Site Suggestions and Feedback

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Like our site?  Think it sucks?  Got an idea how it could be improved?

Whatever, we'd like to know so please leave a comment below

Gizmo

Some past comments from our site contact form:

I have only been looking at your site for about ten to fifteen minutes and felt compelled to send you a message to say "Thank you for not sucking". There's plenty of "Free Stuff" websites out there who simply spill out as much text as they can to maximize banner ad returns. It would appear that you are actually checking to see if this software is worth using in the real world. I have a certain appreciation of free software and often take note of authors [or utilities] I feel have done an exceptional job.

Thank you! Dave.

 

I just wanted to let you guys over there managing this site, my appreciation and thanks at a wonderful job and service that you are providing to the whole World. Thank you, and God bless.

Sincerely, Sam.

 

I've been a visitor to your website for a number of years with it becoming one of my main resources for freeware.  I just wanted to comment that the changes that have come about in the last year and the recent site redesign have turned this from an already great site to an awesome website.  Thanks for all of the effort that you all put into this.

Janet

 

Comments

Thanks for all your wonderful work for so many years.
It will be sad when Gizmos dissappears.
An archive site even on a free host would be a great
permanent parting gift.
All the best in the future.

There is a problem in the Free Windows Desktop Software Security List - System Hardening and Protection section. I was looking for an antilogger and in the Key scrambling subsection when clicking on the "NextGen Antikeylogger (FF,IE,OB)" link it redirects to [sex site link removed]

Many thanks for pointing this out. Unfortunately it does happen since there are hundreds of links to keep track of. This one has now been removed. MC - Site Manager.

Hello Gizmo's,

I love your site and freeware. So, I wanted to see if you would consider having me edit a category. Unfortunately, I ran into a few problems.
On the "Gizmo's Freeware Needs You!" page: https://www.techsupportalert.com/we-need-you.htm it states "What's involved? Just watch the following video:" There was no video.

I found the contact link at the bottom of the page: https://www.techsupportalert.com/content/contact-us.htm It states "Contact' 'Gizmo's Freeware can be contacted using the site contact form."

Clicking the contact form link led to: https://www.techsupportalert.com/contact This was a duplicate of the homepage. There was no contact form.

Please let me know what to do about this. Thank you.

Best regards,
Diane

You have to login to see the form (it's the noticiation on the top).

Check this address: https://www.techsupportalert.com/content/id-become-editor-gizmos-freeware.htm

Thanks Bili!

Hi, and thanks for all your good work. However this page leaves something to be desired:
https://www.techsupportalert.com/content/seven-great-google-maps-alternatives-you-may-not-have-heard.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+gizmosbest+%28Gizmo%27s+Best-ever+Freeware%29

a) you mention that one or more of the tools cover several countries besides USA, but do not indicate which if any - e.g. um, Europe ? (or in my case specifically France, though I sometimes visit other bits - Germany, Denmark, Spain, UK, ...)
b) not clear which are free or price if not free

Maybe you should try throwing this open to users in "abroad" (i.e. not USA) to get some feedback ?
Best wishes, og

Been visiting this site for at least 10 years and have enjoyed the experience. I'd love to support the site and have attempted to unblock it in my Firefox settings. I am unable to accomplish this task. "Oops, it looks like you are using an ad blocker..."
As far as I can tell, the only blocker I'm using is built into my browser and it doesn't want to play nice with your site.

On another note, the padlock symbol in Firefox's location bar suggests the site may not be a safe one to log into.

Alan

I'm not a Firefox user but I've seen this issue on other machines caused by the tracking protection module. Try disabling that. MC - Site Manager.

I just tried to purchase a t-shirt but the link doesn't work

YES, I want to continue receiving your eMails.

The link at https://www.techsupportalert.com/content/free-windows-desktop-software-security-list-system-hardening-and-protection.htm for the program ShutdownGuard has become defunct. It has moved to https://github.com/stefansundin/shutdownguard. The developer says he has abandoned it and recommends against using it.

Thank you for the information. We have replaced the link. MC - Site Manager.

On the Feedburner email, the "Link to original website", clicking on both the top line and logo, only takes me back to Feedburner. Anything I can do to get to the main website from that email??

Re: http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/clip-layer.htm -- Jojo's page has no contact, so, here.

My Samsung Galaxy S III (S3) uses long-press on the home key to bring up the running-apps list.

I'm curious as to the reason that long time members, in good standing, with many useful comments on software would be asked to complete captchas when posting a routine comment? I was also given one to send this message through the "Contact Us" page & it never accepted my comment, though the string was easy to read. It kept showing an error that you could only post messages if you weren't a bot. "If you insist you're not a bot, contact us at..." & gave a few other links. And had generic message about "allow JS to use this page." I had JS enabled & nothing blocked on techsupportalert.

I can see new members / possible spammers or bots just signed up (if it's possible for bots to sign up) being given captchas. I asked the same question to a couple other small forums about needing captchas for long time members to sign in. They agreed it didn't make much sense & changed the policy.

Thanks.

Any ideas why I have to use Chrome to view your side? Firefox is my default browser, but all I get is a blank page for your site is Firefox!

I use Firefox, and I have no problem viewing the site at all.

As MC says, it's a local issue, because of some add-on or something. Please post in the forum with details, or contact MC.

I have solved the problem. It is an add-on I use because I have vision problems. I will just continue to use Chrome for this site.

Martha

Pleased you got it sorted Martha. :) MC - Site Manager.
A large proportion of our visitors and contributors use Firefox without any problems so it looks like you have a local issue affecting this. If you send me a contact by clicking my username, and include your system details, I'll try to assist further. MC - Site Manager.

Suggestions/Requests:
1) In the "My account" area, there should be a list of articles which are sending me notifications of replies or new comments. Why? Because right now, the only to get to that place is by clicking the link on one of those notifications, and the link isn't always correct (like today, for instance!). Besides, having a list would make it possible to do multiple unsubscribes.

2) Furthermore, it should be more obvious how to get to "My account" in the first place. Right now, the only way in the website to do that is for a user to click on her or his own name. Not very intuitive. "My account" or some similar name should be one of the top menu items. [Oh, I just discovered it: it's under the "Home" menu item... right where I was NOT looking for it.)

Re: Unsubscribing.

I see there is a checkbox at the end of the comments section: "Notify me when new comments are posted." I clear the checkbox, and then log out. When I log back in, the box is checked again. So it appears that checkbox works only in conjunction with posting a comment. It almost entices me to write a post just for the purpose of unsubscribing. One can imagine the mess that would cause if everyone started doing that!

I have just one question: WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL OF MY LIFE!? :-) I think your site is simply marvelous and just chock full of useful information, reviews and links. I wish I had some extra money so I could offer you a donation, but you know how it goes :-(

But thank you SO much!

Fancy

I notice a big ad for mackeeper on your home page - mackeeper is responsible for the most annoying malware! I don't know if it's a virus but it causes relentless, pop-ups and is very difficult to remove. It has rendered one of my macbook airs unusable for the moment. I can't imagine how they convinced a legitimate site like yours to promote them!
Mac users, watch out for MacKeeper!

The adds are provided by Google so we have no control over what is shown. MC - Site Manager.

I was invited to the beta testing for a new website design. The deadline was Dec.31. In the US it's now early in the evening of New Year's Eve, but the beta comment forum is locked.

The beta pages are leaving out the Top Rated Articles box, the New Articles box, the Updated Articles box, and the Contribute box. I hope you will not go through with those changes.

The overall beta design is OK, but I like the current design better.

Hello, Thanks for all the hard work. But,... I'd like something more.
I like pages like this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_computer-aided_design_editors
I can make my own religion based on the features listed. I'd love to see more tables of that type when reading from Gizmo's. Sometimes, features that look important to the editor might be pointless to me, or the opposite.
It also would be nice to be able to fill in that type of table collaboratively.
Regards,
Y

Thanks a million to developers and reviewers for keeping this awesome site going! I have been using it for years since a friend told me about it and will continue to spread the word.

I would like to suggest a new review category: "Best Free CPU Benchmarking Utilities" or something to that effect.

As of now, I was only able to find one "Hot find" suggestion on this topic:
http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/really-simple-pc-benchmarking-ut...

I also found Hard Disk Performance suggestions, but this is not the same as CPU:
http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-hd-health-monitoring-and-diagn...

Anyway, I hope you guys have time to put something together for this category.

PLEASE PLEASE don't list freeware when it's not. even the free trial versions or at the very least say at the beginning, that this is NOT FREE.

We do only list freeware unless it happens to be part of a site or occasionally time limited offer. Please provide links to any pages where products are causing confusion, or where a listed freeware might possibly have gone commercial without our knowledge. MC - Site Manager.

I have just been using your site to ascertain what is the best free i-pad apps and have noticed that your E-mail etc app finder brings up multimedia etc and Multimedia etc app finder brings up e-mail etc. This is not a complaint but just an observation to what is a very useful site.
Regards
R G Horrell

Many thanks Horrell for bringing this to our attention. The mismatched categories have now been fixed.

I consider this as the #1 resource on freeware, I also disabled AdBlockPlus on this domain to give more support by clicking ads. However, I noticed that often these ads lead to questionable websites involved in the distribution of potentially unwanted programs disguised as freeware, which is nothing illegal, but maybe it isn't the best choice since this website is about helping the users to find quality freeware.

The site uses ads from Google, so as such there is no control on what ads will be shown.

Love this site!
I notice when I try to "pin" an article to Pinterest it seldom grabs a photo unless there is a screen shot. I see a graphic that has the name of the article but it doesn't actually pin, it comes up saying "You need to upload an image or provide the 'image_url' parameter"
Since I'm sure others also don't know how to do this, I wonder if you could add a larger graphic to your heading that can be used to pin some of your wonderfully helpful and informative articles.
Thanks so much! CCL

At my account page, I should be able to find links to all comments and forum posts that I made. Is that feature here and I just haven't found it?

I appreciate your site very much. Thanks for all your work.

I do have a suggestion. Many people these days, like me, spend much more time using a cellphone or tablet than a computer. That being said, why not create an app for cellphones and tablets for your site? One that allows the page to conform to the window size of the unit being used, etc.

Just a thought. Thanks for your consideration. (Oh. It would be 'free,' right?) :)

Thank you for the suggestion RetdNavy. Currently the site is in the process of being converted to a later version of Drupal to include a mobile responsive theme. This is quite an undertaking however and will take a little while yet to complete. MC - Site Manager.

Thank you for the RAPID reply! Anyone reading this, please note it took only 27 minutes to get a response! If you look up "customer service" in the dictionary you'll see "Gizmo's" for the answer.

Please add the category backup software.
There are different places all over your site where one can find some hints about backup sw but YOU NEED TO MAKE AN OWN CATEGORY!
PS. there is only the category "Best Free Hard Drive Backup Program"
but I am missing real backup programs, not for entire hard drives.
This should be in same Group: Disk & File Tools
Greetings and thanks for your site!
Daniel

Hi Midnight Cowboy,
well, yeah file copy is nice but has not too much to do with backup, online backup is also nice for people who like to put everything into the cloud, which I personally dont like.
My personal favorite is bvckup which is mentioned on your site but anyhow there definitely needs to be a category for discussion of the diffenrent backup programs, thinking how extremly important proper backup for anyone is.
Remember also that Disk & file tools promises to contain "backup" software which it doesnt, apart from the online-backup-sites you mentioned.
Greetings
Magicus

This article "Best Free Hard Drive Backup Program" that you're referring to is actually "Best Free File-Based Backup Program". I've now renamed the article title. Please check back Magicus if it is the one you're looking for.

Your pages on restricting rights are excellent -

How to Surf More Securely
http://www.techsupportalert.com/safe-surfing.php

Easy Ways to Run Windows Programs with Restricted Rights
http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/easy-ways-run-windows-programs-r...

At work they are setting me up with a Win 7 computer and I have asked them to run software that can access the internet with reduced rights. As I recall Drop My Rights won't run under Win 7, and we have tried using PSEXEC and Process Explorer command lines. We can get most software to run restricted. However we cannot get Firefox and IE to run restricted.

Could you get time to update the Easy Ways page to address this?

And here I thought Win 7 was supposed to be so much better in terms of security - and they are still blowing the first line of defense.

Thanks.

There is more information about this at the link below. If you need personal assistance, please post in our forum. http://www.techsupportalert.com/freeware-forum/general-computer-support/ Many people use Sandboxie to secure their browsers and other internet facing apps. MC - Site Manager. http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2006/03/02/running-as... http://www.sandboxie.com/

Have had very good experiences on this site before, so was astounded last night when I began to download what you recommend as the best free MP3 tag scanner - TagScanner. I attemtped to download it from the site given :

http://www.xdlab.ru/en/download.htm

At the top of the download page was a large green rectangular banner which said
"download". Over to the right were some words "Codec Pack", which I did not pay any attention to. In very small print under these words is this "available to download on our website - advertisement". This I did not even see.

I did not notice these descriptions, and clicked the download arrow. The screens came very fast, and I was tired, and did not notice until it was too late that"Codec Packs" had been downloaded, without my awareness or consent. not TagScanner, and that Mysearchdial and other malware had been installed on my Win 7 Ultimate machine, hijacking my browser, etc.. I googled how to uninstall Codecs Pack and used AntiMalwarebytes to remove the rest of the junk that I could not uninstall using add/remove programs..

I think is it criminal for this malware to be so deceptively linked to your most highly recommended TagScanner. Please ask that the website remove the ad and download link for this garbage.

Many websites and products offer additional components users may not want. This is common knowledge and it is necessary to take care with everything you may wish to install in your computer. Simple ad-blocking extensions will help you to avoid most of these. We published an article about this subject some time ago. MC - Site Manager. http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/what-else-have-you-just-download...

The Best Free OCR article recommends FreeOCR. Be aware that users on ghacks.com are indicating that it now contains CONDUIT, V-Bates Toolbar and Remote Access, all of which are camouflaged within a very sneaky EULA and install process.

I can not verify this. I am unwilling to risk the infection and do not run a VM.

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