KOSOVAR1  I contacted the developer and was surprised to receive a response within two hours, along with the aforementioned (by Xeric Design) beta of EarthDesk attached. I installed beta 2 of version 5.0.1 and Voila! cloud images display now perfectly. Xeric Design's website references the known bug, although the wording there was much vaguer than how the developer explains it here. I'm living in Germany, using a brand new iMac running OSX 10.5.7 with the english module active, but with the international preference pane setting for German numbers formatting. That appears to have been the problem, but once again, EarthDesk works now without any further tinkering. Now that it works and because it seems the upgrade might be a bit snappier than version 4, I'm doubling my previous the rating, but especially for the super-fast email support.  
(Version 5.0)

KOSOVAR1  I've always liked this program when it worked. It worked well for a couple of years after I first bought version 1 or 2 (?). Then I upgraded to version 4, but it was months before I could get it to display satellite cloud images. Everything else worked OK, except for it drawing a bit heavily on system resources and being sluggish. Yesterday I upgraded--fool that I am!--to version 5 in spite of my past headaches with EarthDesk. Since then I've spent hours trying to figure out why, once again, the cloud image won't display. Since the time I was having problems with version 4 of EarthDesk, I'd switched from a Powerbook Pro 17" to a new iMac 24" and OSX version 10.5.7. The preference pane confirms "Cloud image downloaded:" with a specific date and time, but it also displays "Cloud image captured: Never" So what does this mean? I've already repaired permissions, reinstalled the preference pane, discarded the old cloud image manually and waited for the re-download, removed the old preference files, restarted, tinkered with preference pane settings, restored system permissions, over and over, and still no clouds. I am going to contact the developer again, and wait for his advice on something I haven't tried already.  
(Version 5.0)

AAANOUEL  Too heavy...

My 4Mgb RAM used more than 50% on it.

So I got rid of it.  
(Version 4.8)

KOSOVAR1  After purchasing and using EarthDesk for a couple of years, it simply stopped working on my notebook as of a month ago. I've tried every problem-solving trick I know (including re-installation), but EarthDesk just sits there displaying nothing. Before this, Earthdesk worked perfectly and was a very nice program which has become useless on my MacBook Pro running 1.5.4.   
(Version 4.3)

AWT  Requires a lot of memory, uninstallation prodedure provided only on support developers site. Better would be a, uninstaller as you have to go through user and home libraries, delete caches, preferences and so on. Anyway nice to look at sometimes.  
(Version 4.0.1)

PETR1  YES! Untill now the EarthDesk used to be the only breath-taking software like this.

But since OSX Planet was launched couple of day ago am afraid EarthDesk will lose many customers. I mean have a look for yourself at http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/13521

It's showing not only earth and clouds, but satelittes, storms, earthquakes and all planets. It's just freaking ahead of EarthDesk. Sorry.  
(Version 4.0.1)

XERICDESIGN  80MB of this is a cache on disk that will be purged if other apps need the space... the rest depends on the number as resolution of your displays.  
(Version 4.0.1)

_RONDYKES  not too stoked w/ this paid upgrade. just paid in sept for 3.x license now have to pay again? will stay with vesion 3 for now, there are really no new features anyway.  
(Version 4.0.1)

AMBERV  I really like the quality of the image that EarthDesk puts out. It feels a lot nicer than the competition. However, this last "upgrade" seems, well, pointless? I'm not so sure I dig the move to a preference pane. What is the rationalisation for this? It isn't a system level task. If they merely wanted to get it out of the dock, a menu controller would have sufficed. So, I've got one more thing cluttering up system preferences. Meanwhile, now that it is no longer a regular application, if it crashes I have to load up Activity Monitor to fix it.

There is no way I would have paid for this upgrade. As it is, I got it because I *just* bought a 3.x license a week ago. Now, I wish I had kept the DMG for the 3.x version, because I rather liked it better.

There is nothing -- nothing -- upgraded except for where it runs from. Everything else as far as I can see is feature for feature identical.  
(Version 4.0.1)

UMIJIN  I really dislike the way this update is announced/distributed without any clear indication that owners of previous versions have to purchase an upgrade license.

There's no indication of it on the install .dmg. Worse, when you type in your old serial number, there is no indication of why it doesn't work. The only way one can find out that he/she has to purchase the upgrade is that you have to dig on the xeric website to find it.

Regardless if this is intentional or not, it leaves a bad taste in the mouth for owners of the previous version.

I purchased ED version 3.5.5 earlier this year, and frankly I'm not sure having a pref panel version of the same app is worth the upgrade price. I doubt I'm the only one who feels this way.  
(Version 4.0)