Excellent Price On An Excellent Application - 80% Off!

[Brad Adrian]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.pocketgear.com/software_detail.asp?id=2477&associateid=204' target='_blank'>http://www.pocketgear.com/software_...associateid=204</a><br /><br /></div>From now through April 24, you can get Spb Software House's Palbum Suite for <b>only $4.95</b>. That's an amazing 80% discount!<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/adrian/palbumsuite.gif" /><br /><br />"Palbum Suite is the ultimate photo management software for Pocket PC that combines functionality of Palbum Picture Viewer and Palbum Picture Optimizer, as well as provides means of creating and viewing interactive photo albums on Pocket PC. Features include fast image viewing, 12-bit image optimization, thumbnail previews, zoom support, and support for JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, and BMP format files. The desktop client also allows the export of PowerPoint and Flash files. Palbum Suite represents the best photo viewing and editing value on the market today."<br /><br />If you view or work with images at all on your Pocket PC, you need to give Palbum Suite a try. At its original price of $24.95 this is a great buy; at only $4.95 there's no reason not to give it a try.

[ipaq-PHD]

Wow ! Thanks for the tip ! This will go well with my 4M camera and my ipaq 3955!

[spaceman]

Wow ! This is really a good deal. I just brought it. I already have Pocket Plus and GPRS Monitor from Spb. All very good products.

[rlobrecht]

I'm downloading it now. A whopping 6 k connection, even though the rest of the net is fast. Is this the Thoughts affect? :D

[Jason Dunn]

I'm downloading it now. A whopping 6 k connection, even though the rest of the net is fast. Is this the Thoughts affect? :D

No, that would be the "PocketGear" effect. :|

[SofaTater]

Great deal -- and I'm only getting 4K on the download!

Good timing -- I was just looking around for a photo program for my iPaq...

[Fzara]

Very nice promotional offer on the program. Hell, it beats out PQV 3.0 in terms of price!

It seems Spb is doing exceptionally well in terms of product distribution. Jason, I was just curious, if you were able to release statistics on the total sales, and the sales count of each product developed by Spb.

[kagayaki1]

Hmm...discount. I smell new product on the horizon. When's it coming out? How much will the upgrade cost be?

-Jason

[jet8810]

This is truly a great deal! I already bought Resco's picture viewer, but at $5 it is worth it even if you only want the picture optimizer and resizer program! Thanks so much SPB:)!

[Bob Anderson]

Hmm...discount. I smell new product on the horizon. When's it coming out? How much will the upgrade cost be?

-Jason

Imagine that... that's the first thought that came to my mind as well! You have to wonder if in the next month or so we'll see more things like this, foreshadowing a release of PPC2003... with that rumor circulating about a late May release.

(BTW I love Picture Optimizer -- too bad I already bought it!)

SPB gets a big thank-you from this user... I like to see developers offer special deals from time to time...

[Lotto]

Very cool! :D

[ariza1]

I've never tried the Palbum Suite, how does it compare to PicturePerfect??
I'm not crazy about PP, but I got it for $1 (BestBuy promotion) :D

[ctmagnus]

I won this in the pdaavenue contest a while back and, in my experience, it does a very small subset of what PQView 2.0 can do as far as picture optimization/editing goes, especially in regards to file types supported. However, it does at least conform to the rest of the PPC2002 gui, which is one of the few areas that PQView 2 is lacking between the two. But if you want the albums, you have to go with Palbum. For my needs, the albums are useless so I'm sticking with PQView for now at least. Palbum is a x.1 release so they should have plenty of room to grow in this version, and hopefully they'll impress me yet.

[Fzara]

I won this in the pdaavenue contest a while back and, in my experience, it does a very small subset of what PQView 2.0 can do as far as picture optimization/editing goes, especially in regards to file types supported. However, it does at least conform to the rest of the PPC2002 gui, which is one of the few areas that PQView 2 is lacking between the two. But if you want the albums, you have to go with Palbum. For my needs, the albums are useless so I'm sticking with PQView for now at least. Palbum is a x.1 release so they should have plenty of room to grow in this version, and hopefully they'll impress me yet.

Would that be PQV 3.0, or are you one of the people who are still taking advantage of the "free", yet donateware, of PQV 2.0? (rhetorical)

:bangin:

[ctmagnus]

I won this in the pdaavenue contest a while back and, in my experience, it does a very small subset of what PQView 2.0 can do as far as picture optimization/editing goes, especially in regards to file types supported. However, it does at least conform to the rest of the PPC2002 gui, which is one of the few areas that PQView 2 is lacking between the two. But if you want the albums, you have to go with Palbum. For my needs, the albums are useless so I'm sticking with PQView for now at least. Palbum is a x.1 release so they should have plenty of room to grow in this version, and hopefully they'll impress me yet.

Would that be PQV 3.0, or are you one of the people who are still taking advantage of the "free", yet donateware, of PQV 2.0? (rhetorical)

:bangin:

Why, 2.0 of course! :grinning devil:

[Bajan Cherry]

I have been using palbum since its first release (did beta testing and qualified for free copy :D ). While album is of no use for me, I love the ability to convert the powerpoint ppt file into palbum format. For this reason alone, the product is worth purchase (espacially at such a rock bottom price).

[cherring]

I've been thinking for a long time that PocketPC Software is overpriced. Before the flames begin, let's put things into perspective, $20 may not be much over there but here it's a week's groceries (family of 3) or a month's worth of meat shopping. Don't get me wrong, the software is cool, but that's about all it is. One may say that the pocketpc and all the little apps make life easier, but put it into perspective, if a pocketpc costs your entire monthly salary, or a single app costs you the equavalent you spend on groceries for a week, would you go out and buy it?

[Bajan Cherry]

I've been thinking for a long time that PocketPC Software is overpriced. Before the flames begin, let's put things into perspective, $20 may not be much over there but here it's a week's groceries (family of 3) or a month's worth of meat shopping. Don't get me wrong, the software is cool, but that's about all it is. One may say that the pocketpc and all the little apps make life easier, but put it into perspective, if a pocketpc costs your entire monthly salary, or a single app costs you the equavalent you spend on groceries for a week, would you go out and buy it?

So right! I possess iPaq 3630 bought almost 2 years back. At that time I paid Indian Rs. 27000 for it. One can buy a 100CC motor cycle at that price. For this very reason, only apps that I have on my machine are either done by me, freeware or low cost titles like flex wallet (at the current price).

[roberto_torres]

Such a cool program at at price!
What's the catch :?:

Also if Jason or someone from SBP is reading here are some recommendations:

By the way the only thing missing in this program is better file exploring features (like Resco). Problem is that if your photos are in various different folders you will have to navigate. Also tumbnails are a bit slow compared to the competition.

Thanks and keep up the great work. :way to go:

[migz]

I feel sorry for anyone that paid full price for this. Worth 4.95 and no more.

[Ekkie Tepsupornchai]

I've been thinking for a long time that PocketPC Software is overpriced. Before the flames begin, let's put things into perspective, $20 may not be much over there but here it's a week's groceries (family of 3) or a month's worth of meat shopping. Don't get me wrong, the software is cool, but that's about all it is. One may say that the pocketpc and all the little apps make life easier, but put it into perspective, if a pocketpc costs your entire monthly salary, or a single app costs you the equavalent you spend on groceries for a week, would you go out and buy it?
That's a tough comparison. $20 may appear overpriced, but realize that most of these developers don't live in a place where $20 could pay for a week's worth of groceries or a month's worth of meat, and if the cost of a PPC is equal to a month's salary, then in the US, you'd likely be homeless or depending on the govt for subsidized housing with barely the ability to feed and clothe yourself and your family.

It's all relative. Considering the costs of everyday expenses here in the US (or in much of Europe or Japan), $20 may be what the developers need to charge to justify the time they spend developing and supporting their products...

If developers charged far less, there would come a point where it's more worth their time to serve french fries at McDonald's then to use their programming skills to develop software.

[cherring]

[quote="ekkie
That's a tough comparison. blah blah blah.[/quote]
I understand what you are saying but the reality is that many software companies realise there is a difference in earnings for their users from one country to the next. MSDN .net pro cost me about $800 instead of about $1200 and I suspect it's the same for others.

My post came from the idea that I was getting that people were saying, "wow, $24.95 is really cheap, this is a great buy!" All I'm saying is for $24, it better be all I need in graphics software because I can't afford to buy it and find it lacking. For $4.95, I could afford to have the attitude of "try it, what's to lose." I'm not saying it isn't a great product, especially from SPB, I haven't been disappointed by my purchases, in fact the FSK worked MUCH better than I suspected and I was happy to pay the $9 or $10 for it.

[Ekkie Tepsupornchai]

I understand what you are saying but the reality is that many software companies realise there is a difference in earnings for their users from one country to the next. MSDN .net pro cost me about $800 instead of about $1200 and I suspect it's the same for others.
That's a fair point, though I'm not sure we'll be seeing regional-specific pricing for PPC software anytime soon. I'd imagine the majority of these development companies consist of only a few people and the benefit of performing such required demographic research doesn't justify the benefit. Additionally, the largest online PPC software store, Handango, doesn't even have the facilities to support such pricing schemes AFAIK. It's far easier to handle with actual boxed software sold at brick-and-mortor stores which is obviously not the case w/ PPC software.

All I'm saying is for $24, it better be all I need in graphics software because I can't afford to buy it and find it lacking.
Agreed. That's also the reason I'd never touch software at that price unless there was a trial version available! 8)

[davidspalding]

I use Fookes.com's Album Express for my sites and my pda. It creates several styles of photo album, and will do image resizing/processing as well. Highly recommended.

[ChrisW]

I bought Palbum for the full price, and have had some issues with it. Emails to any address on their site go unanswered, so I'm hoping they're watching this thread:

---------------------------

I've used PQV for some time, but I wanted a way to organize my photos. Palbum seemed just what I wanted, so I purchased it without even testing. I now find that I'm disappointed by its performance: from what I can discover of the application, it's slow, provides difficult user interface, and most significantly is missing advertised features. Perhaps there's a misunderstanding, though, and you can point me to what I'm missing.

Let's consider an album I tried to create for a recent vacation's photos. There are roughly 100 photos in the collection, averaging roughly 100KB each. When I create quick-and-dirty album by dragging and dropping these 100, the resulting file size on my PPC is 2.2MB. When I attempt to open the album, it takes 4.5 minutes to open. Selecting a photo within the album takes just over 1 minute. This makes it impossible to share my pictures with friends, or to enjoy browsing them myself.

I assumed that the problem was the large size of the files, and that I could improve this using the tool's image optimization. I didn't want to go through each image to scale the images, so thought I'd use the too's promised "batch optimization". Unfortunately the only reference I can find to this is on your web site; neither the Windows app nor the help file mention such a feature. I speculated that selecting the .palbum file on my PPC and using the Optimize command would apply the operation to all images in the album. However, this UI is misleading as all it does is create a new .JPG file for the main image in the album.

The UI is cumbersome in other ways. In particular, I'd like to move from picture to picture using the joypad or scroll buttons, but this is not offered. Using the Groups menu is very cumbersome when there are a large number of images.

I'm hoping that you can point me to the missing optimization features, so that use of your application is a pleasure rather than tedium.

Thank you
Chris Wuestefeld