I took OrchidWiz to judging on Monday 11/21. I showed it to several of
the judges and we all came away wondering why the AOS is bothering to
create an awards CD of their own. This thing kicks ass and its already
here. Why don't they just buy him out?

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 withing that range.

No award photos but it does have photos from contributors and open
source drawings, like from Lindliana. 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, its 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. Its 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 its
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