PicaBOO!

I don't usually use my blog as a place to complain about businesses, but I often use the Internet for reviews of places and enjoy honesty.  So I just have to give a critique of Picaboo.  You may not have heard of it, but it's an online place to order custom photo gifts such as calendars and books.  They promote frequently on Groupon and it always looks like a fabulous deal (over 50% off).  So I thought I'd take advantage.  Well I've regretted that decision for about the past week.

I've made photo gifts at Shutterfly, Walgreens, Costco, etc.  Most are about the same -- I obviously don't have a favorite.  I expected this to be about the same.  Well I now definitely have a favorite of NOT Picaboo.

First off, you have to download the software on your computer (any you expect to use to work on your project), which includes Adobe Air.  I should have known right there (I hate anything Adobe -- I still use the Reader, but I find their products incredibly bloated and slow, and they have obnoxiously frequent updates that inevitably freeze my computer).  Initially I thought working offline might be nice -- figured it would be faster because there wasn't so much uploading/downloading.  Boy was I wrong!  This is the slowest software I've ever used.  I seriously felt like I was working off a Commodore 64 (a little shout out to an early 90s computer).  Every task takes 10-20 seconds.  It doesn't sound like a lot, but add that up and that's a lot of time.  I actually timed what it took to turn the page on the preview -- 30 seconds!  With a 46 page book that's 23 minutes!  Ridiculous.  Also, since it isn't web-based, you have to save regularly.  And you guessed it -- it takes a good 30+ seconds to save each time.  And with 2 littles around, I save frequently.  You also have to create an account and sync your project if you want to work on it from any other computer.  Outside of the time issue, the backgrounds are vast, but hard to see without individually previewing each one, and not accurate to their titles.  You also can't change your background theme once you've created the book -- just change individual pages.  The photo editor leaves a bit to be desired and you can't zoom in on a photo to edit it -- just try to make a guess what looks good on a 1-inch rendering of the image.  When you flip between pages, you can only select the page number -- no preview of the page or title (again, with 46 pages it's a little difficult to remember which page contains what).

On a good note, the pages are completely customizable (you don't have to stick with the templates provided).  This would be a nice feature if it didn't take an hour to do everything!  Also, I ordered Christmas cards from them (another Groupon -- before I used the software) and I think they came out great.  So, I'm hopeful that the painfully long process will be worth it in the end when I see the final product.

So, although the regular Groupon offerings for Picaboo sound fabulous, I would definitely recommend sticking to places like Shutterfly and just watch for their deals (honestly, I don't think I saved much more by using Picaboo -- I just didn't get a free copy for myself like the other places often do).

Okay, that's my rant for the day.  :P  Good night!