I've been cautiously watching the development of hwdvideoshare for months now. Today I went ahead and bought it ($25.28 US...not too bad).

I read the installation guide and forum posts with trepidation: "you'll need to configure servers! and know the ins and outs of Perl!" they all said.

It installed without errors in a minute. I had it stood up and uploaded a video the next minute. I activated the Perl-based uploader a few minutes after that.

It automatically recognized my CB and JComments components.

I'm not on a dedicated server so I lack the fancy tools that REALLY make this a great component. However, my shared server is otherwise configured correctly. I don't get automatic thumbnails or automatic conversions to .flv, but I still think the component is worth it.

My sites are such that there is a central gallery with public categories and members-only categories. And users need a simple front-end mechanism for uploads, edits, and comments.

JoomGallery has been the answer since Day #1 when it was but a release candidate. Would a fancy Java-based front-end upload screen be nice? Sure. But the extension is free. And each user has access to a nice panel with all his or her photos that he or she can add descriptions and titles to later.

And JComments fits in real nicely.

I installed JEvents because it was the only thing that worked with DTRegister (and some of the neater extensions like RSEvents and RedEvents hadn't come out yet). I think it's very disappointing.

Yes, it's very robust. And more mature than some others. But the UI is antiquated at best. My users all agreed: it's ugly. And none of them could figure out how to use it very well.

And I know the devs have been spending a lot of time just bringing it up to 1.5 Native. But 1.5 is not new. Other calendar/event extensions are moving way beyond such hurdles.

I just needed a simple newsletter to go out to the registered members of my site to update them on new items that had been posted and a few site changes. Within 30 minutes of downloading Acajoom News, I had a nice one all set up and successfully sent to all my members.

The learning curve was very slight and about the only issue I really encountered was the interaction between the newsletter editor and FCKEditor. There aren't any errors - you just need to Preview before sending to make sure the HTML didn't get fouled up anywhere.