Every day, I check out Imaging Resource's news page for the latest pr about digital cameras and software. This week, a new release of Kodak's EasyShare software was announced.
(I use three software programs with my digital photographs. Why three? Because no one program does everything perfectly, just like you wouldn't use Word to typeset a book or send an email. The three are:
* ImageExpert(no longer available) - After copying photos from the camera's memory card to my computer, I use ImageExport to examine the images, deleting the bad ones and rotating the turned ones. The software is five years old, but still does the job. Came free with my first digital camera. Jasc bought out Image Export from Sierra Imaging, renamed it After Shot, and then replaced it with Photo Album.
* Picasa (free) - This software manages my collection of 24,000 (as of today) digital photographs. It's user interface quickly lets me find the photos I'm looking for. Google recently bought it, and now provides it free.
* PaintShop Pro (US$99) - Is the software that I used when I want to monkey around with photos, create special effects, touch up, and print. I prefer v6 (loads instantly), and my daughters prefer v8 (more effects).)
The press release described EasyShare as "the simple, all-in-one way for any digital camera owner to organize, share, and print their digital pictures." Because I use three different software packages, I'm always interested in something that might replace them with one. Also, I am interested in user interfaces,and how triple-problem of managing digital photographs might be solved.
(The triple-problem of managing digital photographs is:
1. Getting photographs out of the camera and onto the computer. My brother-in-law has 200 photographs of his Mexico trip on his digital camera, and can't figure out how to get them out. Computers bug him too much.
2. Keeping track of 100s and 1000s of photographs.
3. Backing up these huge collections of JPG and AVI files.)
Went to the Kodak Web site.
Found I had to register before downloading.
Gave fake registration information. (Not yet a crime, but perhaps one day may be.)
Downloaded software that turned out to be downloader software.
Started the install, waited for the installer to install, and then waited for the installer to download the software.
After the software was installed, it told me I had to reboot my computer. I'm working on updating my latest e-book ("Tailoring AutoCAD 2005") and I don't have time to wait for my Windows 2000 computer to reboot. I leave it for later.
During the reboot process, EasyShare asks me for the location of folders where I keep my photographs. Easy enough to specify, because I keep them in my computer's external E: drive in folder "\_Photos".
EasyShare then starts indexing (or something) my 24,215 photos. Here's the problem: it does this before Windows 2000 has finished the boot process. I face a screen that's blank, except for the EasyShare progress bar. I can't do any other work until EasyShare is done.
And EasyShare isn't done for a long time. Indexing 24,215 photos takes nearly an hour. This free software is costing me $$$ in lost-time-not-being-able-to-get-my-work-done.
When done indexing, EasyShare has bad news for me. It brings up a dialog box that lists dozens and dozens of photographs it claims are "damaged." It does not:
* Explain in what way they might be damaged (it turns out the JPGs are not damaged).
* Create a log file of the filenames, so that I can examine the "damaged" files later. I try to copy the list to the Clipboard (Ctrl+C), but that does not work.
* Allow me to exit the dialog box. That's right: no button(s) for exiting the dialog box. Not even the little x button that's supposed to be in the upper-right corner.
I finally escape the dialog box of doom by accidently clicking on a correct spot -- an easter egg exit? Windows finally completes loading.
I start the EasyShare software from the icon on the desktop. First thing it wants to do is access the Internet. I know that only because ZoneAlarm's free firewall software warns me; I don't like software that accesses the Internet without telling me. I tell ZoneAlarm to block EasyShare.
I access some folders containing photos. I don't care for the preview images; too small for my 1280x1024 screen and 47-year-old eyes. There is no intuitive way to increase the size of the preview images.
I try a slide show. Works.
I click a round button (I think it's to show the selected image full size, but I am not sure, as you'll see why). The screen goes black. I wait for the image to appear. Instead, the cursor flashes, alternating between the arrow and hourglass. I wait. After watching the alternating cursor, I press Esc, and EasyShare displays an error dialog box --something to do about not being able to initialize %s.
At this point, I'd had enough, and ran the Remove applet to erase EasyShare from my computer.
You can download the software -- if you dare -- from here after you register with the site.
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