Alsoft

Refused to honor the warranty on a Diskwarrior disk. Also makes false claims as to which version of their disk will work with a specific version of Mac OS. Avoid version 4.2 and Alsoft all together.

Attention Macintosh users!
One of our computers, a 7 months old MacBook Pro 17″ (2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo machine with a 120 GB hard drive) died on us without any apparent reason last Friday.
We went through hell… we didn’t have proper backup of some important files (work-​related + iTunes purchased music…). We tried all known methods to rebuild the damaged disk directory. But in vain– the computer would not recognize the hard drive at all…
Apple’s «Disk Utility», the measly grandson of the glorious and powerful «Disk First Aid» for Mac OS 9.2.2, did not do much good either; we were surprised to notice how weak and slow it has become. Perhaps yet another marketing trick from Apple, to boost sales of commercial utilities, heh?
In desperation, we brought the MacBook to the Apple Store’s «Genius Bar» at the Fashion Island mall in Newport Beach, CA. Those geeky guys clearly knew their thing; according to them, our drive is «probably defective, or severely damaged by an invasive application (such as LimeWire or the likes)».
They recommended that prior to spending more than $ 1500 dollars for a full hard drive recovery, we should check out the Disk Warrior software by Alsoft. Hmm, never heard of Alsoft– what the heck is it?
The Mac guy handed us a clumsy, ugly black box with greenish/​poison yellow accents and terribly designed graphics (a shield with old-​fashioned letters photoshopped over it «disk warrior DW»). See picture.
The box had such poor looks that we were honestly afraid to purchase this product. In addition to the unfortunate appearance, Disk Warrior is not cheap… at $ 99 + tax, it is like a small investment; compare it to the popular Norton Disk Utilities package, priced ad $ 60 + offeding a $ 20 rebate…).
But the Genius people highly recommended Alsoft software and discouraged us from buying the cheaper and so much nicer looking Norton. We gave up, closed our eyes and purchased Disk Warrior.
Here’s what happened next. We had a nice lunch, then went back home and popped the DVD-​ROM into our dead MacBook.
— Waited for about 8 – 9 min. until the software loaded itself
— Then clicked the «rebuild directory» button
— Waited 5 – 6 minutes
— Restarted, and…
A MIRACLE! The hard disk worked like new. No problems, no weirdness– stable, fantastic. Disk Warrior really worked (and in a simple way) — saved us a huge amount of money and a lot of inconvenience…
Thank you, Alsoft. Next time, I will approach your products with confidence.
In the end, it is not important what a product looks like– as long as it does the job. And yours does the job really well.
Umm, having said that, a word of advice from me (I am a designer so I need to say this): Instead of hiring one of the software engineer’s cousins to design your box (on a PC somewhere inside a garage in Spring Texas) maybe you should look into paying $ 500 to a professional graphic designer. I guarantee you will enjoy improved sales of your phenomenal disk utility.