15-Minute Reviews :: FlashSpring Pro 2.2 (Quick)
Hello all and welcome to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s application is FlashSpring Pro version 2.2 by CPS Labs
This will be a quick review (overview and thoughts) on this application because there still is no clear support for PowerPoint 2007. I have previously done another quick review on version 2.0 here for this title.
Software Description
As Giveaway of the Day states:
“FlashSpring Pro 2.2 is a new advanced version of a well-known PowerPoint to Flash converter.
It creates Flash movies from PowerPoint presentations, decreasing the size of the final file and providing the possibility to publish presentations online.
180+ animations, all transitions, embedded audio, video and Flash files are supported like in previous versions. Also FlashSpring Pro 2.2 version has the following new features.
- Support of sounds and animations synchronization;
- High-quality processing of grouped shapes and tables;
- Support of animated GIF images;
- Conversion of large (300+ Mb) PowerPoint presentations into compact Flash files;
- Flash banner creation mode.”
Quick Information
While Giveaway of the Day does not have PowerPoint 2007 in its list of supported Office versions, if you were to go to FlashSpring’s website, you will note on their download page that there is limited PowerPoint 2007 support, but quite a bit broken still until version 3.0 as stated on their site and their forums. With that said, even with me spending over a half an hour just trying to get the toolbar to appear in PowerPoint 2007, I began hunting around and found that in the Add-Ins portion of the settings, that there is no FlashSpring plug-in or any COM or PowerPoint plug-in that might be even linked to that; I could not locate information on their forums on how to rectify this issue, but there is no help on the forums either. I even tried seeing if the buttons could be added manually to the Quick Access toolbar, to no avail.
As mentioned in my previous post, I am not a fan of their upgrade policy at all. If you were to purchase this title at $199, you get one free major revision upgrade (For example, from 2.2 to 2.3) and that is it. All future revisions are another $99 to get sometimes even just bug fixes as since they do no offer bug fixes for previous versions. I know there are many businesses and institutions which may go for this, but honestly is not a good idea. In the time between the last review and this review, a time period of 6 months, and we’re talking 2 major revisions (From 2.0 to 2.2) – One of those upgrades would have been another $99 for a customer using the title. Here are the revision logs for version 2.1 and version 2.2 to give you an idea. NOTE: Please read the update at the end of the review about the upgrade pricing.
Final Verdict
Really, the authors of this application/plug-in need to post some how-tos or troubleshooting for setting up FlashSpring Pro with PowerPoint 2007 before mentioning they partially support 2007 on their site. At least last time they did not display any 2007 support; This time they do but alas can’t make it work. Just taking a quick peek at the Giveaway of the Day comments for today, it appears others are having a similar issue (if not the same). If you have PowerPoint 2003 or below, this might be a good title for you; You’ll have to give it a try yourself. As for paying $199 for this title, even if I had a previous PowerPoint version I likely would not purchase the title just due to their upgrade policy and the lack of content for a major revision. Note: See correction on pricing below and my revised feelings.
NOTE
I recieved an email from a member of the FlashSpring team to try to clear up their upgrade policy as since it isn’t clearly marked on their site. Here is the portion on the clarification:
You mentioned that any upgrade costs $99. That’s not right. We offer one minor upgrade for free as well as tech support and bug fixing. Further minor upgrades are available for only $19, just about 10% of the product price. Actually minor upgrades usually includes new funclionality and we spend significant efforts to develop it. For example, upcoming FlashSpring 2.3 will include support of oriental languages and we have spent several man-months developing it.
The cost of $99 for upgrade to new major release implies about a year of development and user gets absolutely new, redeveloped product with improved quality and a lot of new features.
This does seem a lot more fair, though clarification on their difference on minor/major would be nice as well. Their website does need to clearly indicate these differences, and not force customers to try to farm pricing from the forums which in itself may not be concise either.
Posted by BladedThoth on Friday, September 07, 2007
