Named & Shamed
Barry Collins puts the boot into tech villains, jargon-spouting companies and software trying to trick you
SOFTWARE WARNING!
Process Lasso’s deviously delayed pop-ups
Process Lasso (www. snipca.com/44169) is not a how-to manual for cowboys, but a very handy tool that helps your PC to tick over smoothly. In fact, we liked this Task Manager alternative so much, we gave it a glowing write-up as recently as in Issue 646 (page 19). Since then, however, it’s started to get on our wick.
Craftily, it waits a couple of weeks before it starts pestering you with pop-ups. Our editor Daniel Booth was the first to notice these. He urged me to give it a look, but I didn’t see anything after installing it. I told him he was seeing things and advised a lie-down.
It turns out Daniel’s faculties aren’t deceiving him, because a couple of weeks later I got hit with a pop-up when I booted my PC. It offered me 25 per cent off the full purchase price, and was followed by another nag immediately after.
This second one (pictured) really annoyed me, because it stayed on top of other open windows until I took action to close it. Since then, the pop-ups have appeared intermittently on opening the program.
Just as annoying are the holier-than-thou messages from US developer Bitsum. “Process Lasso is the result of a vision for better performing PCs,” it boasts. “Bitsum tries to offer it as freely as possible, but one of their trade-offs is this nag. We feel that it is a better approach than installer bundles or other deceitful practices some companies have adopted.”
This is a bit like a graffiti artist pleading he’s better than a fly-tipper or a fraudster. Either way, it’s a pain and Process Lasso should rope it in.
WHAT ARE THEY TAL
