Tirminal email file transfer tool review

Tirminal overview

Tirminal is an application used to transfer files via email from your computer to anyone connected to the Internet. It does this not by attaching the files directly to email messages (as is traditional), but by facilitating the transfer of files from your computer to other Internet-connected systems. There is no intermediate storage of the files, and no limit to the size of the file transfer. In the email, a link to the files is provided for the recipients. Exactly how this is accomplished is the big secret -- the company won't reveal anything except that this technology is "patent pending."

Once the Tirminal software is installed, a Tirminal instance can be easily -- and almost instantly -- created by simply right-clicking a file and selecting "Quick send using Tirminal." If you'd prefer to build the Tirminal instance by opening the software, it's a simple drag and drop process and there is virtually no load time.

Putting it to the test

The company Web site doesn't offer a direct download of Tirminal. Instead you're expected to download it through third parties, so I proceeded to download.com to obtain Tirminal for Windows. Version 1.0.8 was the original version shown, but I was automatically redirected to the newer version 2.2.

Tirminal: free and functional

Installation was relatively quick, although I was mildly put off by general statements on the screen while the program was making changes to my registry -- something along the lines of, "Please wait while changes are made to your computer." I'd rather know exactly what's being done.

Tirminal's default configuration settings were straightforward, and required no changes. The only real problem I encountered during testing was the loss of one file in each email I used with Tirminal. The very top link showed as broken, and carried a generic filename instead of the original. I tried setting up a Tirminal instance with only one file in it and was unable to retrieve this file -- it became a victim of the broken link. I contacted the Tirminal developers, who advised me that this was a problem specific to the Firefox Web browser, and only occurred when you select files that have blank spaces in their names. Renaming the files -- which I figured out before I contacted support -- fixes the problem.

In the end, the pictures I needed to send were received without any trouble. I even got a log of which users accessed the files because Tirminal asks recipients to enter their names into a pop-up box before downloading.

Conclusions and developer recommendations

Bottom line: This program works. If what Tirminal does is something that sounds useful to you, give it a run! Setting up a Tirminal instance is a breeze, and fast -- even the long-winded workaround that I had to use to adjust for the Firefox error (before I found out what the real problem was) took far less time than trying to attach the files to my email.

One minor improvement I would like to see in future editions of Tirminal is a focus on proper grammar, both within the software, and on the Web site. Although this in no way affects the performance of the software, it's always nice to have everything as professional-looking as possible -- even in a free-of-charge program.