FreeUndelete review: Confusing utility not worth the time investment

FreeUndelete FreeUndelete helps you track down missing files, even those deleted from the Windows Recycle Bin...but it's not always effective.

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From the moment you launch FreeUndelete, you see that this utility is all business (and in fact, it's not free for businesses—just for individuals). FreeUndelete 2.1.36867.1 features a spartan interface, with no cutesy graphics and little in the way of color. And you won't find much in the way of instruction: If you want to use FreeUndelete, you're going to have to figure out how to do so on your own.

Luckily, it's pretty intuitive. On the left side of the interface is a panel where you select which drive you'd like to scan; what's odd is that FreeUndelete presents Drives C through H as options, but only allows you to scan your C drive. You use the Filter to narrow down your search, but FreeUndelete doesn't present any advanced search options, such as document type or modified date.

Understanding FreeUndelete's results is even more confusing, as it simply presents you with a list of locations where your file might be found, but doesn't actually direct you to the file in question. The locations where shown as lists of folders, and when I tried to browse through the folders, I found no way to go back to the beginning list. To do so, I had to start the scan all over again.

Even worse: The application failed to track down either of my missing test files. In the end, this program proved too confusing too much of the time.

The most appealing thing about FreeUndelete is that it's free for personal use. Since free/donationware Recuva was more successful (though still not perfect) at performing the same tasks in my tests, Recuva is a better choice if you don't have the cash for a paid program.

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.

From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference

Review: Avira Internet Security 2013: Competent but confusing

Sarah is a freelance writer and editor based in Silicon Valley. She has a love/hate relationship with social media and a bad habit of describing technology as "sexy."
More by Sarah Jacobsson Purewal

Avira Internet Security 2013 is an acceptable antivirus program—if you happen
to be an expert in security jargon and working your way through a somewhat
unfriendly user interface. This particular security suite passed our tests (though,
not with flying colors) and even managed to come out on top a couple of times,
but it’s not for the average user.

In our real-world attack test, Avira managed to completely block 94.4 percent
of attacks, and partially block 5.6 percent of attacks. This indicates how well
the product will block new malware threats when it encounters them in the wild.
While this result is solid, it’s not good enough compared to the top competitors:
Five out of the 10 security suites we tested managed to completely block all
attacks.

In our malware-zoo detection test, which determines how well a product can
detect f known malware, Avira detected 98.8 percent of samples. Although
respectable, this percentage still puts Avira in the bottom half of the suites we
tested—six suites managed 99 percent or higher detection.

Avira was able to detect and disable 100 percent of malware infections in our
system cleanup test, but was only able to purge them completely about 50
percent of the time: That’s the worst cleanup rate of the suites we tested. Avira
did perform impressively well in our false positives test; it didn't flag a single safe
file as malicious.

Avira is a fairly lightweight program, and it won’t slow down your computer
too much. It adds less than a second to startup time (as compared to our test
computer without any antivirus software installed), and roughly two seconds to
shutdown time. Avira's suite did drag down file downloads more than we'd like,
though. It’s acceptably quick with on-demand scans (1 minute, 41 seconds, the
fifth-best of the group), and also fairly speedy with on-access scans (4 minutes,
26 seconds, the fourth-best of the group).

Avira’s installation process isn’t the quickest, but it’s fairly easy to get through.
There are about six screens to click through, and the last one requires some
basic personal information—your name, email address, and country. You are able to opt-out of installing the toolbar and Avira SearchFree (if you choose to
just install the toolbar, Avira will change your default search to SearchFree).
You’ll also need to restart your computer once the installation process is finished.

When you first restart your computer, you’ll be inundated with pop-up windows
from Avira as the program tries to determine which of your already-installed apps
should be able to access the Internet. This can be annoying if you’ve got a lot of
apps (including things like AIM and Yahoo Widgets), but luckily Avira remembers
what you choose to allow.

Avira’s user interface isn’t very straightforward. The main screen has a large
checkbox on top that shows whether your computer is secure, and smaller
checkboxes to show PC protection and Internet protection. The left side of the
screen has options for different types of protection (PC protection, Internet
protection, child protection, mobile protection), as well as an administration
section for scheduling scans and viewing reports.

However, clicking on any of these links in the left bar is just…confusing. Screens
are clearly set up for advanced users: For example, if you tap “Web Protection”
under the Internet protection section, it shows you non-user-friendly information
such as what the last scanned URL was. If you tap “Avira Firewall,” you’ll see
the current security level of the firewall and what that means—“Flooding and
Portscans are prevented.” While this information is great if you’re an advanced
user, it means nothing to the average consumer.

The settings are also difficult to access and very confusing. Each screen has
a “configuration” button, which requires you to turn on “Expert” mode (as if
you aren’t already in it?) and takes you to a terrifying, jargon-filled menu full
of checkboxes and nested menus. At least there are descriptions of different
settings in this screen (they pop up in a box when you roll over them).

At the end of the day, Avira Internet Security 2013 is a competent antivirus
program. But being merely competent isn’t a great thing, especially when it’s
combined with an interface that's for advanced users only.

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Usability Expert: Windows 8 on PCs is Confusing, a Cognitive Burden

LAPTOP: How will switching back and forth between different environments (Modern and Desktop) affect PC owners? 

Budiu: Users will need to remember two different interfaces. They will learn Windows 8, but won’t be able to forget Windows 7. And they will need to keep track of which app goes with each framework. [It's] definitely a cognitive burden, but not an insurmountable one.

LAPTOP: Is it a mistake to force people to relearn an interface that has been popular for 20 years?

Budiu: So it seems, at least if we talk about desktop computers. There are several reasons:

The learning curve is going to be steep.
The duality of Desktop-Metro is likely to confuse at least some of the users.
 Most important, while Windows 8 embraces some important mobile design principles (such as giving priority to content), not all these principles are well suited for the larger non-touch screen of most PCs or laptops.

Many apps waste a lot of space for huge images and give little space to text. The idea of hiding the controls to give priority to content may make sense on mobile, where screen space is so limited, but it doesn’t make that much sense on a large screen, especially if users have to work harder to access hidden features. For instance, to expose the URL bar or the list of tabs in the browser you will need to click the right button of the mouse. The back button is not visible either, but if you hover on the left hand side of the screen, it becomes visible.

LAPTOP: If you are in Windows 8's desktop environment and want to launch a new desktop application, you must return to the tile-based Start screen to click a shortcut. One could argue that going to a different screen is no more time consuming that opening up a Start menu that overlays on top of the screen. Was Microsoft really wrong to remove the  Start menu?

Budiu: The advantage of the overlaid menu is that it preserves context. Cognitively, there’s more of a burden when you have to switch context twice (desktop->start screen; start screen -> desktop). There are reasons to force users to switch contexts, especially in the tablet or phone environment, where screen real-estate is a lot more expensive and a menu is forced to use only part of the (already-small) screen. In that situation, a separate page makes better use of the small screen space.

There are fewer reasons for a separate page on a desktop – the start menu is a cheaper interaction than the start page. Microsoft probably does it for the sake of consistency – they want you to start an app in the same way, regardless of whether you are in the desktop environment on a PC or laptop, or in the Metro environment on a PC or on a tablet, or on a mobile phone.

For the PC case, I think that if you are going to have two environments, consistency is important, because otherwise people will always have to keep track of which action to use in which environment – which is an extra burden on their memory. So although the start menu is the cheaper solution (in terms of interaction cost), not using it in the desktop environment is probably the right thing to do, given the choices already made by the Metro interface.

LAPTOP: The Windows 8 Switcher displays each Modern style app as its own thumbnail but folds all the desktop apps into a single thumbnail because it considers the desktop itself to be an app. Is this a usability problem?

Budiu: It is confusing, because users have to remember what they’re running in the desktop and go back to that app to resume editing a document in Word, for instance, or creating a chart in Excel. In general, switching between apps is costly for the users – you have to go to the start page, then select the app, and then, for those apps running in the desktop, go to desktop and select it from there. Compare that with older versions of Windows – just one click was needed to choose the running app from the task bar.

LAPTOP: When using Windows 8 with a mouse, you must hover for half a second over the upper left or right corners of the screen to bring up key menus (the Switcher, the Charms menu). Does hovering slow the user down?

Hovering before using a menu does slow users down, but that’s not the major problem. The fact that the menus are hidden is primarily what slows users down – remember that what’s out of sight is out of mind. In our studies with mobile devices we found that whenever a menu was not in plain view, even users who knew about the existence of that menu (that is, they had discovered it in the past) didn’t use it as much or took a longer time to think to use it than if the menu options were all visible. So it’s not only the hovering that slows users down – it’s the lack of visibility that makes these menus less available.

These hidden menus also have zero affordances on the desktop, which makes them hard to discover for the first time. And even if you discovered where to click, being able to correctly remember which menu goes with location on the screen will require a fair amount of practice and continuous usage.

And yet another problem of these menus in the left and right corners is that they interfere with scroll arrows in some apps. The scroll arrows at the bottom of the screen are very close to the bottom corners of the screen, which are supposed to expose the menus. In general, it looks like the corners of the screen (the top, too, presumably, since this is how you close the app) are no longer good places to position controls.

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