I don't think that his statement is near what most of us are using on a daily basis.
His earlier post linked there used his laptop so you get examples from both albeit several months and versions apart (plus it's still a 1 to 1 comparison since both tools were run from the same machine, the numbers may differ based on your own specs but the percentages should be relatively similar). Most examiners I talk to generally have a laptop for their daily tasks/case work and/or a larger forensics workstation to do anything that requires heavier lifting. That's been my experience anywhere I've worked as well. I do most of my work just on my laptop which has decent specs but we have something bigger back at the lab when we either need more storage space or want to get everything done a bit faster.
From a performance standpoint, the biggest "bang for your buck" in terms of hardware for AXIOM or IEF is going to be additional cores/threads (it can do more things at once) and an SSD (lots of reading from evidence and writing to case database).
Jamie McQuaid
Magnet Forensics
I upgraded from IEF to AXIOM last July and the upgrade price was USD 2999.
USD 999 for the upgrade and USD 2000 for the recurring yearly maintenance fee.
It would vary depending what version of IEF and where your SMS is but yes it's basically $1000 to upgrade from IEF then you just pay the AXIOM SMS moving forward instead of the IEF SMS. That gets you both computer and mobile.
One other thing to keep in mind is that AXIOM doesn't support logical operators for key word searches. Not even the most basic AND / OR.
You can definitely accomplish most of this already by running the keywords and using the filters or using regexes. I've been meaning to write a blog showing how this is done but I just haven't had a chance yet, I'll see if I can write something up this weekend and give some examples. It's not as easy as a AND/OR checkbox but it's definitely doable and we'll try to make it easier in the future too.
Jamie
I don't think the upgrade cost from ief to axiom is that much, I think it was only a few extra hundred a year from memory and functionality was much more.
I upgraded from IEF to AXIOM last July and the upgrade price was USD 2999.
USD 999 for the upgrade and USD 2000 for the recurring yearly maintenance fee.
This is quite disappointing.
It's always frustrating when small and useful forensic tools then start to try to do everything (which isn't needed) and charge ten times the price.
IEF was a great tool to add to the array of existing tools and affordable to do so.
Suspect it's going to end up in a tough decision and probably ditching the tool completely when my IEF SMS runs out.
I would suggest you call in to get a specific quote for your license as that can vary based on what you have but generally it's an $800 difference between your IEF SMS and AXIOM SMS each year which isn't a huge increase for what you're getting in the tool. The 1k is a one time upgrade cost. Plus most tools only do computer or mobile, you're getting both for that price which is less than most other tools with similar features. If it's still not what you're looking for, IEF isn't going away and we'll continue to do new and updated artifacts and bug fixes, you just won't see the big new features that many people ask us for.
Rich feel free to reach out to me directly and I can get you in touch with someone to get you the specific costs.
Jamie
I would suggest you call in to get a specific quote for your license as that can vary based on what you have but generally it's an $800 difference between your IEF SMS and AXIOM SMS each year which isn't a huge increase for what you're getting in the tool. The 1k is a one time upgrade cost. Plus most tools only do computer or mobile, you're getting both for that price which is less than most other tools with similar features. If it's still not what you're looking for, IEF isn't going away and we'll continue to do new and updated artifacts and bug fixes, you just won't see the big new features that many people ask us for.
Rich feel free to reach out to me directly and I can get you in touch with someone to get you the specific costs.
Jamie
Thanks Jamie - sounds slightly more do-able perhaps.
I've already sent an email off asking for a quote / rough estimate so I have a better idea, and hopefully that's in hand (or will be when most people are back from the new year), and no need to bother you )
You can definitely accomplish most of this already by running the keywords and using the filters or using regexes. I've been meaning to write a blog showing how this is done but I just haven't had a chance yet, I'll see if I can write something up this weekend and give some examples. It's not as easy as a AND/OR checkbox but it's definitely doable and we'll try to make it easier in the future too.
Hello Jamie,
Thank you for your feedback.
Using AXIOM filters for AND / OR operations when handling large key word lists is relatively inconvenient, time consuming and a manual process, and therefore susceptible to human errors. This particularly applies for nested AND / OR operations.
Concenring the REGEX alternative, during testing I concluded that either AXIOM or the .NET framework implementation of REGEX don't handle logical "AND" expressions through "look-aheads" very well. During testing the evidence processing stalled multiple times when applying "look-ahead" REGEX search patterns.
Don't get me wrong here, I really like AXIOM as an e-discovery tool but it is my personal opinion that logical operators should be a basic feauteure for a software in this level / price range.
Saludos,
Lex
Hey Lex,
Thanks for the follow up and additional detail. Definitely agree with all your points and we're always looking to make improvements around this type of usage. I was only suggesting the other methods as a workaround to get what you need until we can make it better so you weren't completely stuck. E-Discovery has a lot of different requirements around searching and filtering which get quite specific and simpler logic operators without the need for regex is near the top of those types of requests.
I'll chat with our devs to see if they have a closer timeline to get it implemented and improved.
Jamie
Hey Lex,
I'll chat with our devs to see if they have a closer timeline to get it implemented and improved.
Jamie
Hi Jamie,
That would be highly appreciated.
Thank you.
Rg,
Lex
This is also how Apple gets you to buy a new iPhone model with the battery slowdown excuse. They just don't blog about it.
And as for the duration analysis in that October blog post, it is of course assuming that we do all those features (e.g. Timeline analysis) anyway.
Just make the announcement already that you're going to can IEF and will no longer sell it - with stats like this from your own blog post, marketing has got to be loving it.
I'll chat with our devs to see if they have a closer timeline to get it implemented and improved.
Jamie
Hello Jamie, any update on this timeline matter?
Saludos,
Lex