NeoSmart announces Windows Recovery Essentials

[McLovin]

Important news is coming from NeoSmart Technologies, the company praised for the award-winning boot manager software EasyBCD: the developer will soon release a new system recovery CD for Windows operating systems, rewritten from the ground up due to licensing issues with the official Microsoft products.

Like many companies selling recovery CDs for Windows, NeoSmart was thus far licensing the Windows Pre Installation Environment (WinPE) directly from Microsoft to develop and release its own bootable recovery environments.

But starting from January 2012, NeoSmart reveals, Microsoft stopped renewing the pre-existing licensing agreements with third parties, forcing its partners to search for an alternative solution to develop future bootable CDs without using Redmond’s own WinPE.



Read more.

 

[Ink]

Windows Recovery Essentials sounds too similar to another Windows product.

 

[McLovin]

Sounds similar to Microsoft Security Essentials.

 

[Ink]

And Windows Live Essentials.

Will they get away with using that name? (Like how SkyDrive Explorer was renamed to SDExplorer).

 

[McLovin]

And Windows Live Essentials.

Will they get away with using that name? (Like how SkyDrive Explorer was renamed to SDExplorer).

I'm not sure but being Microsof they probably will.

 

[HeffeD]

This looks pretty interesting. The video shows a snapshot recovery system. I wonder how that works as a recovery CD. Do you burn your own CD with the snapshot on it, or is that a feature that relies on some sort of internal/external media support? (HD, USB, SD card, etc...)