Rob Cheng
Dave Methvin
Steve Hogan
Lyle Schuknecht
Bill ZahrenThe Road Ahead - SaaS
Earlier this month, Google and Salesforce.com announced a partnership to embed Google Apps into their CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software. The next thing you know the media is having a feeding frenzy about SaaS (Software as a Service). Then it struck me. That's what PC Pitstop is all about. We are SaaS and here's why.
Announcing Craplet detection for Optimize 2.0
Optimize 2.0 now scans for and removes craplets! Run our Free PC Pitstop Optimize 2.0 Scan to find out about files that are left behind from interrupted program installations, system crashes, or browser cache bugs. It also checks your Internet settings and registry for maximum performance!
I am very proud to announce a new feature for Optimize 2.0 customers - craplets. Optimize now detects and removes hundreds of those useless programs that sit on your task bar eating up memory and CPU cycles. But that's not the news. The news is that Optimize 2.0 is SaaS.
Speed to market. We launched Optimize 2.0 in December 2007, and 4 months later we are adding a new feature. That is the beauty of SaaS. It is an inherently better development model that allows us to develop more quality code in a shorter period of time. A good analogy is Google Apps. Currently, there is a rather large feature gap between Google Apps and Microsoft Office. But that gap is quickly closing. Microsoft comes out with a new version of Office every 4 years. In the mean time, Google is improving Google Docs every month. Saas is just a better way to develop software.
No cost upgrades. What is the cost to Optimize 2.0 customers for craplets? NOTHING. NADA. RIEN. What must an Optimize 2.0 customer do to get the new craplets feature? NOTHING. NADA. RIEN. Because of the SaaS architecture, rolling out the new feature is seamless with minimal cost. Imagine what it takes for Microsoft to roll out a new version of Office? First, they have to stamp out a gazillion CDs. But it gets better because the CDs need to install on top of at least 10 different flavors of Office. And then, they have to figure out a way to inform all of their Office users about the upgrade. Since they spent so much money, they need to charge money for the upgrade. SaaS is beautiful in its simplicity.
Fluid. SaaS by its very nature is database driven. In Optimize's case, all of the new craplets are stored on a centralized database on our servers. So let's say, we discover a new craplet next month. It is truly as simple as adding a new record to a database, and all customers of Optimize 2.0 can detect and clean the new craplet. SaaS allows us to keep Optimize 2.0 current at a minimal cost to us and our customers.
PC Pitstop OverDrive Comes Out of Beta
Pitstop OverDrive comes out of beta!
Check out the redesign of our world renowned Full Tests. Scan your PC again for a new look and better results.
Here's a second huge announcment and guess what? OverDrive is SaaS. In fact, our world renowned Full Tests have ALWAYS been SaaS. Database driven, zero cost upgrades, and quick to market. I am proud to say that OverDrive has no peer on the web. But since OverDrive is also SaaS, you can expect to see many many new features in OverDrive each and every newsletter. I hope you are as excited as I am.
The Road Ahead
So what is the road ahead? SaaS of course. I truly believe that SaaS is the future. It is the best platform to develop superior software faster and at a lower cost. The road ahead is very exciting indeed.
April 29th, 2008 at 4:56 am
your program is a big con i have just brought pc had it 2 hrs and have only tried your product nothing else has ever been on pc except windows vista ,so you justify to me how there can be all those errors on pc i dont think so have kept results so can prove its a scam
April 29th, 2008 at 9:35 am
As the result of this article, I went in to update Otimize 2.0 (current ver 2.0.0.16 2/12/2008)hoping to get the new software that will remove craplets. Following the update my version is still the same. What did I do wrong?
Thx Jim
April 29th, 2008 at 9:45 am
Hey, I LOVE you guys, but it won't work on windows 2000 Pro. WTF??? Will you ever accomodate this OS?
Eric
May 1st, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Jim, you didn't do anything wrong. It's not a new version of the software that runs on your system. When the current version runs on your system, it will check against a much larger list of known craplets that is in the database on the PC Pitstop web site. That's the benefit of SaaS, you don't need to update it any more than you need to update GMail. It just happens.
In the past two weeks we went from about 20 to more than 80 craplets that we detect, and we're adding more every day. If you didn't see any new ones listed in your scan then your system didn't have any that we thought needed to be removed.
Eric, we *almost* were able to support Windows 2000 and wanted to, but there were a couple of missing features in the OS that prevented us from making it run. (I can't remember what they are at the moment.) Since the installed base of Win2k is shrinking, we're going to stay focused on XP and Vista. You would have to agree that Vista needs more help than Win2k, right?
May 2nd, 2008 at 10:21 am
I would love to order from you but do not want to give you credit card information on the computer.