AutoScreenShot Review

Note: While writing this review I ran into several major bugs.

• Occasionally jumping in processor usage to 100% (and effectively freezing)
• Crashing

As a result, I'm calling this software on-its-way, but giving it a 1 rating because its effectively broken.  The original review is below:


Ultra basic screencasting

Essentially user configured super-basic spyware, the program can also be used to save images as you work for writing usage cases or testing so you can go backward through your steps.  A huge space savings versus

Good

• Only program of its kind that I can find
• Small, easy to use, simple
• Will save screen captures up to one second apart.  Awesome.

Recommendations for use

At startup, change the following options

• If saving to removable media (flash drives), you should use high compression to reduce the writes to your drive (and extend its life)
• Check "Delete duplicates" to avoid having the drive fill up with the same exact picture
• Check "Display the tray icon" unless you want to spy on someone

Bad

• No pause button in the user tray icon.  Its either on and capturing images or shut off in the system tray.
• Won't let you save to anything but JPG, which is not ideal for screen capture.  Should also offer the ability to a low-color PNG file, which would be much smaller and not have the same "artifacts" that JPG files get.
  
• No help file to explain the settings.  I have no idea what "control the actual user session" means.
• No version number unless you start program, enable tray icon, right click on tray icon, and finally select "about".  Annoying.
  
• Creates an "update" folder in the program root directory for no apparent reason.
• As spyware its complete crap.  Even a fairly novice user could do a ctrl+alt+delete and see they don't want to have a program like "autoscreencap" running.  Would need to set the program up as admin and restrict user access to prevent it from being disabled.

Download:

• Portablefreeware's listing
• Official home page

Version: 1.05b
Size:  4.4 megs
RAM Usage:  6 megs
License: Freeware
Score: 1 out of 10 - needs some work to get it out of beta.
In Kitchen Sink Collection: No