Good review writeup Kathy, I was going to buy it but now I will just
ask you! *G*
I will just stick to growing the plants etc.

--
Cheers Wendy

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K Barrett wrote:
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