Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2002 12:11:43 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Sherry Peruzzi Subject: Re: Bird list software? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Bonnie Ott wrote: > There was a great discussion last year on this topic on MDOsprey. You > could probably find the info on the archives. As I recall the two main > listing programs discussed were Thayers and Avisys. I saved the messages on my computer in the hope (at the time) of getting one or the other. Look in the archives around the first few days of May 2001, and you should be able to find it. But then for my birthday last fall I got a copy of AviSys, and I *love* it. It is one of the best-designed programs (for any application) I've ever used. The combination of power and user-friendliness really points up the difference between software written by a single individual who uses the program himself, and software written by a committee of programmers who are not necessarily birders. We have Thayer's Guide to Birds of North America, which our daughter gave my husband Ken for his birthday last summer, so although I've never used Thayer's Birder's Diary, I'm familiar with at least one of their birding programs. The program works okay, but there are a lot of little things that could have been done better, while I haven't been able to find *anything* in AviSys that needed improvement. Ken spent a lot of time deciding which listing program to get for me, and his feeling that Thayer's Birds of NA could be better was part of his decision to get AviSys. There are also several free add-ons for AviSys which extend its usefulness, including data sets for butterflies, dragonflies, reptiles and amphibians, and mammals; a utility to compare the sightings of two birders who maintain their records in separate data sets; and even one which allows you to use the information content from Thayer's Birds of North America CD-ROM from within AviSys. The material from Birds of NA is actually more useful, works faster and looks better with the AviSys add-on (which uses different viewers) than it does from within the Thayer program itself. The main argument I've heard in favor of Thayer's is that it doesn't rely on an individual developer, so if something happens to the guy who wrote AviSys, those of us who use it would be up the creek. The author addresses that situation with his " 'AviSys' author was run over by a truck' facility [which] provides for easy 'birding community' support to keep the AviSys taxonomy up to date, ensuring that AviSys can never become obsolete due to taxonomy changes, even if the author is out of business." He mentions that "There should be no inference here that the author is planning to get run over by a truck, or that he is considering any other form of exit from the birding software business - he's having too much fun to do that." I'm still using a calendar program that was distributed by a major software company that abandoned the product and hasn't updated or supported it for five years, hoping desperately that it will continue to work ... so there's no guarantee that Thayer will stay in business forever either just because it's a larger company. Kerry, take a look at both websites -- http://www.avisys.net/ and http://www.thayerbirding.com/ -- and compare the two programs. Remember to look at what else may be available to add to and update the basic programs. I hope you'll be as happy with whichever you choose as I am with AviSys! Sherry Peruzzi Howard County bookworms@home.com ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================