My personal opinion about Eraser 6 - Pros and Cons

N

Nightflight

New Member
Hye again,

I'd like to post my personal opinion about Eraser 6:

1. What I like about it in general:

- Very fast and secure as always. I'm using this app for years and it always worked great
- It is freeware

2. What I don't like about the new Eraser 6 in comparison to Eraser 5:

- Eraser 5 had a portable version. Eraser 6 actually not
- Eraser 6 has to run in the background all the time to work properaly using about 45 MB of my RAM. Not good. Eraser 5 ran perfectly without background service
- When I want to erase a file, I have to do two steps now. First right-click on the file, then choose "Eraser" and then "Erase". At version 5 it was only one step for erasing files
- When emptying the recycle bin with Eraser 5 I had the possibility to choose which erasing method to use. At Eraser 6 there isn't this option anymore. For me it was very comfortable to choose how to empty my recycle bin. And with Eraser 6 you have to do 2 steps again to empty the recycle bin

Any other opinions?
 
Yes, but remember that Eraser 5 only had a portable version only late in the 5.8 series. The portable versions aren't as easy to develop as it increases the number of development scenarios, but this will definitely be considered for future versions.

If RAM usage is a problem, I'll assure you that since memory is .NET managed under cases of high memory pressure memory is freed. We no longer manage memory and hence memory cannot be "leaked." Eraser 5 ran perfectly without background services, yes, but that was because it was developed without the concept of services (back in the old days of 9x) and also because then there was no issue of LUP where users always ran with administrator permissions. This simply isn't true today with Vista and 7 both implementing UAC. Services will be fully implemented in 6.2 and that's when the real benefits will be realised. I hope you'll be patient to wait for that. It may be a long wait, but I'd reckon it's definitely worth it.

The context menu issue is really personal. Some rather have it uncluttered, other's want fewer clicks. It's not going to be able to satisfy both camps, unfortunately. In addition, selecting an erasure method for erasures as defaults was decided upon as recycle bin files should be treated like other files on your computer. Defaults should be picked to reflect your desired level of security and files if deleted should be within that security level.

I'm not saying that your concerns are not valid; but I'm just trying to explain how certain decisions were made so perhaps you'll be able to understand why things are the way it is.

Thanks again!
 
Version 6 a downgrade rather than upgrade

What have you done with this excellent program in version 6 ?! Where are the real improvements as I see mostly things that downgrade its previous ease-of-use and functionality, namely:

- context sensitive option "Eraser Secure Move" has now been discarded

- confirmation box with user-selectable overwrite passes which may differ from case-to-case has been done away with. At least allow an option for those users who prefer to have it. This also served as a warning in case a user made a mistake when clicking on Eraser right-click option; currently there is none!

- system tray icon is really unnecessary and brings no real functionality gain - most system trays are nowadays too much cluttered anyway so careful consideration whether it is really necessary should be applied. No possibility found to disable this if not wanted!

- feedback bubble informing from systray that erasing has been done is just terrible (!) and is a real nuisance (and a feature for PC beginners!) which cannot be removed even in the settings. After all, when erasing a file the user can see in the Explorer that it has been removed and it disappears from view...!

Versions 5.x were so carefully and tastefully designed, why have you not reused and reapplied its positive, practical and user-friendly features? Not everything new is necessarily better! And this should be the result of your development for more than 2 years?! It's not only what's under the hood that counts - users will also (if not mainly) judge the program by its GUI, user-friendliness, well-thought-out and practical as well as functional solutions...! BTW - have a look at what users think (User Reviews part at the bottom of the page) about this version's functionality at http://www.freewarefiles.com/Eraser_program_1793.html . I have already awakened from the "new update euphoria"... and returned to the last 5.x release.
:(
 
Re: Version 6 a downgrade rather than upgrade

I also have to agree.
I used the "Eraser Secure Move" feature a lot, and I can't see how removing it was an improvement.
I installed the 5.8.8 again.
 
I've registered just to say this.

I appreciate your efforts, but I don't like version 6. It's a hog.
Version 5.8 is less than 2 MB. Version 6 is huge and still needs the MS framework. :( All I need is a small tool to securely erase files.
I hope you keep version 5 alive or maybe create a version 6 lite edition, that doesn't need installation nor the MS framework (just like version 5.8 portable).

Thank You
 
Please, please disable the tray icon and persistence. It's most annoying.

Windows already has a job scheduler. If I schedule a job, use that, or just complain that the tray icon and persistence is disabled and then gray out scheduling of jobs.

Also, WHY THE HECK would you remove Secure Move? It's quite necessary!
 
I'm also back to Eraser 5.8.8 at the moment. It's not because of the bugs I've found immediately after running 6.0.6, it's because I still don't like Eraser 6's user interface. It's just worse in so many ways than the former one. For example the settings: Eraser 5 had everything in two dialogs, General and Erasing, both of which are very small in size, you get a good overview of all settings, which is very very good. Eraser 6 has half of its settings hidden. Yes, it took me about 15 minutes to find the scrollbar at the right, so I could reach the bottom half of the settings "page". Also the GUI of Eraser is very bloated with lots of unused space, whereas Eraser was nicely condensed. Also Eraser 6's overal GUI design looks campy, but that's not really an issue because it doesn't interfere with usability as much as the misplacement of buttons, dialogs and other UI elements introduced in Eraser 6.

So that is a big contra here.

The big pro of Eraser for me is actually (unlike for others here) that task invoked from the Windows Shell (Explorer) are now sent to the background task. It is really annoying when erasing a lot of files, that Windows Explorer is unusable. The workaround was to open a new Explorer instance, navigate to the path I was working in and then continue with the second instance until Eraser was finished.

But then there's a contra in this pro. As I've requested before and just a few minutes ago again, with a slightly different suggestion: If I start a erasure task from the Windows Explorer, I want to see the status window in the middle of the screen, just like in Eraser 5. But without the window being modal (meaning that it blocks the access to the parent window, in this case the Windows Explorer). With Eraser 6's new background scheduler task this is no problem. If it gets a job from the shell extension, and of course if the user wished for it in the settings, then it will show a pop-up window in the middle of the screen, which is not related to the Windows Explorer task, and therefore the user can quickly check that the erasure task is running well, and then click a few pixels to the side into the Windows Explorer window and continue working...

Needless to say that I find the tooltips in the notification area absolutely useless. I have to click on them every damn time, because I want to see if the task is running without errors. This means I have to stop whatever I was doing in the Windows Explorer...

In Eraser 5 it is just perfect (if it weren't for the modal window)! I see the progress of the files and the overal progress in two different bars. I can cancel the task in this status window. And most of all I can set the end report to only show up if there was an error! If the task ran error free, the Eraser windows just vanish...

My conclusion is that technically there are big advancement over Eraser 5 under the hood, even the use of .NET is a good thing IMHO. Eraser 6 still lacks 100% UAC support, it mustn't depend on starting it with Admin rights, for example, also native x64 binaries are missing. Still it's very promising. But on the other hand the GUI is horrible, unusable. A real regression in design.

At the moment the only real technical advancement of Erasure 6 over Erasure 5 that I personally experience is the lack of Unicode support in Eraser 5. Apart from that, Eraser 5 does everything that Eraser 6 does, often in a more user-friendly way, or not worse than Eraser 6. For example I have to start the scheduler with Admin rights in version 5 and in version 6 if I want to erase unused disk space, so version 6 is not better integrated into Vista and 7 at all.
 
I have to agree with the posters who note that version 6 is a downgrade. I have been running Eraser for a couple years, but have not upgraded in a while. I finally stopped in to upgrade to the latest version. I had version 6 on my machine for 10 minutes before I decided it was a horrible mistake. I uninstalled and went to version 5.8.8.

Version 6 restricted options and removed functionality. An upgrade is supposed to add functions. I am very disappointed and hope the next version of 6 fixes this mistake.

I want to see the context (right-click) menu options returned. If you want to give people the option to choose what type of context menu to use (consolidated as in new format or expanded as in old) that is fine, but you have added clicks for most of us that we don't want.

Return the Eraser Secure Move feature - I use this all the time!
 
Secure move couldn't be included in this release because of a design mistake in the way the Task architecture was done; it was a little too late when the flaw was discovered. This definitely will be fixed in 6.2.

How does v6 restrict your options? What functionality did it remove (except the secure move, which I agree is important)
 
I, too, uninstalled version 6 and reverted to v. 5.8.
The user interface of v. 5.8 affords numerous useful options and is generally quite adequate. Reducing options does not make an application friendlier.
I appreciate your hard work, but the interface is seriously degraded in the new version.
 
Reply to Joel:

To find out which functionalities were removed, pls read my contribution again (see above, dated Wed Dec 16, 2009).

To put it in a nutshell - how about using the engine (the unvisible part) from v6 but leaving the visible part (GUI, icons, everything the user can "touch") from v 5x. To me that would be the most viable option!
 
Joel said:
The context menu issue is really personal. Some rather have it uncluttered, other's want fewer clicks. It's not going to be able to satisfy both camps, unfortunately. In addition, selecting an erasure method for erasures as defaults was decided upon as recycle bin files should be treated like other files on your computer. Defaults should be picked to reflect your desired level of security and files if deleted should be within that security level.
Click to expand...

I know of a software that solves this problem perfectly. It's 7-zip. I'll post a picture of its options for context menu. I hope eraser could be the same.

options.jpg


By the way, in my opinion, before deleting something permanently should we ask for confirmation?
 
JohnLucifer said:
I know of a software that solves this problem perfectly. It's 7-zip. I'll post a picture of its options for context menu. I hope eraser could be the same.
Click to expand...
I agree fully. If the context menu question is 'personal', as Joel rightly says, why not have options to personalise this bit of the interface? And 7-Zip is a good model, because it's a utility and it too is freeware.

JohnLucifer said:
By the way, in my opinion, before deleting something permanently should we ask for confirmation?
Click to expand...
Indeed we should! Unfortunately, having raised this question separately with Joel, he tells me that the background service implementation of v6 makes this difficult, and while this feature is planned, the amount of rewriting required to make it happen means that it is some time off. Frankly, this worries me. We have all become used to confirmation dialogs as the first line of defence of ourselves against ourselves, and, in that intervening year (or whatever), I foresee much wailing and gnashing of teeth ...

All that said, having kept v5.x on my Vista machine, and now running v6 on the Windows 7 box that will take over in due course, I am finding that I prefer the generally cleaner interface of the new version. My problem with it is that it is not yet as stable as v5, but I'm discussing those points with Joel in the Beta test forum.

David
 
Well, I agree 100% with the people who don't like version 6. I'll not only go back to version 5.8 (sooooo buggy) but even to 5.7 because it's in my opinion the latest stable version (and I do believe there has been other people working on this project after this version, which could explain why things have gone surprisingly wrong).

I will also add than even the application's icon has a totally unprofessional look. And that's a real pain in the ass to have to register in this forum to be able to provide a user feedback !!!

Seriously guys, if this were not about the solid reputation of this software, I bet nobody would use it anymore (which I will probably do very soon if Eraser keeps on getting worse and worse).

Regards.
 
Mat_F said:
Well, I agree 100% with the people who don't like version 6. I'll not only go back to version 5.8 (sooooo buggy) but even to 5.7 because it's in my opinion the latest stable version (and I do believe there has been other people working on this project after this version, which could explain why things have gone surprisingly wrong).

I will also add than even the application's icon has a totally unprofessional look. And that's a real pain in the ass to have to register in this forum to be able to provide a user feedback !!!

Seriously guys, if this were not about the solid reputation of this software, I bet nobody would use it anymore (which I will probably do very soon if Eraser keeps on getting worse and worse).

Regards.
Click to expand...

+100

I concur with the above poster.

How about that registration process for this forum just to provide feedback what a bloody nightmare!
 
I'm going to agree with a bunch of the previous posters.

In a version from about two years ago, you could "Empty recycle bin" or "Erase recycle bin" in the Recycle Bin context menu. Using "Erase recycle bin" chose the default method. In 5.x I did not care for the context menu that showed EVERY possible method. So 6.x is an improvement in that the context menu is cleaner, but I don't like the extra click Eraser -> Erase requires. The 7-Zip-like option seems excellent if it will get rid of this extra click. :)

I do not care for the pop-up bubble after erasing is completed. Where is the Reports option in the GUI? You used to be able to "Only generate a report if Eraser has errors," (paraphrasing there) but now it tells me it's done *every time*. Annoying.

Also annoying is the tray icon, although I just have Windows hide it.

Of course, I should say that I very much appreciate all the effort the developers are putting into this!

Jim
 
I also registered just to advise Heidi of my dis-pleasure at these last 2 new versions.

They are simply too buggy in Win 7 HP 32. Always getting "could not be erased because the file's permissions prevent access to the file", even though the settings should avoid this from happening.

All the useful functionality has disappeared. It is really a different product from versions 5. You should give it another name. Why do developers all seem to be on the religious path of dumbing everything down rather than improving things and making them simpler by allowing the USERS TO CHOOSE what functions and interface they want to see? It started with Microsoft and when they turned Office 2007 and Windows Vista / 7 into a dumbed down system than clueless MSN users might find familiar and warm to.

OK, it's ultimately all about money and the masses, and this is what Heidi in clearly now going to target. Time to find another utility that gives intermediate and advanced users a CHOICE. I would happily pay a few euros / dollars for it as well, as long as it does the job well.
 
I stopped using Eraser 6 on all my machines and paid for R-Wipe&Clean, which has been working flawlessly on Windows 7 x64.
 
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