George Engel has been a friend to the Design Center and the User Group Network for more years than we care to admit. His writings are always intuitive, informative and fun -- he has been an Apple hardware/software guru since the beginning of the Mac, and is one of our favorite contributors...
Klix (Image Recovery)
a Software Review by George M Engel
I guess I should start this review by saying that I'm pretty excited! There's not a lot of products that I can say that about. I loved the Wacom Tablet, Photoshop and InDesign, you're right. I guess I wax enthusiastic when a product hits my sensory organs in just that right way. When Prosoft came out with 'Picture Rescue,' which was a digital camera owners delight and lifesaver, I thought it was fantastic. Before that, if your digital camera card went 'bottoms up,' you were screwed. There was no way to fix it!
Picture Rescue was a subset of Data Rescue II and it worked very well for me and saved two digital media cards for customers of mine. They thought I was a genius... shhhh. Another computer shop told them to forget about it and just reformat the card. Now, you can find some competing software that attemps to do the same thing. Note I say attempts! After seeing Prosofts other products at a User Group meeting, I mentioned to Ms Jennifer Bell, their Marketing Mgr., that I would like to see Picture Rescue for the PC also. Jennifer told me to keep watching, it's in the works.
Lo and behold, not only was it 'in the works,' but Prosoft spun off a whole new company line called 'JoeSoft.' Wow.
It appears to be an economy line of software with a lot of potential! I'll be keeping you informed as we go along. But let's get back to Picture Rescue. Jennifer let me know that 'Klix' is the leadoff product for JoeSoft with others to follow soon. The others will be 'Jax for iPod' and 'Pix,' a picture enhancement package. You can see why I'm excited. I'm a picture and graphics junkie.
When I downloaded 'Klix' from the 'www. JoeSoft.com' website I found that it was for Mac and PC, your choice. Jennifer also told me that if you owned 'Picture Rescue,' you could use that serial number on 'Klix' when you register the software, which I did. Prior to using Klix, I formatted my cameras 1 GB media card three (3) times and then took 24 pictures outside the house. In a hurry, they weren't good pictures, just fast.
On to the Card Reader
I then hooked up my Card Reader, inserted my cameras media card and saw the screen at right. Okay, it recognized the card. Now what? I clicked the right button and told it to 'start the scan.' The pictures started to show up on the screen, as expected. After the 24 pictures, lo and behold, just like 'Picture Rescue,' the other pictures started to show up, AFTER I reformatted the card three (3) times!
As you can see on the screen snapshot below, 24 of the pictures are what I just took this morning.
Everything else is recovering pictures from 'whenever ago.' It shows about 75 pictures recovered and it's only at 18% done. I'm afraid that it'll go back to the Hindenburg disaster if it goes on long enough.
This is a steal. It retails for $49 bucks, but if you'll click on that box to the right, you can get it for about 20-bucks off! Can you put a price on those digital pictures that you just lost? I thought not! I highly recommend this software!
Klix From Joesoft
Windows Vista / XP, Macintosh -
List Price: $49.00 ~ Price: $29.99 ~ You Save: $19.01 (39%)
Hope this helps you!
About the author: George Engel has been a computer guru probably longer than he will admit -- as a computer expert, he authored The Naked Serviceman book, about his journey through the history of Apple's Macintosh as owner/founder of an authorized Apple Service Center. He owned one of the first Apple II computers as well as one of the first Macintosh 128s. He hangs out with the Lakeland User Group in sunny Florida
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