LastPass acquired by LogMeIn

LastPass, my favorite cloud-based password manager, was acquired by LogMeIn on October 9, 2015.

The news was not well-received by the vocal minority, based on comments on the LastPass blog posting of the announcement. LogMeIn does not have a good track record with products they acquire. Their LogMeIn Free product, which they promised would remain free after they acquired it some years ago, was completely removed from the "free" list in January 2014 and is now a pay-only product.

This LogMeIn Free incident really ticked a lot of people off. Obviously, things can change for a company, and something made LogMeIn decide that their free product would no longer be free. But the way they did it was not very consumer friendly.

Incidentally, LogMeIn acquired another product many years ago called Hamachi, which allows you to create a private network among multiple computers. I use the free Hamachi, in combination with TeamViewer, to do tech support for friends and family. LogMeIn changed this product as well, several times over the years, and reduced it's capability significantly. The free product still meets my needs, but the changes they made rubbed many people the wrong way.

Anyway, I digress. After letting the news of the LastPass acquisition settle in for a few days and reading and listening to many of the experts out there, here's my take on things.

Don't panic! If you're using LastPass now, it's perfectly fine to continue using it. I am. It's still one of the best password management solutions out there. While nothing is 100% safe, it's the best option out there right now. The free product is great, but why the heck aren't you a LastPass Premium user? At $12/year, it's an absolute steal. Shhhh...don't tell LastPass, but I'd pay twice that annually for the value I get from LastPass.

Finally, below is a video from the Security Now podcast I follow regularly. Last week the hosts Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte talked about the acquisition for about 30 minutes with Joe Siegrist, CEO and Founder of LastPass. Joe seems sincere in his intentions to allow LastPass to continue down the current path they are on with the free model. Only time will tell if Joe continues to dictate the direction of LastPass and if LogMeIn allows him to do the same.

Should you upgrade to Windows 10?

Still Holding Off on Windows 10 Upgrade

Just a quick update on updating to Windows 10. Personally, I have only updated one of my very old laptops to Windows 10, and I haven't done a whole lot with it since the update. I'm still holding off another month or two for them to get some more updates under their belt before I tackle upgrading my primary desktop and laptop. That will also give other vendors time to work out any compatibility problems with their software and Windows 10.

Hamachi and TeamViewer

For those of you running Hamachi and TeamViewer, make sure you have the latest version of that software. For Hamachi, I suggest uninstalling (leave the Remove Settings box UNCHECKED), rebooting and reinstalling from here: http://filehippo.com/download_hamachi/. TeamViewer should already be up to date from your Ninite software.

Windows 10 Clean Install

Also, news was released recently about a new Windows 10 Activation feature that will let you do a clean install of Windows 10 and use your existing Windows 7/8/8.1 product key. This is a big deal if your existing PC is a mess and completely re-installing Windows is a better option than doing an in-place upgrade. I think that version will be coming out in the near future (November?) and might be a better option for some of you.

Windows 10 and Your Privacy

Overall Windows 10 seems to have been well received by the public, with more than 100 million activations of Windows 10 reported by Microsoft. There are, however, some catches. Depending on how "tin foil hat" you are about these things, Windows 10 can potentially be a "Privacy Nightmare". Read that article about it (it's a long one) and make your own decision. There's nothing forcing you to go to Windows 10 just yet, but it's still probably a good idea. The privacy stuff can be kept under control by changing the settings properly.

If you have any questions, feel free to drop me a line.