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Friday, July 2, 2010

KeePass v1 or KeePass v2

The pros and cons of KeePass V2 and V1 have been discussed previously.

Finally I have decided to switch allegiance to V1. What sways me over is the problem in V2 needing .Net framework 2. While progressively more and more machines are running Windows Vista or Windows 7, but there are still plenty of WinXP machines out there.

In fact, I was using one that does not have .Net Framework 2 and I was going to use to configure my modem/router. In that situation, I could not use my KeePass v2 database and I did not feel like installing .Net Framework 2 just to run this program. It is kind of defeating the portability advantage of KeePass.

With XP, you cannot count on it having a .Net Framework 2 on it. Without it, your KeePass V2 database is as good as corrupted.

To avoid being left out in the cold, I exported the KeePass v2's kdbx file format to KeePass V1 database format and use the V1.17 instead.

Performance-wide, it starts a lot faster. Until the day when .Net Framework is so widespread that it is not a issue or KeePass organization stops maintaining V1, I will then upgrade to V2.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Funny, I'm going to upgrade to KeePass V2 from V1. I need multiple users to be able to save changes without the risk of accidentally overwrite other user's changes.

.. You say not having .NET makes the DB be as good as corrupt? How do you mean? If anyone would open the DB with KeePass V2 but wouldn't have .NET installed, they would corrupt the DB?? ... If so I need to reassess...

L. Mar said...

"You say not having .NET makes the DB be as good as corrupt"
On a machine without .Net Framework 2, it does not matter if your db is good or bad, you still cannot access it.

If is an unfortunate decision of the KeePass developers not to support KeePass 1 db in KeePass 2 without the need to convert. In that way, user can carry both v1 and v2 program and use them according to the situation.

As a user, one does not really care much .Net, or non-.Net, a comment hard to make from a developer who love new technology.

Anonymous said...

I just setup KeePass for the first time on my Android G2 and v2 on my PC and found a compelling reason to go back to v1:
Because databases created on desktop are only read-only on the phone, I created the database from the phone so I could edit it there. I used Dropbox to sync it back to my PC. However, when I try to open the file, I get an error that the database is v1 and I can't open it.
Oh well. I guess I'll install v1.

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