Directory Opus 9

[Demon Cleaner]

Directory Opus 9 has been released in May, and comes with several new features. I still don't know if I should buy it (2 licenses) or not? I enjoyed using it, but I think it's a bit too expensive, and you have to pay even more for 2 licenses.

Worth a buy? I think yes, as I spend a lot of money buying nonsense, so I should simply get it.

Does someone know how long the license will last? Forever, or does it expire after 1 or 2 years, and you have to buy a new one again?

http://www.gpsoft.com.au/ (http://www.gpsoft.com.au/)

[Harrison]

Not sure if the licenses are forever of limited. Will be interested in find that out as I much prefer buying into a license that offers free upgrades for life.

[Teho]

Not sure when I bought my DOpus license but it was a long while ago, for version 6. When you buy a license, you buy it for that version and all it's updates. I don't think it ever expires. You then have to pay another but much smaller upgrade fee to upgrade to a higher version number.

Which I'll be doing shortly, it seems. :)

And yes, i think it's well worth the cost. This is one of those things I almost refuse to pirate, a great program from a small independent developer amd not some huge software house. These guys deserve your money.

[Harrison]

The thing with DOpus (the original Amiga version or the newer PC version) is that you don't really appreciate the power it has, or how much easier it makes tasks, until it's not available. You then suddenly feel like something very large is missing. Much like XP users suddenly having to use Windows 95 again!

[Demon Cleaner]

I only used it for one month, and already have the feeling that something is missing.

And to answer the pirate thing, I got a copy which worked fine, until I had to restart my PC once, then immediately a window popped up, showing that DOpus had evaluated. So I guess, copies don't work so well. I thought to give it a second try, but still don't know, perhaps I should just buy it.

[Harrison]

I've tried to run a cracked copy of DOpus in the past and it never works for long. They have a pretty good registered certificate system that definitely seems to deter most pirating of the software. Definitely worth the purchase price I think.

Don't forget that you can get a free 60 day certificate from them if you register on the site. That way you will get another 2 months use for free. :)

[Demon Cleaner]

I just got a reply from gpsoft, and they confirmed that the license will never expire, so you don't have to use the evaluation copy. But I suppose this is like Teho said, it is only for the version you have, when a new one is released, you have to buy the update license, but for a smaller amount.

[Teho]

Yes, I just checked too. Buying DOpus 9 outright is around £35, upgrading from DOpus 8 was £22, roughly. So it isn't that much cheaper to upgrade either.

I may just study a bit more what kind of new features version 9 actually adds, there is a chance I don't really need the upgrade at all.

[Harrison]

Indeed. Much like the older Amiga versions. I was more than happy using DOpus4 for years and only moved on to DOpus5 once it was given away on a magazine coverdisk. The features it added were not really needed as I had customised the button set and way DOpus4 worked a lot so didn't really need anything else.

And in reality what else can they add to DOpus that version 8 doesn't already have? Maybe better Vista integration, which I don't think any of us will need just yet, and maybe some more multimedia or built in file handling abilities, but already with version 8 it does more than enough for what I need.

[Demon Cleaner]

I thin they added an advanced FTP feature, which is nice, and I also tried it out, but in version 8 I didn't work quite as well as FlashFXP. So I can go without that.

[Harrison]

This is quite cool. My DOpus 8 60 day free trial was due to end in 4 days and I was about to purchase a license when I received a message saying version 9 was available. So I downloaded and installed the update and have been given another 60 day free trial period. Bonus! :)

[Demon Cleaner]

That's great. I still can't decide whether to buy it or not. When I used it for a month it was of great use, but then I had to use the normal explorer again, which sucked. So if I'm not gonna use it for 60 days, I will not miss it afterwards ;)

[Harrison]

As I've said before. You don't realise how good the features of DOpus are until you don't have it.

[Submeg]

Just another thing to add to my wish list...

[Harrison]

It's quite sad to report that DOpus 9 is currently quite unstable, especially when accessing networked drives. I've been running it since I upgraded from version 8 yesterday and it has already crashed about 10 times today.

Luckily it does recover better that 8 did. With version 8 when it crashed you often needed to reboot the PC to get a file lister to show again, but with 9 after a crash it just relaunches a new DOpus thread and you are back up and running, so not as bad.

[Demon Cleaner]

Hm, that's not good to hear. Does it ONLY happen when accessing networked drives?

[Harrison]

It so far only seems to happen when I have at least one network drive open in a listers and DOpus comes up Not Responding when I right click and drag a file to move it into one of the lister views. It doesn't crash otherwise.

[Demon Cleaner]

Did you try reporting the error/bug to Gpsoft? I would tell them about that problem.

[Harrison]

Yes, I'm going to when I get chance as it definitely seems to be a repeatable bug. At least on this PC it is.