Aquazone Desktop Garden Reviewer's Comments
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Vivid backgrounds and tranquil lighting make Aquazone Desktop Garden by Allume Systems a relaxing and fun virtual aquarium for all ages. You feed the fish and watch as they gobble up the food with realistic mannerisms, or you can simply sit back and watch them interact.
The program comes with 20 different fresh-water and salt-water fish and eight different tanks, one of the two programs on our list that offer both saltwater and freshwater fish. The graphics are pretty good, especially for the smaller fish. The scenery is vibrant and exciting, too.
Unfortunately, this program suffers from some of the same problems that its sister program, Seven Seas Deluxe, has. The movements of the fish are often unnatural and sometimes they don't look as real as they could. Add to this the fact that Desktop Garden is just Seven Seas Deluxe with fewer fish and backgrounds and the program starts slipping in the ratings.
Aquazone Desktop Garden Screenshots. Click to Enlarge
Ease of Use:
Desktop Garden uses a simple pop-up menu to make changes in the fish, scenery, or sound in the program. But we found it frustrating that the menu couldn't popup while the program ran in the background, like many other programs do. The menu is slightly unclear when it comes to audio and visual information, too. But the interface is still very useful. We do like the fact that there is a dedicated mini menu that can appear in the program, and the mini menu has a dedicated button for switching between fullscreen and windowed modes, something that most other programs lack.
Feature Set:
Aquazone Desktop Garden does a good job of providing realistic tanks and a variety of fish, though there is a much smaller selection than that found in Seven Seas Deluxe. One of the best parts about the program, though, is the expansion packs that can be bought to increase the number of fish and backgrounds.
One feature we had fun with is the ability to add your own background. You can add a picture of your living room, so the tank appears to be in your home even at the office. Or, put a picture of your children behind the tank so it looks as if they are peering in from the other side.
Desktop Garden does not support music playback, but you are able to zoom in and see the fish up close. You can also feed the fish and use a feature that lets you "tap on the glass." The manufacturer says that tapping on the glass allows the user to interact with the fish, but we found that no matter how much we tapped, the fish seldom reacted at all.
Ease of Installation:
Installation was easy; anyone can install and enjoy Aquazone Desktop Garden.
Help/Support:
Allume Systems, a manufacturer known for excellent customer support, distributes Aquazone. You can contact customer support via email or use FAQs page to quickly access information. The thing that we liked the most is that this company is the only one to provide a phone support line, which is often more convenient than email.
Fish:
Aquazone Desktop Garden has some of the best and most realistic fish behaviors that we've seen. The fish appear to swim around the tank as if they were looking for food. You might even see a fish bobbing in and out of a plant or rock. However, they often look a little less than realistic, especially some of the larger fish. If you add some of the expansion packs, you might be disappointed with the scale and appearance of some of the saltwater fish, like the black tip shark.
For the most part they move just like their real-life counterparts, but then they will suddenly perform a maneuver that is completely unnatural, ruining the entire effect of the screensaver. Another problem arises when fish pass each other too close. They often jitter up and down and parts of their bodies seem to pass through other fish.
Scenery:
Eight colorful, exotic sceneries come with the software, lighting effects give the appearance of day or night and Aquazone Desktop Garden's vegetation sways back and forth in the water giving a weightless appearance. That being said, somehow the backgrounds seem less life-like and far more confined than backgrounds in other programs.
Summary:
Aquazone Desktop Garden, while fun, ends up being mediocre at best. Limited selection of fish and unrealistic behaviors make it less valuable than many of our top-ranked programs.
©2008 TopTenREVIEWS, Inc.
