Weather Depot at:
www.weatherconnections.com

What's it do?

Weather Depot is a desktop weather software application that updates itself on the Internet to provide the user with a myriad of weather-related forecasts and information,


Does it do what it promises?

Reviewer 1. Yes.

Reviewer 2. Yes, it definitely does. It professes to be aimed at the weather and travel enthusiast, and it lives up to its claims.

Reviewer 3. It pretty much does what it says it will do. It showed the temperature and weather-related information. Unfortunately, it doesn't show very current information.

Reviewer 4. Yes, the information is all there and displayed in an efficient manner.

Reviewer 5. Yes. It provides up-to-the-minute weather information for several user-configurable cities. Included are detailed maps and animations used to show the flow of the weather in the areas defined by the user.

Reviewer 6. Yes, but not as straightforward as I'd like.

Reviewer 7. Exceptionally well and thoroughly, in a very user-friendly interface.


Was it easy to install?

Reviewer 1. Yes. Upgrades are also easy, with an automatic notification when there is an update available.

Reviewer 2. Yes, I had no problems installing this program on both Windows 98 and XP.

Reviewer 3. Very easy to install. It also updated itself without any help from me, aside from clicking on an OK button when an update was available.

Reviewer 4. Installed quickly and with no problem.

Reviewer 5. Yes. The installation was easy to understand and no problems were encountered.

Reviewer 6. Fairly easy, but there were a lot of questions about settings that a person using it for the first time may have trouble with. A novice might have a very confusing time with it.

Reviewer 7. Simple, straightforward program installation and Premium upgrade process.


Good points?

Reviewer 1. Receives weather warnings via email from within the program and/or audibly. Provides a 24-hour forecast as well as an extended forecast with just a click.

Reviewer 2. Very detailed information on weather for general knowledge, planning travel, and even gardening. Easy to use and navigate. Gives audible and scrolling on-screen alerts for inclement weather, which was really a plus.

Reviewer 3. The weather maps and hourly/weekly planners were very nice including some animation. There is quite a lot of weather information available including dew point and "feels like" temperatures.

Reviewer 4. I liked the feel of the interface, even down to the option of left-handed as opposed to right-handed. The updating feature when Weather Depot is first accessed is a nice touch. Particularly useful is the ability to configure personal alerts so that, for example, if the minimum temperature is anticipated to reach a certain set temperature, Weather Depot will alert you, a nice feature for gardeners who have to protect plants from frost. Online help was straightforward and ample.

Reviewer 5. There is a multitude of ways to view weather forecasts with this software. It is also valuable to those interested in gardening as it can give current and predicted ground temperatures and moisture levels. For the business traveler, it is easy to set the software to monitor several cities and switch between those cities with a quick choice from a dropdown menu. Alerts for severe weather can be configured, and the software can scroll an onscreen message, sound a warning, or even email a warning when an alert condition is met. User-defined alerts can also be configured.

Reviewer 6. It keeps you up-to-date on a minute-by-minute basis of the weather situation and forecasts.

Reviewer 7. Excellent user interface, comprehensive & easy to navigate. Allows for right-handed or left-handed main screen layout and customized ticker-tape. Outstanding tutorial that allows user to point-and-click at a replica of its main display window and have a tutorial-window come up about the part of the screen clicked on. Very complete and thorough up-to-hour weather reports -- actual, forecasts, and radar displays of weather activity. Got to admire and compliment a company whose Aim includes "Have fun...life is short." Sufficient documentation, but only via help screens and interactive display


Weak points?

Reviewer 1. Warnings from the NWS (National Weather Service, a free Web site, requires being at the site. If the weather is bad, what are the chances you'll be on the computer to receive the warnings? I receive a wind advisory from WeatherBug and EmergencyEmail network, but not from Weather Depot. I don't think the travel, lawn, and garden maps in Weather Depot are of real value. Weather Channel has the same maps for free.

WeatherConnections responds: While it is true that the Weather Channel has maps for travel, lawn, and garden, they are not the same as ours. For example, our lawn and garden maps show soil moisture and soil temperature across all of the United States with daily forecast maps that go two weeks into the future. The Weather Channel's lawn and garden maps only give present information

It's better to obtain the most accurate information of flight delays from the airline or airport.

WeatherConnections responds: No argument here, but some clarification is needed. Our forecast flight delay maps predict possible weather caused air travel delays out to 60 hours in the future. Unfortunately, neither the airlines nor the airports provide information on delays beyond 6-12 hours from present. We designed our predictive air travel delay forecasts to be useful for frequent air travelers who would like heads up 12-60 hours prior to their trip so they can better plan for potential delays. While there are many sources of near and short- term air travel delay information, no one is offering the type of air travel forecast that we provide

Nexrad radar is available only for local radar. And to get other areas, you must add other cities, requiring a set up, whereas NWS requires entering only a ZIP code, city, or state.

WeatherConnections responds: This is a true, we decided not to offer too much information within Weather Depot believing that the majority of weather information seekers want details specifically for just a few locations: home, work, relative's location, etc. Similar to the NWS sites, we do offer a zip code driven - quick information access for any location function through our website: www.travelforecast.com

Weather Depot has limited information with a couple of satellite shots and movement/strike forecasts while at NWS you can click on "Tropical Weather Update" to access information on the tropics, current, forecast, or historical.

Reviewer 2. It clashed with my firewall for awhile, but I got that ironed out; otherwise, no problems.

Reviewer 3. The weather data usually ran about one hour behind the current time.

WeatherConnections responds: We utilize National Weather Service weather observations in Weather Depot. The majority of National Weather Service observations are taken only once an hour near the top of the hour. Thus, it would not be unexpected that the observation information we display could be as much as an hour old - depending on how close it was the update time from the National Weather Service.

The temperature in the taskbar did not always show completely, sometimes just the numbers, sometimes just the "F", but resizing the taskbar usually fixed the problem. The tool tip that went with the temperature in the taskbar should have included the time that the temperature was retrieved. I had to run the ticker to find out when the temperature was reported. I felt that the crawl at the bottom of the Weather Depot main application window was distracting. I was expecting information and got advertisements instead.

WeatherConnections responds: We do utilize this marquee space at the bottom of the main console to promote various content and features within Weather Depot. Quite simply, there are a lot of features contained within Weather Depot and we want our users to be aware of them. We don't put 3rd party advertising or messaging here. Conversely, Weather Depot does have a ticker which is designed to cycle through summary weather information for the locations a user has set up in Weather Depot - particularly useful when the main console is minimized/hidden. The ticker cycles through current conditions, hour by hour forecast for the next 6 hours, day part (day, night, 2nd day, etc) forecast for the next 2 ½ days, and an almanac

Reviewer 4. I found support to be fast, and got a response within 30 minutes; however, a followup was never received. The current temperature differed considerably from the expected temperature for the next hour in the Hourly Weather Planner, causing one to wonder how reliable the planner could be.

WeatherConnections responds:This can happen - our forecasts are not always 100% correct, and certainly when one is providing hour by hour forecasts for specific zip codes the chance for error grows. However we stand by the value and precision of our forecast weather information and feel it is much more useful than traditional National Weather Service oriented forecasts that generalize a weather forecast over a 12 hour period (e.g. chance of rain, mostly cloudy, highs from 75 to 80)

I didn't like the incessant crawl at the bottom of the console, urging the user to check out "last minute travel deals" and other sales at the Tech Store. Although promised an email for alerts, I never received any such notification, even though I have an always-on Internet connection. The on-screen notification seemed to function well (this feature may be enabled only for standard alerts that would apply more to a widespread audience, such as a hurricane (?)) Most annoying was the use of resources. I installed Weather Depot on my rather antiquated Windows 98 SE and it immediately used 14% available resources from startup, and steadily eroded further resources over a period of an hour or two, making multi-tasking nearly impossible without a crash and reboot.

Reviewer 5. Weather Depot gives the ability to put up an onscreen "ticker" which is a toolbar-like device showing a rotating set of weather conditions, forecasts, etc. This is also where alerts will show when an alert condition is met; however, the ticker is not convenient to use due to the fact that it can only ve placed at the top left or bottom left of the screen. This causes it to cover desktop icons in either position. Future versions of the program should incorporate the ability to move the ticker, and even resize or reposition it vertically or horizontally. A better tutorial would also help. Some points of navigation were hard to understand using the help files and had to be found via trial and error.

Reviewer 6. I didn't like the way it docked itself at the bottom of my screen. I do not have my Start bar "always on top" and I hide it between uses; so, this was a pain in the neck for me. I then found how to move it to the top of the screen, but unlike other docking tools I've used, it didn't move my screen contents down, it just plants itself on top of them. This is obtrusive and needs some work. The ticker itself has an annoying feature in that whenever you click on it, even to bring it to the foreground, the main window pops up.

WeatherConnections responds:We'd like to think of this as a good feature. The user can bring up the minimized main console window of Weather Depot by either clicking on the bottom ticker or by clicking on the current temperature display in icon tray.

Reviewer 7. Offensive, hyper-jiggling, in-your-face ad on main screen of free version, one of the worst I've ever seen. Glue the Marketing Manager's nose to it for an hour and see if he can see straight afterward!

WeatherConnections responds: Unfortunately, although our user base is rapidly growing, we're still relatively small as it relates to options for online advertising. While we strive to eliminate offensive, objectionable, or annoying ads from being shown, we are at times at the mercy of our ad network partner. Technical support only via email and for unstated duration; no specific response time, just "as soon as possible".

WeatherConnections responds: We strive to answer all support questions and problems as quickly as possible whether it is a free or paid user of Weather Depot. One of our key company and product goals is to provide the best possible user support for our software and services.

I question whether most people would find cost of $30/yr worth that compared to other free services or its own, for that matter, although offensive ads on free site might drive you there! The real issue is going to be who gets enough incremental benefit to pay this much for it.

WeatherConnections responds: Great observation, we believe the premium Weather Depot version will appeal to weather and technology enthusiasts who find value in all of the forecast weather content and the overall utility of the Weather Depot software that manipulates it.

The program automatically installed to C-Drive, where I didn't want it, with no option permitted.

WeatherConnections responds: We do this for support reasons. It would be nearly impossible to troubleshoot problems with an installation (often times problem is with individuals unique computer set-up and not the software) if we had multiple ways to install the software.

It refused to permit normal Windows Notepad copy and print of the license and there was no way to print Tutorial Screens.


Other comments?

Reviewer 1. I reviewed the premium service of Weather Depot as a weather enthusiast, not an expert, but someone who has a fascination with it. The basis for comparison is two free weather sites, National Weather Service and The Weather Channel. Weather Depot is a nice program and provides everything on your desktop. But since you have to be connected to the Net to get updates, it's just as much effort as going to a free Web site to get the information.

WeatherConnections responds: We respectfully disagree. We believe that Weather Depot makes it much easier to access weather information/forecast content and quickly get to exactly the type of information you want vs. the multiple clicks and general lack of organization on most weather websites.

Reviewer 2. The program is a weather enthusiast's dream. You can check just about every aspect of the weather imaginable.

Reviewer 3. None.

Reviewer 4. I like the privacy assurances in Weather Depot. At least one weather service has been known to load in adware and spyware, and it's nice to know the use of this software doesn't compromise our security.

Reviewer 5. Overall, this is a very good program for monitoring current conditions and viewing weather predictions. Most of the forecasting seemed to be at least as accurate as my local news/weather forecast, and having information for multiple cities at my fingertips was very nice indeed. The gardening information was also helpful. While there are a few minor issues that could be corrected in a future version, overall I thought the program was well done.

Reviewer 6. The almanac didn't show the moon phases and I'd like that.

WeatherConnection responds: A Weather Depot software update in late October now includes this features which is contained in the Almanac section (Channel 10) under Today's Weather.

I have Windows 98SE on my laptop and this software uses in excess of 12% of my system resources.

Reviewer 7. Good directions and pointers by balloon comments, excellent options menu by geographic location. Needs to define "reflectivity". The minimize button buried at the bottom right tray is unconventional and annoying. How would a user transfer a license to a different machine (no instructions about how to uninstall and/or reinstall.)?

WeatherConnections responds: With regards to the premium (paid) Weather Depot software, we only allow one version of software to be used per computer in order to prevent software piracy, so there is no formal license transfer mechanism. However, we do work with folks as circumstances dictate.

I did not test the accuracy of the weather predictions.


Will you continue to use it?

Reviewer 1. I would not pay for Weather Depot. While its features are OK, they are only fluff to someone like me. Most of its features are free elsewhere.

WeatherConnections responds: While we understand that most people will not pay for Weather Depot, we still hope that they like it enough to use the free version. We have specifically designed our premium version to contain features that are not free elsewhere (personal alerts, hourly forecast maps, daily forecast maps out to 14 days, etc.)

Reviewer 2. Absolutely. I have come to rely on the information provided by Weather Depot. It does all it claims to, and does it well.

Reviewer 3. No, the most important piece of weather information is the temperature, and it did not stay close enough to real time to be worthwhile.

WeatherConnections responds: Our main weather content focus is on the weather forecast (what is expected to happen) vs. current weather observations and conditions (what is happening now) - although we certainly do include the latter. By definition, the only way to get real-time temperature information is to install your own on-site monitoring device - such as a Radio Shack thermometer. For current weather information, we still believe nothing beats stepping outside to experience the weather with the ultimate weather observation system - the human senses.

Reviewer 4. Possibly. I think if my resources become stable enough with the next computer, Weather Depot will be a worthwhile addition.

Reviewer 5. Yes.

Reviewer 6. Probably not on an ongoing basis. My weather needs are modest enough to go to my favorite weather page on the Web, but not enough to use the PC's resources continuously.

Reviewer 7. Yes, because it's a charming little program. But of marginal incremental utility to me over free alternatives. I certainly couldn't justify paying this kind of price, but maybe a market (farming?) exists for it. I certainly wish them well; they've done a great programming job!

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