I recently came across a program called Page Translator.
Its purpose is to translate web pages into other languages using Google's translation facilities.
I thought this was going to be a great way of increasing the reach of my websites until I installed it.
I ran the installer and installed it in the default folder.
When I ran the program, it took a few seconds to start and then produced two error messages - the first saying that it couldn't find a file which was clearly there.
(As a programmer I could see from the error message that the program was not looking for the file correctly)
The second error message was completely blank. Very useful.
The main program's user interface was completely blank except for a menu that contained nothing useful (About, Tell a friend, Exit). So I wasn't actually able to do anything with it.
The About box revealed that the program was from 2004, so I went to the originator's website to download the latest version. That turned out to be the same one, so it behaved in exactly the same way.
So Page Translator found itself uninstalled from my system almost as quickly as it had been installed.
Such a pity. The demo in the sales website looked good. This program had the potential to be a real winner if only the programmer had taken a little more care and tested it properly.
The program was originally sold for anywhere between $14.95 and $29.95, but is now free. I'm not surprised.
Rating: 0/10
Verdict: Avoid at all costs.
