WARNING: JUNK AHEAD
Junk offender: Poweriso
Poweriso ( www.poweriso.com) is perhaps the best-known program for creating ISO files (system backups, not to be confused with the photography term ISO). And yes, it’s powerful. Just a shame you have to cough up $29.95 (£23) – or suffer its junk-addled free trial.
There’s a whispered warning in the small print on the Buy Now page: “After registration, you can receive the full clean version” (by “registration” they mean “paying”). Wait, “the full clean version”? So the trial version is limited and dirty?
In a twisted twist, Poweriso doesn’t let you opt out. You have to agree to download the dirt with the installer – even if you intend to buy the full version later. Perhaps Poweriso thinks its customers enjoy a spot of punishment, because it tells you off if you try skipping the junk.
After clicking Download Now, then the appropriate link for your system, you get a pop-up containing an “optional offer” that changes by the day. Today, it offered me a browser-hijacker called Search Manager. Yesterday, it wanted to replace my homepage with Duckduckgo – a perfectly good search engine when it’s not forced on you.
The Poweriso pop-up gives you two options: ‘Add & Start Download’, which downloads the junk and the installer, and Skip. Yesterday, Skip redirected me to a page with an odd URL ( http://bvz-ext. com), which Chrome refused to open. Today, Skip delivered another pop-up, accusing me of stealing from the mouths of Poweriso’s babes. “We’ve invested considerable time and effort to provide you the best product,” it admonished. “Please give us a chance and continue the installation. You can remove the extension at any time after the installation” (see screenshot). Wow. So it’s actually taking the moral high ground over infecting my PC with PUPS. At best, this is naive – failing to distinguish between adware and display adverts. At worst it’s dizzyingly disrespectful to users.
sugar in their blood.
However, Skype could ease mounting pressure on the emergency services. Ambulances are increasingly forced to queue outside Accident & Emergency departments when offloading patients, meaning they can’t respond to incoming calls.
Increased demand has led to the biggest shake-up of ambulance response times in 40 years. New targets, which will be introduced in November, give paramedics seven minutes to reach the most urgent cases. But these no longer include victims of strokes and heart attacks, who will now be treated within 40 minutes, longer than before.
So will the Skype trial be successful? SCAS’S positive reputation may depend on it. Last year it became the first ambulance service to receive a ‘Good’ rating by the inspection watchdog Care Quality Commission. But more important will be the verdict of patients. If they hate the service, it may not be used for long.