(very) mini-review of Resco Explorer 2010

[Guest dwallersv]

Resco just recently released an update for Resco Explorer, bumping the product from "2008" to "2010", constituting a major release, and therefore an upgrade fee for existing users.

So, is it worth it to pay the 50%-listprice upgrade fee? This is, of course, always a subjective question, but it always annoys me when people refuse to answer because of that. I will.

Yes, it's worth it, explained below.

First, has been my File Explorer of choice for many years. This review is for people like me: Current RE users that don't need a review of existing features.

So, what's new in 2010? Not much. The GUI has been upgraded a little bit, but if you don't try, you won't notice much of a difference, if any. The main changes as marketed by Resco are:

• Social networking integration (facebook, twitter, etc.)
  
• Image thumbnails view
  
• integration with Photo Manager (impacts performance of thumbnail view)
  
• Customizable Today plugin
  

Otherwise, it looks and feels about the same as 2008.

So, why is it worth the money to upgrade? Simply put, yes, for the image thumbnail feature alone. This makes RE very useful for managing image files, where before it was limited at best.

Also, a new app included with 2010 is Resco's take on a task manager, and I like it a lot. Simple, fast, no fancy eye-candy. A great replacement for the neat -- but slow -- visual task manager included with the O2. Here's a screenshot:

Edited February 17, 2010 by dwallersv