Exces Editor's Review

Exces is a simple application that allows you to create or open encrypted file vaults.

When I read for the first time the description of this application I was quite anxious to test it. But, the results of this application and the the file vaults building mode is disappointing.

The first thing that gave me a nice welcome was a window that asked for a registration license. I must add the fact that the application used to be freeware. After the first impression, the second thing was a big nice application crash. So much for the fun part.

I started to test its actual functionality by providing my usual 'test_files', a folder that contains 2.5GB of various data. The application did its job quite flawlessly, but it kept popping up that annoying 'Registration' window. Then I tested the access to the encrypted files, and it also worked.

One thing disturbed be though. The file container was mounted like a disk image, so I started to investigate the case. I actually found that the output is a package with EXC extension, basically a directory, that contains some files. One of those files is a regular sparse disk image, so any application that does sparse images, can obtain very easily this kind of functionality.

The producer refers to his application as to an application that uses the same encryption algorithm as the one used by Apple. In fact it is the same algorithm since it uses the built in support for making disk images and basically this application is just a nice and shiny frontend.

Pluses: it provides an easier way to create encrypted file vaults.

Drawbacks / flaws: it has a 10 GB vault limit, it is unstable, the registration window is annoying, the application is just a frontend that builds sparse disk images and uses a proprietary package method.

In conclusion: you can achieve better functionality with a tool that can create sparse disk images. A good example is CreaDMG, which doesn't have a sparse image size limit. In my opinion, this program is not worth the money under any circumstances.

version reviewed: 1.1.1