Cheap Instant Home Design (4 CD-ROM) (Software) (Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows XP) Price

The concept behind Instant Home Design is a simple one. Users evaluate a planned renovation to a home by scanning in a photograph of the house. Once uploaded, the photo can then be altered and expanded upon. You can change the exterior of a home from wood to brick, add a skylight, or build an additional bathroom. Viewing the altered photograph, you can then make informed decisions about whether a contemplated change is worth the expense.

Unfortunately, a host of minor glitches will probably leave eager renovators frustrated with Instant Home Design and still in the dark about the merit of their design scheme. The most fundamental of these problems is the interface, which is non-intuitive to the extreme and makes the process of using the program hard to learn. True, clicking on almost any screen object will trigger a lengthy video, one which purportedly explains how to use the features of the package. However, instructions on the basics--how to draw a house or room from scratch, for example, or how to single out part of the roof for alteration--are all but lost amid cheerful video chatter about more esoteric options.

Instant Home Design is also prone to system crashes, and though it works in partnership with a Web page that allows users to download interior and exterior wall patterns and other home décor elements, the site tends to have errors and it loads very slowly. The program also lacks features that add to the appeal of its competitors. In particular, users cannot get automatic price estimates for their renovations, or move easily from room to room in a simulated 3-D tour. Finally, drawing a new home from scratch with this program is an intensely slow process.

To some extent, Instant Home Design suffers from a flaw common to most current home design software. It is extraordinarily difficult to take a flat picture of a home and then provide information about its three-dimensional features. In this respect, Instant Home Design merely reflects the weakness of similar programs. However, Instant Home Design has been less successful than others in combining the techniques available for merging digital photographs with images of home furnishings and finishes. --Alyx Dellamonica