PHOENIX_SCANNER
Member
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.
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.
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