We are Gene and Linda Barlow, owners of the User Group Relations consulting firm that represents excellent Acronis products to the user group community. We focus mainly on PC and MAC user groups, but those not associated with a user group may also use our services and purchase our products at great discount prices.
We want you to take advantage of these great discounts, get to know our products by using them, and then share your experiences with your friends and family, so they will also want to use these excellent products. This grass roots marketing lets us offer you these products at significant discount prices.
On a Personal Note
In my last newsletter, I announced the stroke I had last October. Thanks to all for your wishes for a speedy recovery. They were greatly appreciated. I made good recovery until last March, then two falls put me back a bit. So, three steps forward and two steps back, time to re-access things.
I’ve decided that this will probably be my last year representing Acronis and offering you our user group discounts on their excellent products. I can still process your orders within 24 hours of submission. I hope to keep this ordering service open through the end of this year, so we can get you the new True Image 2022 products expected this Fall.
I am partially paralyzed on my left side and can no longer type with my left hand. I have learned to type using only my right hand, but this is a fairly slow process. This limits my ability to reply to your many emails. I read and enjoy each note, but I cannot reply to all of them. I try to reply to the most urgent notes, but it may be a few days before I get back to you.
Technical questions should be sent to Acronis for assistance. They provide free technical support for up to a year. So, as long as you have a subscription product or have the latest release of their perpetual product, Acronis will give you free technical support. If you use older releases, then you will have to research your own answers in the Acronis forums or knowledge base.
We miss presenting and seeing our many user group friends, but I can no longer present to your user group. If things should change, I will let you know in a future newsletter.
Now Some Acronis Product News
On April 1, 2021 Acronis announced the termination of their Acronis True Image 2021 Standard (Perpetual License) product. The reason they give for discontinuing this popular product is right on. Internet hackers are being more and more aggressive in attacking your computer. Hence, to adequately protect your computer you need to keep your Internet protection software more up to date. True Image Perpetual is only current the first year it is released. After that, it becomes more and more obsolete as each week passes.
Unfortunately, this discontinued version of True Image 2021 is our most popular version of True Image. I have a small remaining supply of this version, but once my supply is gone, you will no longer be able to order this product. These remaining copies are clean and still current. So, order today for your immediate needs. Eventually, you will have to consider moving to one of the three subscription versions: Essential, Advanced, or Premium. But for now, you can still get your favorite Acronis True Image 2021 Standard (Perpetual License). Don’t wait, these will go fast.
The major new feature announced in True Image 2021 is a full function Antimalware utility. I understood that this new feature was included in all four versions of True Image 2021. Unfortunately, the announcement briefly mentioned that only a 30-day trial of the Antimalware utility was in the Perpetual and Essential versions of True Image 2021. If you want this significant Antimalware feature, then you need to order either the Advanced or Premium Subscription Licenses of True Image 2021.
Selecting the Best Acronis True Image 2021 Package for you
Until recently, Acronis has offered four different version of their latest True Image 2021 product. Each with similar functions, but slightly different features. Selecting which of the four versions would best suit your needs was a bit confusing. This article should help you understand the differences and pick the best version for your needs.
Acronis True Image 2021 Standard (Perpetual License) has been the most popular version our user group customers would purchase from us. However, Acronis announced on April 1, 2021 that it was discontinuing this popular product. Why?
During the first year, Acronis publishes free bug fixes every few weeks. After that, the product is frozen and no further changes or fixes are released for it. All future changes and fixes will go in the next annual release and not retrofitted into past releases. The old versions may continue to run, but they are no longer up-to-date and eventually fail to protect your computer.
More likely what really happens, is that True Image stops doing good backups over a year before it stops running and you don’t realize it. Just because True Image runs to the end of the backup, doesn’t mean that the backup image is usable. I advise my customers to upgrade True Image at least every other year. Still, some users may go 3 to 4 years on the same old True Image software and never know how risky they are being. They think True Image Standard (Perpetual License) is saving them money. Actually, they are playing Russian Roulette with their important computer security.
Also, True Image Standard (Perpetual License) is missing a couple of very important features found only in some of the other versions of True Image. First, the ability to back up to the Internet (called the Acronis Cloud) is not possible in the Perpetual version. Portions of your computer contents are very important and need to be backed up daily. If you forget to attach your external hard drive every night, then these critical daily backups do not happen. Using a more advanced version of True Image that can do Internet backups daily, provides a much better backup solution.
Second, True Image 2021 introduced the addition of a full function antimalware utility, which is a very significant enhancement that all users should be using. Unfortunately, this antimalware utility is not included in the Perpetual version of True Image.
For these reasons, I can no longer recommend True Image Standard (Perpetual License) to protect your computer from the dangers of the Internet. If you are currently using a Perpetual version, you should replace it soon with either True Image Advanced or True Image Premium.
Acronis True Image 2021 Essential (Subscription License) is one of the newer annual subscription licenses of True Image introduced a couple of years ago. When you buy a subscription license of this product for one year, you can use this product to back up your computer for one year from when you register it. At the end of that year, you need to renew the license for another year. If a new release of True Image is available during your license year, you get a free upgrade to the new release, but your license expires at the end of the original year. This product is always available to be up-to-date and current. It is also, the least expensive version of True Image that can be up-to-date with Internet threats.
However, True Image Essential has a couple of major weaknesses in it. You cannot use this product to back up to the Internet (called the Acronis Cloud). So critical files that should be backed up daily, will not get backed up regularly if you forget to attach your external hard drive each night.
Another major weakness of True Image Essential is that it doesn’t support the newly announced Antimalware utility as a key part of protecting your computer from Internet problems.
For these reasons, I am hesitant to recommend True Image Essential as a good tool in protecting your computer from Internet problems. It is an excellent low-cost backup utility.
That leaves True Image 2021 Advanced or True Image 2021 Premium (both Subscription Licenses) as your best choices to protect your computer from the very active threats of the Internet. So, why would you pick one or the other of these two as your best Internet protection tool?
The cost of each product is certainly a consideration. We offer both of these excellent products at great discounts. For example, a single license of Advanced from us is only $45 and a single license of Premium from us is only $63. This is half what you would pay Acronis for exactly the same item and support. However, the real cost savings happen when you buy either 3 or 5 licenses at a time. For example, 5 licenses of Advance from us is $95, that’s only $19 for each license! Also, 5 licenses of Premium from us is $105, just $21 for each license! So, you can get either Advance or Premium for about $20 per year when you buy 5 licenses. So, cost is not a major factor in selecting which of these two products to purchase.
Finally, features between Advanced and Premium should be considered when selecting which to purchase. They both offer an excellent backup utility and the new full function antimalware utility to fully protect your computer from the very active Internet problems we all face today. So, both offer you the best possible protection you can get for your computer today.
Both products offer you online Internet storage on the Acronis Cloud. The Advanced product includes 500GB of free storage, where the Premium product includes 1TB of free storage. Since Internet storage is much slower than local storage on an external hard drive, I would recommend you only store your few critical files that should be backed up daily to the Internet. I would still backup your entire hard drive each week to a locally attached external hard drive. This combination of both Internet storage and local external hard drive storage will give you the best of both storage media. The 500GB of Acronis Cloud storage that is included free with your Advance True Image license should be more than enough to store your few critical files.
True Image Premium does include some advanced features such as Blockchain certification of your backup files and Electronic Signatures on files which give you ultra protection of your backup image files. You also get high priority (less than 24 hours) technical support with the Premium product.
In conclusion, I recommend either True Image 2021 Advanced or True Image 2021 Premium products to protect all of the computers in your household. Your best deals are with the 3 or 5 licenses annual subscription packages. True Image Advanced is slightly less expensive, but True Image Premium offers you the best protection possible. Either product will be an excellent choice for you.
Just go to my secure website at www.ugr7.com and click on the Product button under the picture at the top of the screen. Then click on either Advanced True Image or Premium True Image to place your order. Scroll down to either the 3 or 5 licenses boxes and click on Add to Cart. When you are ready to check out, click on the Cart button near the upper right of the screen. PayPal will process your payment using either your PayPal account or your Credit/Debit card. You do not need a PayPal account to pay with either a Credit/Debit card. You will see the PayPal option first. Just scroll down to see the Credit/Debit card option. When you submit your order, you will quickly get an email confirming the order. I will send you a second email with your serial numbers and a link to my Starter Guide that you should follow to download and install the products on your computer. It may take me a few hours to send you this second email, so please be patient. If it doesn’t show up in 24 hours, send an email to gene@ugr7.com asking about your serial numbers. Normally, they will probably arrive a few minutes after you place the order. I try to get orders out as quickly as possible. We appreciate your business.
We are an official distributor of Acronis consumer products, focusing mainly on computer user groups members and their friends. We offer special discount prices and add extra support to our customers. Make sure you purchase from us for the best protection of your PC or Mac.
We now offer one serial number that can be installed on 3 or 5 computers. In the past, when you ordered 3 or 5 licenses from us, we would send you 3 or 5 different serial numbers that could only be installed on one computer each. That kept things simple for us and you — one serial number for one computer. Acronis started to send out single serial numbers that could be used to install on 3 or 5 computers. Now, you have to keep track on how many computers you installed these multi-computer serial numbers on so that you fully used these multi-computer numbers.
However, things got a bit more complicated than this when you registered single computer numbers and multi-computer numbers in your Acronis account. Also, perpetual and subscription serial numbers were treated differently when you registered them. Unfortunately, Acronis didn’t document any of this anywhere, as near as I can determine. Strange things happened that left us scratching our heads. I think we have finally unraveled these strange happenings. Let me try to explain all the complications.
A few years ago, all Acronis products were Perpetual . Subscription products had not been introduced. You could register more than one Perpetual product in your Acronis account. Since, only one Acronis True Image product could be installed on one computer, each new Perpetual license you registered in your Acronis account needed to be installed on a different computer. So, a household with 3 different computers, would have 3 different True Image Perpetual licenses in the same account, each associated with a different computer.
With Subscription licenses, you now had two factors to consider– what computer was the license installed on and how long was the license valid for. By default, one Subscription license was valid for one year. When you registered a second Subscription license in the account, it extended the license on one computer for another year. So, by adding additional Subscription licenses you can stack additional years on the computer. The problem this caused, was that you needed a separate Acronis account for each computer you had.
To avoid the need for separate Acronis accounts when you had multiple computers, Acronis introduced the multi-computer serial number. So, if you have 3 computers in your household, you could get one serial number from Acronis for all 3 computers and register it in a single Acronis account. That solved the problem, sort of!!! What if you have 4 computers? What do you do then? Buy a 3 computer number and not protect one of your computers? Buy a 5 computer license for your 4 computers and waste 1 of the licenses? Set up two Acronis accounts, one for the 3 computer number and the second account for a 1 computer number. This could get very complicated.
We are now sending out only single computer licenses when you order True Image Perpetual or True Image Essential products from us. When you order single licenses of either True Image Advanced or True Image Premium you will also get single computer license numbers. Only when you order 3 or 5 licenses of True Image Advanced or True Image Premium will we send you one serial number that can be installed on more than one computer. I hope this is not too confusing.
This is one of a series of technical articles that I distribute to those that have subscribed to this newsletter. You can subscribe at:
http://ugr7.com/newsletter-signup.html
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Visit Gene and Linda’s website to purchase your discounted True Image 2021 or Disk Director 12.5
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