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[Kathy Barrett is
an American Orchid Society orchid judge, probationary. She lives in Pleasant Hill, California. This review was originally
published in the online forum rec.garden.orchids November
26, 2005]
“I took OrchidWiz to judging on Monday 11/21. I
showed it to several of the judges. This thing kicks ass.
At first I only saw the use of this program in terms of researching AOS
awards. It really does a mind blowing job of providing data for
comparing awards. It'll list a flower's awards from 1932 to the
most recent AQ in a table, and you can click on the heading in each column to
re-sort the data according to that criterion. So if you want to compare
according to petal width you can. If you want to compare to dorsal sepal
width, you can. If you want to compare to natural spread, you can.
Click of a button. Very cool.
Even cooler is you can compare the offspring's awards (if there are
any) to the stats for the parents' awards. It will give you the size
range and where this flower falls within that range.
No award photos, but it does have photos from contributors and open source
drawings, like from Lindenia. So the parent trees
show thumbnail pictures if he has them. And not only one picture but
whatever he has. So click on C. mossiae will
bring up a variety of color forms and drawings. Click on the thumbnail
and the image enlarges. Very cool. Now, it’s not like he has a ton of photos.
Far from it. But the feature will evolve, I hope, as people send in
pictures.
But aside from AOS awards, I mean, the list of what this disk does goes on
and on. When I looked at the web page it sorta was
- I dunno - I was mystified as to what was so great
about the product that I'd dump Wildcatt for this, or plunk down additional
money for this. There wasn't really anything on the webpage that made
me want to buy this. But I took a leap
of faith. I think the web page is so vague because you *can't* list
everything this program does. It’s like trying to describe the taste of
an apple. I'm sure as the word gets out people will bring it to meetings and
you'll be able to check it out for yourselves.
Sheesh, it even has culture guides, LOL!! Based of
parental species makeup - and yes he cautions you that there's no guarantee
of genetic make up in a complex hybrid.
If you never needed Wildcatt you won't want to buy this either. You can
use the RHS database and you'll be OK. If you already have Wildcatt and
rarely use it, you won't need this either. Why bother? For you it’s
redundant. If you need to research parentage, breeding lines or awards this
is the program to get.
I'm not connected with OrchidWiz, or anything. Heck I can't even recall
the name of the fellow who created the CD.
K Barrett”
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