Snappy Driver Installer

I'll echo what the others have said. Great work, excellent program, unique - thanks for all of your efforts. The several months of my patreon contribution is not enough compared to the value this program has provided to my business. Safe travels to your next endeavour!
 
Are you all kidding me? SDI sucks. There's no adware. How am I suppose to sell additional services if there is no adware installed on a clients machine? You guys need to get with the program (pun intended) and start doing what others do, include adware and open candy!! Sheesh!!

Seriously though, I love SDI and it is a godsend to us and really, we all say it, but we do mean it, THANK YOU!

We only hope that it continues as it currently does - works and no hidden features! Please update us as to where if/when we can donate towards keeping this going in the future - other than a place where we need to create an account :p
 
I am only guessing here but I think @BadPointer probably got fed up with the lack of investment from us techs. I had a look at his Patreon page and saw 110 patrons giving a total of $291 per month, another look today shows 108 patrons giving $289.
Hardly an incentive to keep up the good work. You get what you pay for in life, if you don't pay, you don't get, simple.
 
If there's the need of money, IMHO they should really be commercializing SDI. I'ts great and highly regarded by the right crew. I guess that for some reason they just can't or want to do it. Anyway thank you @BadPointer for the great software, and good luck for your future projects.
 
I am only guessing here but I think @BadPointer probably got fed up with the lack of investment from us techs. I had a look at his Patreon page and saw 110 patrons giving a total of $291 per month, another look today shows 108 patrons giving $289.
Hardly an incentive to keep up the good work. You get what you pay for in life, if you don't pay, you don't get, simple.

I agree. I wish they'd just make the damned thing $20/month to keep up the development and keep it free of crapware. Enough technicians use this that they'd make a killing. Sadly, asking for donations has NEVER been a way to keep a project alive and profitable. Just 50 shops paying $20/month would have tripled the contributions to $1,000/month, and I'm sure there are thousands of shops that use it. With so much other GARBAGE out there that people pay for like TechSuite and Repairshopr (sorry for the developers here, but your products suck and aren't even worth a one time purchase let alone a subscription), I can't believe you couldn't make a killing by selling SDI.

Just the other day I used SDI to install a graphics driver for XP. I installed XP on an old SERVER that my client wanted to use as a regular computer. The manufacturer didn't list any drivers for XP (no big surprise there), but SDI was able to find a driver that worked reasonably well. Without SDI I wouldn't have made $200. I would gladly spend $20/month for SDI. It's saved my bacon more times than I can count.
 
I wish they'd just make the damned thing $20/month
I don't know. $20/mo for something that installs drivers? Don't get me wrong, I'd gladly pay a subscription for it, but maybe $5-$10 a month. Any higher and I feel as though it should do more. Maybe combine SDI with WSUS Offline - or something along those lines, or perhaps with Fabs!

The issue is NOT a subscription based service, its the fact that SOME of these companies that charge a monthly fee are not even true companies, just 1 or 2 or a few people sitting at home behind a computer.

There are some services I like and would probably pay for with a monthly payment, however, they are ridiculously too high. Yes, Repairshopr is one of them. You could take an opensource CRM and change some wording in the php files to make it fit our industry. Just saying! I did that with Fatfree CRM, though don't even use it anymore.

Also:
TechSuite and Repairshopr (sorry for the developers here, but your products suck
Care to elaborate?
 
I don't know. $20/mo for something that installs drivers? Don't get me wrong, I'd gladly pay a subscription for it, but maybe $5-$10 a month.

I'm sorry you don't see the ENORMOUS value of this software. The only better software that ever existed was Hirens Boot CD back in the day. However seeing as it was just a culmination of other software I don't know if that counts.

Care to elaborate?

Exactly what I said. Repairshopr was confusing and had hundreds of functions I would NEVER use while lacking basic functions that I've had in my old (one time purchase software) for 15+ years. I wouldn't even pay $50 as a ONE TIME purchase, let alone $600/year!

As for Techsuite, it took forever and didn't do anything I couldn't do myself faster and easier with separate tools (or heck, even no tools at all). I haven't tried their latest version and I might take it for a test spin again, but I was NOT impressed when I tried it last time.

Honestly, most subscription based products are complete and total BS. The cost to keep them running is little to none and they could easily survive with traditional licensing (charging for upgraded versions with more features). Subscription is nothing but a big money grab, and it kills the desire to innovate. Why make a better product when you've got thousands of idiots that will pay you for it EVERY MONTH just the way it is?

SDI is different however. It requires a lot of work to keep everything updated, so I'd be more than happy to pay a subscription. Besides, because the target market is so small and it would take quite a while for a non updated version to become completely useless, the traditional licensing model wouldn't work for SDI. And asking for donations definitely hasn't worked. So I propose a subscription model.

It might be a good idea to sell 6 or 12 month licenses pre-paid to get a large lump sum of cash together so @BadPointer can build a team. It's obvious he doesn't want to work on it anymore, but I don't think the project will survive without him. I'd be the 1st in line to pay $120 or $240 for a 6 or 12 month license. That would allow him to hire someone that he knows would do things correctly. And with a guaranteed income stream the project could survive.
 
I'm sorry you don't see the ENORMOUS value of this software.
I never said that. If you reread it, in no part was it said I didn't see the value in SDI. I merely was pointing out or rather giving my opinion on the cost. However, let me give you an issue.

Say SDI goes monthly at $20. How many people will stop using it? I'd say a lot! Why? Well, because for so long a product was freely given and then all of a sudden becomes a mandatory cost would throw people off and they would just as soon use the slow process of downloading and installing drivers themselves. I'm not saying people wouldn't buy into it for a subscription fee. As I stated originally, I would. But the cost would have to be nominal. Also consider how long it may be before someone else comes up with the same kind of tool for free, or at a lower cost. It does happen!

Again, as I stated, I'd be all for paying a subscription each month, or yearly at a discounted rate. But for something that shops may use just a few times a month, you'd have to justify why the cost would be what it is, unless the cost is fair to begin with. Thats why I said $5 or $10 a month. To me, a shop owner who uses it less than 5 times a month, that would be fair.

But all of this is hearsay and it remains just what direction SDI goes to and whether or not it will survive without @BadPointer

Why make a better product when you've got thousands of idiots that will pay you for it EVERY MONTH just the way it is?
^ This I agree with. D7x (@FoolishTech) is one of those products.
 
I have been using this program pretty much from the first time it was posted on here and I have always been very happy with it, in fact I love the program. I happen to be doing some work for a very large corp today however and I was trying to update the program on my drive and it set off alarms in there security department.
Not sure if this is the way the program should be behaving or not

Please do not use this file as it connected to over 10k IP’s since it was executed.

0day reaching out to blacklisted ip's, making sys changes
"D:\SDI_R390\SDI_x64_R474.exe"
 
yes my bad I guess, just thought that 10k ip's was excessive and that they stated 0day so was not sure if something changed. thank you
 
I bet it is down for good. Badpointer has quit so there is no need for a website. You can still grab the files from the SourceForge site. https://sourceforge.net/projects/snappy-driver-installer/
The dust is yet to settle on SDI and there's quite a bit of dust! Sadly, BadPointer lost control of the web site and it's been taken down. But that's ok. As of now, the Source Forge project is being administered by Sam who creates the driver packs and myself as the, now, sole developer. I continue to work on the code and fix bugs and I intend to do a release next week. Sam is still publishing the driver packs on a weekly basis. So, for now at least, the project lives. New releases will be available from the Source Forge site and via the normal torrent downloads.
 
I have been using this program pretty much from the first time it was posted on here and I have always been very happy with it, in fact I love the program. I happen to be doing some work for a very large corp today however and I was trying to update the program on my drive and it set off alarms in there security department.
Not sure if this is the way the program should be behaving or not

Please do not use this file as it connected to over 10k IP’s since it was executed.

0day reaching out to blacklisted ip's, making sys changes
"D:\SDI_R390\SDI_x64_R474.exe"
That would be the internal torrent client. We should probably think about a switch to have it normally off.
 
The dust is yet to settle on SDI and there's quite a bit of dust! Sadly, BadPointer lost control of the web site and it's been taken down. But that's ok. As of now, the Source Forge project is being administered by Sam who creates the driver packs and myself as the, now, sole developer. I continue to work on the code and fix bugs and I intend to do a release next week. Sam is still publishing the driver packs on a weekly basis. So, for now at least, the project lives. New releases will be available from the Source Forge site and via the normal torrent downloads.
Sounds like you need to buy a new domain and get that going.
 
Back
Top