15-Minute Reviews :: SnapLogger v1.0

Hello all and welcome to another edition of 15-Minute Reviews! Today’s application is SnapLogger version 1.0 by Uconomix Technology – An application to take screenshots of your screen at specified intervals and plays back like a video for later review.

Software Description

As Giveaway of the Day states:

“Record and play back your day like a movie. Track your time ‘visually’. It makes filling up timesheets a breeze because you can see what you did on your computer at a specific time on a particular day. If your work involves billing your clients for your time then SnapLogger is a must have tool for you.”

Quick Pros

• Filters to allow or deny recording of specific applications
• Automatically clean up old snapshots older than a specified number of days
• Password-protect your screenshots
• Capture can collect entire screen or only active window
• Capture process also captures date/time as well as what program was active

Quick Cons

• Installer halts if it doesn’t find .NET
• System tray icon needs to be more powerful
• Should be easier way to grab snapshots for use
• Password protection works, but kills using the files outside of SnapLogger
• Hefty memory usage (30MB, 35MB, 42MB, 48MB, 54MB

Expansion

With the age of billing based on time spent on computers, there also has been a growing number of options to help those in the profession of digital work maintain accurate timesheets with the aim to recover lost billing time and decrease billing disputes.

Launching this application, it is fairly straightforward. The top third of the window has two large buttons – Start Recording and View SnapLog. Right next to that is control for managing auto-stop functionality (Say after your day is done or a certain amount of time) and what filter is currently running. The lower 2/3rds of the page is comprised of four tabs of settings, from general capture options, to security, cleanup of old files and filters.

The filters offer you the ability to either deny or allow (Has to be all deny or allow) specific applications from being logged. This would be handy if you didn’t want logged your time in an internet browser, chatting; It could also be useful for logging on specified tasks that would be billable, like logging only PhotoShop, Adobe Flash, Excel and so forth.

The automatic cleanup functionality is handy if you don’t want your folder size getting away from you. You can set how many days old that it will delete old files; You could do 2 weeks for typical timesheeting, or 90+ days to ensure timesheet disputes won’t be an issue.

You can also password-protect your images from prying eyes. Essentially the application makes the JPEGs useless outside the application and can only be viewed inside the application with the password. This is handy, but my concern is that there is no way to use those files in a dispute issue or otherwise outside the application if you were to secure the files with this application. There should be an export function directly in the SnapViewer section so that if a physical record is needed, it can be done, even if there was a password in place.

You can also set up the application to catch only the active window and not the entire monitor; This may be handy for those who may show their work progress to a client (or boss) and don’t want them to see everything going on on the screen, or another client’s files and so forth. The capture also logs the date/time stamp (It is actually placed in a date folder with a time stamp on it) and also records in itself the active application and allows you to search a timeframe for specific application usage only. With capturing as well, the time delay can be changed in seconds; Meaning you could make it longer timeframe to cut down on hard drive usage, or shorter for more accurate tracking of events.

I did have a few issues with this application. First off, this application does not come bundled with the .NET framework nor will it install it for you. If it does not find .NET, it will ask you if you want to go to the .NET site to get the framework; This isn’t too bad in itself, but it closes itself out as well, requiring you to install .NET first before having to launch again.

The system tray icon should be more powerful. A statechange should occur to the system tray icon when recording is turned on or off should occur at minimum so people can quickly glance to see if they are recording; A possible option could be that the icon also will blink when a screenshot is taken. It may also be nice to be able to take a quick screenshot just by clicking the icon as well. The clicking functionality of the icon could be improved as well. Currently, double-click results in opening the main window and right-click pulls up a small pop-up menu. To optimize this, maybe include the ability to single-click to start/stop the screenshots as well.

As mentioned briefly above, I feel there should be a simpler way to grab the screenshots than having to navigate to the predefined folder to use them, or changing the destination to a closer location. This especially rings true in the matter of security; Going to browse for the files does not work when they are password protected – They can not be viewed in the previewer or otherwise. There should be a feature such as Export Timeframe or similar.

One final note, and it is pretty important. The memory footprint of this application is rather hefty. Just launching the application, this application sits at a bit over 30MB memory usage; A significant amount of memory on a 512MB system and even a good chunk with a system with 1GB, especially if you use it all in PhotoShop. The memory usage doesn’t stop there. I noticed as soon as I launched the recording feature, the memory usage shot up to around 36MB usage, and every screenshot after that it climbed approximately 6MB more until it hit a bit over 60MB, when then it would seem to ‘purge’ itself (I’m assuming dumping the images) and drop back down to 36MB. It would continue this loop until I stopped recording; The memory amounts aren’t always the same; I’m assuming it is based on the raw screendump each time and its size. This could be very hazardous on a system nearing the end of physical memory and nearing swap file usage and could cause some significant system slow-ups (I can picture issues with PhotoShop becoming a lot less responsive with large files.)

Final Verdict

All-in-all, while this is a great concept and runs well for what it does so far, the memory aspect should be cleaned up some; cycling up to 60MN usage could be dangerous and should be looked at to improved. That said, if you do have a significant chunk of memory and don’t care about 60MB more and the few small quirks of the application, while free may be a great product for you. If this can help you (without being a nuisance for memory) it may be worth $19.95 if it could help you recover even an hour of billing, or recover a customer complaint on hours spent on a job.

Posted by BladedThoth on Wednesday, July 18, 2007