Chartsmith - 1.2.2

I've been using Chartsmith for about three years. It is a nice piece of software, but I believe it is no longer worth it. In the three years that I have used it, there have been effectively no changes to the software: no enhancements, no performance improvements, nothing. Chartsmith also does not perform well with large data sets (upwards of 2000 data points), which is what I keep struggling with. I believe there there is now a superior product from Gigawiz called Citrin. It's not really more difficult to use, is much more powerful and costs less. If Blacksmith had continued to improve the software or lowered the cost, I would say it would be worth it. Since nothing has really changed, and the software is now relatively expensive for what is does, I recommend you look elsewhere.

I'm happy with Chartsmith. I have come to see that this will NOT be a substitute for other applications such as Aabel or DeltaGraph, although I would be very happy if it were. Aabel is my curent favorite in terms of power, features, and potential, but it is way too expensive.
Chartsmith seems to be more oriented towards making "simple" charts. It is an excellent tool for creating business-type presentations, while the other programs seem to be geared towards more scientific uses, and can also do the business-type of charts.
What Chartsmith does, it does very well. It is very easy to use, and has some great features that can save users a lot of time. For example, Control-dragging to change the series order, other combinations for previewing formats/colors, exporting images, etc.
A few months ago I worked on a couple of projects and did all the charts with Chartsmith. We got great results, it was easy to do, and the process was relatively fast.
I just updated one of the projects, and we decided to do the charts whithin Excel this time, since the company does not have Chartsmith or Macintosh computers, and they wanted to be able to have updated charts within the same file. Using Excel took more time, since all of the charts are customized and the default options were not useful. The results were actually quite good, and the company has the advantage that all of their charts will get automatically updated every time they open the spreadsheet and/or add/modify data. In this sense, Chartsmith really falls short. Manually updating the data is a time-consuming process, so working within Excel is really a good alternative in this case.
I was actually surprised by the good quality of the Excel charts. Placing the company's logo in a bar chart looked better in Excel than in Chartsmith. While Chartsmith placed the logo in the front of the bar, Excel placed it in the front, top, and side. The logo was not really identifiable on the top and side, but still it made the chart look MUCH better. Adjusting the gap between bars with Chartsmith "corrected" some of this, but I did prefer Excel. On the other hand, making formatting corrections is a breeze in Chartsmith. With this custom chart, it's not possible to adjust a gap between bars in Excel, since only the space before the first bar and after the last one is adjusted.
With the charts, the Excel file went from roughly 400k to 2Mb. That's when I decided to try Chartsmith again just for comparison, and was pleasantly surprised that the files size was under 500k for the 50 charts.
I used Excel 2004 and Chartsmith 1.2.5. Chartsmith can get a bit slow on my G4/800 with 1GB of memory, OS X 10.3.4.
I would love to see an easy way to automatically update data from Excel or other programs, as well as speed improvements. Having said that, I have really liked the previous updates, customer support was great when I needed it a couple of versions ago, and the November deal was GREATLY appreciated. Thanks for the tip. Overall, highly recommended, especially if they decide to have another deal. I would give it a strong 4-stars, but to compensate for my previous review, and given the great price they had during November, they deserve a higher overall mark of 5-stars.