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Reviewed by J., 2004-06-13
Categories: Photography / studio, Babes, Mega-Sites, Teens, Amateur
Visit Karups Private Collection
| Review summary: Karups Private Collection is a mega collection of amateur teens and babes. Thousands of exclusive models bring you over 750,000 good quality images and movie files. 4,000+ images added weekly. |
Karup's PC has been reviewed again since this review was written - click here to read the newest review
Karup's PC has been reviewed before - click here to read the previous review
- Over 750,000 Hi-Res Photos and movie files
- Over 4,000 new pics in 50 new photo sets added every week
- Thousands of exclusive models
- Home-grown movies (over 95% exclusive)
- 12 themed categories of images
- Searchable model index
- Lightning fast servers
- E-zines and live feeds with chat
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About our ratings
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I've been hearing about Karup's PC for, literally, years. I may be mistaken, but I think I remember hearing about these guys back when I first remember the World Wide Web getting big in the mid-nineties.
That being said, I finally visit the site and am pleasantly surprised by the amount of free material they're willing to give out. They even update the free stuff weekly. That sort of thing goes a long way with me- thumbs up, guys. They make a lot of big claims with 6 digit numbers and whatnot, so I'm anxious to see if they plan on delivering.
The opening members' page starts with a lot of text. It explains that they've made the member area "very easy to navigate through" with "very little or no advertising." And of course, below that is an advertisement for a Karup's Hometown Amateurs subpage that requires a seperate membership. While I understand the need to advertise, they might have chosen a better place to do so than right on top of the opening member's page and right under a notice in bold that there will be little or no advertising. It's the little things like this that bother me, though most people might have glanced right over it.
I'll try not to hold it against them.
Below all of that is an extensive update list with literally over two months worth of updates at your fingertips. Okay, now I'm much happier. I love seeing a nice update list right at the beginning of a site. Not only does it immediately give me the impression that the site is dedicated to updating, it also provides a way for members who've been around a while to simply keep up with the new stuff. At the very bottom, there are two ways to access Karup's Private Collection (I always thought the PC stood for "Personal Computer," indicating that this guy just had a lot of porn. Seeing that the site is almost completely exclusive, "Private Collection" makes more sense). There is a link to the model index, where you can choose a model based on her name and a sample thumb. To give you an idea of the amount of content here, there are 50 models listed per page... and there are 11 pages of "A" models alone. That's pretty remarkable, if you ask me. Apart from the model index, you can also access the photos by collection.
They've got their photo content broken up into categories (for example Collection 1 is Amateurs, Models, and Teens) and the other content (Movies and Feeds) are each in their own Collection. I promise it sounds more complicated than it is.
Clicking on one of their Collections brings those three categories up, each in their own column. Listed under each category's Albums (it's like in biology... kingdom, class, species, phyllum... I never remember the order). Each album is listed on by a number- there are no thumbnails to give you an indication of what's in each one, but each album contains 9 photosets, each with a thumbnail. Not the most detailed navigation here, but it gets the job done.
Clicking on a set brings up the first page of 8-12 thumbs for the set (every single image is thumbnailed) as well as the option to download the set in .zip files. Two things are missing at this point: the .zip files are only per page, not per set. So a set with 12 pages will have 12 seperate .zip files. In the larger sets, I can see this becoming a huge problem for those of you who like to archive your favorites. Also, a minor pet peeve of mine is that you have to go page by page. That is to say, there is no way to skip page 2 if you think that page 6 is really where the action is at. This makes for relatively slow browsing and, in a collection this large, that can add up to some serious time spent (though the thumbs load extremely quickly on my slower -than-cable DSL connection). Also, there is no way to go from album to album without going back to the main Collection page. A "Next album in this collection" link would be a big plus.
The photos on the site are, for the most part, of very high quality. A very large percentage of the stuff here could easily make it into some of the smaller magazines and an equal percentage of the models are well above the acceptable level. Content-wise, you're likely to find what you're looking for here as long as you're not looking for extreme stuff. In fact, I found lots of semi-hardcore (full nudity, no penetration) here- a lot more than I was expecting, actually. The quality of the images is very good on average. The sets are from different sources, I assume, as the resolution varies, but is usually a respectably high quality one at around the 800x1200 range. This keeps the one page of 12 photos to about 800k in the .zip file. The photos load without any notice- it appears their servers are well-suited for a high volume and high traffic adult site. All of this, plus the fact that it's all exclusive, gets a big thumbs up from me. Bear in mind that navigation is not included in that thumbs up- but I'll have more about that later.
Apart from the ridiculously extensive photo collection, there is both a Feeds and a Movies Collection. The Movies section is set up exactly like the photo section without the benefit of categories to guide you- you just get the album titles (there are nearly 100 albums in the section at the time of this review). Each album usually has at least 2 different scenes and, depending on length, those scenes are broken up into seperate movies for a total of 4 or 5 videos per album on average. The content here is heavily loaded with solo girl material, with quite a bit of hardcore boy/girl and some girl/girl as well.
The videos are all in Windows Media format (.wmv) and are best downloaded to your hard drive, if only because you get asked for your password at least once every time you login to the site and try to stream one of these. Also, they don't buffer very quickly, which is a little annoying, but I prefer downloading them anytway because WMVs don't allow you to skip around within the video until the entire thing has buffered.
The new videos look very nice at 320x240 resolution and a whopping 742kpbs bitrate. I thought they were a bit choppy at times and blowing them up to full screen brings out some pretty intense pixelization, but in their original size, they look great. The length of each clip differs, so it's hard to give any specific specs on that. However, a movie that clocks in at about 7 minutes will run about 40MB on your hard drive. Please note that these are just the newer videos I'm talking about here. The older ones are more variable in quality, size and length, but I would go so far as to say that I won't even include them in my point totals, as they are all of pretty low quality (most in .mpg format) and not nearly as good as these newer ones. That seems like a problem they've addressed and, therefore, I don't want to count it against them. It certainly wouldn't hurt to go back and resample those old videos, but I know that's asking a lot.
I had assumed that the Feeds section was just a bunch of those standard "pay for private" live feeds that everyone has these days, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that the feeds are not only live, but also third party recorded feeds from some good companies like Dreamzotic, Viv Thomas and Hustler.
They've also got some of their own models on live feeds, but it's the same kind of pay extra thing that the others are. But overall, I'm impressed with the third party content here.
There is absolutely no question that this is one of the most extensive collections of adult photos on the web. The quality is above average and the fact that it is almost all exclusive makes it even better.
However, the bottom line for me is that Karup's PC was just plain annoying to navigate. There are a million different ways to design navigation for a collection this large that would be infinitely more efficient than the methods employed here. A collection this large needs an equally extensive search engine, not just a few categories, to make navigating it anything less than time-consuming. Navigation, however, is not everything. And it would be entirely unfair of me to not give due credit to Karup's PC for putting together such a large exclusive site. It is truly a great accomplishment and, even with the nagivation troubles, would likely be worth both your time and money.
Credit, Phone, Online Check, Mail
One month: $29.95
Three months: $69.95 (not available by phone)
Six months: $100 (only available by mail)
Preview gallery: Check out the free preview pictures provided by Karups Private Collection
Members area samples: See a selection of picture samples from Karups Private Collection!
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