Not so much a review as an adventure
For several years I had been using CBI – Comic Book Inventory – on iOS. It was pretty nice and did everything I needed it to do for inventory management. Well, thise days are gone. Looks like the developer decided to no longer support it, and it is no longer in the app store, nor would it work for downloading covers. I found this out when I went to sync my collection up on my new phone. Dagnabit – the app wouldn’t load.
So, now I am on an adventure to find a new app to manage my collection. There are a few.
CLZ from collectorz seems pretty good, and more importantly, it has an import feature so I can get my collection loaded into it. It features manual input and barcode input. Could be handy-dandy for updating my collection. Nifty neato. Barcode scanning is new for me as CBI did not have that feature. Importing my data from CBI to the Comic Connect website worked okay, but the collection came up as being “unlinked”. Weird. I was then able to load a set of comics to the iOS app, however only very little data shows up. There is a feature on the iPhone version of the app to update the data from the core. Supposedly it exists on the iPad as well, however the app layout and function is a bit different, and getting to the point where I can sync to the core database is not as intuitive. Be that as it may, on the iPhone, it doesn’t work, probably because my data is “unlinked” Email sent to their support on this issue. The import database process could use some over-hauling.
Adding new comics is, quite frankly, a breeze. Go to the add issue, enter in a title, and it pulls up a list of issues, just select the ones you want to add, and poof, they’re in your database. This will also make it a bit easier to get my data from the old CBI app loaded if this “unlinked” comics issue can’t be resolved. A bit time consuming, but, not too bad.
Barcode scanner – well, like everything else I have used barcode scanning, takes getting the camera angle right, but once it pics up the barcode, poof, item is added. Slick!
Next up – iCollect
There seems to be two versions on the Apple App Store – one labelled iCollect, the other Comic Book Collector Database, both from iCollect, and both are pretty poor compared to CLZ. My adventure at this point is looking pretty grim.
iCollect – well, it has a nice look, but the interface to enter comics manually is pretty kludgy. Also, the import database from a different app requires sending a file to their support desk, and they will, supposedly, convert it to the correct format for their app. Say what? Really didn’t like the initial pass on this app.
Comic Book Collector isn’t much better, and seems to be specifically designed for iPhone, not iPad, which is wonky. The manual add is similar to iCollect, as is the process to import your existing data. The database to manually add issues seems to be a bit better, but, wow, kludgy as all get out as you have to add cover images before you can save it to your database. Say what? Yeah, really.
All three of these apps cost a few bucks to unlock so you can add more than a few comics. For me, no biggie. I have no issue paying for software that I will be using. And as they supply cloud support for syncing across multiple devices, then definitely worth the bucks.
Final note – this is my take on these apps. You should test them for yourself, and any others you run across and see which one floats your boat. Right now, I am looking at CLZ as being new comic inventory app. The only hangup I have with CLZ is the import my old data process. Assuming that can get hammered out, it will be a major win. And even if it isn’t I think I can fairly easily get all of my current data loaded in a few hours (I have several thousand comics spanning roughly 60 years).
