Pinnacle Instant Copy review

14 July 2003 0:00 GMT / By Stuart Miles

While some software packages pride themselves on being the best that they can be, others seem to not only fall short of the mark, but miss the boat completely. Pinnacle has in the past been renowned for making great movie editing suites, whether it's their editing studio or merely a USB link cable, you can normally trust Pinnacle to do a good job.

It was surprising therefore that Pinnacle’s Instant Copy software is so poor. With limited choice and a poorly managed interface, you are left not only what to do or how to work the software. Once you have worked it out you are forced with limitation after limitation.

Load the software and instead of a greeting screen or tips on how to get the best out of the software you are merely presented with a window. Within this window are two columns - one that lets you know the source drive and the other the destination drive. From here you are supposed to work out what to do, what to tick and when to press start.

For disk to disk copies this works fine, but if you want to compile a disk from files and folders on your hard drive the program for some reason deems it impossible to transfer folders. Strange as folder management is the key to the windows operating system.

If like us you look further into the software you’ll realise that there is a host of further options but these are only expandable when clicking on the rather small “details” icon similar to the “details” icon you see when downloading your mail in outlook. Once here you can chose drive speed and number of copies, but little more.

Verdict

This program has the charm of something an A-level computing student could muster together over a long weekend rather than something that has come from a professional software house. Worse still is that Roxio offer this program as a sort of add-on to there burning suite - a “if you need to copy quickly use this tool” program.

Pinnacle has for once stepped way out of its depth with Instant Copy, it’s a shame, but something that should be avoided at all costs - for both the manufacturer Pinnacle and us the consumer.

Score

Review Recap

Made by: Pinnacle
Price as reviewed: £30
The good: Disk to disk copies OK (=they work)
The bad: The least usable piece of software reviewed to date on Pocket-Lint
Quick verdict: If you need disk copying software stick to Norton/Powerquest to name just one example.
Score