MORTIMERPA  I was first impressed by shoebox and bought a pro license: it's fast, load better than iphoto to manage large photo collection.

However, now, I would just discourage anyone to go and rely on this application to manage their photo collection. It's buggy and just unreliable. See the rest of my review.

After some time of usage and >30'000 photos entered and catalogued, I found the interface very buggy and missing the promissed "backup" feature... I had to go to complex manual file movements to get it to see photos as backuped...

I had emailed the support about these issues 4 months ago and never got any reply from them.

MORE IMPORTANTLY, apart from stability problem (the app would crash randomly and loose the data you had entered during the session), the missing -- but advertised -- backup feature and the UI bug... this application just breaks down when you try recovering from a backup.

I just updated to leopard, after backing up all the system, my photos and taking care of saving Shoebox database and preferences. After a reinstall, shoebox is unable to reuse the saved database... it just lost the tag data and backup info of 30'701 photos I had catalogued in it.

I already emailed their support 3 times in 4 months with no replies.

This is not worth 30$, not 70$, I won't even recommend it as a free software... even if I was quite positive about it when I first tried it...  (Version 1.7.1)

ANDREW STEWART  This review is to offer balance to my previous one. Since once of my main problems was addressed. Furthermore I learned that the limitation of thumbnail sizes is a problem with OS X itself, that complaint carries less weight as well.  (Version 1.6.1)

ANDREW STEWART  Program has promise but is pretty unrefined at this point. Would be a better value for less $.

My main complaints is the restrictive licencing structure and poor customer service.

You can only install this on one computer. I have my photo library mirrored on my laptop and desktop computers.

When I upgrade my laptop (which I do often) I will have to beg for another license key. I wonder given the developers lousy customer service reputation if I will be able to do this.

Lastly the thumbnails are tiny on a large monitor and can't be resized like in iPhoto.  (Version 1.6.1)

IKEMA  I had many stability problems with Shoebox that were not resolved to my satisfaction. My experience was that the user support was poor (it took a week and a PayPal dispute to just get an email response). $80 is a lot to spend to maybe help organize your pictures. BUYER BEWARE! I'd save my cash and keep looking.  (Version 1.6.1)