You'd be partially right. It does what it's supposed to do, at least some of the time. On every computer I tried it on, GigaTribe crashed completely at least once, and became unworkable on one machine entirely after doing nothing more than trying to share a folder within my account. That's what it's designed to do, so not being able to pull off its primary function doesn't sound good to me.
I mentioned earlier some problems with links. When the program starts up, it informs you that you're using EasyConnect, but after 30 days you'll have to start connecting the hard way. There's a link in that window to a page on their site with more information about EasyConnect. However, clicking the link brought up nothing more than a 404 Not Found error on an otherwise blank page. Then, say you get confused with the interface (I know I did) and want some help. There's a help menu in the program with a link to Online Help. Sounds good, right? Well, clicking that opens the ordering and pricing page, making it appear that you have to pay for any level of support, including online FAQs.
This isn't actually true, as you can get to the FAQs by opening ShalSoft.com and clicking Help there. This is also where you have to go to enter a license activation to unlock the Ultimate version of the program. So, as they've designed it, once you order the program, and click Help within it to try to activate it, you're brought back to an order and pricing form rather than a place to activate your software, something most other programs (WinZip, Nero, games, Office, etc.) do right inside the program itself. It's convoluted and broken.
Then let's say you set up a user on one computer, but want to access that account from another computer. What seems obvious to me is that the same user account would have discrete listings of all shared content on all computers with which it's been associated. This is completely not the case. If you set the program up on one computer and then install it on another, it looks like a brand new account. There's no apparent evidence of shared content, and you cannot use one account to share content between your own computers. Do to this, you need to make (and presumably eventually pay for) a separate account for each computer to have them "see" each other for sharing purposes. What's more, if you have to wipe your hard drive or reinstall the program, get ready to re-map all your shared folders as well.
Article comments
1 - Phillip Winn
Gee, what a glowing review! ;-)
2 - Mark
I wanted to like it, but the frequent crashes when trying to do basic tasks really didn't help.
3 - OMV
Going on 2 months and not one single crash, you are right about the damn config though, a pain in the ass, but I am not paying for a program like this.
4 - Mark
I was requested by the developer/PR people to rewrite my review and take out mentions of the crashes I definitely did see, on two completely independent machines with unique configs. "GigaTribe.exe has encountered a problem/stopped working and needs to close" sounds like a crash to me.
They fixed the broken links and some of the other missing things mentioned in the review after the fact, and wanted me to change that as well. Sorry, reviews are written as-is, to represent what the average user would have encountered if they had started using it the same day I did. Patches and fixes are great, but nobody re-reviewed the PS3 game Lair after Factor 5 fixed all the glaring control issues.
You get one shot at this; make sure your your stuff is working every day, not just the day you think it matters most.