Odd how every one of Justin sales posts turns into a bash Inspectvue thread. I think all of the different programs have their own unique problems. One program may be almost perfect for me but a horrible experience for you.
Question for those that are complaining about the long transfer time for the hand held computers. How are they connected to the computer? If it is by USB cable, do you have an older computer that has the older 1.1 version of USB? I don’t remember the exact numbers but there is a huge difference in speed between 1.1 and 2.0.
PS When I bought Inspectvue over a year ago, they told me the new version was due out “in the spring”. I was naive enough to think that they meant last spring.
Who’s bashing InspectVue? Overall I like it, the transfer times and especially the Preview and Print times are bugs, as has been said on this thread, every software out there has bugs, I don’t compare InspectVue to other software because all I have done is play with their demos, I like HG from what I saw on the demo, but I didn’t have time to really work with it, I do know you can preview your report a hell of a lot faster.
I’m using a 3.8 ghz PC, an on board card reader, and San Disk Extreme III flash card, it takes just over an hour to download a Library to the card, which is almost 3 times faster than my older Ultra II flash card, I can live with the hour because I don’t update my libraries on the card unless I’m sitting around with nothing to do.
The delays that effect me are the preview and print times, I like to preview my reports and fix little glitches like sentences and paragraphs being split between two pages, and other things that may effect the appearance of the report, plus I keep tweaking the formats of the summary and narratives to make my reports, the preview slowness costs me a lot of time, and the busier I get the more time it costs me.
It’s not bashing to point out bugs in the software, like I said I can adapt to the bugs, as long as they are fast bugs. Hopefully Ver5 will fix these, it’s good software that could be better, just like everything out there
I thought I would like the hand held too Dave, but it is more bother to me than it is worth. It is just easier for me to look at whatever I am inspecting and walk back to the computer and enter it. This works especially well if you have many of the narrratives pre selected for different areas of the house.
An hour Lew, man that is a long time. I think my AXIM took about 10 minutes of so.
As for previewing the report it comes up in about 15 or 20 seconds for me. I believe you may be able to send your forms to Lorne and he could insert them into your report, call him and ask.
And stop worring about sentences being on two pages Lew, no one reads the entire report anyway, you are just wasting time.
You’re right, I just timed previewing several of my reports, it’s only around 50 seconds, although it sure seems longer when I’m working on a report, I’ve hit preview when working on a report, got up, got a cup of coffee, and came back and the preview still hadn’t loaded, I know its just trying to trick me today.
I have my Summary in the front of my reports, that’s where I don’t like paragraphs and sentences split, in the Narrative it doesn’t bother me, I also have my photo’s with the related narrative in the summary, and I use the full narrative in place of the summary Narrative.
The buyers and realtors seem to like it, using that option it makes the summary longer but more informative and it stll only lists the “needs service” items.
I had one realtor show me a HG report a couple of months ago and tell me how much she liked the check box system in the summary, she said she could just look at that and not have to read the report, now she says she likes my summary better, because it’s still pretty quick and yet it provides more information. and she likes the pictures.
That’s why I like InsectVue, it’s tweakable, just a lot of work, a constant work in progress, I swear when I’m really working on a report it takes ten times longer to Preview, I’m going to time it tonight when I’m doing my report from this afternoon’s inspection, in the damned snow again. I’m tired of winter.
I agree with you here. The delay is because it is “printing” to a pdf file. I would love for the program to format the report to a word file instead of a pdf. That way I can make changes directly to it instead of going back and forth. When it is complete, I can convert it to the more secure pdf format for the client. This would be extremely helpful for contracts, invoices and letters. I suggested it on the old PV forum but as I recall, there was no response.
I have been looking at several different ones too. I wanted to know if anyone has used either of these. www.InspectionReportCreator or the Borealis InspectNow. I like the InspectNow,but I havn’t bought it yet.
I recommend ReportHost to new inspectors because of the 15 or so free reports and the pay per report feature, that’s a great feature for someone starting out and not wanting to spend all the money for software,
The pay as you go Insurance that Nick announced will be a great help too. Allen Insurance was offering it at the ITA EXPO in Vegas, but it was only for the first year, I don’t know what Nick’s deal is but it would be nice for part timers if it weren’t tied to their first year only, and I don’t believe Allen’s offer was for Occurance type E&O that would be needed in Washington as a substitute for the SPI Bond.
I took you off ignore to see if you were rambling on about your dislike for “Boiler Plate”, you suprised me, try InspectVue and some of the others, you’ll find that you can change the boiler plate to what ever you want, and edit it for individual Inspections and unique situations.
Thanks Lewis. Have you looked at HiSpec? It is similar in nature I think to Inspectvue and Homegauge. It has really nice features such as scheduling and all. I have a trial CD for Inspectvue as well as Homegauge and I have the full software for HiSpec.
LOL, I just saw how close I posted under you. Boy, that’s making a liar out of me!
O.K. Evryone. For the new kid on the block, following this thread, please share thoughts on InspectIT Office Pro. I like the formatting but would yield to the years of expertise you all bring. As well, it’s hand held version seems to prevent possibly missing anything, (as I have yet to develope a process or rythm). It also has the option of “pay-as-you-go”. Thoughts…?
Ron
Allow me to restate my question. InspectIT Office is not the program to which I wanted a reply, that’s just the business software. I meant to ask about InspectIT Report Plus, which allows both checklist or narrative. It’s on-line demo seems good. Thoughts…? and thanks>
Ron
3.06.007-1 This is a good one, but you’ve gotten behind, see below.
If you are updating from a 3.04x version of InspectVue or if you are installing on a computer that has Windows VISTA and you have any previous install disk prior to 3.06x then you will need to download or acquire a new installation disk. Please contact support@pvsoftware.com
I’ve only been getting notices the past few weeks, Lorne seems to have started sending them about the time the new message board came on line. I usually check once a week or so, Lornes been cranking them out pretty fast lately.
There is a Library update that creates a Library set up for the NACHI SOP. Be careful if you upload it because it will delete which ever library you have selected, create a throw away library before you upload. When I uploaded the NACHI Library it deleted one I had just spent a cou-le of hours editing, Lornes Instruction don’t give any warning of a library being deleted, also the NACHI Library some how corrupeted or changed all of my libraries so that they would not download to my IPAQ, I had to restore the Master and my working libraries from my backups to get things working again.
They all worked on the PC, but would not download completely to the SD Chip, I even reformatted the SD Card, but nothing worked until I restored all my working libraries, there was a wasted day.
Whenever there is an update, wait a week or two and let one of the newer guys call Lorne to explain how the update fcccked everything up. If it is out a week or so and there is not a new update (fix) then it is probably ok to use.
