Alcohol 52 FE review
Alcohol 52 FE enables you to save your physical CDs and DVDs as virtual images, so you can transfer and access them in a relatively easy and straightforward manner. On the downside, the app comes bundled with additional software that's unneeded and yet cannot be removed without uninstalling the app.
Pros
Image maker: Alcohol 52 FE's ability to make disk images of CDs and DVDs translates into faster reading speeds, convenient access on devices with and without an optical drive, and preservation of the disk and the disk reader. We successfully made an ISO image of a 3.09GB DVD in a little over ten minutes.
Multiple virtual drives: The free version allows you two virtual drives, while the premium version goes up to 31.
Virtual drive sharing: Using the iSCSI protocol, you can share virtual drives across computers on your home network. You can set a name, permissions, and a maximum number of connected computers for each share.
Cons
Bundled software: Installing the app will also install Smart File Advisor as a required component during setup; the two apps are so intertwined that installing or removing one will have the same effect on the other. Smart File Advisor is an app that looks for performance, stability, and security issues on your PC and offers solutions, but Alcohol 52 FE does not require it for its operation.
Broken double-click functionality: After associating a file type with the app and then double-clicking on such a file in Windows Explorer, we expected it to be mounted on our virtual drive. This was not the case, however; after we double-clicked the file, Alcohol 52 FE opened, and that was it. We still had to actually mount the image.
Restart required: During the installation, you'll be prompted to restart your computer. This isn't a deal-breaker, but workflow disruptions of this kind are very unwelcome. The restart is needed in order to complete the installation of the app's advanced emulation features.
Bottom Line
Although Alcohol 52 FE does have some unique and interesting features, like drive sharing, we feel that those features don't make up for the bundled software and broken functionality. Unless you desperately need an option that's only available in Alcohol 52 FE, you should stick with the more reliable Daemon Tools Lite instead.
