I bought SR 3.0 when David Diaz announced it and I am glad that I did. Here's an attempt at a review:
Creating cigar software is a labour of love. While we are now experiencing a boom in cigar purchases, there are just not that many people willing to buy such specialized software. If one doesn't want to buy, there are a couple of free alternatives - humibase.com and cigarregister.com. So why did I pay $11 for StogieRate - without even a demo to play with?
Well, to be honest, I bought because of a misunderstanding. I thought that buying StogieRate meant that I would get all the review, pics, etc., of cigars on the StogieFresh review site. The SF review site takes forever to load, so it would be nice to have that database accessible locally if it would load faster. I was wrong. Another thing that I would like to do is be able to see/organize/summarize together multiple notes on the same cigar, e.g., sticks smoked from the same box. The SF review site does this to some extent.
Unfortunately, the StogieRate software doesn't have the website review database, for what are now-understandable reasons. The software also isn't directly setup for multiple reviews. I found a bug within a half-hour of using the software. So ...
Cigar software is pretty simple stuff. A spreadsheet is all you really need, and that only if you want stats. So what does the software really need to do? Besides work correctly, two things:
1. It should make entering the information as painless as possible; and
2. It should give you analysis reports of your collection.
The first, data entry, is where StogieRate shines. It isn't a fancy design, but it is very evolved and thus well-laid out. Getting your collection in and keeping the database up-to-date is about as painless is it'll get (use the tab key). Overall, excellent functional forms design. I entered my boxes/fivers, but left the singles drawer un-entered.
Import/export from Excel is also possible. I don't have a huge collection, and my Excel spreadsheet was out-of-date, so I didn't use the import. However, the export to Excel is painless - just remember to choose the fields that you want :blush: - so further analysis can be done in Excel, e.g., a smoke-next report.
Analysis reports are new to StogieRate 3.0. One report is given in two flavours. Clicking 'Sort by Price' gives you your whole collection, while clicking 'Sort by Age' excludes boxes/fivers/etc. that you've completely smoked, and individual sticks that you've smoked, i.e., only sticks that you can smoke now are displayed. Basic totals are shown - though I would've liked to have seen an 'Average Price of Stogie' as well.
(edit: some pics of cigars, e.g., the RASS above, are included, as are many pics of bands. Easy to add your own.)
Note that 'Age' refers to the date of purchase. If you want to use box date instead, you have to put the box date in the date of purchase field (and, I guess, enter the date of purchase in the box date field).
With data entry and reporting covered off nicely by StogieRate, let's get back to the software working. One can't complain about free software, but software purchased is different. As mentioned previously, I found a bug in the software. This bug was related to new-to-v3.0 non-core functionality, and could not affect the database.The bug was found within hours. You cannot get better support.
As with most mature software, you must go through the help/info file
http://www.stogiefresh.com/stogie_rate_help.htm to get the most out of the software. Where the help was not helpful to me, Mr. Diaz gave timely and helpful responses to my e-mails.
So, on the whole, software that worked well enough to get me to enter my sticks, a useful summary report, and excellent support.
