{"id":1209,"date":"2012-07-09T20:12:22","date_gmt":"2012-07-09T19:12:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dpscomputing.com\/wordpress\/?p=1209"},"modified":"2012-07-10T00:47:03","modified_gmt":"2012-07-09T23:47:03","slug":"cnet-techtracker-not-as-user-friendly-as-it-may-seem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dpscomputing.com\/blog\/2012\/07\/09\/cnet-techtracker-not-as-user-friendly-as-it-may-seem\/","title":{"rendered":"CNET TechTracker – Not As User Friendly As It May Seem"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"CNET<\/a>CNET Tech Tracker<\/a> – we had high hopes for this one. \u00a0Granted, we didn’t really search and check out the alternatives, but it’s from CNET, the great people that give us download.com, so it’s got to be good, right?<\/p>\n

Erm, well we’re not impressed with it really, not by a long stretch, however we’ve coped with it for the past year or so.<\/p>\n

There’s a few problems and niggles that we have with TechTracker.<\/p>\n

Firstly, it is a resource hog. \u00a0Or at least it was for us. \u00a0When TechTracker decides to spontaneously show up from time to time, everything goes slow and it takes forever to open the TechTracker window, so much so that, for the last few months when we’ve seen the icon ‘bouncing’ in the dock (and believe me, we’ve watched this a lot<\/strong><\/span>), we’ve been instantly right clicking and selecting ‘Force Quit’. \u00a0This is because there’s much more important thing that the computer needs to be doing rather than straining loading TechTracker for 10 minutes, for us just to close it anyway.<\/p>\n

Now it should be mentioned at this point that we’ve been using the Mac version, maybe the Windows version is different (or maybe it’s just the same! ;)).<\/p>\n

Secondly, when you do actually want the thing to start, it takes ages, as noted above. \u00a0Also on this point, as it stays in the background while the system is running it uses too much memory for our liking. \u00a0Not an\u00a0exorbitant\u00a0amount, but too much considering what it actually does or the benefits of actually having it installed.<\/p>\n

Thirdly, the ‘auto downloading’. \u00a0Now, of course you can disable this and we fully admit we were lazy and didn’t do it. \u00a0But TechTracker, periodically (it was daily for us, by default) downloads a copy of the updates to all the applications that have an update listed. \u00a0Great, this is useful! \u00a0That is unless you don’t update everything on the day that the update becomes available. \u00a0Because if you don’t, every day you’ll get a new copy of the update, delivered directly to your downloads folder. \u00a0Expect your once vast hard drive space to suddenly dwindle to a few hundred megabytes over the course of a month. \u00a0It was a bit disheartening to see update-blah-blah-47.dmg in our downloads folder. \u00a0Yes, a crisp new copy of each update, every day until the application is updated.<\/p>\n

So why not just update more regularly? \u00a0Well there is that. \u00a0However, there are some applications that we don’t want to update. \u00a0Maybe there’s something about the new version we don’t like? \u00a0Maybe we don’t want to have to fork out hard earned cash if it’s being sold. \u00a0Either way, it should be our decision.<\/p>\n

So, we finally decided to uninstall it. \u00a0Memory is precious and we haven’t used TechTracker for the past few months anyway. \u00a0So, with no uninstaller being present, we just trash the program and reboot. \u00a0Then, rising from the ashes, the TechTracker monitor application loads and places its ‘tt’ symbol at the top of the screen. \u00a0We thought we’d seen it off but unfortunately we’d just seen off the main app. \u00a0The ‘Preferences\u00a0Pane’, as it’s referred to, was still there.<\/p>\n

Time for a Google to find out how to remove it. \u00a0Firstly we find a post where a member of staff says to run the TechTracker Uninstaller located in the TechTracker folder in the Applications folder. \u00a0Now, we couldn’t remember seeing one of those, but we thought we’d go back and double check. \u00a0No definitely not there.<\/p>\n

Then, we go back to Google and find another post of the CNET forums. \u00a0Staff member #2 advises we download TechTracker, reinstall it and then run the previously mentioned Uninstall mentioned above. \u00a0So we download, install and go in search of the\u00a0mysterious\u00a0folder again.<\/p>\n

It doesn’t exist. \u00a0There is just the app. \u00a0By now, we’re a little bit annoyed, thinking TechTracker is as hard to get rid of as that annoying bit of spyware that lingers around on your machine for a bit until you figure out a way to outsmart it.<\/p>\n

Well, seen as though we’ve reinstalled it, lets go to the main app and search for clues there….. We search…… not a carrot. \u00a0Not a single wiff of any kind of way to even disable it, let alone uninstall it.<\/p>\n

So back to Google and back to another CNET forum post. \u00a0Staff member #3 suggests that we sign into our TechTracker area, select ‘Change Computer’ and click ‘Remove Computer’. \u00a0OK, this seemed a bit weird. \u00a0We didn’t just want to stop TechTracker doing its tech tracking, we wanted it off our machine, so I couldn’t understand how that was going to be performed through the CNET website, but hey, we’re getting a little desperate, so lets give it a go.<\/p>\n

We go to the TechTracker page on CNET to log in. \u00a0Hover over the login drop down and click ‘Log In’. \u00a0Wait….. wait…. wait a bit more. \u00a0Nothing. \u00a0So we do it again. \u00a0Wait….. wait…. wait a bit more. \u00a0So we do it again. \u00a0And again once more. \u00a0We’ll doesn’t look like the log in is working.<\/p>\n

Lets try a page refresh. \u00a0Hover on ‘Log in’, click on log in. \u00a0Woohoo, success, we’re travelling to the log in page, heaven knows what was happening previously. \u00a0Wading our way through the social login options, which we were not using, we eventually come across the standard e-mail password sign in. \u00a0We log in. \u00a0We’re in!<\/p>\n

Nothing on the main page. \u00a0Let’s try ‘My Profile’. \u00a0Nothing there either. \u00a0By now this has already taken 20 minutes longer than it should have done.<\/p>\n

Back to Google and back to another CNET forums thread. \u00a0Staff member #4 suggest dragging the TechTracker app to the trash and an uninstaller will appear, asking if you want to remove the dependencies, including the preferences pane (also referencing these less publicised instructions for uninstalling TechTracker<\/a>). \u00a0Strange, that didn’t happen last time…. maybe it was because we were using an older version of TechTracker. \u00a0But seen as though we’ve just reinstalled it, let’s give it a go.<\/p>\n

TechTracker gets dragged and dropped in the trash. \u00a0We wait, and wait a little bit more. \u00a010 seconds later, the uninstaller appears. We carefully make sure everything is ticked – there’s no way we won’t to go through all this again. \u00a0And within another 10 seconds it has been banished. \u00a0Result.<\/p>\n

The whole uninstall process debacle just confirmed our suspicions that TechTracker is most definitely not the product for us and is of a lower quality than we would expect coming from CNET.<\/p>\n

Wonder whether CNET will want our feedback on TechTracker, maybe it’ll help improve things:<\/p>\n

\"CNET<\/a><\/p>\n

OK then, guess that they’re not to keen on feedback. \u00a0Oh well, at least they said thanks :).<\/p>\n

However, the idea of program that tracks your programs and says when updates are available is one we like, rather than having to monitor hundreds of developers sites for updates constantly.<\/p>\n

We’ve started using AppFresh<\/a>\u00a0now. \u00a0It’s early days, but it’s looking good. \u00a0Not hogging resources, quick to start up and doesn’t download a bajillion copies of each update to our hard drive. \u00a0And it does things when want it to and updates what we want it to, not what it wants to do itself.<\/p>\n

All in all, we’d recommend TechTracker users to consider the alternatives as we just don’t think it’s up to scratch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CNET Tech Tracker – we had high hopes for this one. \u00a0Granted, we didn’t really search and check out the alternatives, but it’s from CNET, the great people that give us download.com, so it’s...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[55],"tags":[654,647,646,652,650,648,649,653,651],"class_list":["post-1209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-appfresh","tag-cnet","tag-cnet-techtracker","tag-monitoring-apps","tag-monitoring-software","tag-tech-tracker","tag-techtracker","tag-updating-apps","tag-updating-software"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsfA-jv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dpscomputing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dpscomputing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dpscomputing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dpscomputing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dpscomputing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1209"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.dpscomputing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1213,"href":"https:\/\/www.dpscomputing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1209\/revisions\/1213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dpscomputing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dpscomputing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dpscomputing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}