Night of the Five Lizards

Tonight I walked into the living room and found FIVE lizards on my window, trying to catch bugs by the light of the incredibly bright lamp I've placed near the window. FIVE!!!!

Broke down and bought the Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer Software, which is supposed to be the best on the market. I'll admit it's very easy to get started with the software, but so far I don't see what all the fuss is about.

First off, this package (like all the others I've tested) has a decidedly modern slant. It really doesn't do a good job of imitating certain features of my 1958 house, especially on detail areas like fireplaces and windows.

The packaging went on (an on and on) about all the choices it offered. Admittedly I've only tried one furniture category, but I'd say three styles of beds isn't choices. They're very traditional beds, too -- not a plain platform bed in the lot. And none of them are studio beds with wheels, which is what my non-traditional bent is screaming for.

The software also lacks a feature all three of the other programs I tested contained -- the ability to import bitmaps as textures. This is very important in some rooms, like my living room, which has a pale pink brick fireplace. BH&G is forcing me to go with a reddish fireplace. I'm not happy. In the other packages I'd just open a brick image in Photoshop, tint it to match my brick, then import the new image into the software, and apply it to my fireplace. Bingo. A fireplace that actually looks like my fireplace. BH&G doesn't have this flexibility, and to me that's a BASELINE feature.