The IT Nerd

Paragon Software Group announced Paragon Migrate OS 5.0, a one-step tool to help with Windows systems migration to new storage devices – solid-state drives (SSDs) and hard disk drives (HDDs). Paragon Migrate OS 5.0 instantly performs fast and safe Windows migrations and even downsizes to smaller capacity drives, thanks to advanced data exclusion capabilities. You can transfer a live system with no impact to your work, and have your partitions automatically aligned in the process, if needed. The new release fully supports Windows 10 and comes with an even more intuitive UI providing easy access to the software’s step-by-step migration wizard.

According to data analysis by Statista, SSD shipments in the last few years have increased drastically – from 39 million units in 2012 to the estimated 189.6 million in 2017. As PC users seek to take advantage of SSDs’ better access time, read/write speeds, and resistance to physical shock from drops, the challenge becomes moving massive amounts of data, applications and the operating system from the existing hard drive to a smaller SSD. Paragon Migrate OS is a handy tool that transfers any Windows version since XP to any capacity storage disk in a single operation.

Paragon’s intuitive wizard in Migrate OS simplifies the migration process, automatically downsizing the source system volume and providing intelligent selection of specific files when migrating to smaller-capacity drives, and auto-aligning copied system partitions – all without rebooting the system.

New and major features in Paragon Migrate OS 5.0:

• NEW! Support for Windows 10;
• NEW! Windows 10-style GUI;
• The option to build a WinPE bootable media to do migrations or to fix various boot problems without installing the product;
• Migration of 64-bit Windows systems configured to the uEFI-based boot mode directly, under Windows, without any work interruption or having to reboot.

Key product features include:

• Migrates Windows to larger or smaller storage devices in a single operation;
• With WinPE bootable media supports all Windows systems since XP, including Windows 10;
• Migrates 64-bit Windows systems configured to the uEFI-based boot mode;
• Automatically aligns partitions on the destination disk, if necessary;
• Automatically detects and copies Microsoft Reserved Partition (MSR) for successful migrations of Windows 10;
• Allows the user to exclude data during the process in order to fit in to the destination disk;
• Processes locked (in-use) disks with Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) to migrate without rebooting Windows;
• Includes Paragon’s time-proven move/resize functionality;
• Guarantees safety for the system and data.

The technology that powers Paragon Migrate OS 5.0 comes from Paragon’s Hard Disk Manager, the company’s recently upgraded full-function disk management toolkit that also provides optimization of NTFS volumes, Windows migration to dissimilar hardware, backup and recovery, simplified virtualization of an existing system, and more.

Pricing & Availability:

Paragon Migrate OS 5.0 is available for a limited offer price of $13.96 (regular price $19.95) via download from https://paragon.cleverbridge.com/80/uurl-irpuey6620 or at https://www.paragon-software.com/home/migrate-OS-to-SSD/index.html

PONS and Paragon Software Group have released PONS Russian Illustrated Dictionary for Android and iOS. Developed by leading language instructors, this dictionary app presents information in a new and unique way – with corresponding illustrations for every word. More than 5,000 words and phrases are grouped into 13 essential topics for everyday life, covering everything from emergency situations, education, and work to hobbies and culture. 

The app covers the following topics:

• People
• At home
• Food and drinks
• On the go
• In the city
• Education and work
• Communication
• Sport and fitness
• Free time
• Body and health
• Emergencies
• Earth and nature
• Numbers and measurements

System requirements: iOS 8.0 or later; Android 4.0 or later.

Availability:

PONS Russian Illustrated Dictionary apps are available for $4.99 each, or $14.99 as a set of dictionaries for all languages via in-app purchase. You can get it from the App Store or from Google Play. 

Paragon Software Group, has announced the release of its first browser-based series of Slovoed dictionaries for Google Chrome. Chromebook users can use English, French, German, Russian, and Spanish dictionaries in online mode, and enjoy the many advanced features, learning tools, enthralling games, and self-quizzes. 

Slovoed dictionaries include the most comprehensive and up-to-date content from the world’s foremost lexicographers. The advanced features allow users to look up words and phrases in any grammatical or spelling form, listen to word pronunciations, memorize built-in tables of irregular verbs, conjugation tables, and much more.  

Slovoed for Google Chrome apps include:

• Slovoed Deluxe English ↔ German Chrome Store
• Slovoed Deluxe English ↔ Russian Chrome Store
• Slovoed Deluxe English ↔ Spanish Chrome Store
• Slovoed Deluxe French ↔ German Chrome Store
• Slovoed Deluxe German ↔ Russian Chrome Store

Features:

• Headword search
• Full text search feature looks up words more efficiently throughout the whole dictionary content, including headwords and usage examples
• Favorite articles to quickly access and revise frequently searched words
• Flash Card Quiz adds new words to practice
• Spelling Game – listen to words and try to write them correctly
• Search History
• Table of English irregular verbs

Free Slovoed Spelling Game

With Slovoed Spelling Game, the user listens to word pronunciations and has exactly three minutes to spell them correctly. The game includes multiple difficulty levels, and the highest levels challenge the player with the most difficult words carefully selected by leading linguists and experts. This powerful, exciting, and free learning tool allows users to have fun, while at the same time stimulate foreign language skills, pronunciation, and verbal comprehension without having to purchase additional software.  

Slovoed dictionaries can be downloaded and tested for free from the Google Chrome Store  Prices start at $20.99.

Paragon Software Group announces the release of Paragon Snapshot for Mac OS X, the industry’s first snapshot technology that allows users to create block-level archives of OS X volumes. With Paragon Snapshot for Mac OS X, incremental backups contain only the blocks that have changed instead of the entire file, the way traditional backup and archive software work. The technology is available for licensing to developers who publish backup software, as well as providers who specialize in disaster recovery.

On OS X, traditional backup archives are created at the file level by Apple’s built-in Time Machine and other third-party software that work in a similar fashion. Paragon Snapshot for Mac OS X is the only technology that allows users to create block-level archives of OS X volumes. Recovery from images made with Paragon Snapshot for Mac OS X are at least four times faster than restoring from existing Time Machine backups. Compared to file-level backups, the software with integrated Paragon Snapshot for Mac OS X technology will also provide a higher compression rate for archived files. Among other advantages, Paragon Snapshot for Mac OS X works 100 percent online while OS X is running, requiring no system restart or reboot. With this Snapshot technology in place, incremental backups will be smaller, because the block-level imaging stores only the blocks that have changed.

Once integrated, Paragon Snapshot will prove invaluable for Mac owners, providing them with an option to elevate and accelerate backup routines. When disaster strikes, Paragon Snapshot for Mac enables hassle-free recovery from snapshot-based backup archives, which is significantly more efficient than recovering from file-level backups. Just like the company’s industry-proven, cross-platform Universal File System Driver, Paragon Snapshot for Mac OS X supports all file systems, even those not natively supported by OS X (e.g., Windows NTFS and Linux ExtFS). Even more, being installed on the lower level than a file system, the utility can take snapshots of disks without a file system at all. It means that a third-party developer using Paragon’s Snapshot technology to work with unformatted disks (e.g. with deleted volumes, etc.) can develop new approaches to address users’ needs.

Paragon Snapshot for Mac OS X allows you to:

• quickly and easily back up running applications and system-locked files;
• create RAW disk images;
• image any type of volume, including Windows NTFS or Linux ExtFS-formatted partitions.

Why Paragon Snapshot for Mac OS X?

• Mac computers have become increasingly popular in content development and other business segments where data loss can be a nightmare. Retrieval of data, multimedia, and system files can be a very risky task.
• The majority of current OS X backup solutions work at the file level. As a result, such backup archives contain all files at different moments of time, so their states may differ. Users may not be even aware of such concerns, and continue changing files that reside within a group. Compared to sector-level, snapshot-based images, file-based backups do not guarantee consistency for a group of files. By comparison, the advantage of a snapshot is that the image-based backup contains changes made at the very moment the snapshot is taken, so all associated files in the group are in the same state.
• Paragon Snapshot for Mac OS X package includes a single-license SDK for both OEMs and ISVs who may want to build their backup or other software solutions.
• Benchmark tests have shown that system restores from a snapshot-based backup take considerably less time than the same recovery from file-based backups. This ensures shorter downtime and quicker access to the required data, which is absolutely critical for businesses and end users alike.
• When it comes to incremental backup, recovery from a snapshot-based image of a typical OS X workstation of Paragon Software’s QA engineers ran two to four times faster compared to a recovery from a file-based backup; this difference becomes particularly noticeable with larger archives.

System requirements:

Supports Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and later, including the latest OS X 10.11 El Capitan.

Availability:

Paragon Snapshot for Mac OS X is available for licensing. Paragon Software provides flexible licensing packages for independent software developers as well as large disaster recovery solution vendors. For more details about the new technology and evaluation options, please contact technology@paragon-software.com.

Paragon Software Group has announced the release of the Oxford Collocations Dictionary for Students of English iOS app, developed by Oxford University Press, the world’s authority on the English language.

The app shows students the most frequently used word combinations (in both British and American English). Developing a better awareness of how words work together improves students’ accuracy and helps them produce more natural sounding English – enabling students to express their ideas convincingly and naturally.

The app is a great tool for improving students’ writing – it is highly recommended for students preparing for exams or studying other subjects in English which require writing in English.

The key features of the Oxford Collocations Dictionary for Students of English app include: 

• 250,000 word combinations, 9000 nouns, verb and adjective collocations.
• 75,000 examples showing how collocations are used.
• 25 usage notes on collocations shared by words such as seasons, currencies, and language.
• 17 topic lists – grouping words in useful subject groups, such as business, clothes and food – which students can edit.
• Students can create and edit their own word lists.
• Unfamiliar with a word? Tap any word in the dictionary for a pop-up definition and pronunciation by real British and American voices.

Here’s a look at the app in action:

You can by the app from the App Store here.