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I'm Confused, Are We Waiting For An 8.x Update?


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The release is coming very soon. Rather then release a product before it is ready, we made a business decision to continue testing and bug fixes a little longer. I think everyone would agree that a stable product is much better then a product released too quickly.

 

Well Mayoff, as others have pointed out, 'very soon' has come and gone, just like July 2011 did.

 

You now have people on this forum openly discussing alternatives to Retrospect and how to migrate to them! You obviously know how serious this is, but does anyone apart from yourself at Roxio read the forums?

 

I hate to sound negative, but the impression that this delay and lack of communication gives is that the next release is a complete disaster. Ie it's much worse than the current one so you can't possibly release it.

 

There has been no reply to the suggestion of extending the private beta to people on this forum. That would 1) help you get a lot of extra testing done under many different situations and 2) give people here the sense that progress is actually being made. This would let them defer their decision to switch to a competitor's product.

 

Contact people who've posted to this thread privately if you are worried about offering a link to the beta in this thread.

 

Endless promises with no supportive evidence are really making us feel that 8.3 is just vapour-wear.

 

Currently I'm running 8.2.0 (399), and have to put up with it losing its clients and media sets. And having to restart proactive backups of Windows clients when they get stuck. After a year this gets very tiresome.

 

James.

Edited by jlbrown
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You obviously know how serious this is, but does anyone apart from yourself at Roxio read the forums?

Eric Ullman (the product manager) wrote a single post in September:

http://forums.support.roxio.com/topic/77321-windows-home-server-2011/

That's all I'm aware of apart from Mayoff. Maybe other staff are reading but not posting. In any case, I agree it's a shame we don't see more staff activity on here, despite it officially being a 'community' forum.

 

The Retro-Talk e-mail list is another option to discuss Retrospect:

http://list.dantz.com/mailman/listinfo/retro-talk

The list has been really quiet lately, but if more people join and start being vocal on there too, maybe we'll start seeing a bit more official communication.

 

There's also Twitter and Facebook:

http://www.twitter.com/RoxioRetrospect

http://www.facebook.com/RetrospectBackup

Edited by Cygnis
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Guest btovsky

coming on november....

i'm also one who thinks that communication is always better than silence, if only to say "we hear you and we're doing the best that we can" - i think many of us would go back to patiently waiting if that was the case. hard to make angry clients unangry again.....

cheers

b

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On page 9 in MacTech september 2011 issue there is a full page ad for "New Roxio Retrospect 9". Listing all the new features and a "Download a FREE 45-day trial at www.retrospect.com/trail"

 

Amongst the new features it lists Cloud Storage support, Great performace, WebDAV, new administrative controls and 10.7 Lion support.

 

So I think at least someone is expecting a release soon.

 

 

 

edit:typo

Edited by hvar
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On page 9 in MacTech september 2011 issue there is a full page ad for "New Roxio Retrospect 9". Listing all the new features and a "Download a FREE 45-day trial at www.retrospect.com/trail"

 

Amongst the new features it lists Cloud Storage support, Great performace, WebDAV, new administrative controls and 10.7 Lion support.

 

So I think at least someone is expecting a release soon.

 

 

 

edit:typo

 

Not sure if this is real or not. It is not on the mactech website, the url you posted says trail, not trial, but either way doesn't go to a "trial" page to download products. Would be great if they (Roxio) posteed something here, or on their retrotalk mailing list. basic quick searches on the internet about Retrospect 9 produces nothing.

Edited by cpguru21
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basic quick searches on the internet about Retrospect 9 produces nothing.

I found a couple of small bits of info:

 

http://fall.smbnation.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=77&Itemid=124

Near the bottom of the page: "Stop by Exhibit Hall booth 406- learn how new Roxio Retrospect 9 for Mac makes backing up to cloud storage profitable, secure and easy!"

 

http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=%22roxio%20retrospect%209%22&source=web&cd=8&ved=0CGsQFjAH&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.alias.it%2Fscarica%2Fa97d3c43c307ce91ed4bfe7fae23f07a%2F&ei=5bamTqjnDuO7iAeFkuCqDg&usg=AFQjCNENbyfGKg8ieR7rjvPxN5Q_DYXkMA&cad=rja

This second one is Italian, which I don't speak, so I ran it through an online translator. The last sentence seems to suggest it will be a free upgrade for users of version 8, but not available at upgrade pricing for users of version 6 and earlier:

 

"Advances Imminent the launch of version Roxio Retrospect 9 for MAC The new version Retrospect 9 for MAC he will be available give October and between the innovationes that are been implemented are one new and intuitiva interface customer all' vanguard and functions of level enterprise. Between the functionalities announced we will find the management remote of or a more serveur than backup, the support of the new one OS Lion and of WebDAV cloud storage, the restoration of the data started dall' customer… and a lot other anchor will come rendered famous to short. The modernization to version 9 of Retrospect for Mac it will be possible only from the precedence versions 8.x and for those who they will acquire in this period version 8,2 of Retrospect for MAC the modernization it will be free."

 

Best not to take this too seriously, being a loose translation of unofficial information, but if it's correct, I'm sure disgruntled users of version 8 will be pleased. I hope the bit about users of earlier versions not being eligible to upgrade is wrong, given how many people have probably stuck with 6 due to 8's problems.

Edited by Cygnis
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Not sure if this is real or not. It is not on the mactech website, the url you posted says trail, not trial, but either way doesn't go to a "trial" page to download products. Would be great if they (Roxio) posteed something here, or on their retrotalk mailing list. basic quick searches on the internet about Retrospect 9 produces nothing.

 

 

Here is a picture of the ad. It is in the paper magazine MacTech, september 2011 issue.

sorry, my typo: url in ad is <www.retrospect.com/trial>

 

(You only get the 8.2 version trial version there)

 

 

Edited by hvar
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Here is a picture of the ad. It is in the paper magazine MacTech, september 2011 issue.

sorry, my typo: url in ad is <www.retrospect.com/trial>

 

 

 

Thanks hvar and Cygnis. Not sure if I will switch back or not, or get the approval. Plus the feeling of purchasing a product that was unstable to begin with, then forced to purchase the next version. Of course i do understand if Roxio does this, im just not sure I like it.

 

thanks,

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Why is it so hard for Roxio to acknowledge they have a new product in the works? It's just over two months since Robin Mayoff last participated in this discussion, a short message indicating "The release is coming very soon", are you still with us Robin? If this is the release that was being discussed then why not flood the forum with a little hope? Let us know what the new software can do, get us excited about the new features, capabilities and reliability. Now that the marketing arm of Roxio has let the cat out of the bag you would think the feature set has been locked down and a list of enhancements and fixes would be near enough for release. Is anyone from Roxio participating in this group discussion?

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Everyone, the product is coming. I can promise that.

 

Thank you for that at least - although it does have a familiar ring to it.

 

WebDAV support is one of the many new features.

 

To be honest, I don’t care.

 

Instead of new features (that may or may not work) how about fixing those parts of the current feature set that are fundamentally broken?

 

I’d rather a basic application that was bullet proof (given its mission critical role) than one with a bunch of features that didn’t actually do the job its meant to do - 100% reliable unattended backup.

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Everyone, the product is coming. I can promise that.

Everyone, the winter is coming. I can promise that.

 

Sorry Robin, but your response doesn't give us any clues about what we can expect from Roxio and/or Retrospect. The rumor mill is working overtime and Roxio needs to give us, the users, information about what will happen next. Especially if Roxio is already advertising with the new product. Continuing the radio silence only feeds everyones fears that they will have to pay to get a new version, while the current version they paid for still contains a lot of know bugs. Would you be happy if you bought a product somewhere else and had this experience?

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Everyone, the winter is coming. I can promise that.

 

Sorry Robin, but your response doesn't give us any clues about what we can expect from Roxio and/or Retrospect. The rumor mill is working overtime and Roxio needs to give us, the users, information about what will happen next. Especially if Roxio is already advertising with the new product. Continuing the radio silence only feeds everyones fears that they will have to pay to get a new version, while the current version they paid for still contains a lot of know bugs. Would you be happy if you bought a product somewhere else and had this experience?

 

Have used Retrospect since version 2 if I remember correctly. I would gladly pay to upgrade our two licences to version 9 - if it works. Works as in stable and trustable. Somehow my expectations are not too high.

 

We are currently evaluating PressStore. Seems to the best alternative, but it lack features and is quite expensive. BRU is too akward and we bumped into too many errors while evaluating it. Atempo Time Navigator has a user hostile interface.

 

I do not think users want new features in Retrospect 9. We want stability. However Roxio needs to put a bunch of "new features" there to make it a "Major update". Expect to pay. (But hey Retrospect is very cheap anyway.)

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Well its August 24 here so presumably even for a US centric firm 24 days is beyond “July”.

 

We are now working our way through the issues involved with moving to PresSTORE.

 

Very disappointed that we are leaving a product that had been so good for so long (been using it for about 20 years), but can’t rely on it anymore and that’s not good for “mission critical” backup software.

 

Hopefully those of you who stay behind to listen to the orchestra don’t suffer too much when she finally slips beneath the waves.

I check here every coupla months, just to see what's up with Retro. I see it's more of the same so not much has been missed. Retro has been with us for a similar time and over that period it's been a love/hate relationship.

 

We recently went to a more manual approach using JBOD media, TIme Machine, and CCC. I saved some space and the backups are much, MUCH FASTER and RESTOREs as well. Neither of which Retro seemed to have the ability to do with completeness via a GigE connection with any kind of speed.

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Agreed, I could care less about new features, and hope that's not what your developers are waisting their time on. Just give us reliable software, that's not totally flakey. Give us a program that doesn't freeze for minutes at a time, until you give up and have to force quite the retrospect engine. Backups are so critical to get right, this software does not instill confidence. It's been passed around like an unwanted stepchild and it shows...

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Robin, if you are restricted from talking about the software I can understand your absence from this forum, providing us a breadcrumb every now and then is maddening. With the Retro 9 product officially announced isn't it counterproductive to alienate your installed base? Is there another forum, newsletter, blog we should be paying attention to so we can receive information in a more timely manner?

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Here's my fear: the focus changes to small business, and things like tape library support become secondary considerations. WebDAV? Seriously, big deal- the upload link for most sites is so small to make that not all that useful for anything besides small amounts of data. And for that, Crashplan already does a very nice job (and is reliable).

 

And now that Growl has gone paid, we will be relying on Retrospect to ship updated builds of Growl for the client (meaning more updates).

 

And of course the silence has been deafening, particularly since the beta applications went out months ago.

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WebDAV? Seriously, big deal- the upload link for most sites is so small to make that not all that useful for anything besides small amounts of data. And for that, Crashplan already does a very nice job (and is reliable).

 

CrashPlan is indeed very nice. Stable, small, and even free for a subset of it's abilities. But CrashPlan's cloud storage options are pretty limited; either pay Code 42 or do without hosted backup storage.

 

On the other hand, my web hosting plan includes unlimited storage space with a WebDAV option; coupled with Retrospect's flexibility of file selection I can give myself pretty good offline security for my most critical data without spending any more money. With the loss of Internet Backup Sets from Retrospect "Classic," the option to save Disk Media Sets to a WebDAV member is very compelling.

 

The other major limitation with CrashPlan (which may not be present in CrashPlan Pro, which I haven't used) is that while the current (paid) version allows you to create "Backup Sets" to configure independent sources of hand picked local files (no Rules) and save them to independent destinations, incoming files (from other machines on the network) can only be routed to a single selected location. So in order to effectively backup a network of computers you have to configure things on each machine individually. Not impossible with remote management software, but still a hassle.

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CrashPlan is indeed very nice. Stable, small, and even free for a subset of it's abilities. But CrashPlan's cloud storage options are pretty limited; either pay Code 42 or do without hosted backup storage.

 

On the other hand, my web hosting plan includes unlimited storage space with a WebDAV option; coupled with Retrospect's flexibility of file selection I can give myself pretty good offline security for my most critical data without spending any more money. With the loss of Internet Backup Sets from Retrospect "Classic," the option to save Disk Media Sets to a WebDAV member is very compelling.

 

The other major limitation with CrashPlan (which may not be present in CrashPlan Pro, which I haven't used) is that while the current (paid) version allows you to create "Backup Sets" to configure independent sources of hand picked local files (no Rules) and save them to independent destinations, incoming files (from other machines on the network) can only be routed to a single selected location. So in order to effectively backup a network of computers you have to configure things on each machine individually. Not impossible with remote management software, but still a hassle.

 

 

So WebDAV ends up being a fix to replace a function that was removed? Not exactly a highlight. Additionally, CrashPlan can work site-to-site, greatly increasing the speed of recovery (and in fact making larger backups feasible, by allowing a local backup to be converted to a remote backup).

 

And your "unlimited" WebDAV storage is at the mercy of the bulk service provider who is likely running things on a barebone budget in order to offer unlimited storage.

 

Of course all of this is moot, as CrashPlan works now, while Retrospect hasn't been feature complete since v8 shipped, and the company line has been to promise an update that didn't arrive (and tomorrow we'll find out whether they expect us to pay to upgrade to a fresh, newly written version with a whole host of new bugs).

 

For what we are now doing (one time archives) Retrospect has been functional (not smooth, but at least functional). Time will tell with v9, but the company has lost all the built up goodwill that years of successful backups brought-one year of no fixes is a very big hurdle.

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So WebDAV ends up being a fix to replace a function that was removed? Not exactly a highlight.

 

Actually it's an improvement over FTP; it takes the best parts of that Type of Backup Set ("slices" of files written to the media) and adds Grooming.

 

Additionally, CrashPlan can work site-to-site, greatly increasing the speed of recovery (and in fact making larger backups feasible, by allowing a local backup to be converted to a remote backup).

 

Disk Media Set Members should be location independent, too, with the WebDAV option. Just point the Catalog to the current/correct Member and it'll take right up where it left off. At least it should; testing would have to be performed on the feature, of course.

 

And your "unlimited" WebDAV storage is at the mercy of the bulk service provider who is likely running things on a barebone budget in order to offer unlimited storage.

 

That was just an example, silly. One could leverage Amazon A3 storage via WebDAV, or any other commercial service. My point was that CrashPlan provides no options for cloud storage other then CrashPlan, while having WebDAV support opens up a world of options. In this case, more=better.

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