I will fix the weaknesses as soon as I find one. The truth is, I was quite surprised by some of the claims made regarding the "Close" button really being a "Save and Close" and nothing being saved if you "use the little x in the upper right hand corner."

The guy sounds very nice and he seems sincere so the nicest word I can think of to describe his comments is INACCURATE. It's true, the documentation could be better and allowing the user to specify how many copies he wants to print could be explained better.

However, the other statements are totally incorrect and it is unfortunate because they misrepresent this product. My support people turn around support e-mail messages within 24 hours. They are available via telephone, e-mail, and online chat. My e-mail address is made available to all customers. It can be found on the home page of my web site: www.dvo.com.

I can't think of any other way to help confused people like the author of the last review...who recently converted from DOS to Windows. I guess I could include a thicker User's Guide but many times that confuses people like him even more. I figure I'd rather make myself and my staff available to answer any questions that may come up because no matter how thick the manual, someone will always have a question.

That's my philosophy and it is very different from most of my competitors who do not offer telephone support or the e-mail address to the President and developer.

We also offer a free monthly newsletter, free software updates, additional recipe downloads for free, and much more. If I give away anything else, my wife will have my head!

I hope this helps someone out there. I don't know if it's good for the President and developer to write a review about his own product...but I just couldn't help it. (...)

"taste of home cookbook awesome"
i use the cookbook at home and at work,,i work at a mission so the big recipes are cool,,the sloppy joe recipe i use is the best mix ive had..

"Some software bugs- but not bad"
There are two reasons to buy recipe software. The first is for the recipes. I did not buy the software for the recipes and I have not tried any recipes. I bought it for the second reason: to manage my recipes using their software. Generally the software works and it is better than the old DOS based software that I have used for years. There are some problems:

1) When printing, you can not specify how many copies you want. Each time you print, you must go through the whole routine.

2) Once you assign a recipe to a category, it stays. As far as I can tell you can not unassign a category.

3) The documentation is poor. The user has to be willing to experiment to figure out how it works. For example, the "Close" button is really a "Save and Close". If you use the little x in the upper right hand corner, nothing is saved.

4) On my computer, the mouse is deactivated whenever a pop-up box appears. To get my mouse working again, I have to press the tab key. This is true for the print box, the intro box, the exit box, etc...

I e-mailed DVO about problems 2 and 4. For problem 2, I received no response (I sent 3 e-mails on this problem). On Problem 4, I received a prompt response requesting more information. I responded. I waited. After a couple of weeks, I was told that I my problem is unique. It might be my mouse driver. I downloaded a new mouse driver from Microsoft. No change. I have over fifty programs on my system. The only place this problem appears is on DVO software. I may have a system problem, but, something DVO is doing is contributing.

This software is better than my old software. The software does have some nice features such scaling the menu for the number of servings requested and allowing photographs to be attached to recipes. I will continue using it but I have not ceased looking for better program. Maybe DVO will read this and fix the weaknesses.

I never tried the software with my PDA since it does not work with Pocket PC's. It likes the Palm OS.

The menu planner seems to work.

NOTE:

After I posted this review, DVO sent me an e-mail on how to delete categories from recipes. It works, but the documention still is missing this piece of information.

"Mom Loved the Program"
I got this for my mom as a Christmas present. She was looking for a way for storing her recipes on the computer. She loves how simple the program is to setup and get started. She set up her own cookbook with chapters she wanted and started adding recipes with 30 minutes.