PC INSPECTOR™ WatchIT Basic

[Chris]

Hardware: PC INSPECTOR™ WatchIT Basic

Manufacturers Website: WatchIT - Protects your PC

Hardware Page: PC INSPECTOR™ WatchIT Basic

Platform: PC [support for Windows file System]

Cost: €19,95 [£12.90 approx]

Application blurb...

Time to admit it: you have already experienced that frustrating feeling when your PC just does not want to work any more from one day to the next?

..and of course it is always after your children have downloaded new music files and they need to write that important essay for the school: everything on the same PC…

Then what happens?

All of a sudden, your important data has been deleted, and it is always the data that your children need the day after, perhaps for that important presentation. The configuration you carefully set up is simply gone or it just does not work anymore. Should you always blame the children?

More and more frequently Hackers and Viruses attack your PC and your privacy, without giving you the slightest indication about what is going on.

Do you enjoy being spied on?..

Here are two options to avoid all this:

First of all, you can buy a PC for each member of your family or invest your money in expensive programs that promise a lot, but in the end cannot really help you, once the damage is done.

Second option: you trust. WatchIT Basic.

Absolutely priceless, 100% trustworthy.

Never before was it so easy to recover in just few seconds the data you thought was lost forever.

It does not matter whether the data was lost through viruses, hackers, data manipulations or faulty software. The keyword for WatchIT is always the same:

WatchIT takes the PC back to the exact moment BEFORE the data loss has occurred.

And what´s best: it is just as simple as it seems.

With just one click, you will get your data back and your wallet will be untouched.

You do not need a huge amount of money to protect your data any longer. Do not invest on expensive PC programs!

You just need 19,95 €.

Ummm say that again

When I first read about this piece of hardware I'll admit I had trouble understanding what exactly it did and how it would help me. From a marketing point this is not the best of ways to catch a potential client. There was nothing obvious that struck me as to the way this piece of hardware works and what exactly it did.

However this didn't stop me...

Package Contents

For some reason I was expecting something around the size of a sound card, user manuals and numerous setup disks. Well, how wrong was I? What you actually get is a PCI card the size [more or less] of a Credit Card and a small 8cm CD. You can actually fit all of this on the palm of your hand with room to spare.

Impressive?

What goes where?

If you are familiar with the insides of a PC then you will have no trouble locating a spare PCI slot and its installation. However if you are new to all this then I think this is where your first let down will be. There does not appear to be any form of Quick Installation guide, or Manual. Even if they only scratched the surface they would have been welcomed.

CD IN

Place the CD in your CD/DVD drive and then click on My Computer and explore the contents of this CD. If you have Adobe Reader installed then click on User's Manual. However if you do not have Adobe reader then you will need to download and install Adobe Reader. What would have been great is Adobe Reader being available from the CD.

User's Manual

I suggest to anyone that they print the entire 22 pages as the manual itself will not be available when you want to restore a drive. The manual seems to have been translated, so does not read too well in places. There are very basic instructions on installing the Drivers and PCI card. It would have been great to have more detailed instructions on how to install the drivers and especially the PCI card.

Drivers To install the drivers you simply click on the file, install531, choose Install Drivers and wait for the confirmation of installation. I was rather surprised at how quickly this happened, not even one second had passed and they were installed. Clicking the install531 file again showed that the Uninstall Driver button was greyed out. Which led me to think, were the drivers installed in the first place?

PCI Card Installing the PCI card requires you to open your computer. Locate a spare PCI slot and slide the card into place. The User’s Manual is very lacking on images and instructions on this.

Setup Parameters

The setup parameters are easy to set and the manual covers this part well.

Express Test

To test that everything is working, you are told to create a folder at the root of the C drive. When you restart your computer this folder should no longer be there. The folder was indeed no longer there and it was at this point that I realised the purpose of WatchIT Basic.

What’s It About?

WatchIT Basic is a hardware recovery tool that can recover your system to a stable state. For example, if you have a serious infection from a virus you can recover the system to a time before infection. The recovery time is amazingly fast and beats the competition with ease.

The Competition

As far as I know the competition would be from the likes of Acronis and Symantec with their Software applications in the form of True Image and Norton Ghost. I am currently unaware of any other Hardware offering.

Recovering the system...

Recovering the system only takes a few taps on the keyboard and your system is restored. You can add data to recovery points if data is valuable to recover but you will need to consult the User's Manual for instructions on this.

ezControl and

It is possible to control and setup parameters on remote computers via LAN but for this review I did not explore this route due to not having the necessary hardware.

Verdict...

You get what you pay for

If you are after a simple device to recover your system then WatchIT Basic is what you should be looking at. However, be prepared to find out most of what you have to do yourself. The User's Manual is basic in parts and does not read properly in others and consequently can be difficult to understand. If you are not familiar with installing a PCI card then the instructions contained within the User's Manual will be of no real help. For £12.90 you are getting what you are paying for.

What is needed is a thorough overhaul of the User's Manual to make this product more appealing. There needs to be more specific instructions for installing a PCI card and also examples of recovering your system. There are easier ways of recovering your computer and these other applications are easier to use, look much better and do not even require the use of a screwdriver.

Rating: 3/5

Needs work!

Review: PC INSPECTOR™ WatchIT Basic

Reviewer: Powerless

[Sir Radfordin]

By pure chance I've seen something similar before - more details here

http://www.faronics.com/html/deepfreeze.asp

Looked to buy it for a set of training room PCs that seemed to be messed up no matter what we did with them. Didn't bother in the end but was a valid solution to the problem.