Archive for August, 2009

27
Aug
09

Deep Freeze Mac v4.5 for Snow Leopard now available

By brentsmi Leave a Comment
Categories: Product Management

Good news, everyone! Deep Freeze Mac v4.5 is now available and is compatible with Snow Leopard. Please make sure you uninstall Deep Freeze from Leopard (or Tiger or Panther) prior to upgrading to Snow Leopard. Once you have everything set up the way you like it, then you can install Deep Freeze Mac v4.5 and you’re all set. Let us know your experiences.

In addition to support for Snow Leopard, we have also introduced Licensing into this version. More details on why we did this can be found in the about our license keys post. If you’re a licensed customer, you will need to log in to Faronics Labs to get your License Key. You can copy it from there and paste it into Deep Freeze. Complete release notes are available from Faronics Labs as well or from this this direct link.

The other important thing to note is that we no longer support Mac OS X 10.3 Panther as of this release. Panther users can continue using v4.24. We didn’t specifically set out to eliminate Panther support, but with the changes that were required for Snow Leopard, we had little choice. Very few customers still use Panther anyway so I hope it’s not a big deal to anyone.

20
Aug
09

What’s up with the beta product(s)?

By brentsmi Leave a Comment
Categories: Product Management

We have always prided ourselves on being a feedback driven organization, focused on the needs of the market and individual customers. We are attempting to be more transparent with our product planning and development process itself. I hope the existence of this blog demonstrates that. As part of that initiative, we are releasing a new utility (Faronics Data Igloo Standard), as a beta. This is the first of several new products that are planned to be initially available as betas over the coming months.

Calling something a beta is not our excuse for attempting to get the community to perform QA for us. Data Igloo has already undergone a full QA cycle. The purpose of these beta releases is primarily to get feedback from real users after an iteration of development and QA has been completed.

Our product development is often performed in iterations that lead up to an official release. If at the end of an iteration we are satisfied that the product is stable and could benefit from user feedback, then we may release it to our users in order to get that feedback. That feedback will influence the direction we take on subsequent iterations. It will also help us with planning the launch of the official release.

I should point out that the specific development methodology used varies by project. The suitability of releasing something as a beta varies by project as well. Therefore, we won’t be doing this for every single product release in our roadmap, but we will be doing it when suitable.

If all of this is clear as mud, you may be interested to read more about the concept of iterative development on Wikipedia or elsewhere.

Quick and very, very ridiculously over-simplified example

Product X will have 12 features. All 12 features are required before the product is ready for the market. It is developed by working on 3 features at a time in each of 4 iterations. The product will be released at the end of the 4th iteration.

Therefore, at the end of each of the first three iterations (after verifying that everything works), there are two choices:

  1. Move on to the next iteration.
  2. Move on to the next iteration and share this one with users to get feedback.

With Data Igloo and some other products coming up, we are choosing to go with option #2. The only thing we ask is that if you use one of these products, please send us feedback!

14
Aug
09

regular expressions

By azilliax Leave a Comment
Categories: Uncategorized

I got a note today from one of our customers pointing us to the following URL:

http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55572

While this tool will let you build a regular expression for filtering a specific IP range, there are some other pages on Google’s site that give a nice overview of Regular Expressions that can be applied to our Core Console product.

http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55582

13
Aug
09

Windows 7 RTM

By azilliax 1 Comment
Categories: Uncategorized

Well Windows 7 has finally hit the MSDN site so we have been able to put our hands on the RTM in the office and it’s running better on the hardware here than the RC’s did. I was one of those people who has stuck through running Windows Vista for the past few years and seeing the people in the office who where less than impressed with Windows Vista fawn over the changes in Windows 7 is amusing I will admit. Having the chance to toss this on a couple of workstations here and work through it for the last week here’s some of what I have noticed.

Performance

Windows 7 feels faster than Windows Vista did on the same hardware. Now, my work laptop is not a slower machine but it’s not the fastest computer in the building anymore. Windows Vista ran fairly well, even with multiple VM’s open and running, however the UI for Windows 7 seems more responsive to my input and overall the OS just seems to be smoother running with fewer stutters than Windows Vista had. Even the install process was smoother, with no drivers required to get all the hardware on the laptop up and running.

The Desktop computer I’m working on is a much faster beast and the applications are responding in kind.

User Interface

Really it’s not that much different from Windows Vista, some things have moved around a little bit, some things are renamed but it’s all where I expect most things to be. When I did transition from Windows XP to Windows Vista it was a jarring experience, most of the bits of the OS that I needed to be into and the preferences that I liked to customize where hard to find at first. All and all it took about three or four tries before I was comfortable with Vista and this time around anything that has really changed feels like it should have been done that way in the first place.

Applications

So far everything that I use day to day as a line of business application seems to work fine, granted there are a few hiccups that I’ve seen but nothing that I would consider critical at this time. There’s even some applications that I can finally get rid of as the OS seems to have the functionality built in for the first time in years.

As for our products our QA team will be looking into them over the next couple of weeks, but feedback that we are getting seems to say that the more recent versions of DF are working (with some warnings at install time) as long as you don’t use a ThawSpace, and the copy of Insight that I’ve installed on my box seems to be running well. Keep in mind that this is not a official test – I’m just throwing these at the wall to see what sticks, official word has to come from our QA team and their testing is far more involved than what I’m doing.  If you have problems please let us know – even though we can’t support it we do want to know what you are seeing so that we can take a look at it too.

10
Aug
09

New Deep Freeze version released

By azilliax Leave a Comment
Categories: Tech Support
Tags: ,

We have released a updated version of Deep Freeze to the masses today, the release notes for the changes we have made are listed below:

Deep Freeze Standard

Resolved an issue that could prevent installation from occurring successfully if a workstation had been updated to v6.52 or higher, then downgraded to v6.50, then updated to v6.51.

Resolved a potential security vulnerability that only affected Deep Freeze Standard installations.

Deep Freeze Enterprise

Resolved an issue in the One Time Password Generator that caused incorrect keystrokes to be displayed when non-hex characters were entered.

Resolved an issue that could cause an existing .rdx file to be unexpectedly deleted in a specific circumstance: If it was opened for editing in the Configuration Administrator and some disallowed settings are specified (such as an empty password), then a Save As command is issued with the existing name; the original file was deleted, but the new file fails to save because of the error in the configuration.

Resolved an issue that could prevent installation from occurring successfully if a workstation had been updated to v6.52 or higher, then downgraded to v6.50, then updated to v6.51.

Windows 2000 only: Resolved an issue that could cause installation of the Configuration Administrator to fail with an error message.

Note that the security vulnerability only affected Deep Freeze Standard – anybody with Deep Freeze enterprise has nothing to worry about.  As always we recommend the latest version be downloaded and deployed as quickly as possible, but if you don’t have any of the specific issues that are listed above feel free to hold off as you get through the summer rush.

10
Aug
09

About our License Keys

By brentsmi 1 Comment
Categories: Product Management

You have probably noticed that we have implemented License Keys for the first time in DF as of v6.5. They use the same model that we have already tested and used successfully in WS, AE, and PS going back 18 months. From discussions with channel partners and monitoring Technical Support inquiries, we know that DF is very widely pirated, particularly outside of North America. Prior to implementing Licensing, we created and distributed two versions of each product:

  • Full Shipping Version
  • Evaluation Version (no cost and valid for 30 days after installation)

This worked reasonably well, but had several disadvantages for us, end-users, and partners that have been addressed with Licensing.

Note that regardless of whether a product uses Licensing or not, the legal ramifications are the same — if you use our products past the 30-day evaluation period, you are obligated to pay. Just because you can pirate a Full Shipping Version or use a License Key obtained from a pirate site, key generator, or a colleague, does not make it legal to do so. Also, just because you can install our products on more computers than you have purchased licenses for, it is not legal to do so.

Scope

Description of how our Licensing functions as well as how this affects us, end-users, and partners.

Goals

Licensing was planned very carefully with the goal of benefiting us, our users, and our partners. Potentially disruptive or non-desired behavior common to other licensing schemes was intentionally minimized or completely avoided.

Benefits

  • We are able to develop, build, test, and distribute a single version of each product (there is no longer a need for separate evaluation and full shipping versions).
  • Our users are able to easily convert an evaluation into a full shipping version (there is no longer a need for a customer to uninstall the evaluation and then reinstall the full shipping after purchase).
  • Our partners are able to focus on distributing License Keys to their customers (there is no longer a need for a partner to figure out how to deliver the separate full shipping version to a customer).
  • Our users and partners are able to easily extend an evaluation period for a product to fit any foreseeable scenario (there is no longer a need to distribute a full shipping version to a customer on a “good faith” basis when the 30 day evaluation period needs to be extended for a valid reason).
  • Our users will immediately be aware if they are installing a pirated version of the software. With the old method, many users claimed to have installed a full shipping version not knowing that they were supposed to have paid for it. Now that they would need to install a correspondingly pirated License Key, the argument that they “didn’t know” no longer holds water.

Limitations

License Keys are valid only for a specific major/minor version number pair and any earlier versions. They are not valid for any later versions. This is an intentional design based on the goals above.

License Key Creation

The specific major/minor version number pair that a License Key will function on is determined at License Key creation time. License Keys are created under two scenarios:

  1. When an invoice is generated.
  2. When a new major/minor version number is Published. In this scenario, all customers with valid Maintenance for the Product at version number publication time will automatically have a new License Key created for them and will be able to retrieve them using their Labs account.
Types of Licenses
  • No Key (literally, no Key is entered).
  • Invalid (improperly formed or otherwise invalid) Key.
  • EE (Extended Evaluation) Key: Currently generated by creating an invoice (typically for $0) for a Part Number containing “EE”.
  • NFR (Not For Resale) Key: Currently generated by creating an invoice and for distribution to our partners. They are identical to a “Standard Key” with the exception that the words “Not For Resale” will appear in the product’s UI.
  • Standard Key.

Behavior

  • No Key: The product will expire (cease to function) 30 days after the initial installation.
  • Invalid Key: The product will notify the user and will not allow an Invalid Key to be applied.
  • EE Key: The product will expire (cease to function) on a specific date. The date is determined by the date entered as the “Maintenance End Date” on the invoice.
  • NFR (Not For Resale) Key: The product will never expire.
  • Standard Key: The product will never expire.
I hope that clears things up for some of you. We have received many questions about this in Tech Support. Let us know if you still don’t understand or require further explanation.
Scope
Description of how Faronics Licensing functions as well as how this affects you and your interactions with end-users and partne