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Pro Discover

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(@akaplan0qw9)
Posts: 69
Trusted Member
Topic starter
 

Has anybody had any experience using Pro Discover? If so, your evaluation would be appreciated.

 
Posted : 22/01/2005 8:09 pm
 Andy
(@andy)
Posts: 357
Reputable Member
 

My trial ran out before I could evaluate it thoroughly – 😕 , but from what I saw it was just …ok. It does much the same as other tools.

Andy

 
Posted : 23/01/2005 9:05 am
(@akaplan0qw9)
Posts: 69
Trusted Member
Topic starter
 

That trial run is a big joke. Every time you click on the shortcut you lose one of your 5 lives. When I first downloaded it, I absentmindedly clicked on the icon just to see if it worked, I guess – that was life #1. Then it was sitting on my desktop and I did not remember what the icon was for, so I clicked it and lost life #2. After I finally went into it intentionally, I had to abort because of other needs for computer resources and used up the other 3 lives without learning much. I would have walked away from it were it not for the documentation and the help menu which I found to be quite well written.

Apparently, there is no limit to the number of fully functional 5 shot downloads you can make. I just downloaded it again and added insult to injury by telling them how idiotic that fully functional 5 shot procedure was.

One thing that impressed me was a 30 day 100% money back guarantee if you are not satisfied. That sounds like they think they have something good. I just may take them up on that and use that to evaluate it instead of the 5 shot deal.

 
Posted : 23/01/2005 9:08 pm
keydet89
(@keydet89)
Posts: 3568
Famed Member
 

Al,

I might suggest that you get in touch w/ Chris Brown (who is very responsive) to address any issues you might have with the demo or the product itself. Rather than bad-mouthing a product, or subverting the marketing methods, IMHO it would be better to address these issues specifically w/ the folks who wrote the product.

H. Carvey
"Windows Forensics and Incident Recovery"
http://www.windows-ir.com
http://windowsir.blogspot.com

 
Posted : 25/01/2005 4:02 pm
(@akaplan0qw9)
Posts: 69
Trusted Member
Topic starter
 

Apparently, you did not read all of my comments. You accuse me of bad mouthing their product. On the contrary, I spoke well of it when I said,

“I would have walked away from it were it not for the documentation and the help menu which I found to be quite well written.”

As you may know their free demo carries with it a requirement for an name and an email address and leaves room in a text box for comments. As I said below I told the reader in great detail just how obstructive and short sighted that part of their marketing was. I would hope that all responsible persons in the company, including Mr. Brown would have seen that.

“Apparently, there is no limit to the number of fully functional 5 shot downloads you can make. I just downloaded it again and added insult to injury by telling them how idiotic that fully functional 5 shot procedure was.”

On the other hand if you read further you would have learned just how impressed I was with their 30 day guarantee and how it reflected favorably on their product

”One thing that impressed me was a 30 day 100% money back guarantee if you are not satisfied. That sounds like they think they have something good. I just may take them up on that and use that to evaluate it instead of the 5 shot deal.”

As for "subverting" their marketing methods, I assume that you are referring to my consideration of taking advantage of their 30 day money back guarantee.

I find that one particularly interesting, since for about 13 years we have been closely paralleling that same marketing strategy.

Back then we heard business consultant Tom Peters advise, "Find something that everybody in your industry says is impossible and then guarantee that you will do it or they get their money back."

We thought about it and realized that we had to give such a guarantee on a service where success or failure was a clear black or white situation. As Private Investigators, locating missing people was one such area. we either found the person we were seeking or we did not. We did not have statistics, but we knew that most of the time we were successful.

And so that same policy is active today. The client gives us a flat fee of $500 and 30 days to get the job done. Most of the time we are successful. These days, many clients have spent a hundred or two on internet database research before they come to us. Sometimes they fail to mention that. Sometimes I misjudge the situation, spend more than $500 of my own money and then fail in the assignment and have to give the client back his $500. Whether we fail or succeed we call them all clients and never consider any of them to be "subverters" of the system.

As you can see, it was easy for me to empathize with the Pro Discover people and I did so by saying, "That sounds like they think they have something good." That is exactly the way I felt when I adoppted that type of marketing strategy.

 
Posted : 30/01/2005 1:51 pm
(@branerift)
Posts: 59
Trusted Member
 

I have an opportunity to attend some training via the HTCIA National Conference this year and one of the "break-out" sessions is sponsored by Pro Discover. However, here is my situation that I need insight on… The conference offers alot of classes in a short time, so I can't possibly attend all of the ones I want to. Pro Discover is offering a class, but there are others that I also want to attend held at the same time… I would like your opinions on Pro Discover and whether it's worth looking in to since I already use EnCase, FTK, ILook, and Pareben ( I like to diverisfy my tools ).

I really don't have to time to download the demo and use it alot on my own, so I was looking for the experienced opinion on this.

Thanks in advance.

 
Posted : 11/08/2006 9:53 pm
(@echo6)
Posts: 87
Trusted Member
 

I too would also been interested in hearing views on it.

I'm used to EnCase, but ProDiscovers ability to use Perl has intrigued me greatly, especially when I see how useful it is for some one like HC.

Harlan, how much does ProDiscover benefit from Perl??

 
Posted : 12/08/2006 12:28 am
keydet89
(@keydet89)
Posts: 3568
Famed Member
 

ProDiscover benefits a great deal from Perl…at least, in my hands. Perl is not encapsulated in ProDiscover, so you can still use Perl to do other things on the system, such as extract information from the image and manipulate it using RegEx, dump it into a database/spreadsheet, etc.

I continually run into situations where I receive E0x files, convert them to dd format and open them in ProDiscover. I can do what I need to do much faster, and I don't have to rely on anyone to do other things for me, such as write scripts.

For me, when examining a Windows system, ProDiscover is the way to go. I use the IR version, and that means that I can distribute a remote agent to collect info, either via CD or over the network. This can also be automated via ProScript, which is very nice and very useful.

Harlan

 
Posted : 12/08/2006 1:24 am
(@farmerdude)
Posts: 242
Estimable Member
 

BraneRift,

Hopefully I'll see you in one of my labs or lectures at the International HTCIA conference in Cleveland 😉

farmerdude

 
Posted : 14/08/2006 1:34 am
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