Virgin Media offers "V Stuff"

Comments

• To be honest, I am at a loss with this V Stuff backup, I am an advanced PC user, having built tens of PC's, dabbled in programming, etc, etc.....
  
  using this product, it is almost impossible to be sure which files you have backed up, there is no real-time 'add / remove' feature, so if you select backup, then you have to backup exactly that.
  
  I have been running it since yesterday, and fair enough I am uploading 1.5 gig of photo's, but there is no clear way of telling which files I have uploaded so far, it just says 700 odd mb so far.
  
  To select the photographs you want to order, from an uploaded 500, the page takes so long to load and the pc just hangs, the interface is painful to use, I just wish I had'nt heard of this product, as it is in with the price, and I was happy before I started using it, now I have a product that would be great if it worked.
  
  This is shocking though, I do not recommend this product to anyone, it is horrible. Posted by Kenny, UK
• took hours to back up and now cant access the log in at all. cant actually find where it is. just keep getting error loading page., Only wanted to backup my own files but it backed up everything on my partners files too although we have seperate password protected desktops. Didnt know that would happen. Posted by mary.hole, uk
• I was lured into installing this software by the offer of free prints. I really wish I hadn't bothered. I'm an expert PC user, having worked in IT for over 10 years, and I'm pretty confident that it's the V Stuff System that's crap, not me. I'm finding it incredibly frustrating, slow and difficult. As others have said, it's impossible to make any changes to the downloads you've selected once it's begun, as the activity log screen doesn't allow any changes. Also, the system keeps pausing at random intervals, but the "pause" button doesn't change to "resume" as it would if you had paused it manually, so there's no way you can force it to get going again.
  
  In summary, if you're an extremely patient or masochistic PC user with one file that you wish to back up, very slowly, using a system that continually fights against you and refuses to give you any information about what's going on, and won't let you change your mind once you've started, then this is for you!
  
  I just can't believe they've released this onto the market. I mean, has anyone actually looked at it, or tested it, at all? It's an embarrassment! Posted by Ed, UK
• God, it's getting worse. I tried clicking on "My Backups" on the web view. What was I thinking?!! That I would actually be able to see what I've uploaded?!! Hahahaha!!! AS IF!!! After twenty minutes I was able to click on a subfolder, then another one twenty minutes later. An hour's passed and I've finally been able to click on the folder I want to look at...... "Loading...."
  
  YAWN... Posted by Ed, UK
• Am reassured after reading the above that its not just me that finds this prog crippling to use and more trouble than its worth. Not thought out or tested properly. AVOID! (bet its too late!) Posted by theMink, UK
• just installed, it only seems to allow backups of specific files type from the desktop or My Document. I store my stuff elsewhere.
  It did back up my IE Favorities, pity I don't use IE!
  
  Useless. Posted by chris, UK
• I gave up, it is like watching paint dry when trying to select Photos for printing. I managed to select some from the first page of 500 images, then the page change took so long I just couldnt contemplate selecting 50 to print.
  The idea might be good, but I shall go back to Jessops for prints.
  Posted by J. C. Tomkins, England
• 4 days to back up 9 gig of files. £60 p.a. for unlimited service! Are you joking!!!?
  It's a pile of rubbish. Go back to the drawing board, Virgin. Posted by Dr. J Cockrill, U.K.
• V Stuff is the pits. I'm trying to upload 7.6Gb of photos. So far I have run it overnight for 8 consecutive nights and also a full 24 hour period....it has only uploaded 3Gb so far. Also. when you have to pause uploading (i.e. to give your computer a rest so it doesn't catch fire) you have to restart the programme a dozen times before you can convince it to resume uploading.
  
  Fair enough it is "free" as part of my package, but if I was paying a subscription fee just to have the storage space I would have cancelled immediately. This really is an insult. People, you'd be better off buying a 5 pack of dvd discs from a cheap shop and burning your photos on them, then stick them in a safe place.
  
  If anyone's computer ever fries do you really want to be downloading photos back to your computer for 2 weeks, or put them all back from a few dvd's in a few hours? Posted by Dave Ace, UK
• This V stuff back up is appalling,
  My computer ran solid for 4 days backing up all my files and pictures I struggled to separate the things I actually backed up and have found that when I log in I can not change or remove things that I dont want backed up.
  It sates it is full and do I want to pay for extra storage ..NO I DON'T. I wish I had never bothered with it nice idea in theory but in reality a nightmare Posted by Bex, England
• I actually googled virgin V stuff to see what I could find out about it as I have encountered problem after problem trying to find the thing on the virgin site, uploading stuff, trying to view itetc. It seemed that it just doesn't work to me and seeing the comments on this site just confirms my fears. Have virgin got ahead of themselves and rolled out a service with flags flying when it is loaded with floors and glitches? My thought are ''yes they have''. Posted by kevin, england
• I've been using this for however many weeks it's been out (several). I really wish I'd never heard of it - it's cost me several days of my life in total, mostly trying to make it "resume". After around a month I've managed to upload around 740Mb. I could have stuck that much stuff on a CD in minutes.
  
  MY ADVICE: STEER WELL CLEAR. DON'T BE TEMPTED BY THE FREE PRINTS OFFER. There are plenty of companies offering introductory free prints offers that have far more professional and efficient user interfaces. Use them.
  
  Once again, NTL has released a totally abysmal product - it's like the company has no sense of shame! Posted by Ross, UK
• I tried this - it sounded like a good idea. Apart from being very slow it started to have peculiar effects on my pc. I deleted everything I had uploaded and uninstalled - thinking who has all these "importand documents"/ Do I have any confidence in them? Posted by Joseph, Scotland
• Appalling - the server behind the front-end interface must have less resources than a 10-year old laptop; it takes forever to navigate around. Want to select some photos to print? Tick the one you want, watch the egg-timer, go for a cup of tea, have a nap - come back, and if you're lucky it might have registered your selection. Now choose the next one....
  
  10G of free space isn't really that much these days, with each photo from a modern digital camera clocking up a few hundred mb's..
  
  Forget it, don't waste your life Posted by Kev, UK
• A month since I posted a comment saying it was poor; still finding it impssible to work. Aksed a neighbour who also has virgin; he's give up on it. When you try and use it you just seem to hit a void, time passed and either nothing happens or when it does another hour to try and see what you've achieved. Book in many hours to do a simple task. Someone at Virgin has some real questions to answer over this one; must be alienating a LOT of customers Posted by kevin, England
• I agree with all above, this service is CRAP! I have tried to back up my Outlook messages, started it last Thursday - its now Sunday, amount backed up Zilch!! Really useful. Why don't they withdraw this blight until they have something that works! I don't think anyone monitors the V Stuff help line either - zero response to my messages so far. Posted by PeterB, England
• I agree totally with the comments above. Absolute rubbish. One giant step backwards. Waiting for it to show you anything you've backed up is like being on a 14.4K modem. 15 years ago it might have been considered slightly decent. Now it's just a joke. Posted by Paul, UK
• Thought it was just me having problems. Have wasted too much time on this already and am now going to delete the program Posted by Nicola, Northern Ireland
• I have a 50meg connection and 1 and a half weeks later V-Stuff is still less than half way through backing up my photos and videos which totals about 6 gig. Posted by Brian, England
• Shocking system, its so goddamned slow! I have 2 photos I thought "lets get some prints from VM, never got round to using that free system"
  The design and layout are ok, and despite what other people have said you can specify individual files and folders for upload, although the upload is incredibly slow. My problems began when I tried to get to my files online, takes 15-20 mins for each page to load and 4 times out of 5 it'll timeout and make you start from the beginning again.
  
  Well this is why its a free photoprinting service:
  IT TAKES 6 MONTHS FOR ONE PERSON ON THIS PLANET TO GET A PHOTO TO PRINT! Posted by Rob, England
• I have to agree that this is an apalling service that does not seem to be getting fixed. Luckily I didn't install the software, just used the web interface (when it will load) to upload 50 pictures each month to print. Even then its like pulling teeth, I'll stick with my 25gb from Microsoft thankyou! Posted by Kirk, UK
• Wish I'd checked out such comments before I spent several evenings trying to get this to work and certainly before I paid £5 for the unlimited service. Interesting how easy it was to cancel over the phone, they didn't question the request, never mind try to get me to change my mind. Suspect they've been dealing with this request a few times lately. V get stuffed I say.... Posted by Shona, UK
• V stuff is an absolutely shocking service for a well known, multi-national company. The website is not clear enough and hard to navigate - even for us computer literate people. The software is slow and I would not recommend it to anyone. I have wasted my money - not only the unlimited fee but my electric! It takes approx 12hrs to upload 1g - so for someone who has 50g of music this would take 25 days... I even phoned technical support to check! Not a good service in this day and age. Don't even bother with Vstuff - get an external hard drive for your back up. Posted by Charlie White, UK
• What the hell is this? No wonder VM are giving it away for free! Installed the prog, backed up my data, I think it took 2 weeks as I lost count of the days it tryed to upload and now cant access anything! WHERE HAS MY DATA GONE?
  Did anybody at VM test this before conning people to use it?
  
  I dont think anybody has got any free prints, if it takes that long to upload one photo, then imagine how long it will take VM to deliver your photos.
  This is a really, really CRAP prog. Dont bother to waste your time.
  Posted by Richare Branson, UK
• OK, I don't usually comment on stuff like this, but I have just spent a frustrating morning trying to upload and print 6 photos with this service. It is utterly awful. I am 25+ year IT veteran, and I have seen few UIs so poorly laid out and implemented as this, I doubt that the programmers that wrote this software have ever seen what proper backup software looks like, and that's before I get onto the appaling performance.
  It's not worth the nothing I paid for it. So don't waste your time or your money on it - I suggest Virgin shoud withdraw this service ASAP and rethink it. It just makes them look like a bunch of amatuers - This and thier Mumbai call centre. Posted by Dave Rtder,
• Despite subscribing to the unlimited version, it is still limited to 10Gb. Virgin Media tell me that the software is incorrectly reporting it, but that is no use since it is the software that is stopping me uploading more than 10Gb
  
  Also after 2 weeks of uploading it has only got to 7Gb
  
  It will not backup network drives, even if they are mapped Posted by Magnox, UK
• Simple questions -
  
  1. why is v-stuff backup not installed as a windows service - so at least I can goddamn log off while it continues to grind away in the background !
  
  2. Why are upload speeds throttled so making backups take weeks! if a cable can support 50MB's down it can support 50MB's up as well! And as most traffic is download as opposed to upload - unless we are genuinely concerned about illegial filesharing abusing a high speed uplink; just limit it to the v- stuff by using a dedicated port etc.
  
  3. Let me backup my network drive! that is where I keep all the stuff I want backing up! Posted by jolov, England
• Would like to echo all the other comments here - Virgin, if you are listening, THIS IS UTTERLY USELESS. I think I can beat all your stories on speed though: so far, my PC has been running for 4 days non-stop, and it has managed to upload a whopping 151mb!! At this rate, the whole process should only take 4 months to complete. Like many other posters, I an an IT professional, but glad to read the comments and know that it's not me.
  
  If by any chance you are reading this before setting up the service (or maybe, heaven forbid, actually paying for it), do yourself a favour and heed the warnings - it is an utter waste of time. Posted by Richard, UK
• Signed up for this last week, not because of the free prints but because of unlimited online storage. Selected all my photos and files, about 30gb worth - said it would take 45 days!!!! And that I would assume is calculated based on 24 hours uploading per day. I started the upload thinking maybe they'd caught the "microsoft time" but, but no, left it running from midnight until about midday, it uploaded about 150mb. In 12 hours. My calculations figure thats about 0.0035mb/s upload. On a 20mb connection (yes, I know uploads aren't nearly as fast as downloads, but this is pushing it a little). I'll be giving Virgin Media a call and asking for my money back. Posted by Damian, UK
• Please beware. I had backed-up all my photos, documents etc. Few weeks later, my computer crashed and I lost eveything. Went onto Vstuff knowing I could get it all back and guess what? Only got a quarter back!!!!! Nothing else.!! Posted by Lin, UK
• it is terrible. The program is awful to find your way around, it continually gives problems with login (and has now refused any login despite the vstuff website accepting the same). Most stuff is customisable but impossible to find the settings (and refind a month later). The website is rediculously slow and worst of all, when I tried to retrieve files in a test, it fails on all of them but doesn't tell you why.
  
  Free photo prints is the only redeeming feature... but I haven't even bothered to use it yet... Posted by Mark, UK
• Being a photographer the free photos are great.. But As has been said before I have been using PC's since the 16k spectrum and this has to be one of the hardest interfaces I have tried to use (with the emphasis on try.. To make matters worse it takes an age to take the files from your pc which it seems to do without knowing which ones you want backed up. Then i could not find how to delete them,I wont go on as its all been said.. what annoys me now is I cant even log back on to get my next lot of photos which means I have to call the help line at some extortionate rate.. (I spose its a way of recouping money for the free photos) lmao .. yep its a joke Posted by Pete Welsh photography, England