BrightCar mileage tracking software

Tested March 2007

Website: www.brightcar.com

Hot on the heels of GasDandy (below) I was sent a copy of BrightCar for review. This is another vehicle mileage tracker, but it has more complexity to it than GasDandy. BrightCar should be considered more of a car maintenance tracker than just a simple mileage tracker. The major difference between it and GasDandy is that BrightCar has an available online database of over 10,000 vehicle service plans. So how does it work?
Setup is pretty simple and only takes a few minutes. Once the software is installed it prompts you for your vehicle information, year first, then make, then model and options. An initial quirk I noticed straight away is that on first starting, BrightCar expands to full screen. On a 2560x1600 monitor that's quite a smack in the face especially as most of the intial screen is whitespace while you set up the first vehicle. But once you make your selection, it connects to the BrightCar servers and downloads a vehicle service plan specific to your car (you can check on their website first to make sure they have one) then you can resize the window however you like and it's persistent between sessions. The service plans that get downloads are quite, quite comprehensive. When you dig into the details, it gives you everything from the timing of simple oil changes right down to when the track-rod ends need greasing and the window tracks need a lube. Because of this, BrightCar is not so much for the casual mileage tracker - more for the driver who's serious about keeping their car in tip top condition.
The interface is nice to use with the main 'home' page showing a user-definable graph as well as any services due. Entering petrol stops is fairly straightforward and you can put all the usual stuff in there - odometer reading or trip-meter reading, petrol station, price etc. On the home page there's a print function that prints out some basic info on your vehicle. A separate print icon prints out the mileage graph.
One of the plus points about BrightCar is that they seem to be very receptive of customer feedback. The initial version I was sent for review had a couple of ridiculous bugs in it and a particularly annoying mpg graph that stuffed everything close together and overlaid the whole graph with mpg figures. It made it near impossible to read. I mentioned this to their customer support and in the service release that came out a couple of weeks later, they'd modified the mpg graph to have a more laid-back appeal to it, with the mpg figures appearing for any given point when you hover the mouse over it. In this day and age of get-it-done-now-and-bugger-the-customer, it's nice to come across a company who still takes the time to listen to its customers.

Summary

BrightCar or GasDandy? I'd say if you're a casual driver who'd like to keep track of basic cost and gas mileage, either would do - probably GasDandy simply on price though - BrightCar is $39.95. That being said, if you're serious about tracking full vehicle maintenance and all the other miscellaneous expenses to boot, then BrightCar might be more the piece of software for you. It costs more but then it's more feature-rich. QED. Fortunately, both offer trials from their site so you can try before you buy. One last thing with BrightCar - it worked perfectly at home on my DSL connection but at my office where we have firewalls and proxy servers, it had a bit of a panic attack trying to reach the BrightCar servers. I think it was our proxy server that was messing it up.

Special offer

coupon If you're interested in a license for BrightCar, car-bibles.com has negotiated a 20%-off deal. Click on the coupon on the right to get the deal. When you click through to their "buy now" page, you'll see the discount applied to the total cost.

GasDandy mileage tracking software

Tested February 2007

Website: www.gasdandy.com

If you've read my fuel & engine bible, you'll know I use an online mileage-tracking service from GreenHybrid.com. When I was looking around for a way to track my mileage, there were a few bits of software here and there but none of them quite did what I wanted. In February 2007 I discovered GasDandy. The idea is really simple: track your mileage and fuel costs and have the software generate small reports for you. The software is free to try (available from the GasDandy website) and the trial version allows 5 sets of data to be entered. The full piece of software is $14.95.
In use, GasDandy is pretty easy. You set it up with a couple of named data items - typically your car(s) and/or motorbike(s). Then, each time you start it, you can choose one of your vehicles and enter in some basic information from your most recent fill up. This includes how much the petrol cost you, the mileage (total odometer reading) and the number of gallons of petrol used. Note that there is a metric version available from the website too if you want to work in litres and kilometres. My only bone of contention here is that it insists you enter the total odometer reading. A lot of car nuts track their mileage using the trip meter. It would have been nice for GasDandy to allow total odometer or most recent trip meter reading. Because of that I took one star off my review rating.
Because GasDandy is tracking your mileage, you can enter in oil-change intervals and tyre rotation dates and it will remind you when its time to get an oil change or a tyre rotation, which is a neat feature. It also allows you to keep track of any mileage driven for business along with notes to remind yourself about the what, where and why of the business trips.
Finally, GasDandy allows you to print out basic reports and generate graphs. The graphing function is a nice touch as it shows the overall average mpg for your vehicle and colour-codes the graph nodes green or red depending on whether that tank was above or below average, respectively.

Summary.

GasDandy is a simple (ie. not bloated), inexpensive piece of software that will help you keep track of mileage. The interface could do with some eye-candy - it has a distinct 90's feel to it - and like I said, it would be nice to be able to put trip-mileage as well as total mileage, but apart from that, I like it. The screenshots below show the main mileage interface, and the graph screen.