Not worth the money!
Written: Aug 25 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Great image quality, easy to install
Cons: Poor user interface, battery problems
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| dennyk's Full Review: Play Snappy Video Snapshot |
I tried Snappy Video Snapshot a couple of years ago (version 3.0), and now that $100 unit is sitting on my shelf collecting dust. It could have been a great product, but there were just too many annoying problems that prevented it from truly being worth the $100 it cost.
First of all, I must say a couple of positive things about Snappy. Without a doubt, it took very good still images from video. The image quality was excellent, and the pictures were clear and crisp (or at least as clear and crisp as our old camcorder could make them ;) ). It was also, I think, the simplest product I've ever installed on a computer, and the only one that I've ever tried whose installation went perfectly.
If everything else had worked as well as the installation, that would have been wonderful...but things didn't turn out that way. First of all, the interface for the software was poor and clumsy. Unfortunately, Play decided to jump on the "cool" bandwagon with the user interface, and as a result, the Snappy software is a real pain to use...no menus to speak of, just an endless series of buttons, buttons, buttons. I know that a good-looking interface on the box can sell a product, but one of my biggest pet peeves is seeing companies abandon simple, functional menu-driven interfaces for these ridiculous, flashy, clunky, button-driven user interfaces with nary a straight line or a menu to be seen. No matter how pretty the application window is, it annoys me to no end when I have to hunt down the command I want through five different screens and fifty different buttons, instead of flipping through a few menus. It's my belief that any user interface should follow the rule of "function before form." So, needless to say, I was not happy with the Snappy software from the beginning.
Seeing the results of the first few snapshots improved my mood somewhat, but then the really big problem struck. The Snappy unit, whether due to poor design, a manufacturing defect, or something else entirely, ate batteries like nothing I've ever seen. According to the documentation, one battery should last for "1000 snaps." As far as I know, this is perfectly accurate...as long as all those snaps are taken in the same day. If I left the unit to sit with the battery in it for a few days, it would drain it completely. Next time I went to take a snap, I would get the camera image for a split second, then a lovely blank screen. "Oops!" After changing the battery, everything worked fine...until the next time the unit had been sitting for a little while. Then, it would start all over again. After going through a couple twin-packs of 9-volts, I gave up...it was too expensive to keep feeding the thing's hunger for batteries, and it was a major pain to crawl under the desk where the computer tower sat to install and remove the battery every time I used it. I decided to buy a scanner instead...I figured the money I spent on the scanner would be about what I would spend on 9-volts trying to keep my Snappy powered over the course of a year or so... When I built my next computer, I added a superb all-in-one video card, and I've used that for video capture ever since. It does stills *and* full-motion video, doubles as a TV card, and cost me about the same as the Snappy did in the first place. Now, I've got my scanner, my video card (on what is now a secondary computer), a USB PC camera, and a brand-new low-end digital camera...and my Snappy sits collecting dust.
Now, this was my personal experience with Snappy...the problem with the batteries may have been a defect with my unit or something I was doing wrong. Judging by the number of five-star reviews on here, everyone else apparently hasn't had similar problems, at least not with the 4.0 unit. Still, based on my experience, I can't really recommend Snappy to anyone, not when digital cameras, scanners, and full-motion video capture cards are so inexpensive and readily available these days.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
dennyk
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Member: Denny K
Location: Atlanta, GA
Reviews written: 20
Trusted by: 6 members
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