Any thoughts about A-Squared 3.0 ?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Robinb
  • Start date Start date
anyone use it and how do you like it?
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I wasn't too happy to see that a2service.exe was set to start automatically
as yet another new drain on resources, but it seems you can set it to Manual
without any problems - and that's what I've done. It scans and updates OK.
But afterwards a2service.exe is still running after you close the GUI.

Haven't done more than a very quick scan with it yet though.
 
....good catch for an on-demand only scanner. Thanks for waking me up Alan
D. No problems seen so far here in early use Robin.
 
anyone try it with vista? it is vista compatable so they say
I have not gotten a chance to install it for vista yet
robin
 
also if you did is there a way to make the a2service.exe manual in vista?
so it is not automatic?
robin
 
lol i can answer my own question
Yes you can by going into services in vista and putting it to manual
robin
 
Dave M said:
....good catch for an on-demand only scanner. Thanks for waking me up Alan
D.
Click to expand...

Actually, Dave, a chap at the a-squared forum has been patiently explaining
to me that the impact of this service on perfomance is negligibly slight, so
it seems to be of no real significance whether we switch the service to
manual or not.

Also, adding to what I wrote earlier: I've used it now for both quick and
smart scans. Seems fine as far as I can tell. One point worth noting is that
the logs folder has now shifted from the a-squared folder in 'Program files'
to 'My Documents'.
 
....and he's probably right that it uses negligible CPU cycles as an ongoing
process, but why run it at all during startup if it's only On-Demand?
Doing that will only cumulatively help slow down getting booted and running
when you consider the effect of initializing those all unused services. I
use a-squared perhaps once every week or two, so there is absolutely no
need to have it initialized as a service on a daily basis if you use it in
that same way. Nothing is happening automatically there that would justify
any overhead what-so-ever for on-demand use.

But I probably just now used more cycles typing this than switching it to
manual will save in a year... LOL.
 
...and he's probably right that it uses negligible CPU cycles as an
ongoing process, but why run it at all during startup if it's only
On-Demand? Doing that will only cumulatively help slow down getting booted
and running when you consider the effect of initializing those all unused
services.
Click to expand...

Well yes, that's what I thought too, but I assumed I wasn't understanding
something fully! It does seem that leaving it switched to manual is the
sensible, albeit barely significant, thing to do.
But I probably just now used more cycles typing this than switching it to
manual will save in a year... LOL.
Click to expand...

And I've just made it even worse!

(This talk of insignificant differences reminds me vaguely of a conversation
I had with a friend who wanted to save the planet by giving up the use of
his electric toothbrush: "all that recharging of batteries!!". So I did a
little calculation to discover that he would save as much energy by choosing
not to have a hot bath on three days, as he would by abandoning the use of
his toothbrush for THE REST OF HIS LIFE. So dental hygiene won the day at
the expense of a slight additional use of deodorant.)
 
i set it to manual on both xp home and vista and found a difference in
startup.
with it set to auto startup was a bit slower
Manual- startup was a bit faster
since I want it as an on-demand only i would rather it sit in manual
expecially in Vista
Vista loads enough junk of its own I do not need another program loading too
robin
 
in message
i set it to manual on both xp home and vista and found a difference in
startup.
Click to expand...

Well, for me that's a good enough reason for leaving it on manual. Thanks
for reporting the results of your experiment, Robin.
 
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