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We'd like to say that the ASP-based ShareHQ Secure Workspaces is an inexpensive product that will meet your needs for collaboration on a budget. We'd like to say your users will be able to navigate ShareHQ without any significant expenditure in training and that their productivity will be enhanced. Unfortunately, all we can say is that ShareHQ is cheap.

ShareHQ offers three types of accounts: a personal account for a single user, corporate accounts with multiple users, and an enterprise account with multiple users and an administrator. The software also is available for self-hosted solutions. ASP enterprise-account pricing of $19.99 per user per month makes ShareHQ the least expensive of the four products we tested.

ShareHQ (screen view) Click here to enlarge

When you enter ShareHQ Secure Workspaces, a summary page displays information, such as your personal work space, the number of new items and the names of other users logged into each of the work spaces to which you belong.

Getting to new items is as simple as clicking on the link to your inbox, which brings up a summary of all the new items. Users can add bookmarks, files, addresses, notes, tasks and discussions to a work space and send e-mail to other users.

Our testers all had a difficult time figuring out what to do with this product. ShareHQ offers no help. No online help, no tutorials and no online documentation of any kind are available. This fact alone makes it difficult for us to recommend the product. Our users also complained about ShareHQ's use of frequent pop-up windows. After you create an item, for example, instead of going away, the window pops back to the front so you can add a comment. In frustration, one of our testers asked, "Why would you want to add a comment to an item you just entered?" We don't know.

The final nail in the coffin? ShareHQ's search is keyword-only, based on title content. Item text is not indexed and is not discovered during a search. This just doesn't cut it. We talked to the CEO at ShareHQ about our concerns, and he assured us that fixes for all these problems and more are in the works. We're from Missouri. Show us.

ShareHQ Secure Workspaces version 1.0, $29.99 per user per month. Bungo-ShareHQ, (401) 461-8022; fax (401) 461-8885. www.ShareHQ.com or sales@sharehq.com

Ron Anderson is Network Computing's lab director. Before joining the staff, he managed IT in various capacities at Syracuse University and for the Veteran's Administration. Send your comments on this article to him at randerson@nwc.com.