WinJournal Software Review

Keeping a journal is an age old practice, but with the release of Mariner Software's WinJournal, the idea of recording your personal life takes on a fresh new meaning. Better than blogging with simple tools, WinJournal is packed with features that make it the electronic equivalent of the ultimate scrapbooking kit- and then some. I was lucky enough to test the program myself, and I have to say that, even as a person who really doesn't do much journaling of my own, I was impressed- so much so that I will probably continue to use WinJournal in the future, even if only to record my thoughts and writings offline in a format that can be accessed by myself or others in the years to come.

Advantages:

The install was quick and easy, free of those annoying extras that so many programs seem to come with nowadays, extras that clog up your memory and slow things down with "neat functions." WinJournal is a clean program, sleek and well designed, goes in clean and problem free.

The first thing that struck me as being totally awesome about the program itself is the documentation. Not only is Mariner software's WinJournal a tree-friendly product in that their guides, help, and how-tos are all electronic, but the sheer size of the documentation provided with the product is staggering! 92 pages of sleek, stylish full-color PDF await your perusal, containing info on a whole slew of features just waiting to be discovered! Large, comfortable text size also makes this an easily accessible resource for people of all ages.

Troubleshooting with WinJournal is a breeze- whatever problems aren't handled by the impressive help system can be answered directly by Mariner Software's people on a support forum, or VIA email in some cases. Real person-to-person customer support! Wow! Now that's impressive.

Writing blogs with WinJournal turned out to be a snap. Click and type, just like a word processor- save and print are easy to find and work like a charm. Spelling is a cinch too- simply right click the word underlined in red and select "spelling" to be presented with not only the spell checker's suggestion, but the ability to add unfamiliar words and force the spell checker to ignore certain words as well!

Another cool feature that comes with WinJournal is an adjustable autosave feature that works behind the scenes to help prevent data loss in the case of unexpected power loss or computer failure. As a big fan of the Word Perfect series of products, I have to say that this particular function endears WinJournal to me more than any other feature- with WinJournal, long gone are the days of losing hours worth of work just because you forgot to save. Very cool.

WinJournal is open, with enough freedom to spread your wings and fly through journals without feeling hampered by options that don't work or only work under certain, mysterious circumstances. It's well designed, and it gives the user the kind of freedom we deserve and just don't find often enough in the programs we use. It can print, export, import photos and audio, even provide a statistical analysis of how often you use certain words in your journal entry! Copy/pasting from wordprocessing documents is flawless, and it can even podcast your custom audio as well! Amazing! Want to share what you're listening to with the world? WinJournal can import the track title of the song directly into the journal for you!

Oh, and did I mention the price? Where else can you find a program as amazing as WinJournal for the incredible deal of $34.95? Simply amazing!

Disadvantages:

Very few, and certainly fewer than your average program. Shoutcast radio station track names tend to come up as a four digit number value when you try to stick their title info into a journal entry as a shortcut to typing out what you're listening to, but that's so minor it barely deserves mentioning. Other than that, the program currently lacks Myspace compatibility, but they've got blogger, wordpress and livejournal covered, which is three out of four when it comes to the big sites.

...And if you're planning on publishing online, make sure you've got a place (like a server or FTP) to stash your imbedded pictures and/or audio. You can still go to town with the technology offline, which makes the program an incredible tool in itself, but files of any substance will have to be uploaded to a site like photobucket separately.

Final Thoughts:

Not bad! WinJournal truly is the next generation in journal technology. I was impressed! It makes me want to start blogging again, and coming from a guy who isn't much into online journaling, that's one heck of a statement!