INTRODUCTION

    Spb Software House has
broke into the RSS spotlight recently with its new
release of Insight. Spb’s Insight is a novel,
advanced news reader for Pocket PC that enables
users to read full text articles/messages with
images. Since Spb is the new kid on the block, we
thought a comparison review against the established
Ilium’s NewsBreak would be a great way to explore
both products. So how does Spb Insight measure up
against the competition? Read on to find out!

WHAT’S HOT

    Spb’s latest release brings some very new
and exciting features, including full text articles
and support for GPRS.

• RSS/Atom
  support (0.9x, 1.0, 2.0)
• Full website
  news
• No desktop
  component needed
• Offline
  reading with pictures
• Skin support
• Article
  thumbnails
• One hand
  operation

SETUP

    Spb Insight is available in a desktop installer or alternately, a CAB file. For this review we are using the
desktop installer (Activesync
required). Setup is pretty straight
forward and there isn’t any guess work here. Read and accept the license
agreement then proceed!

   
NewsBreak is also available in a desktop installer
and a CAB file. Like Spb Insight, it is also
straight forward and typical.

PRODUCT FEATURES

    After the installation, Spb Insight will
present you with a few choices to help you get
started. You can select where to store the
downloaded articles and RSS messages for example.
Insight supports memory card storage and will create
the required folder on your memory card.

   
Spb Insight feature a splash screen on first run
where you can then tap the "New" button to get
started adding channels and RSS feeds. NewsBreak
also features a similar screen, so getting started
is not a problem with either application.

   
After we’ve installed both products and gone through
a few basic options we are now ready to subscribe to
some channels and download messages. The choices
between the two programs are similar here. Both
support searching and browsing online channels,
adding a URL directly and importing channels from an
OPML file. Spb Insight does however offer a new
feature not seen in NewsBreak. Local Templates. With
Spb Insight you can use Template files to extract
articles from web pages and present them in a
readable message format. Currently Spb Insight has a
growing collection of Templates that can be
downloaded. Instructions are also provided on their
forum for creating your own templates.

   
When adding channels to either Spb Insight or
NewsBreak, both present you with a similar screen.
Channels are neatly displayed in a categorized
fashion. Looking at these two screens I cant say
that one program has something over the other.
Select your channels/feeds and your good to go.

   
Now that we have our channels and RSS feeds
selected, its easy to see some differences between
Insight and NewsBreak. Insight lists your channels
with the number of articles in each one while also
displaying the channel’s icon (if available). Some
people might prefer the simple display of NewsBreak
and consider it less cluttered-looking.

   
When you select a channel to view, you are presented
with a list of articles. If a picture is available,
Insight will display a thumbnail image for the
article while NewsBreak will display a generic icon.
Otherwise Insight also displays the date for each
article. However the light grey text used for the
date is easy to overlook. NewsBreak will display the
channels logo in the top left corner while Insight
will simply display the channel’s title. From
Insight, its easy to jump to another channel by
tapping the channel’s title in the top left.

   
Here is a side by side comparison of both
applications when viewing an article. Both
allow the text to be resized. Insight will download the
article’s image during an update, while NewsBreak
requires an active internet connection to download
the image(s) as articles are viewed. For this reason
I prefer Insight. I can update all my channels and
have the images for the articles ready to display,
without an internet connection. This functionality
is not present in NewsBreak. So if your like me and
constantly ‘sync and go’ this might be a deciding
factor for you.

   Spb Insight provides users
numerous options for updating, storage connection
options to name a few. From
the General tab you can set options for D-Pad
navigation as well as updating options. The Content
tab allows you to select the location to store
articles and images. You can also set the default
channel properties. The Network tab will allow you
to specify how and when Insight should update
articles.

   From
the Channel properties, Updating tab you can set
channels to auto or manual update. Here you can also
disable image support. From the Cleaning tab you can
limit the number of articles to download and purge
old articles automatically.

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HELP SUPPORTs

    Spb Insight includes a help
file that is installed on the device. Should users
still have questions or issues, there is an
online FAQ. Users can also take advantage of the

online forum, or submit a
support request via email. With all of the
available resources, getting assistance should not
be a problem.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

   
Spb Insight
requires one of the following mobile operating systems: Windows Mobile
2003, 2003 SE or Windows Mobile 5.0 and requires 1.5 MB’s of storage
space. Spb Insight will also run on any mobile phone that uses one of the
above mentioned operating systems, such as the MDA.

    Insight supports the following
screen resolutions:

• 
  240×240 Square Screen
• 
  240×320 (QVGA)
• 
  320×240 (Landscape QVGA)
• 
  480×640 (VGA)
• 
  640×480 (Landscape VGA)

BUGS AND WISHES

   


Although I didn’t encounter any problems or bugs I
did notice that the download time for new articles
was a bit long. Especially compared to NewsBreak.
But we have to keep in mind that Insight is
downloading the images for offline viewing, where as
NewsBreak uses a "Download on demand" approach for
retrieving article images. It is possible to disable
image downloading in Insight and thus the update
time becomes comparable to NewsBreak.

   The lack of a Today plugin was a
little disappointing. Although it is a planned
feature. I would also like to see the light grey
date text changed to a darker color. That would make
reading article dates much easier.

   Otherwise,
I would also like to see a way of exporting articles
for archiving or attaching to an email message as
opposed to emailing a link to the online article. I
think a great way to close out the Bugs and Wishes
section is with a feature matrix.

PURCHASING

   
Spb
Insight can be purchased directly from their
web site, or from
or
PocketGear for $19.95 USD. For the same price, you can buy NewsBreak.

PROS

• Thumbnail
  images display for articles
• Article images are downloaded
  for offline viewing
• Easy one-handed operation
• Templates
  allow users to customize the content

CONS

• No Today
  plugin
• No Keyword notifications
• Thumbnails
  and article images downloading for offline reading
  can be slow

Value
Ease of Use
Features
Overall

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OVERALL IMPRESSION

    Spb Insight is a great article viewer for
people who like to sync and go, and in the end, I found it to be an improvement over Ilium’s NewsBreak. Articles are
downloaded with images and can be viewed offline
anytime, anywhere. The large collection of templates
created by other users, brings new content to your
device that was not previously possible with other
RSS readers.

   Overall
for a v1.0 release, I feel Spb is really on to
something here and I look forward to the integration
with other existing Spb products. At the time if
this review a Today screen plugin has been planned
for a future release. You can
download a trial version from
Spb’s web site.