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


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OK, time for my two cents worth...

 

Back in August I purchased an ASM. Below is the e-mail confirmation - as you can see, I paid $260. It turns out that that was a pretty good deal, because if I'm understanding things correctly it entitles me to a free upgrade to version 9. Now, I come to my point - a lot of people were/are pissed off at how little love they've been shown by Retrospect during the last several months, and asking for $940 to upgrade feels like a slap in the face to almost everyone - me included. So here's my suggestion to Retrospect - continue to offer owners of V8.x the opportunity to purchase the ASM for their version 8 product @ $260, and allow them to go to 9.x if/when they feel the time is right. Come on, Retrospect, what do you think? (P.S. May that option does still exist and I just have not seen anyone talking about it).

 

Brad.

 

 

On 12-AUG-2011 you purchased the following product by Roxio, a Division of

Rovi Corporation from element 5 and paid by credit card:

Roxio Retrospect Multi Server Unlimited Clients MAC 8.0 ASM - GZ01A8000C

 

The order stored in our system under order no. xxxxxxx was paid with your

Visa card. The total amount of the order is USD 260.00.

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I'm not going to defend the pricing one way or the other (and I can imagine the inactivity Roxio/Rovi gave to the product is a factor in the pricing/versioning here), but you *can* get a free 30-day trial version to see if it fixes the bugs you are having. If it doesn't, don't upgrade. If it does, then make your decision based on that.

 

Good idea. I'll spend dozens of extra evening/weekend hours upgrading my infrastructure including 40+ computers to a trial version in the hopes it works, and then be forced to pay for it after 30 days, or spend even more time going back and downgrading to 8.2 and rebuilding that from scratch. Sounds like fun! I'll get started right away.

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I was stunned to find out we still maintained an ASM on Retro 8 and the Advanced Tape Support. I've submitted my support ticket and received a case ID, I guess I'll see where this will take me.

 

You should get a code and a link (I did just for “fun”).

 

You’ll also note that the disk image at the link is dated late August (26 August, 2011) so we could potentially had a detailed list of what was “fixed” (if it has been) almost 2 months ago. :(

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I'll spend dozens of extra evening/weekend hours upgrading my infrastructure including 40+ computers to a trial version in the hopes it works, and then be forced to pay for it after 30 days, or spend even more time going back and downgrading to 8.2 and rebuilding that from scratch. Sounds like fun! I'll get started right away.

You mean if the upgrade were free you'd just update your infrastructure without testing it first? Really?

 

Did you install 8.2 in your infrastructure without testing it?

 

My current license shows as valid until the end of November, giving me 30 days before having to request anything else. And the steps for a trial key are trivially easy, allowing an on-the-fence administrator the capability to get a new trial key if the testing process is not completed/accepted/successful.

 

That's what I recommended for version 8.0, 8.1 and 8.2. If you installed software on 40 machines without doing your due diligence and qualifying it appropriately, well that's on you.

 

Dave

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You should get a code and a link (I did just for "fun").

 

You'll also note that the disk image at the link is dated late August (26 August, 2011) so we could potentially had a detailed list of what was "fixed" (if it has been) almost 2 months ago. :(

 

I did receive a code, but just for the Single Server license. Any ideas if I have to submit a support ticket for my Advanced Tape Support separately?

 

I noticed the date on the file as well, I suspect the new owners were still hashing out the details of the business transfer and were contractually obligated to keep quiet and withhold the release until all the i's were crossed and the t's were dotted.

 

 

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You mean if the upgrade were free you'd just update your infrastructure without testing it first? Really?

 

Did you install 8.2 in your infrastructure without testing it?

 

My current license shows as valid until the end of November, giving me 30 days before having to request anything else. And the steps for a trial key are trivially easy, allowing an on-the-fence administrator the capability to get a new trial key if the testing process is not completed/accepted/successful.

 

That's what I recommended for version 8.0, 8.1 and 8.2. If you installed software on 40 machines without doing your due diligence and qualifying it appropriately, well that's on you.

 

Dave

 

Luckily I'm in a different boat, we moved on to a competing product so I will not be deploying Retro 9 to an active state, I just felt compelled to use my ASM option to upgrade since it was paid for. If Retrospect Inc. wishes to survive they will need to do an outstanding job on this new release and prove they are dedicated to the users who have stuck with version 8.

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I'm not going to defend the pricing one way or the other (and I can imagine the inactivity Roxio/Rovi gave to the product is a factor in the pricing/versioning here), but you *can* get a free 30-day trial version to see if it fixes the bugs you are having. If it doesn't, don't upgrade. If it does, then make your decision based on that.

If I do download a trial version, what do I need to do to back out of it if I decide that it doesn't work any better for me than 8.2? Can I run 8.2 and 9.0 side-by side (obviously running only one engine at a time)?

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I wonder if Retrospect Inc. will realise that these are all legitimate complaints from users around the globe who really, honestly and truly have racked up serious hours trying to get version 8.x working properly. I wonder if they'll realise that we've all been expecting a massive bug-fix to version 8 rather than a few new features in version 9.

 

And the price. Oh dear god, the price. As many have already expressed, it's going to be very difficult getting customers to pay for the next version of a product that hasn't worked since early version 6.

 

Is there anywhere a list of fixed issues that we can at least refer to in order to assist our purchasing decisions? We all know what parts were broken. I'd like to see those all addressed *before* I pay for a new version.

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Guest Steve Maser

If I do download a trial version, what do I need to do to back out of it if I decide that it doesn't work any better for me than 8.2? Can I run 8.2 and 9.0 side-by side (obviously running only one engine at a time)?

 

 

Well, what I'd suggest doing here would be to:

 

1) Make a copy of your 8.2-running "config80.dat" file. Store that somewhere safe.

 

2) Install the trial version. Use the trial version with *new media sets* only (just in case there's some compatibility issue -- which I don't think there is, but I've not tried this.)

 

3) Evaluate the trial version. If you don't like it, then you can uninstall 9, reinstall 8.2 and put your 8.2 "config80.dat" file back in service.

 

You can't run things "side-by-side" -- you'd have to uninstall/reinstall the engine to compare/contrast the versions. You could have two different *console* apps, but not two different engines on the same computer.

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This thread looks like a great place to vent...

 

With no specific v8 to v9 upgrade instructions, I installed the v9 engine on a limited use backup server (we have multi-server license) to take it for a spin. There was only one script on that Retro server which copies some files from a Windows 2003 client to a local drive (no media set/catalog). The install was painless and my one script and history converted without issue. I need to research how well catalogs are handled in the upgrade, as my previous upgrades in v8 forced me to rebuild most of my catalogs.

 

I'm impressed by how quickly the client app loads. Huge improvement. In my limited testing, the client even looks like it knows how to sort list items by column correctly.

 

What has me down is that the two things that bothered me the most in v8 are still present in v9. Let's take a look at the readme file in the Retro 9 application folder...

 

1. Known issue: Disk Media Set members cannot be edited on Mac OS X 10.5 64-bit Macs. We recommend running Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" or later on 64-bit-capable Intel Macs.

--- Bummer! I was really hoping v9 would save me from having to purchase a new server version for our primary Retro box. Sadly, we haven't cleared the very reasonably priced 10.7 server for use yet.

 

2. Restoring a Windows client using the optional Retrospect Emergency Recovery CD:

When restoring a Windows client computer that is booted from the optional Retrospect Emergency Recovery CD for Windows, drive letters might change. Pay special attention to which volume(s) you are restoring.

--- Oh, I was really excited about this one. My biggest pet peeve about Retrospect Mac was that I could backup a Windows box, but couldn't do a bare metal restore with vendor supported tools. I entered a support ticket to request my optional CD.

Agent response, "I am very sorry, after looking into this, it appears that the mention of this in the Retrospect documentation is an error. The Disaster Recovery disk is something available only with Windows editions of Retrospect. My apologies, this will be corrected in future documentation."

--- Wow. Instead of changing the docs, why not fix the real problem?!? Besides. after all these years, wouldn't it just make sense for the console app to be able to create bootable media (CD,USB,etc) with the latest client app on demand? I'll have all my servers virtualized before I get BMR for Windows!

--- Well, at least I now have "cloud storage integration." I didn't even know I needed that. ;)

 

Venting complete.

 

Thanks.

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Hippy: Upgrade pricing is available for Retrospect 9. I am not sure why you believe the upgrade is a full price purchase. Upgrade details are found at:

 

http://www.roxio.com/enu/products/retrospect/upgrade/upgrade-options-mac.html

 

That page lists Upgrades from V6, not v8.

 

After being promised an update being in the process/coming soon, it is a disturbing thing to see, we have to dish out $939 again for something that is essentially a bug fix.

 

unbelievable.

 

cheers

®

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Good idea. I'll spend dozens of extra evening/weekend hours upgrading my infrastructure including 40+ computers to a trial version in the hopes it works, and then be forced to pay for it after 30 days, or spend even more time going back and downgrading to 8.2 and rebuilding that from scratch. Sounds like fun! I'll get started right away.

 

I fear there are too many people that just backup a handful of workplaces and cannot understand how big a deal it is to upgrade a big pool of clients and servers. And I think Dantz/Roxio/Retrospect (still all three names come up in certain web services... how about cleaning up that mess too) doesn't really care much about bigger installations. Having a bug fix to a existing installation base is a different beast than having to migrate to a new version with questionable compatibility.

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I am aware of that. But I feel pissed on because I already paid the v6 to v8 upgrade price. So, some of us just pay twice as much as others...

 

I completely agree with your point. Especially since we paid to upgrade to v8, but outside of many wasted hours trying to make it work, (and again, and again, and again - every time it was updated) we never deployed it. We've been maintaining our v6 backup system this whole time. With the current pricing, I wish I never upgraded to 8 at all.

 

Now I've got an intel server with appropriate hardware ready to deploy the new version on - but I've been hoping to receive a response from Retrospect "to make this right" - but it's been more than a week now and I think its safe to assume they're ignoring me.

Edited by sgladfelter
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I completely agree with your point. Especially since we paid to upgrade to v8, but outside of many wasted hours trying to make it work, (and again, and again, and again - every time it was updated) we never deployed it. We've been maintaining our v6 backup system this whole time. With the current pricing, I wish I never upgraded to 8 at all.

 

Now I've got an intel server with appropriate hardware ready to deploy the new version on - but I've been hoping to receive a response from Retrospect "to make this right" - but it's been more than a week now and I think its safe to assume they're ignoring me.

 

Well, to be fair after venting and ranting, I now want to state that my direct contact with Jean-Christian Dumas from Retrospect corp. was constructive and supportive. You might want to get in contact with them directly and take your matter there. The forum doesn't seem to be the proper place for this kind of issues. But at last, they ARE listening and communicating. So, lets give them a chance.

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Well, to be fair after venting and ranting, I now want to state that my direct contact with Jean-Christian Dumas from Retrospect corp. was constructive and supportive. You might want to get in contact with them directly and take your matter there. The forum doesn't seem to be the proper place for this kind of issues. But at last, they ARE listening and communicating. So, lets give them a chance.

 

Does this mean they're communicating and listening to individuals, perhaps deep pocketed ones, on an individual basis? In other words, every man for himself? I'm not having a go at your suggestion, and if you make progress this way then so you should. I just wonder if they are handling it this way.

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This web forum is a user community; it is not now, and never has been, an official communication channel for the publisher(s) of the software.

 

Yet, one would think that when asked directly in a thread in which he has actively participated, Robin Mayoff could point us to the "official communication channel" for our request.

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Well, what I'd suggest doing here would be to:

 

1) Make a copy of your 8.2-running "config80.dat" file. Store that somewhere safe.

I do that after every backup. Corruption of the Retro8 config file is too much of an issue not to.

 

2) Install the trial version. Use the trial version with *new media sets* only (just in case there's some compatibility issue -- which I don't think there is, but I've not tried this.)

 

3) Evaluate the trial version. If you don't like it, then you can uninstall 9, reinstall 8.2 and put your 8.2 "config80.dat" file back in service.

 

You can't run things "side-by-side" -- you'd have to uninstall/reinstall the engine to compare/contrast the versions. You could have two different *console* apps, but not two different engines on the same computer.

So I guess the short answer to my question is, "no, there's no easy way to back out of an upgrade to Retro 9".

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