Spb Software House Insight v1.0

[MarcFou]

Spb Software House has broke into the RSS spotlight recently with its new release of Insight. Spb's Insight is a novel, advanced news reader for Pocket PC that enables users to read full text articles/messages with images. Since Spb is the new kid on the block, we thought a comparison review against the established Ilium's NewsBreak would be a great way to explore both products. So how does Spb Insight measure up against the competition? Read on for the comparison review!

[Jabes]

A few comments...

1. Newsbreak does show how many stories each channel has and how many of those stories are unread. I am staring at my Treo 700w running Newsbreak and it is showing the counts to me.

2. Newsbreak does support 1 handed operation. I'm not sure why the comparison table in the review says it doesn't.

3. One glaring missing feature in Insight is that there is no way to export your list of channels. This is a BIG oversight... what happens when you have selected all of your channels and then need to do a hard reset? Or what if you want to switch to a new device? Newsbreak offers an export feature.

That being said, I really like the images features in Insight and generally like SPB software. When Insight offers a Today plug-in that works with Pocket Plus and they offer the export feature, I'll probably switch over to it from Newsbreak.

[MarcFou]

Just to respond to the items...
on 1. I did an update as I did with Insight and didnt get an article count. I coulndt think of a logical explanation for this. I assumed the article count simply wasnt present as a feature.

2. SPB is promoting Insight as easy one handed operation. In executing some functions and features of both I found that Insight was a little easier. File Explorer is supposed to be one hand operable. But is it really? It all comes down to personal opinion and preference. I tried to be unbiased and review both applications from my usage scenarios.

3. There does need to be an export feature. It is possible to retain the articles by copying an entire folder. But this is a far cry from Import/Export. I havent tried it, but I'm sure i would have to resubscribe to all my channels. I made mention of it in the bugs and wishes section.

Overall. NewsBreak out performs Insight in terms of downloading feeds/articles. Insight has the advantage of offline images, thumbnails - but the price on performance is high. I really think people should try both and see which one is right for him/her.