BigShot Screen Magnifier, v2.10

By Alan Lummus
February 11, 2003

IN SHORT:

PC software for Windows that magnifies your desktop or laptop screen to make reading easier and reduce eye strain and fatigue. You may need a patch to use it effectively, depending upon the particulars of your system, but, all in all, it works as advertised, and technical support is great.

Highly recommended.

Current Price: $99.00 Introductory offer. 20% discount available to NTPCUG members.

"BigShot Screen Magnifier" is an interesting new product, especially if you've ever suffered from eye strain or fatigue while working at your computer screen.

Happily, I've been blessed with good eyes and large screen monitors. Even my laptop has a 16" screen! Generally, I can work all day in front of my computer without difficulty. From time to time, though, I find myself rubbing my eyes or taking a walk, just to get away from the computer display… And then there's the ache in my neck and shoulders that comes from sitting at a desk all day typing…but that is another story, and I digress.

Like many of us, you've probably seen and/or tried the stick-on, clip-on, or magnetically held-on screen filters/magnifiers, but they offer only a small amount of magnification, if any. Worse, they are often hard to read through, totally defeating their intended purpose of making your life easier.

Enter "BigShot Screen Magnifier" from Ai Squared. BigShot is a software solution to those small icons and tiny type. It makes reading easier by increasing the apparent size of your computer's display, whether desktop or laptop, in 20 even increments from 105% to 200%.

Using what Ai Squared describes as "variable magnification technology", the product magnifies your choice of either your active window or the entire screen, and then enables you to zoom around by simply moving your mouse. The software scrolls your screen automatically to keep your work in view, even sensing drop-down menu selection, etc. Whether you are typing, using your mouse, or entering control codes, BigShot keeps your current work in focus, whether you're working in a spreadsheet, word processing program, database program, or virtually any windows based program.

Installation Problem - and Solution

My copy of the software arrived on CD-ROM, and after reading the installation instructions and complete User's Guide in about 10 minutes (Yes, I'm one of those anal-retentive personalities.), I completed a successful installation in about five minutes. During the installation, you are urged to create a "restore point" before proceeding with the installation, and you can do so without having to leave the installation program. You can also choose whether to put an icon on your desktop or load the software each time Windows loads. I chose to create a restore point and place an icon on my desktop.

As soon you load the program, a small "always on top" toolbar appears that provides easy access to all of BigShot's options, including zooming (intelligently moving around) the full screen or active window, enable/disable zooming, magnification level, exit BigShot, more settings, and close the taskbar. You can easily move the toolbar to any location on your screen, making it easy to use, and the key combination ALT-HOME is a toggle hotkey to alternatively hide or show the BigShot toolbar.

I then loaded and ran several pieces of my personal productivity software, and all went well until I decided to see how the program worked with a different screen resolution setting. Now, I usually keep my monitors at 1024x768 as I do a lot of web design work. I can take most of my monitors up as high as 1600x1200 and as low as 640x480, and I often do when testing the appearance of different designs for different viewer monitor settings. Suffice it to say that I was most troubled to find that with BigShot loaded, any time I tried to access the Settings tab of my Display Properties, my system rebooted!

I uninstalled the BigShot software and my system returned to its perfect working order. Upon reinstalling the software, the problem occurred again and then disappeared once I performed another uninstall.

Perplexed, I called technical support for Ai Squared…and I was astounded! While they didn't provide an 800 number for me to call, a real, live person actually answered my voice mail selection asking for technical assistance, and did so in about 30 seconds! I can't remember the last time I got through to a real, live, knowledgeable and truly helpful technical assistance person without running my blood pressure through the roof as I sat on hold listening to their dreaded elevator music!

Maurie Hill listened to my description of my system and problem, and immediately diagnosed an incompatibility of their software's installation routine and my NVidia video card operating under Windows XP. She quickly e-mailed me instructions and a simple program that removes a system driver their software installs during installation. It took me another 6 or 7 minutes to again install the BigShot software and then run the driver deletion routine, and all was well!  Now BigShot worked as it should and I could easily access and change my Display Settings. Maurie explained that the problem was common to systems running NVidia cards in systems running under either Windows XP and Windows 2000 operating systems. She said Ai Squared was working on a fix for the BigShot installation program, but hadn't gotten it completed yet.

From that point on, I kept the software installed for several days on my main production computer, using it with a variety of programs including: Microsoft's WORD, Excel, FrontPage, Outlook, Outlook Express, PowerPoint, Adobe's Acrobat and PhotoShop, Cool Edit Pro, Quark Express, WINZIP, WinFAX, Synchromagic, Nero Rom Burning Software, and a host of other software titles, and everything worked properly.

Now, most modern software titles have come a long way in the area of accessibility for sight handicapped, with many offering user selectable display settings of the working area. For example, WORD allows you to select up to 500% magnification of your working area. The problem with most of those "built-in" solutions is they don't have any effect on the toolbars and drop down menus that have become so crammed with tiny icons on higher resolution computer screens, and this is why BigShot can be such a big help even on the latest computers running the latest software.

For the small screens of most laptops and desktops under 17", I would consider BigShot Screen Magnifier a "must have" product for anyone who spends more than a hour or two a day staring at the screen.

Competing Products

Turning to a review of the competition was quite easy:  There simply isn't any! I couldn't find any other product that did exactly what BigShot did in magnifying the entire screen or active window. I did find a handy little utility, sold under the name "VisToolBox," that provides a small window of adjustable size that provides a magnified image of the area immediately pointed to by your mouse. It's a handy tool for graphic artists seeking a quick and easy way to view an image or portion of an image they want to examine at resolutions up to 500%, but it would be cumbersome indeed to use when you were typing or doing other data entry.

Now that are several much more expensive programs aimed at vision impaired folks that build upon BigShot's magnification functionality. Ai Squared, publishers of BigShot, also sells "ZoomText," which provides magnifications ranging up to 1600%, advanced edges smoothing, voice screen reading, etc., at prices ranging from $395-595, depending upon whether or not you want integrated screen zooming and voice page reading, and their website for those products is: . Other companies offer products that compete with ZoomText at comparable prices, but no one else seems to have developed a product that clearly is designed for most computer users rather than sight handicapped persons.

In summary, I really liked this product. At its retail price point of $99.00, BigShot Screen Magnifier is a real bargain if you value your eyesight, spend long hours in front of a computer screen, and don't want to invest in a 30" monitor!

If you suffer eye fatigue or strain, I highly recommend you check it out. With a free, fully functional 30-day trial version downloadable from the Internet, coupled with really great technical support, what have you got to lose besides your tired eyes?

-- Alan Lummus      

The author of this review, Alan Lummus, is the SIG leader for NTPCUG's e-Commerce, FrontPage and Audio-Midi SIGs, and Alan is also a member of, and the audio archivist for, the Dallas Symphony Chorus. He is also a commercial webmaster, developing and managing several commercial websites and affiliate programs selling a wide range of products. Alan began using PDP 4's, 8's and 11's, and IBM mainframes during his college education at the University of Texas at Austin in the 1960's, and he's been using mini and micro computers ever since.

Alan may be contacted by e-mail: Click to e-mail Alan Lummus