The New eBay Desktop Program - Buy Buy Buy

I recently downloaded the new eBay Desktop program and installed it on my computer. It was promoted as being a possible replacement for using EBay online through a traditional browser window. This sounded great and I looked forward to the new and "improved" experience. I quickly learned however that it is not so much about what this new program has. I found that it is what it doesn't have is what came to my attention immediately.

The program does have a bug reporting system for problems. As soon as I started using the program I took advantage of this feature. After I got started i went straight to the setup or preferences link. The appearance of the text on the screen was way too small.I wanted to increase the font size. There is no option however to change the font size. On my computer the writing is very small. Perhaps if using a large screen computer this would not be an issue. I however am not. My screen can be considered small. According to reports, the trend these days is to use screens that are even smaller than my own on smaller laptops. Users may need a magnifying glass to see the screen. Once I realized that font adjustment was not an option, I reported it as a bug and moved on to the content.

All of the content is about the user being a shopper. My Favorite Searches is the title of the first Section on the top left area of the eBay Desktop program. There you can find links to a truncated list of your favorite sellers, The ability to search eBay categories is offered in the other modules as well. Underneath My Favorite Searches is a section called My Categories. This area will store Categories selected in the larger section the right of the first two sections called Browse EBay which has a list of all of the main categories on which you can click and choose. Underneath is a section that lists side by side, Watching Items then Bidding Items then Recently viewed Items. To the left of these, underneath My Categories is the Help Section. This concludes the Homepage view. The Top Right of the Home Screen has more links to additional screens.

The screen links on Home and on every other screen show where you can find items to buy. Clicking on each one opens to its' own screen . There are Home, Find, My Items, BidBuy and Feeds. On Find you can search and sort. My Items shows Watching, Recent Items, Messages, Notes and Reminders. BidBuy shows Bidding Activity, Allows you to pay for items, has feedback activity and past purchases. Finally, Feeds has a list of Satellite provided links to a long list of items for sale and auction on eBay. That concludes what can be found in this program.

What I can't find is a lot of useful links currently found on the My eBay online Summary Page. The eBay Desktop Program promotion notes that this can replace the online browser eBay experience. It does not show any selling activity! If you make yourself one of your own favorite Sellers it will show your activity as a Feed. You can do this before or after installing the program. My eBay Desktop did not update the list immediately even when shutdown and restarted. It did update eventually, later. Even more is missing at first glance.

I appreciate all of the links on the left of the recently remodeled My \eBay Summary page online as well as the main content. There you can check on your eBay account,, have shortcut links to places like your account on Half.com, Buyer tools, eBay fees, Feedback and Seller Central. Unlike the eBay Desktop, on My eBay Summary Page you can customize your views of Bidding, Buying, Watching, and SELLING. All of the Selling links are absent in the new format program. There is no link there as there is in My eBay for scheduled selling, sold, active, unsold and deleted items.

Overall, so far I prefer the old way to the new. Although I cannot change the font size in every browser, the set up on My eBay is large enough to see on any browser. eBay is as much about selling as it is about buying. In that light the new EBay Desktop Program is single minded and geared towards searching and buying, buying, buying. Hopefully the developers will change this and balance out the features as they develop the EBay Desktop program.