Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The other reviews lead me to believe this was the frame I was looking for - remote management of photos for my parents, what a great idea. It is a great idea, but so far their implementation falls short of that goal. Please note that I actually bought a Second Pulse frame from a local store because I couldn't believe the issues I was encountering. With both frames running side by side it is pretty certain that the issues I am experiencing are not isolated to just my frame or frames, but rather are shortcomings in how Kodak has set up the frames and their intended interaction - or lack thereof - with the Kodak Pulse website. Here are the fundamental issues and problems: - Pulse Frames do not return information to the Kodak Website. - Kodak Website's report of photos on the Frames may not be correct. - No ability for remote delete of ALL Pulse Frame photos. - No ability for remote awarness of incomplete transfer. - No refresh from server option on the Pulse Frame - No thumbnail review on Pulse Frames. - Poor transceiver strength. - Very limited transition options between photos. - With no folders, the claim of 4000 pictures would be a confusing mess. Kodak has setup the Pulse Website to be one-way communication to the frames. You upload your pictures to the website or email them, and the Website sends them to the frame, and reports to you how many pictures are on the frame. But this isn't always true as it is strictly based on the photos received by the Kodak Website. In testing , I would upload 40 pictures at a time and found that repeatedly the frames (both of them) would each receive only about 4 to 6 of those uploaded pictures, yet the website would tell me that all 40 pictures were there. It didn't happen every time, but frequently enough to be a concern. As the intent is to have my folks in another state see different pictures based on different events, changing the photo library currently displaying on a monthly basis was the major desire behind the selection of the Kodak Pulse. It's failure to permit this to occur reliably is a huge problem. Because the frames are communicating over the wireless network and receiving photos that have been uploaded to the Kodak Pulse Website, your system should not matter. Whether dealing with a Mac, or PC (Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer) my results are the same - the photos do get to the Kodak website, but they don't always get to the frames. It's also not the same photos that always fail, suggesting that it's not an issue inherent to one photo or another. According to Kodak Technical Support the frames do not report basic details, like how many photos are actually present back to the Kodak Website. So if the frame doesn't get all the photos intended, you will never know if you are only looking at the website. I also learned that if local photos are uploaded to the frame via a memory card or USB jump drive, the website doesn't receive any information about these new photos. Even a simple indicator that local photos are present would be nice and helpful to a remote administrator. There is also no way to actually see thumbnails of the photos on the frame - you can scroll through them, but it's a random presentation so you may see the same photo multiple times before you confirm which photos you have and which never got there. I have devised a workaround that almost guarantees that the photos do get there, but it is a pain, and can result in unknown duplicate pictures on the frame - which will remain until they are manually deleted at the frame. The workaround is this - I upload a folder of pictures and then as soon as the upload has completed and the first few pictures are arriving on the frame, I switch over on the website and DELETE the very first picture received - which is also the LAST picture uploaded. Then I go back to the upload screen and reselect this one deleted photo and upload it again. This seems to force a refresh to the frame and nearly all the pictures will come through. The one that was deleted may or may not come through even though it will show up on the Kodak website. In other words the Website may tell me that I have 45 pictures on my frame but I may only have 44. In other instances the delete and re-upload results in a double of that one picture on the frame, such that the frame says it has 46 pictures while the website says the frame has only 45. Deleting from the website permits the double image to remain on the frame - the only way to remove this is to manually delete from the frame. To be clear, on the Kodak Website you can certainly see a display of what pictures are supposed to be on the Pulse Frame. You can select one or all of them and delete them. If you delete all of them the site will tell you that there are no pictures on the Pulse Frame. But if there was a duplication of one or more pictures as a result of the less than assured transfer from the Website to the Frame, those duplications will stay there on the Pulse Frame and unknown to the Website, even though they originated from the Website. Both Pulse frames do this and I have had lengthy conversations with Kodak Technical Support about this behavior. Having a "Refresh from Server" button on the Pulse Frame would go a long way in helping keep the frame in proper sync, and this has been suggested to Kodak. I also found that emailing photos directly from Aperture (Mac app) by clicking the email icon after selecting a series of photos resulted in only the first two (2) photos being received. Switch the order around and still only the first 2. Dragging and dropping into email, exporting and then dragging and dropping into email or sending from iPhoto does get all the intended photos to the Kodak website, so it seems to be a quark with Aperture - but assurance that the photos will go from the Kodak Website to the Pulse frame is anything but certain. I sent one Pulse frame to my parents as that was my original intent. I have now discovered yet another frustrating behavior. Their wireless router is in one room and the Pulse frame they desire to have in another. It's signal strength is sitting at about 45% and occasionally it looses the network. When this happens it reverts to the base setup - asking for a choice of language and for you to select a network. The suggestion to put the frame next to the wireless router is not practical as it defeats the ability to enjoy the frame in the desired location. While there are some folks in the Kodak Tech Support group who seem earnest in their efforts to help, others take a canned approach - sending back instructions for how to set up the frame in the first place. If I was not on the network , I would get nothing. Truly there is nothing more annoying then sending in details of a problem and having the tech support group fail to even read your comments before sending out a worthless suggestion. The Picture quality is great, and when all the photos actually get to the Pulse it's nice. The second Pulse frame will live closer to me at my in-laws which also affords me the opportunity to check on it. With a capacity sufficient for 4000 photos it would be nice if you could organize them into folders - and then display one folder and not another. But that's not an option. The transitions are also very simple. That's fine - I wanted display quality, but some other choices would be nice. So in the end it's a great concept and when it actually works as intended it will be great. If you are willing to go through extra steps like the upload - delete - upload I describe above to insure that transfers have occurred, great. But it is a pain. Resolution of these issues should be achievable by software upgrade, I hope. But until then the Pulse Frame falls short of expectations.