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USER COMMENTS
About Ideas Genie Pro 6

I still love your product, I would be totally lost without it, and to date, have yet to see anything else on the market to match.
Julie Cox, Michigan, USA

I am impressed with the improvements in Genie Pro 6!  Great job, George!  I was able to transfer my garden files with no trouble and when I opened Plants and Gardens - GA604 everything I needed was right there.  I clicked on a plant and immediately saw how many specimens I had and where they were planted.  Fantastic!  I love how everything is streamlined yet available.
Gordie Moulton, Nova Scotia, Canada

Looks really good, No problem importing my data base.
George Stewart, (Retired Professor of Botany), Tasmania, Australia
Read Georges comments on the Master Database

Love this software, it is perfect for the nit picky computer geek in me.
You have an excellent product. Thank you for everything.
I would be totally lost without it, and to date, have yet to see anything else on the market to match.
Julie Cox, Michigan, USA

...so far so good with the new one. I really like it.
Annie Glass, Everson, Washington State, USA
 

USER COMMENTS

(Older Versions)

Two words appear in the “Favourable Press” which I like. Incredible and Sophisticated. Unfortunately they are not about me. They are about Ideas Genie - Software for Plant Lovers
 

I often wondered how all our new Ideas Genie users who bought copies at the Northwest Flower and Garden Show in Feb 03 managed with the software. Heres one happy user:

I never took the time to comment, but I'm a great fan of this incredibly simple and powerful software: true user-oriented design without a top-heavy interface, polite use of resources, and customizable beyond belief. 
The programmers consideration of the different aspects of gardening and the ways in which to connect them is profound. 

My fascination with this software helped me realize that I was truly more of a plant geek than a computer geek.  I started working toward a horticulture degree this past year and Ideas Genie was a great help in organizing my plant identification notes and photos.
Terri Bates, Washington State, USA

Comments from some of our users in England

Now that I have personalised the program, it is really impressive and I can see that it is going to be difficult to decide whether to spend time tending or logging the plants!
Gillian,  Guildford, England

I'm still thrilled with the Genie - I'm getting all my plants in with no problems but as I've got around 1500 different species its going to take some time!
I now understand Divisions (how to set up Rose Divisions using the software) and the page works fine.  I've been using the RHS Plantfinder classifications for roses.
Please feel free to use any of my comments for your page - at present the words I find continually coming into my head are "mind-boggling in its comprehensiveness and speed."
Its a brilliant programme - thanks again for all your hours of hard work.
Alec Mackonochie, Calstock, England

I am having a great time inputting my own data and photographs and  burning a lot of midnight oil!  It seems to be the program that I been looking  for for years.
Rob Sands, Dorset, England

I have been thoroughly enjoying the software.I am  very happy using it. The tutorials are terrific and I am delighted at  how easy it is to understand and use.
I have recently purchased my first digital camera  and have been adding some new pictures along with many from my older collections
I have a lot to learn but am very pleased with my  progress so far I am looking forward to lesson three
Maggie, England

I had a little chuckle when I read this one from Alison in England. It was sectionalised
1.The Stately home, 3 The Artistic Bit, 5 The Technical bit etc.
Recognise the similiarity with my “Quick Overview” presentation on this web site?   

With the aid of the tutorials and Lesson 2 I made the new 'Alison' Garden profile, adding areas and divisions with wild abandon until now the whole place sounds like the garden of a stately home.  My fault for digging out so much of the grass.  Comment - "easy peasey'

Lesson 3 was brilliant (thanks for the pointer), so I now have igdata_sets\Alison storing the first of my photos...
Linking the photos to the plants was almost self-explanatory.  Beginning to feel the new garden is really mine.

I then realised that I needed extra plant types - Aquatic,Marginal - so another learning curve developed.  I have found Philip's User Guide really useful in such circumstances, pointing me in the direction of yet another hand-holding tutorial.  The actual linkage came quite easily, and I enjoy 'lassoing the plants.
Alison, Kent, England

Now, I’m always impressed when users email me excitedly to report that have discovered how to really tweak Ideas Genie to their specifications. Alison (above) added more Plant Types. Melissa (below) reports how she added more Cultural Classifications.

I'm very excited about this program. As we used to say in the southern U.S., it looks like it's the 'best thing since sliced white bread'.

I am getting more skilled in fine-tuning some parts of the program to suit my personal needs more: for instance I added some plant classifications to the list. I split trees into deciduous and evergreen, as well as both categories for shrubs. Also added sedges and reeds, and added woody perennials (such as sage). Now if only I could add several more hours to the day, I'd be all set!
Melissa, Washigton State, USA

The Master Database has grown to more than 36,000 plants.
In Ideas Genie Pro 6 (see above) this Master Database is installed on your computer by default.
It is used to allow you to add a plant from the Master to your own database by typing only a few characters of a plant name.

t's really impressive the species you have in the master list. Thinking back to when I was really a botanist the program would have been really great for the sort of data we were collecting on hundreds of different species, mostly physiological or biochemical traits but it would have been easy to store that info in your program - My Garden would then have become the species habitat
George Stewart, (Retired Professor of Botany), Tasmania, Australia

Help and advice is always welcome. In that respect I have been so fortunate that Philip Goodwin from Kent, England found our ad in the RHS members publication, “The Garden”, and bought a copy of the software.
Philip has RHS Horticultural Qualifications, and has given amazing support to the project.
It was in the early days when he received the software. He sent me an email out of the blue one day to say he had written a User Guide. It arrived on CD, and I was absolutely flabbergasted by the content. It is a very professional document. 
Its now included on the distribution CD to all users. Also on the CD is one of the first SWAP Library databases. Its the list of the plants which I converted for him from Access to Ideas Genie format.
Heres a very short extract from one of his many supportive emails.

I have been using the tutorials to get into the system. These seem to work well and do help to find your way through. I like the way it says when I am lost! I started by putting in all the plant culture/classification bits I wanted.

I use the RHS Plant Finder and RHS A-Z Encyclopaedia of Gardening as my main reference works so I use the parameters they use (for instance I might use Hardiness Zones if I were into garden design around the world but the RHS classification of Fully Hardy, Frost Hardy, Half Hardy and Frost Tender are enough for me. Putting in classifications is always the difficult bit.

I know from bitter experience that users want to record as much as they can but do not want to put in the effort of entering all the data (and I include my self in this!). So deciding which parameters are going to be important for me will come as I enter data and then I will no doubt reduce the list to a manageable size.

... I did like the internet link. The link through Google is very effective and throws up some fine images. This is a very good way to easily find images for the database.

For my own fun (and yes, some of us have really weird ideas of fun!) I went back to my old days and started to write a User Guide. I did this for me so that I could see the structure, understand the interrelationships and also so that I had to go through each area of the database in order to get the best from it.

Philip Goodwin, Kent, England

You may have noticed that Ideas Genie has alternative language features. Heres the comments of our first Italian user.

ok  George Ci sono riuscito.  io sono un giardiniere professionista. in questo periodo ho poco tempo per usare ideasgenie ma ho gia visto che è OTTIMO.

Translated, means something like:
ok George, I have succeeded (registering the software).   I am a professional gardener . At present (high season gardening tme!!) I have little time to use ideasgenie but I have already seen that it is Excellent.
Angelo, Italy

The most enthusiastic new user has to be Doug from Seattle, USA. His impressions ran into 4 pages. I’ve abbreviated it a bit to conserve disk space!  Read this:

I am having a great time with the software.  You can't pull me away....
You are to be complimented... This is a sophisticated and useful program. I have just begun to scratch the surface and I can already see the many possibilities.  Thanks again for creating this!

I got the software on Friday afternoon and I have been glued to it since. I  have used the software during that 2.5 day spread and have had NO issues with it  at all.  I see a couple of misspellings in a place or two.  However, there has been  nothing else which caused me a major problem.This  is to be HIGHLY complimented.  It is difficult to accomplish.  I work with  software development every day....
There are SO many applications for the functionality of this software I cannot  imagine them all

The SLIDE Show is COOL.  The ability to stop it, do a quick run  to the data about a plant and then to continue and restart is really neat. This  is NOT just a slide show, once it is together it is an entire presentation!  Any  speaker could use this to teach or demonstrate information about gardening in  almost any crowd.  So cool.

 I really liked the way you set up the Plant Profiles and the  cultural information programs.  They make sense, are easily used and demonstrate a LOT of thought in the  way they are structured.  Again, the flexibility of the program is INCREDIBLE.  You have truly delivered something unique in the market place, at least to my  knowledge.

The query program is logical, easy to use without knowing  programming language, and just plain good.... This was one of the things which  excited me most about this product.  I was not disappointed.

The garden task setup is intuitive and expandable. I do not think I have ever  seen software which has the capability of expanding data at the user level like  this does. It is incredible!  I can dream up a new use, and this software will  most likely handle it.

I LOVE IT, I LOVE IT, I LOVE IT!

Update: Doug is now our US agent! He convinced me to launch Ideas Genie at the Northwest Flower and Garden Show in Seattle in Feb ‘03.

Next some extracts from an email from Bobbi, Washington State, USA
Bobbi sent some photos of her garden while waiting for Ideas Genie - Version 2 to be released. They were included in the “Mini database” which is shipped with Ideas Genie. Heres the extracts of her impressions of Ideas Genie:

I have to tell you I'm loving it.
It's been easy to maneuver myself around and find things.

Right now I'm playing with  the feature that drew me to your software in the first place, scanning in my magazine articles. 

Registering went great. The getting started document was very informative. I'm good  with computers, but even someone who doesn't know much could get started easily with it.

I viewed the slide show first and what do I see? My favorite picture! I have a  picture in your CD, how exciting! Thanks so much, that was very cool of you J

Thanks again for all your friendly email and thanks for the wonderful  surprise, I've been showing the slideshow to EVERYONE.

Update: I emailed Bobbi and told her I would be at the Ideas Genie booth at the Northwest Show. It was a lovely surprise to meet up. Bobbi was one of the very first Ideas Genie users!

Bobbi, Washington State, USA

Finally, its nice to get a laugh from time to time. This comment in an email from Chris had me in stitches.

The background... Ideas Genie has a feature to remind you when your books are due back to the Library. I set the due back date for “My books” in the database to Oct 03 for the batch of CD’s we cut for the Northwest F&G show. It seemed a long way off at the time!

Chris bought a Feb 03 version CD (the offer to US customers) in 2005, so as soon as he installed Ideas Genie, he got “a reminder”.

Now, heres the droll comment!

I sure hope you are good friends with the librarian. I get this message every time I open the program:
Your books are over due
Were due back on 01-Oct-03.

Chris Lambruscati - Virginia State, USA

Brilliant!
Itold him how he could use that feature, or switch it off , of course!
(I also returned the books!!)