The Fox Report
Barry Fox’s technology column
Good: could be better
G
erman software company
Nero made its name with
Burning ROM, a program first
released in 1997 that lets a Windows
PC burn music CDs. Since then, Nero’s
software has progressively evolved
through numerous generations, which
cater for DVDs and Blu-Ray Discs. With
an eye to the fact that physical discs
are now a declining force in many
countries, Nero has expanded into
other areas, such as audio
and video editing, copying
and coding software, PC
tune-up, data backup and
duplicate file detection and
deletion. The original basic
software is now free, but
the full package, currently
called Nero Platinum, costs
between £50 (for a year’s
subscription) and £80
(outright purchase).
The latest version does a
much better job of gathering
all the disparate applications together into a single
interface; previous versions
have looked too much like
a rag-bag of apps bought in
from smaller developers.
need, as anyone who uses a Windows
PC will attest. Unwanted duplicate
and closely similar copies of files
grow like fungus.
Just the act of trying to copy photo
files by pointing and clicking with a
mouse can generate unwanted copy
files; the act of collating and deleting
the copies can then inadvertently
create unwanted copies of copies.
It’s a real nuisance.
My PC is drowning in duplicate
copies of audio, video and photo files,
some of them deliberately created as
safety copies and some there for no apparent reason. On principle, based on
bitter experience, I will not install any
software with limited life, so jumped
at the chance of trying Nero Platinum
Unlimited and its DuplicateManager.
After spending several hours analysing a 4TB hard drive store of multimedia files, Nero DuplicateManager finds duplicate
photo folders and files, and
shows large thumbnails.
(Unfortunately Nero does
not find duplicate music
and movie files). It then
uses AI to suggest with red/
green marking which exact
duplicates can safely be
deleted. One Click on Next
and they are gone, saving
large amounts of disc space.
Copies of copies
Nero DuplicateManager
tackles a real and growing Nero DuplicateManager – a good idea, but unnecessarily hard work
What’s best?
But Nero’s AI and I did not
agree on what were the best
duplicates to delete and
the best to keep. Indeed,
how could Nero possibly
understand my personal
preferences? So I restored
everything Nero had deleted and started again,
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Practical Electronics | February | 2020
over-riding Nero’s intelligence by
selecting a ‘keep all’ option to mark
everything green and then starting on
the laborious task of looking at each
delete-or-keep choice.
And this is where Nero DuplicateManager seriously disappoints. There
is no option to save the results of
Nero’s time-consuming search. All
the choose and delete work has to be
completed before quitting the program
or shutting down the computer. If the
PC has to be re-booted – for example,
because of an update or a Windows
freeze-up or crash – any pending
search and analysis data is lost and
has to be done again from scratch.
The free option
This is in direct contrast to a very good
free program, Duplicate Cleaner Free
from Digital Volcano, which saves its
search and analysis results through
program shut-downs and PC re-boots.
Also, Duplicate Cleaner Free handles
all multimedia files: audio, video and
photos. It’s much faster too – scanning the same 4TB HHD took only
20 minutes; probably because
Duplicate Cleaner Free does not
show thumbnail images.
I asked Nero if I was foolishly
missing any option to save unused
search results for later, as with
Duplicate Cleaner Free. I have
not heard back, so I assume not.
As I write this I need to re-boot
the PC to get a recalcitrant printer
printing again, and to get Outlook
to find email again; but I still
have to work through 5903 exact
duplicate images and 12684 similar images which Nero Duplicate
has laboriously listed for action.
And that list will need rebuilding again after the re-boot. Have
Nero’s software engineers never
faced a similar Windows re-boot
dilemma?
In Search of Simulacra:
Modeling a Self-Learning Android
Photo: interloveupted.blogspo.com
Simulacra: an automated robot mentioned in Homer’s Illiad – 700 to 800 BC
The reader is taken through basic understanding
of human nature, thinking, learning, problem
solving. Then Conceptual information about
basic control systems through to Artificial
Neural Networks and software architectures is
presented. All in plain language. The book goes
on to explain the details of how a self-learning
Android could work by putting together those
previously described control systems.
Available on Amazon.UK
Written in plain language, for anyone interested
in the next step in Artificial Intelligence
www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1513653075
Barry Fox, FBKS (Fellow,
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Practical Electronics | February | 2020
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