Macrium Reflect moving to lease model.

OldMainframeGuy said:

I always wondered why Paramount offered such a full-featured version of Reflect for free. In retrospect, perhaps they should have lowered the price of their home product a bit to make it more attractive to those who would only run the free version. I used to run the free version and I liked it so much that I bought a license just to show my gratitude. With this new subscription model (I hate subscriptions) I'll probably look for another product when version 8 is no longer usable.

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Exactly.
They should give reasons free users to pay for premium version. Not scare them away.

James said:

In my opinion, I would rather pay; say £200 for a piece of software, even if it be fixed on the version at that time, and not have to pay £40 a month, just to get these updates.

In a way - if I see two products, the exact same, yet one is more expensive with free delivery, the other is cheaper with paid delivery and then turns out slightly cheaper than the free delivery option, I would go with the more expensive with free delivery. I suppose we can relate this back to subscriptions, as you are getting updates, it is just the burden of having another monthly payment

If you pay £200 one time for the software it is on a fixed version. Say every 2 years you then upgrade, over 10 years that is £1000.
Whereas if you then pay, maybe £50 a month for the product, over 10 years it would be £6000. So this is just a money making scam from these companies.

Cough cough, adobe.

Luckily I get adobe free with my organisation.

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Depends on what it is and how much the upgrades are really needed. I find for 99% of things I need Ms Office for Office 2010 is still working perfectly -- I don't need mosty of the bells and whistles and the base Windows OS security these days is more than good enough to secure the system.

So paid version of Office 2010 one time payment -- cost not much back then (and actually I got it free via the old technet model - VL version --serial numbers still work even on latest version of W11 so unlimited installs allowed ) - vs Office/365 subscription --- No contest --the Office one off purchase 2010 model was a far better value - and really apart from a few bells and whistles with "Collaboration software" what really "New" features are in the later MS Office products that people actually use.

Even if some older software might not continue to run on a newer version of the OS you can always run it indefinitely on a Virtual Machine -- so don't always get "conned" into thinking you always have to upgrade tp the latest verion of everything if it means coughing up a load of dosh.

I've always been against this subscription stuff for most things -- in the long run it doesn't benefit the customers -- just look at the rediculous number of streaming TV / movie services are out there now -- no wonder there's a growing popularity again in "alternative sites" just as those were gpong out of fashion.

I saw in the Brit Financial Times (approx equiv to USA's Wall St Journal) about how big companies didn't these days care at all about customers -- just squeeze as much profit as you can -- load them up with debt and then walk away. For Supermarkets -- they called them Dupermarkets - since presumably Customers were duped into paying high prices nort really caused by inflation and people could often get cheaper in smaller local individual stores and inflation itself they called "Greedflation" since a lot of price rises weren't caused at all by "inflation".

Macrium will go out of business if they persist with their proposed model.

Cheers
jimbo

Porthos said:

To transfer a license from a PC that still works, launch Reflect and click Help > Remove License. Then use the license key you just freed up to install/activate Reflect on whatever PC you want to use that license with going forward. If the PC that had the license was completely dead, you would still be able to reuse your license key on some other PC, but you might hear from Macrium about duplicate activations of the same key, in which case you'd just need to reply asking them to invalidate the dead PC's activation.

Reflect licenses are not specific to a particular CPU architecture or Windows version, i.e. you can use a given license key with either a 32-bit or 64-bit Reflect installation.

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I forgot to do that when building a new PC a few weeks ago. I just contacted Macrium and they reset the licence so I could install on the new PC.

I checked out the Lease Fee yesterday for 3 Devices, $147 or so lol, i'm like you gotta be kidding me, for now just gonna stay on Reflect Home 8, and if they should discontinue Home 8 in the future/end support, then i guess will check out alternatives for backup needs. Used to grab Family pack 4 Device licenses when i could in the past, guess not anymore

I believe other than being greedy, they could've lowered the price of Macrium Reflect Home and brought in a ton of paying customers perhaps with the free version no longer available, and renewals for current existing users at same time.

Backup software is Important for health of Computers and Peace of Mind, not sure i see the need for subscription model with software that is suppose to help keep your data and system safe

50 bucks to keep my own things. LOL

OldMainframeGuy said:

I always wondered why Paramount offered such a full-featured version of Reflect for free.

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Simple, it's because an awful lot depends on what's your own personal definition of "full-featured". It's a belief system above anything else, and, belief systems often tend to collapse over time... eventually. As for the free version of Macrium Reflect, the way that I see it, the number of useful features it has that stretch beyond the minimum-basic concept of just creating/restoring an image is still next to zero, even today, and I have already talked about that subject countless times in the past, both on TenForums and on here.

Free creates an explorer mountable compressed backup with write access. You can literally run virus scans/fixes on the backup before re-deploying it without touching the original disk.. More than basic imaging if you ask me.

I cant think of a scenario where I would need macrium support or the latest update,

Even Reflect 7 Free still makes reliable images and performs the same as it always has, why would this be different with current versions?

If the "features" you are using only speed up the backup process, there's almost an argument to buy faster drives with the $$ instead and just do full disk images with the free version

(but I do think they are an amazing company, and would rather support them myself, which i guess is the point of the thread, since they are making it harder to do that)

cereberus said:

Actually the mobile phone market where people get a mobile on a contact is just like the old car lease. People get sucked in to a lease deal as they could not afford to pay for e.g. a ridiculously expensive iphone as a one off cost. But over the length of the contract, they always end up paying more.

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Yes, I would never buy a phone on contract. I want to own the thing! If you don’t have the money to buy it outright then just get a cheaper phone.

hdmi said:

Simple, it's because an awful lot depends on what's your own personal definition of "full-featured". It's a belief system above anything else, and, belief systems often tend to collapse over time... eventually. As for the free version of Macrium Reflect, the way that I see it, the number of useful features it has that stretch beyond the minimum-basic concept of just creating/restoring an image is still next to zero, even today, and I have already talked about that subject countless times in the past, both on TenForums and on here.

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BobOmb said:

Free creates an explorer mountable compressed backup with write access. You can literally run virus scans/fixes on the backup before re-deploying it without touching the original disk.. More than basic imaging if you ask me.

I cant think of a scenario where I would need macrium support or the latest update,

Even Reflect 7 Free still makes reliable images and performs the same as it always has, why would this be different with current versions?

If the "features" you are using only speed up the backup process, there's almost an argument to buy faster drives with the $$ instead and just do full disk images with the free version

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Paid version can do protected backups that are ransomware-safe. Their Image guardian is a Windows driver that prevents any attempt to move/delete/write/copy a Macrium image other than by Macrium itself. If any other process tries to wrote to the image Macrium throws an error and blocks it.

I bought the full version for that and incremental backups.

I do local on a locked down server internally and send the image up to the cloud when completed, macrium FREE reconnects to the share each time the backup runs and it stays disconnected with no saved creds in between.. I guess it all depends on what youre comfortable with and your exposure/data sensitivity..

Either way its hard to be mad at them but i'm 100% sure i wont lease the software..

If they don't sell many at those prices, they might add a 2 pack or 4 pack deal later.

What do you guys think of a set price for home users and the lease stuff for business users?

I'm a bit surprised that they seem to think SUPPORT is such a big deal. Every time I've had a question about MR, I've reached out to the user community forum or to this (EF) one, and gotten all the help I needed in a jiffy. They said some requests for help cost them more to answer than the value of the license to them. Is that a stretch?

BobOmb said:

What do you guys think of a set price for home users and the lease stuff for business users?

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The thing is a lot of businesses now use laptops, and since they can’t be locked to one ip address, everyone in the business could then just use the set price for home users.
If you are talking the bigger picture, not just macrium reflect, then with certain things yes.

Wisewiz said:

I'm a bit surprised that they seem to think SUPPORT is such a big deal.

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I was wondering that myself, I can understand being on with an engineer to get data off an unbootable raided server, but why would i need macrium support? either the backup finished or it didnt... if my backup drives are bad i replace the bad drive and run a new backup, omsa tells you when drives are dying, plus there's the original data and the fact that your are actively supposed to be checking your backups.. there is no way around it..

James said:

The thing is a lot of businesses now use laptops, and since they can’t be locked to one ip address, everyone in the business could then just use the set price for home users.

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Do they use IP? They are assuming people have statics? They probably use the mac of the network card+the productID of the system.

They should be compensated by commercial users, I just hope they steer clear of quickbooks level predatory pricing..

BobOmb said:

They probably use the mac of the network card+the productID of the system.

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I’m not sure - you are probably correct here

BobOmb said:

Free creates an explorer mountable compressed backup with write access. You can literally run virus scans/fixes on the backup before re-deploying it without touching the original disk.. More than basic imaging if you ask me.

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ⓘ Note: Changes made to the mounted file system are temporary and are discarded when the image is unmounted. So, not THAT particularly useful to most users most of the time if you ask me.

I cant think of a scenario where I would need macrium support or the latest update,

Even Reflect 7 Free still makes reliable images and performs the same as it always has, why would this be different with current versions?

If the "features" you are using only speed up the backup process, there's almost an argument to buy faster drives with the $$ instead and just do full disk images with the free version

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The free, Linux based, bootable Rescue Media ISO file of Acronis True Image can speed up the image creation process by allowing you to conveniently (with wildcards) specify file/folder exclusions in the GUI, by allowing you to create incremental images and by allowing you to pick a destination folder that is located on a partition that you have included in your source selection. Whereas the free version of Macrium Reflect still lacks every one of these features the usefulness of which really just speaks for itself in every way, IMO anyway. So, here's the link once again:

(but I do think they are an amazing company, and would rather support them myself, which i guess is the point of the thread, since they are making it harder to do that)

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Hmmm, first the notice of no more free version. Then the announcement of the adoption of the subscription model. What is next? Sign over your first born to slavery or no more restores? It seems like the marketing types are in charge so I expect all surprises to be of a negative nature in future.

hdmi said:

Simple, it's because an awful lot depends on what's your own personal definition of "full-featured". It's a belief system above anything else, and, belief systems often tend to collapse over time... eventually. As for the free version of Macrium Reflect, the way that I see it, the number of useful features it has that stretch beyond the minimum-basic concept of just creating/restoring an image is still next to zero, even today, and I have already talked about that subject countless times in the past, both on TenForums and on here.

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I think being able to do an image backup & restore for free is enough of a feature that most people wouldn't need much more. And, because you can mount a backup image as a virtual disk, you could restore individual files off of it. In any case, it's more than Microsoft gives you. Reflect looks like business-grade software that's been dumbed-down a bit for consumer use. It's fairly geeky and parts of it are not intuitive at all.

The timing of these Macrium Reflect price changes is interesting to me, because it just so happens that I am reconsidering my entire backup strategy.

Lately, I have been relying more upon laptops which contain only a single drive. I have a fairly sizable chunk of data that I replicate between all of my systems so that already serves as a backup. My procedure for syncing data between all of these machines includes the archiving of any changed or deleted files so that I can easily recover from any accidental deletions or corruption of files.

Because this is a sizable amount of data that has a lot of frequent changes, it makes disk image backups rather large, even the incremental and differential backups making these backups impractical for me.

Another strike against full disk image backups for me is the fact that I have unattended setup of Windows down to a science now so even if I need to reinstall Windows from scratch, that is a matter of minutes to accomplish.

This change in pricing just pushes me even closer to ditching full disk image backups altogether. I have 8 licenses of Reflect 8, but with the new pricing, it's simply going to be too expensive to upgrade to 9 unless they have some really aggressive upgrade prices.