 "It's a start, anyway -- Amazon has a great price, too!" | 2008-07-01 |
| - Reviewed By sanlyn@worldnet.att.net |
| I guess you could say when it come to ease of use -- in terms of just setting up this gizmo and running monitor adjustments -- it gets 4 stars, maybe 5, for ease of use. Install the software in a minute, position the sensor, start the program, lie to the software and say your monitor has no controls of any kind (Spyder will then kick off a completely automated, hands-free scan), and less than 10 minutes later you're home free. Unfortunately after over a dozen runs on 3 of my monitors, it's evident that Spyder's programmers are fascinated, maybe even obsessed, with the color RED. They must figure the redder the better, I guess. Finally I ignored one of their iron-clad rules: rather than leave the room totally dark or covering my monitor with a blanket during the scans, I turned on the rather subdued, soft lighting I use for PC video work (who the %$#&* works in total darkness? Do you? You can't even see your keyboard!). With some gentle ambient worklight (tungsten) nearby, I finally got a really nice adjustment from Spyder. Did a teentsy bit of tweaking with some of DVE's tv test patterns, and now it's about right. Tip: Don't calibrate in total darkness, run it in the same light you use for PC work, short of flashing strobes and circus floodlights. Caution: this will not make games or videos look "better" on your PC. Media players, games, and most other Windows programs have no way of recognizing .icm color profiles. Photoshop Pro does ($600), and Sony Vegas Pro does ($800), and a few Windows games that need $400 graphics cards -- but Windows Media Player, PowerDVD, most freebie photo printing programs, most Kodak photo-CD browsers, most consumer video editors, and most digital camera utilities do not use Windows or Mac color profiles. For that you'll have to run a manual setup on your CRT and push your own sliders. Sorry, LCD's have notoriously goofy picture controls, so don't be surprised if manual doesn't work with LCD's (anyone who uses LCD's for graphics work is fighting a losing battle anyway). Subtract 1 star because Spyder2 told me that before adjustment my monitor was too green. It wasn't. It was too blue. Otherwise, Spyder2 on auto did neat, quick work on 3 monitors and two laptops. With some qualifications in mind, I'd recommend Spyder2 over the usual calibration videos or test pics. |
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 "spyder2 suite windows" | 2008-05-31 |
| - Reviewed By thewizzard7153 |
| Color Vision Spyder2 suite is Perfect for my needs and even more worked right out of the box no muss no fuss the results were even better than I could have hoped for |
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 "Not worth the effort" | 2008-05-17 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1CAYC6NFJ0OHQ |
| I received the Spyder2 Suite on April 3, 2008. Installation was straight forward with no problems. It appears to do what it says it will do, however, two weeks later when it was time to recalibrae, found a problem. The recalibration would reach the point of "Adjust Color Temperature Preset". Next step should be "Attach colorimeter to screen" but it bypassed this step and went to "Remove colorimeter" and loops back and forth between these two steps. Finally I would have to close the program. The only way I can recalibrate the monitor is uninstall and reinstall the software.br /br /Went on line and registered with Datacolor (Colorvision) and they said I would receive an email so as to validate my email address. To this date (May l7, 2008) haven't received anything from them. After two weeks and no email, sent them an email explaining the situtation and ask for help in this matter. Still haven't received anything from Datacolor. Called their 800 support line and was told that he couldn't help as his departmnet doesn't handle the problem of not receiving emails, but he did give me an email address for downloading v2.3 as I was using v2.2. My ATT browser said it couldn't find the address. Finally sent a letter, by mail, to the General Manager directly, asking for help on this matter, as you can't receive support or download software updates without being registered. That has been two weeks now and no reply. So I guess this is my problem now and it appears Datacolor just doesn't care about it's customers. Also didn't find out that the Spyder2 Express and Spyder2 Suite are discontinued products until almost a month after purchasing. I would go to another company.br /br /I would have gave Spyder2 Suite 4 maybe 5 stars if I wasn't having the problem and could get support. I didn't purchase it for profiling the printer as other previews said this sucked anyway. The Suite has more options than the Express.br /br /UPDATE (May 19,2008)br /After trying one more time, I called the 800 support line and explained my problem again and was transfered to someone else to resolve this issue of not receiving an email so as to validate my account. While my email address was registered with Colorvision (Datacolor) it couldn't be explained why I couldn't receive an email from them. Tried registering with an disposable email address and this worked. I was able to click on the link and validate and was able to download v2.3. After uninstalling v2.2 and installing v2.3 it would still skip the step of "Attach colorimater". Only by deleting the profile created by Spyder2 by going to Control PanelDisplayAdvancedColor Management was I able to calibrate, and right afterwards to make sure I could, recalibrate the monitor, but by only deleting the profile created first. If I don't, it will bypass the step of attaching the colorimeter.br /br /I will now give it a 4 STAR RATING and not a 5 star because of all the problems experienced and would recommend this product to others.br / |
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| "Will improve your display's color reproduction!" | 2008-03-01 |
| - Reviewed By jspitznas |
| I was surprised how much it changed the color reproduction on the monitors -- especially since I wasn't really sure the monitors needed calibration. The first calibration on the 17" MacBook Pro did NOT produce good results; Apple recommends using a target gamma of 1.8 so that was what I initially used and the resulting calibration was horrible. I reran the calibration using the target gamma recommended by Spyder (i.e., 2.2) and got great results. Since then I've calibrated two other monitors and gotten very good results -- the tones look truer and the colors are more vibrant. My only regret is that I didn't shell out the extra $$ for the Pro version so that the software would remembered which monitor was being calibrated. |
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 "Terrible software" | 2008-03-01 |
| - Reviewed By tidal_wave_one |
| Seems like it would be a great product if the software wasn't so bad. The profile chooser software is terrible. Constant messages and errors and they still haven't fixed it. I have to constantly select the correct color profile at bootup and nothing I've tried seems to fix that. When I do run with the color profile, it's great though, so I give it 3 stars. 5 is the software was good. |
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| "Great product." | 2008-02-01 |
| - Reviewed By edgardo_font |
| A very easy and inexpensive device to calibrate your display. I never expected such a great improvement in my iMac monitor after calibrating it with the Spyder2 from Color Vision. I recommend it highly. |
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| "Easy monitor calibration at the right price" | 2007-11-16 |
| - Reviewed By warshado |
| I installed this product on my PC and there were no problems. The most difficult thing was figuring out the monitors directions for adjusting the color settings. The calibration seems to have worked perfectly, or at least, as perfectly as I need for my purposes. I had been getting prints that did not match the monitor which wastes paper, ink and time. I am a little sorry I didn't buy the spyder2 pro instead of the suite. I bought the suite thinking that it would have provided means of calibrating my printers, but it doesn't offer much in that direction. Also, Spyder3 is already out, but I figured I didn't need professional level calibration and this product was much less money. |
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| "Works as advertised, but tedious" | 2007-08-06 |
| - Reviewed By User: A2SF8PFFLRGWV4 |
The monitor profiler works great.
The print fix plus software is a print tweak, repeat affair. I needed five tries to get close on the first paper I tried. |
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 "Buggy. When it works it's great, IF you can get it to work." | 2007-08-02 |
| - Reviewed By mrccn |
Works great, but MANY people have had a hard time getting the computer to recognize the device. Software will often say "Please plug in your sensor", when the device is already plugged in!
IF you get it to work you will be VERY happy with the results-- just be prepared for an endless series of downloading drivers, re-installing, re-booting, etc, etc. |
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| "Glad I bought it!!" | 2007-08-01 |
| - Reviewed By centurion12 |
| For the longest time my photos did not print out the way it looked on my monitor. After doing a little research I got the Colorvision Syder2 to calibrate my monitor. Its easy to use. Within minutes my monitor was calibrated. I gave it a test and immediately printed out a photo. It was exactly what I was looking for. It printed out great. Monitor calibration is what I needed and the Colorvision Spyder2 did a great job. |
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