ARC500 Issues - Software comparison

[PHOENIX_SCANNER]

Well after spending a few months playing with PSR edit, then WIN500, then ARC500, I have reached a few conclusions.

PSR edit works great, as long as it isn't crashing. I liked the interface the best, including how you could make changes from the scanlist tab. But for unknown reasons, it would just quit when trying to save or open sometimes. This was on a legal copy of windows with all the updates, on a fast computer. In fairness I was running bootcamp on mac to use windows, so maybe that was a factor. If you get the free trial, and it doesn't crash, then this program works great.

WIN500 is an outstanding program which I am now planning to purchase. It does everything well, is easy and logical to use, and doesn't seem to have any bugs. No crashes, no hassles. Not much else to say, it rocks.

ARC500 really surprised me. I see all these people buying it and heard good things so I gave it a whirl. My first impression was bad to start with. It took FOUR tries to get the software to read the file from the scanner and put the results on the screen, and yes the port was set correctly. Finally it took. Then as I started playing with it I noticed how poorly laid out the interface is. You can't sort correctly by alpha tags, so far as I can tell. I was trying to sort a few hundred conventional objects by alpha tag, and it did strange things. It would sort groups of them in alphabetical order, but not the whole list, no matter what. Frequencies and other things sorted, but no the most important thing of all, the tags, at least not correctly. For editing the program is lame. In WIN500 you can highlight a series of rows, then globally edit certain things that apply to all the objects, AT ONCE. The ARC interface is just a pain in the ass in this regard. It is a strange system where it is easy to wipe out large blocks of data by accident, not even knowing what it was you did. Worst of all, no UNDO button, and control z doesn't work. The scroll wheel on my mouse doesn't work either, only on THIS program. When changing scanlist memberships for an object, if I selected an object near the bottom, the scanlist change window would be partially off the screen on the bottom of the page, where certain things weren't listed. And this window doesn't move like you would expect it to on windows, it is fixed, in an unworkable location. I had to close out, then scroll the objects a bit for the right position, then make the change where the box was fully visible. Lame. The interface struck me as "DOS like", not "windows like". Even though I had only one scanlist checked in the scanner, the program had them all checked. Hit the wrong button, and blamo! Wiped out every scan list label. This wouldn't have sucked so much had their been an undo feature, but none seems to exist.

Even if I am mistaken about any of my assertions, the truth is the first two programs made perfect sense, and worked logically right off the bat, and this one is just, well, weird, in my opinion. I would suggest avoiding ARC500.

[mikey60]

Originally Posted by PHOENIX_SCANNER

PSR edit works great, as long as it isn't crashing. I liked the interface the best, including how you could make changes from the scanlist tab. But for unknown reasons, it would just quit when trying to save or open sometimes. This was on a legal copy of windows with all the updates, on a fast computer. In fairness I was running bootcamp on mac to use windows, so maybe that was a factor. If you get the free trial, and it doesn't crash, then this program works great.

Can you give me any more details about these crashes? I don't recall hearing about any crashes while saving. There was one report of crashes when uploading if the port was in use (like by the PSRCtrl500 program), but that was fixed.

I try to fix issues like this as quickly as possible, but I don't remember hearing about this one.

Mike

[Butelsoftware]

- ARC500 has 2 sorting options, the standard windows sort and a sort 'right to left' that works better for scanner alpha tags that have a number like TAC 1 etc.
-mouse scroll is supported, make sure it is enabled in the software setup
- multiple row editing is supported, highlight multiple rows and you can set the data using shortcuts or the excel style fill options to set options for all selected objects (all shown in the manual).
- I need more details about the scanlist window position, the software should adjust that so it is always visible
- we are working on a UNDO option, in most cells escape will restore original data


Gommert
www.butelsoftware.com

[XTS3000]

I have the 396 and 996 Pro versions of ARC. Do not like the user interface what-so-ever, so I use the FREE usad software from uniden. ARC's remote control works very well, and use that part of the software often.

[PHOENIX_SCANNER]

The PSR crashes came when opening files, and saving a file as a new name. That is really all I can tell you. I freely admit it may have had something to to do with my rather uncommon setup (bootcamp windows xp), so it may well have only been an issue for me, and as I said if I were someone else with a more conventional setup, and it didn't crash, I would have been very happy with it.

As far as the Butel issues, I apologize if I missed an option to enable mouse scrolling properly. I will go back and revisit that.

The undo issue was probably the one single thing that really got to me.

I want to be fair though as I was a bit harsh (I was a bit miffed at the time), and am sure tons of hard work went into the Butel program, and it seems Butel cares enough to make things right. So it is the least I can do to revisit the issues. Besides, from first glance it look beautiful and seems to be more feature rich on the whole, so let me take another crack.

Update to follow...

[ka3jjz]

If you want to be absolutely sure that Bootcamp isn't the issue (and you said in your first message that it was possible), get yourself a desktop with XP and run your tests. That way you've eliminated Bootcamp as a possible source of problems. They're quite cheap these days - I just got a used Dell (which I had the RAM upgraded from 256 to 768k) for less than USD200.

It really isn't fair to compare programs under an environment it was not originally designed to work in the first place.

73 Mike

[fmon]

I agree Mike, my xp doesn't have any of the above issues with ARC500. Nor has it ever crashed with PSREdit. I might add, Win500 sorts selected lines with Windows Ctrl giving the user options for which column to sort on and direction of sort.

[gd9704]

I've tried all three of these and I tend to like the ARC software the best.

Different strokes?