Bot News
EdgeGain

By Brian Proffitt

The age of equality is slowly coming upon us: after several centuries of active resistance, men are finally learning how to comparison shop.

Oh, we've done it before, for those big-ticket items like cars, where it becomes a game to see who can walk out of a car lot with the best deal. But for those everyday things, like laundry detergent, snack food, or frozen pizzas, the concept of comparing and using coupons never even enters a lot of men's minds.

Until the shopping bots came along. Suddenly we have what was a stereotypically male activity: having the coolest computer toys coupled with something we generalize men not doing: checking things out before they buy.

This is of course, a very good thing, since in these odd financial times, everyone needs to pitch in and pinch pennies.

There are, essentially, two kinds of shopping bots in the world of the Internet: those that work from a Web site and those that work from your desktop. EdgeGain, from Rasante Technologies, Inc., falls into the latter group.

EdgeGain is not a stand-alone application, but rather a plug-in for Internet Explorer. Once installed, it acts as a toolbar within the the browser, waiting for you to bring up an item in one of the member sites.

Once any item is located, EdgeGain immediately expands a bit in the browser and begins checking other sites for the pricing of the same item. This auto-search feature can be switched off, if you don't want it to fire off every time you're looking for something. You can always click the Start Search button manually if auto-search is turned off.

The interface for EdgeGain is minimal, without being too stark. The placement of the Start/Stop Search control was a bit odd: right in the center of the toolbar. I also wondered why there was a need to have a Tell a Friend About EdgeGain button on the bar, but this wasn't taking up that much room.

I ran EdgeGain for a couple of days, checking out various types of items. It works with a pretty decent number of sites, and in the Configure tool, you can click a button to update the site list whenever you need to.

As for the prices, I have to say that except for one hiccup, EdgeGain did a good job tracking down things that were inexpensive--sometimes very. I think this application would be even better if users could enter their location so sales tax and shipping costs can be computed in the final cost of the items.

After about 40 searches, all but one went off without a hitch. But a search for the "X-Men" DVD had a big glitch: no matter which site I started on, the search for X-Men always turned into a search for "12 Angry Men" (another darn good movie, but not the one I was looking for).

While the interface and the searches were above average, the speed was just okay--it seemed a bit slow regardless of the time of day, and I have a cable modem. Also, my system resources were a bit taxed whenever a search was running. You can fix this by adjusting the amount of bandwidth the bot grabs when running a search--but this can slow the search down even more.

EdgeGain is not freeware; after a free seven-day trial, you need to purchase it ($29.95) if you want to keep it any longer. This could be a keeper, but you should try it out yourself before deciding.