Aloha Matt, Maxine and Tweeters,

I use Avisys on a Mac and it works great, if you want to make to make
lists for pretty much anywhere in the world you may want to consider
Santa Barbara Softwares BirdArea, the data files are importable to
Avisys and appear to work flawlessly. I use Windows XP on my Mac
using an Intel based Mac and Bootcamp - there are newer programs that
may be better, but I have never had a problem with Boootcamp.

Aloha
Reg.

Reginald David
Rana Productions, Ltd.
P. O. Box 1371
Kailua, Kona, Hawaii

329-9141 Phone
rdavid at ilhawaii.net
P Please consider the environment before printing this email.



On Feb 22, 2008, at 3:28 PM, mattxyz at earthlink.net wrote:

> Hi Maxine & Tweeters -
>
> I'd be interested in hearing some other opinions online,
> personally, since I believe this hasn't been discussed in a while.
>
> Here's my experience [usual caveats, no financial interest, etc]
>
> Mac:
> I've used Birdbrain version 5.0 for Mac for years now. It is good,
> but I wish there were something else. Birdbrain hasn't been updated
> since 1998, and it doesn't yet even run on OSX. I haven't tried to
> use their customer support in a long while, but when I did try a
> few years ago, I never received a response. Basically, I'd be happy
> with Birdbrain if it were being updated. It runs a bit slow on some
> of the listing functions, but I bet a revised version could clean
> up a lot of that.
>
> There is also a program called Wings - has anyone had experience
> with this? From what I can see on the web, it looks decent. One
> thing that doesn't sound great is that it looks like you have to
> 'subscribe' to it, paying an annual fee -- and if you don't pay,
> you can't enter more species. That sounds dangerous to me, and I'd
> rather buy software free & clear than remain on the hook over the
> foreseeable future.
>
> PC:
> The only PC listing software I have experience with is Avisys, and
> I've found it to be really excellent. It is regularly upgraded, the
> support responses come quickly, and it seems clearly made with a
> birder's record-keeping needs in mind. You can easily keep state &
> county & other checklists, and running reports on these lists
> [life, year, species not seen, etc] is easy and fast. There's a lot
> of flexibility and power inside the program, but it is set up so
> that it can be used pretty easily at any level, without having to
> spend a long time becoming a computer programmer to understand it.
> I'm sure there are other downsides, but the biggest one in my mind
> is the reliance on a checklist in Clements taxonomic order, an
> ordering of species that can take some getting used to if you are
> more comfortable with the ABA [US fieldguide] ordering of species.
> I imagine it is pretty hard to work around this problem though, if
> one wants to present the whole world checklist of birds.
>
> Hope this helps a bit,
>
> Matt Bartels
> Seattle, WA
>
>
>
>
>
>> I know that there has been past discussions on Tweeters about the
>> best birding software to easily organize lists etc. I am ready to
>> buy a program now and would like to find out what I should get. I
>> would like something simple that would allow me to make a life
>> list and sub-lists via state or country. I don't think I need lots
>> of bells and whistles.
>>
>> Please reply to me via email if you don't want to launch a new
>> full Tweeters discussion.
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>> Maxine, Seattle
>>
>>
>> --
>> In order to see birds it is necessary to become a part of the
>> silence. - Robert Lynd
>> _______________________________________________
>> Tweeters mailing list
>> Tweeters at u.washington.edu
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>
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