A long time ago, I bought a license for the ZoneAlarm Pro software firewall. I don’t use it anymore (no reflection on ZoneAlarm, which was excellent the last time I used it, I just don’t see sufficient need for it any longer to justify installing it), but I still sometimes get e-mails from Zone Labs, touting certain “partner” utilities. Most of them are useless to me, but this latest one deserves special mention.
It’s for a utility that would sound fairly useful, if they’d pitched it right. It is supposed to allow you to access files remotely, secure and hide your network, identify intruders and kick them off of the system, map your network, test Internet speeds, and have an easy-to-use interface on top of all that. And it’s priced attractively too. But their marketing guys decided to concentrate on how easy it makes printer and file sharing… something that’s already falling-off-a-horse easy on a Windows network. “No more emailing files to yourself just to print them out,” it touts. I can well imagine that a few people might do that, but most people with the minimal technical know-how to set up a Windows network in the first place will already have the files and printers shared that they wish to, accessible to all the systems on the network. If they don’t, it’s a matter of maybe six mouse-clicks to make them so.
Maybe I’m being too harsh. Maybe a lot of people really are so ignorant that they can’t create shared folders on a Windows network. But even at my most cynical, I can’t believe that, and the ad insults the intelligence of anyone who knows even a tiny bit about running a Windows network. Which leads me to predict that unless these guys get a new marketing strategy pretty quickly, Network Magic is going bye-bye, regardless of it’s technical merits.
(Disclaimer: I haven’t used the program, or even looked at it. I don’t know whether it does what it claims to or not, I’m just critiquing the focus of the ad.)
Actually, printer sharing and folder sharing are WAY more difficult to the target customer for Network Magic than you suggest. Yes, it is true that these are fully supported features in Windows, but we have well over a million customers and the number one use of the Network Magic product is to implement sharing of the printer.
Sharing is turned off by default in Windows, so you first have to know enough to realize this and turn it on. To get a good feeling for the majority of the market out there in the consumer space, find a non-technical person close to you (spouse, mom, girlfriend, whatever), place them in front of a new Windows installation and tell them to share the printer.
Now, just for fun, add a Vista computer to the mix and have them share a folder between it and a Windows computer. Heck, see if YOU can actually do it. We created a white paper on how to do this without Network Magic and it runs 17 pages.
For the full bonus points, get a Vista computer and a Mac to share a folder or printer.
Network Magic reduces all of this to a single mouse click between all three platforms, as well making a large number of other hard (but fully supported in Windows) things very easy to use.
You make the common mistake of believing that if you can do it, anyone can. Nothing could be further from the truth. Give the product a try. If nothing else, you can refer all of those people that come to you for help with this stuff so they don’t bug you any more.
Jeff Erwin President & CEO Pure Networks
I haven’t tried it on Vista yet (I might this weekend, out of curiosity), but MacOSX uses samba, if I’m not mistaken. Having just set up samba for file- and printer-sharing between a new Linux machine and my existing Windows network, I can readily believe that it’s not a straightforward task to get a Mac talking with a Windows network — but in my defense, your ad didn’t once mention Macs, it only made vague references to “multiple operating systems including older versions of Windows.” I had to visit your website to see that that meant Macs as well, rather than Linux or something else.
I think that the first sentence of your comment points out the problem. The “target customer” for the program is probably much less technically inclined than the kind of person I was thinking of, one who had the technical know-how to be comfortable in setting up a network to begin with. And yes, I will take a look at it… if it does even half of what it claims to, it could be quite useful, even to me.
In Network Magic’s defense, I had a heck of a time setting up sharing between my Windows XP box and my wife’s MacBook. Apple Support was no help, neither was my wireless router’s help line. I found Network Magic, installed it on both the XP machine and the MacBook and, Voila!, instant file and printer sharing between the two!
Network Magic does some pretty dastadly things. There is no UNINSTALL option. It is VERY resistant to being removed if you don’t want it. Still trying.
Thanks for the warning, Richardb. I’ll be sure to make a full backup before I try it.