I mentioned recently that I watch videos on Kelby Training. The question then came up from a friend: “is it worth the money?”

I’m not sure, is the answer.  A few cons, followed by pros.

Cons:

• It’s expensive. Not saying it isn’t worth it, but for that cash, the private/amateur has to think about it (for business?  That’s cheap – write it off!).
• It uses a flash player. I know they have to worry about theft, but I’d really like to take the lessons with me on a laptop.  It would be great to watch on airlines, in meetings, in transit… But no, not yours: must use streaming flash video.
• Lessons are often of dubious value. There is a lot of old stuff on there.  Useful to some, but not to me.  An added annoyance: there are a lot of “get up to speed quick” lessons each time Adobe releases something new (like all the CS5 stuff now).
• Length of lessons.  Hard to criticize this, but I will.  When I’m watching on a computer (an *interactive* tool), I get fidgety.  10 minutes?  Fine.  20?  I barely hold on.  An hour or more?  To Hell with that.  This ain’t TV, it’s the internet.
• Video quality can suffer. Which isn’t much of a complaint: “it’s not as smooth as a multi-million-dollar movie.”  Get over it.  But it does feel cheap, at times.

Pros:

• The information is pretty good, even if you need to wade through an hour & a half of info to get it.
• While not as good as personal tutoring, it’s about as close as you can get.
• For the money, it’s hard to get as many knowledge experts in any one place.
• Taken in small bites, the learning can be quite effective.

Overall:

It’s kind of hard to say if it’s worth it.  I’ve renewed for two years in a row & I expect to renew at least one more time.  After three years, I may have learned enough so that the benefit just isn’t there.  On the other hand, I thought that would be the case after one year, and I’m aiming at three now.

I do find that I tend to watch in spurts, or when I really need it (really, when I needed it two weeks prior, it seems).  Three months no watchie, followed by a weekend glut of four lessons. And it’s always there when I need it.

Yeah, probably worth it. To me.