Erby,
No...I am not trying to promote our software.... but I am actually trying to get inspectors to understand the difference in the MANY software packages out there. With over 10 years in the software business for home inspectors I have a pretty good idea of what inspectors want and the confusion that seems to come over them after going to a big show like the national ASHI convention and not knowing the differences. All the software companies do their fancy demos and show all the neat things they can do to their reports but never tell them how much TIME they are going to spend doing all those fancy things to their report. I can tell you are a devoted HomeGauge fan and I have known Russell and Shawn since they first started their company and their software has come a long ways and I am not a person to bad-mouth any of the competitors but most inspectors that use HomeGauge reenter their data after the inspection process as I believe Mike S. in this thread said he does.

Mike...sorry to tell you but there is software out there that is being used that inspectors are actually using data collection software as they are doing their inspection and then printing right on site from that data WITHOUT having to rekey the data again later...or they are creating the Word document equivalent of it automatically....and it is not "canned"...it is the data YOU decided to put in the report....if it seems "canned" then it is because that is the way you worded the comment...not because of the software.

Some inspectors want "Reporting Software" and will never feel comfortable collecting the data electronically while they are doing an inspection and would much rather use a voice-recorder, or use a camera with a lot of pictures, or a pad and pencil, or a clipboard and form or even just their extensive memory. Every inspector has their preferences. I am just trying to help inspectors understand the differences in the 2 main types of software out there.

Jeff Knight
Knights Software Solutions