Well, whodathunk it? Sometimes salvation comes from the most unexpected place.

I had just spent the better part of two weeks fiddling about testing the latest cataloguing softwares, with no luck whatsoever. 

It is very important to me to have a good, reliable catalogue. Over the years, I have purchased duplicate items on many occasions. An organized system of cataloguing would have prevented this. Fortunately I am usually able to resell or trade the duplicate items, but usually at a loss in time and money (it's difficult to recoup those postage costs).  

I also want a reliable catalogue so that I can retrieve a collectible I want to randomly have a look at, or if someone emails me asking if I know anything about a particular item, or asking for photos of it.

Also, an organized  catalogue actually saves memory on my computer-no duplication of photos or items. I have those in spades right now.

And it saves me having to rephotograph items for Ebay or trade purposes. Under my current spreadsheet system, it's a nuisance to recall items and find the photographs, so much so, it's easier just to take new photos and scans. Talk about a time killer. Aaargh!

So rght now, I have a  loosely organized, seperate folder of photos on my desktop, for auctions that I am prepping for Ebay.

One Sunday morning, as I was scrolling through the auction folder, using the Windows Photo Gallery on my new Vistas laptop, it suddenly hit me. Bam!!!! At the bottom of the gallery screen is a small area where you can enter tags, titles, comments and other information.  Why hadn't I noticed this before? Could it be?

To my astonishment, and somewhat to my shame (since I constantly bellyache about the difficulties of learning Vistas.....yes, it IS just like the commercials with the cool Apple dude and the Vistas geek) I realized I have exactly what I want built in on  WIndows Vistas Photo Gallery. It's just regular photo files, tweaked with descriptions.

One of the features of Windows Vistas is an Explorer type Google search, everywhere on the computer. You can search a folder, file, desktop, programs, even an entire hard drive, or go to the internet. Simply enter your search term in the Google box and voila! If it's on your computer, a list of matching items comes up in a split second.

It's that simple. No hassle, no fuss, Google search and Windows Photo Gallery came free with the laptop. I've checked the two other Vistas laptops in the house, both by different manufacturers, and they both have them, too, so it must be integral to Windows Vistas.

Since it functions off the most basic, simple of Windows folders, it is uber quick to load, easily customizable, and most thrillingly.....stable.   It doesn't lock up my computer like several of the software programs I tested!   

I can put as many search terms in as I want, I can enlarge, expand, and email directly out of it. I can search by title, tags, "author" and several other fields. The only field that does not seem to be searchable is the comments field, but who cares?Stick whatever you need to search under tags.  I'm just so happy to be able to enter any comments at all, it just doesn't matter.

In one hour, including tweak and experimenting time, I have managed to catalogue my entire collection of AOME figures. I even found a shortcut, and hope to have my Toybiz figures set, which is twice as big, knocked out in half the time.

I have everything organized by type: bookmark, CDroms, AOME, food, ephemera, etc.  For example, I simply select all in the Toybiz folder and rename everything "Toybiz".  I also tag everything as "toybiz; figure". Then, as I individually rename and retag each item, I just add the words Frodo, Sam, Prologue Elf, etc. to the existing captions. Easy as pie.

I'll do the same thing with more complicated categories such as bookmarks, renaming  and retagging them in batches "Bookmark Italian"  and then going back and adding in the character's name, and any comments, such as "in house set", etc.

There is even a 5-star rating system at the bottom. Perfect for rating items on a scale of common to rare.

The captions even bring up the date of the original photograph, which is rather nice, because it gives me a (rough) idea of when I purchased the item.

Also, since my website limits images to a maximum of 640x480 , Windows Photo Gallery gives me the size of the photo, so I know instantly if I need to resize to add the item to my website- something I can easily do by simply rightclicking the image to open in  Irfanview   (If you don't know Irfanview, it is a free, downloadable image manipulation software that is so easy to use, a five year old can do it.)

Being Windows based, I can easily cut & paste an item if I need to move it to another folder, something I already foresee happening as I struggle with where to put certain items. (Should the Burger King Toybiz Uruk-Hai Toybiz figure go in "Food" or "Toybiz"? What about the Pringles Point of Sale Poster Display? Food, Posters, or POS? Oh, those Pez cards.....ay yi yi!)

Being easily searchable, I'll be able to find these cross-category items immediately.

Drag and drop is a cinch, of course, and none of the commercial softwares I checked into made it easy to email photos of items. Are you joking? This is Windows, baby!  How much easier can you get to email a jpg out of Windows?

It will also be extremely easy to back up the files, something that was pretty convoluted on the commercial softwares.

I cannot keep track of values, but I had stopped doing that ages ago, since the values are so inconsistent, often literally depending on what's "hot" at any given moment on any given day. (Did anyone see the Galadriel snowglobe that sold for $192.50 yesterday? Yikes!  Be sure to read my article on insuring your collection. )

So far I see no downside to Windows Photo Gallery. Simple, professional, idiot proof, everything I wanted, and I would have even been willing to pay extra bucks for it, to find it was all included in the basis computer anyway. Wow!

I am a Windows Vista convert, disciple, whatever right now. Besides. I never trusted cool Apple dude. It was the Nehru collar.