MaxBlitzer's community posts

Conrad Sallian wrote:

Hello Max,

our pricing page clearly shows two paid license without this feature. Why do you keep saying it's not shown for commercial users? That's confusing and annoying to be gaslighted. You should be specifically mentioning the $499 and higher commercial license not 50% of your commercial licenses.

The line in the pricing table you are referring to mentioned a different message, specifically this one. Yes, it is shown for all commercial licenses except the Pro and Site and only when some conditions are met.

Whereas in this thread we are discussing  a different message , the one that I've shown in my previous post. And this message is shown for free license and trial users only.

There's no connection between this message and your constant flagging by Av software for YEARS. How this isn't solved with digitally signed certification, and threats from legal. There's a difference between Av software saying the app may be potentially used as a RAT, versus Microsoft Defender that just outright says it has a virus. No other software I use has the ongoing issues as you guys.

... and then they remove the detection/classification and apologize. It's all the same every time.

This is a three year old thread and is about first connection message. Just check the first page.

But are you saying that for free users in v7 there's a permanent notice box that can't be removed for free users? That would be bonkers.

Edit: I see now that instead of opening a new thread, this new message was discussed in this existing thread about first connect. So the point is now, instead of removing this obtrusiveness, you've doubled down with another one.

Conrad,

Your pricing page clearly shows two paid license without this feature. Why do you keep saying it's not shown for commercial users? That's confusing and annoying to be gaslighted. You should be specifically mentioning the $499 and higher commercial license not 50% of your commercial licenses.

There's no connection between this message and your constant flagging by Av software for YEARS. How this isn't solved with digitally signed certification, and threats from legal. There's a difference between Av software saying the app may be potentially used as a RAT, versus Microsoft Defender that just outright says it has a virus. No other software I use has the ongoing issues as you guys.

(And yes, I'm familiar with the v6 message and stopped buying upgrades when I realized nothing that bothered me was getting addressed, mainly this one).

Conrad Sallian wrote:

Hi Márcio ,

I understand allright, so I hope you understand too - that notice will likely make you loose potentially paying customers that would gladly pay for your software in other situations. Just not this one.

This message is not visible for a commercial license owners. And it's not because we want to squeeze money from our free license users, as we explained earlier. We just wanted to put another obstacle to abuse of the 'out-of-the-box' free RU version. It was just too easy to abuse it - and as a consequence we had a lot of headache with antivirus software.

What truly made us losing our customers and getting refund requests was antivirus software blocking the program for our corporate clients, just because yet another "mom's hacker" used the free RU to remote into his ex-girlfriend's computere to steal some photos. Well, that is what kills customer trust, and not extra security measures.

That's not true. You need to be on an enterprise plan. It is money gauging and your reasoning that buying a larger license negates the limitations is proving that.

Your rational that an attacker can get the silent installer installed and still need to have a really dumb message to inform the user is illogical.

Even walking through over the phone to install it and the user still gets the message and treats the IT person like it's unsafe. If my name or email address was shown instead, they'd know it was me, not some attacker.

I said years ago the message needed to be changed and was completely ignored, only to have the same complaint for years.

And has these changes stopped AV providers from flagging your software EVERY TIME, no. You're handling this feature very poorly.

Conrad Sallian wrote:

As for upgrading to a newer version, it is not mandatory. Any customer can stay with version 6 if they are not happy with version 7. Even if they upgrade their key to version 7, their version 6 key still works, i.e. they can even roll back to that version if needed.

I would suggest in the future, not to deprecate the "Simple Update" feature then. Since v7 got released, doing a simple update prompts that a new viewer is available. If you sel ect yes, you're forced to install v7. If you select no, it doesn't proceed with simple update and the feature is therefore deprecated.  Work around is to use the Remote Install feature, though that takes longer with more clicks. Not the end of the world.

We'll keep to a more frequent release schedule fr om now on.

Anywhere I can find a roadmap or plan of what features you have prioritized next?

Conrad Sallian wrote:

We didn't intend to trick anyone. Beta version is, well, beta version. It can be any number. And initially we indeed wanted to make it another minor release. But then it were a lot of quite serious improvements so it could easily become version 7. That said, there is 7 years span between version 6 and 7 - unlike our competitors we do not release a major each and every year whether it's justified or not. Otherwise there would already be version 14 :)

Well, you did. You went through several beta cycles under the 6.x version which gave me hope for getting improvements and fixes. You're pretty much alone in thinking that version scheme is meaningless and trivial.  Other companies would have just been clear from the start and called it a v7 beta.

Unfortunately, none of the new features interest me as much as just resolving a few issues that have been there for a while. Given they were not resolved in the last beta and I don't know what you've improved since then nor do I have the time or systems set aside to devote any time to QAing it, so... I was drawn to RUT years ago because of the perpetual license, but this specific event has caused me to switch to a subscription based service.

If you're thinking its a good thing there was 7 years span, I disagree. Not if it means nearly 2 years between supported stable builds instead of frequent updates. I'm burned out now on RUT, I don't have any expectation of bug resolutions that is satisfactory to me.

Having major releases every 1-3 years would be better from a financial point of view, as well ensuring you're properly road mapping your development instead of dropping new "major" releases like this.

Further, when someone inquired about getting a new beta update before March 1 expiry, this critical fact was neglected and downright misleading: "Yes, the final release will be made before the end of this month.

And we made the final release before the end of this month, just as we promised.

No, you're mistaken. You're "final release" was 6.10.10 in 2019.  The "new" release was Feb 25, 2021.

As for paid upgrade - our upgrade policy has always been very precise on this point. We exactly follow this policy.

Yes, and those are usually helpful, when releases are more frequent than 1.5 years.  Acronis puts out a new release each year (whether or not they need to). They're growing and offer both perpetual and subscription. They put out several releases a year, including updating previous versions 1-2 more times after the new release is out. When "major" updates occur regularly at 1 year intervals, it helps the product stay on the tracks and get back focus if they strayed too far one version from what their customers want.

https://www.remoteutilities.com/download/older-versions.php
We'll fix that page now leaving only version 6.10.10.0 avialble for download. Yes, the last minor update of version 6 is 6.10.10.0. And the server is 2.8.2.0.

Thanks.

Thanks

Conrad,

This is really disappointing. I really wish you called your 6.12 beta version 7.x instead of tricking us into thinking it was another 6.12 release. I wouldn't have bothered testing the betas if I knew this to to be the case.  Further, when someone inquired about getting a new beta update before March 1 expiry, this critical fact was neglected and downright misleading: "Yes, the final release will be made before the end of this month."

I just installed the RU Server 3.0 and then realized with the version bump to v7, I would need to pay for an upgrade. So now I'm stuck on a mix of 6.10.x's, beta 6.12's and a RU server running 3.0 I need to downgrade to 2.7 release. I really hope it doesn't bork the address books or settings.

https://www.remoteutilities.com/download/older-versions.php

So what is the last official 6.x release that I can still run? The 6.10.10 that is ancient and buggy that is almost 2 years old?  I don't even know if there was a minor update put out after the last time I upgraded my license in May 2019. Can you update the page above to include them, please?

Clodomiro Berzelius wrote:

This is not good enough. You NEED to make your program safer, or you deserve to be shamed all over the internet, or marked as a malware forever. Your program is IDEAL for scammers.

https://youtu.be/k25QGUhzODA

You need to stop using the Internet if you're going to make nonsensical complaints like this. Use your head next time.

The user installed this at the request of the fake technician. The user is stupid and needs to be educated, not take away all the tools. The same thing can be done with 100 legitimate purpose software, this isn't specific to Remote Utilities.

Do you request kitchens stop using knives because criminals can stab people?

Seriously, you don't understand this is a user problem, not a software problem.

Before the next beta, please change the default option for:
Remote install->Connection type  to "Remote utilities security".

I only use single passwords. And when testing betas, you prompt for each login credential rather than the saved single password when the default "Windows security" is selected. This doesn't make much sense for me, especially if upgrading 1+, not sure about other users. I suspect not.

Still looking for improved version reporting. It's one of my biggest issues with RUT.

Upgraded 4 using remote install and the host .msi file, and 2 of them show the new version number and 2 don't (but did upgrade to .4).
Also, when I did them one at a time, they succeeded, but when I tried two at once, the first one failed authorization and the second one worked. Without changing any setting, tried remote upgrade again on the one that failed authorization and it upgraded.

Lastly, given the amount of time between beta releases, the 3 month license expiry seems short. You should think about 9 months at least.

Rob,

Just do the DNS name and setup a dynamic DNS hostname. You'll need to sync the registry and some RUT files between the servers. You won't need to change your address book at all.

DON'T do the MSI thing. When trying to using the Remote Install Tool for upgrading beta versions, it rarely, if ever worked. So I wouldn't suggest that especially when there is no point.