Overboard

Website: gusinc.com

Mayer Johnson is renowned for their picture/symbol software program, Boardmaker. Although they have many other fine products, Boardmaker has been widely used by professionals, caregivers, and school systems throughout the country and there hasn‘t been another program to rival Boardmaker until now. Gus Communications, Inc. has developed a product similar to Boardmaker named Overboard.



While the Overboard program is similar to Boardmaker, there are some differences. Overboard is less expensive by almost $100 and there is no cost to upgrade as there is with Boardmaker. Overboard takes up less hard drive space and there are 5500 symbols to Boardmaker‘s 3000 symbols. Overboard symbols are clear and easily understood but they don‘t have the black and white line drawings sometimes needed for specific individuals. Overboard also does not have a "scatter" button to create identical cells in once document but the cells can be created by simply clicking a button and positioning it on a palette. Overboard’s default cell is 2”x 2” and when a larger or smaller size is needed, the cell can be changed but the picture and words do not have a "snap-to-grid" feature. There is, however, more functionality in drawing and tweaking the symbols in Overboard and it has a quick link to the paint program. The difficulty with this is that the copy and paste short cut commands can‘t be used. These commands have to be accessed through the edit menu.



Overall, Overboard is a great program with clear symbols and pictures. It certainly has the makings to rival Boardmaker.