 "It worked for me, but don't get your hopes up." | 2009-09-09 |
| - Reviewed By steve_hoge |
Unlike some others I didn't have any problem getting this unit setup on Grandma's wifi network with WEP security.
Over time, however, it did need to be rebooted when it lost connectivity with the network. This is made most difficult because there's no power switch - you have to unplug the power supply connector.
The picture was decent, though the frame's firmware was apparently hard-coded to perform randomly selected but uniformly buttugly transitions between each photo. I never was able to find a way to select just a nice slide or fade. And the frame's UI, implemented by impenetrably black buttons located on the back side of the bezel, was the suckiest slideshow controller I've ever used.
The unit did the very basics of what was advertised, and I have to say that I had the best luck simply emailing individual photos to the frame's email address. However it was entirely unclear what its capacity was and when it would decide to cycle out old photos and refresh new photos from the server.
I thought the RSS feature would be the best aspect of this system since I could subscribe the frame to feeds from albums I already had online. Although it would pick up photos from the feed, again it was entirely unclear how to force it to refresh itself from new data in the feed. In the end it would just cycle through the same dozen or so photos, leaving hundreds from the feed undisplayed. Sometimes a reboot would force it to fetch new content, other times not.
Managing feeds from the Seeframe website was a totally bogus exercise in frustration, even after they did an entire rewrite of the site circa 2008. The whole thing smelled like the firmware, software and web apps were poorly implemented by offshore contractors not directly connected with the company. Furthering that impression, the online help (don't even hope for a real manual) is poorly translated from somewhere else. They've even outsourced the "customer support" to some online service that is no more than a glorified FAQ.
Some company is going to do this right someday, there are a fair number of players out there now with wifi/internet connected frames. Skip this one. |
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| "How to complicate your life further... and pay for it" | 2009-06-11 |
| - Reviewed By babylonrockersfo |
Bought this item for mom. She's not technical, so I came over and set it up. Within 6 months, the plastic front of the frame broke away from the main frame body, and it is NEVER touched by mom. Meanwhile, the cryptic s/w/website does a bad job of helping manage the images, and the customer support is so bad it might be better if they just charged less for the product and fired the CS "team". Well, cutting edge products, what do you expect? maybe they should go get some product development and support lessons from Apple.
BTW, I got a reply from the support people - it was so hilarious I thought I'd add it to my review, so you know what you're in for:
"Our apologies, Would you please try to plaster it with some double-face-plaster. Since if it work fine ,but we swap a new frame to you ,will spend too many times and some money , and you need return the old frame yourself.
Deeply sorry for our product."
(I am NOT making this up...) |
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 "Cant connect to WPA networks" | 2009-04-03 |
| - Reviewed By User: A2H5V1367XR8KH |
I've been using this frame sense Christmas of '08.
I have it set to turn off at 11pm and turn back on at 9am. Every other morning there is a message saying "FAILED TO CONNECT TO NETWORK". I have to manually scan and accept the network to connect to the frame when this happens. When I emailed tech support about this, this is the exact copy and paste reply I received, typos and all:
"please try moving the frame closer to the hub for a better connection.In the mean time,please be advised to change your router as OPEN mode or set it running IEE802.11b&g,WEP mode ,for the frame can detect the Wifi more easily."
I responded that the router is 15 feet away line of site from the frame and shows up as full signal strength on the frame. And that changing the security mode to a less safe one was not an option and I received this email:
"Our apologies, We have not found good way to solve this issue yet."
So as it stands I have a frame that requires me to manually connect it to my network almost every morning. I haven't tested it yet but I think this issue can be avoided by never putting the frame to sleep, letting it run 24/7, but I assume when you do that you hinder the life of the LCD, but at least you have a product that will do what it should.
The suggestion to change my encryption from WPA to WEP was ridiculous. The product literature says the frame works with WPA but it clearly has a hard time, and making my network less secure as a "fix" for the problem is not really a fix at all. |
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 "All the features you want in a sleek frame" | 2009-02-08 |
| - Reviewed By User: A227LSQAU54OIZ |
I bought a second one of these frames for my parents, after they have seen the one at my in-laws. This is the best frame ever, I set it up, I can manage it over the web, and it just works. I found that some people just want to have a difficult life and expect thousands of options and settings. This frame does not have that, but it doesn't need it either.
I had some problems with a Netgear router and WPA2 AES, changed to WPA TKIP, and everything works great.
The greatest thing about this frame is how easy it is to send pictures there. Just add them to an e-mail(the frame has an address ?????@seeframe.com). THis works great even from my cell phone. It makes it easy for my brother and sister to send pictures there, too.
I really don't see any down-side to this frame. |
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| "Works great, EZ install" | 2009-02-06 |
| - Reviewed By User: A2X9KNIDFXALRE |
I got the eStarling for my Mom, who is not tech literate. The product was easy to set up and works just as it's supposed to.
All the siblings are able to add pictures to the display by simply emailing them to the frame. It can also get pictures from social websites and picture services if you want.
Using their website, I can control the settings such as telling the unit to turn on at 6am at off at 10pm.
Most of the deficiencies cited in earlier reviews seem to have been addressed. I think this unit is pretty slick! |
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| "awful. just awful." | 2009-01-03 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1AWBJPV03UWKG |
In all my years of buying from Amazon, I've never been motivated to write a review before. Until now.
We bought two of these frames for holiday gifts this year, with the intention of using them to send new pictures of the grandkid to her grandparents across the country. After a week of trying in two different homes with two different wireless networks, with the help of some extremely experienced IT folks (relatives), we got nothing. The frames turn on, but beyond that, simply do not work.
The in-box documentation is useless, and the website is useless. We emailed customer support, and it took days to respond with a useless reiteration of their poor documentation. They still haven't responded to our follow up queries. I've now contacted customer support twice to request a return authorization code. I sincerely hope that their response is delayed by the holiday and I will hear from them first thing next week, because I will be even madder if they make me fight more to get my money back for these stupid frames.
In short, a wireless frame you can connect to your Picasa or Flickr account is a great concept...but as far as I can tell, E-starling is not the company to execute it.
Don't buy this!!
(and I wish zero stars was a rating option!) |
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