Cheap Starry Night Enthusiast (Software) (Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows 2000, Windows NT, Windows XP, Mac OS X) Price
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$49.99
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| PLATFORM: | Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows 2000, Windows NT, Windows XP, Mac OS X |
| CATEGORY: | Software |
| MANUFACTURER: | Imaginova |
| FEATURES: | View the sky from anywhere on Earth or blast off and visit locations 20,000 light years away, Learn how to identify planets, stars, and constellations; new weekly sky-gazing suggestions, LiveSky panel lets you see up-to-date images of the Sun and Earth, Locate objects easily with 'Find' command; create your own movies and images, More than 2.5 hours of movies, on both CD-ROM and bonus DVD |
| TYPE: | Computer software (programs), Education (Educational), Reference, Science (Sciences), Mac Macintosh Machintosh Apple |
| MEDIA: | CD-ROM |
| # OF MEDIA: | 1 |
| UPC: | 628306789803 |
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Customer Reviews of Starry Night Enthusiast
Underwhelmed! Maybe it is because this is the base version but I have mixed feelings about this program. I loaded it into my laptop and at first I thought that was neat since I had the sky at my fingertips, it shows the planets, constellations, many stars. Just punch in your location and date and there is the sky duplicated on the laptop. And I like a number of features. Fast forward and turn the sun on and off, sun comes up and goes down. It has lots of information - all neat.
But then when I got out the telescope I went for a couple of books. My general feeling is that yes it is neat but maybe just a toy. So when I got a new computer I did not bother transferring the program. More of a toy, not a great tool and like all toys you lose interest fast. For the serious astronomer or telescope user just use a Miller Planisphere - it is the sky on a 10" circular disc with a sliding cover elliptical hole. You rotate the cover to the date and time and it shows the shy through the open elliptical hole. That gives a similar level of detail. For more information - go to a reference book. Maybe the program has some appeal in teaching where the novelty factor might generate or keep the interest of the students.
Jack in Toronto
I'm satisfied... totally.
I know that some people seem to have had a bad experience with Space Holdings, but I have ordered both directly from them and also from Amazon before and was satisfied with both previous transactions. I will concur that they seem to have some internal communication issues and that the people you may talk to on the phone don't seem to have a very good handle on things... at least when you consider that they actually work for the company. It kind of feels like you've called someone's house and their 4yo kid picked up the phone. Trying to get Mommy or Daddy on the phone at that point can be tricky.
While I can't speak to the quality of other similar products (Red Shift, TheSky, etc.), I can say that I have been VERY happy with Starry Night. Having been a Starry Night Backyard user since version 3.0, I can say that it was worth my upgrade to 4.0 and then again to 4.5 (Enthusiast). I am now using 4.5.2 on my Apple TiBook running Mac OS X 10.3.2. The product is satisfactory to me in every way, and really lacks nothing that I use for amateur observation of the sky. I thoroughly enjoy it personally.
Additionally, I enjoy it professionally. I teach astronomy at a public high school with over 1400 students. I see about 130 of those students each year enrolled in astronomy. We use Starry Night Backyard (version 4.0.5) running on Mac OS X (10.2.8) as a part of the curriculum that I have developed. I have been totally satisfied with it as an educator.
Obviously I'm runnning all this on a Mac and the same was true with my version 3.0 (though that was on Mac OS 9). It could be that this product does not run as well on a Windows machine, but that can be said of a great many things. If you decide to get it, though, I would recommend is getting it from Amazon or some other source than directly from Space Holdings. Not only do they charge full retail price for the product, but because they're in Canada, the shipping is outrageous.
Don't buy from Space Holdings
This product crashed my machine, which is a new Dell Inspiron laptop running Windows XP. There customer service is dismal. After four emails and no response, I returned the product and stopped the payment on my credit card, indicating that it was fraudulently represented as a functional product. They have the worst customer support I've ever experienced. Buy something else.