Don't forget that with any article submission software you still need to manually create and validate accounts from all of the sites before you start. With a few hundred sites this takes ages.
I totally agree. I have the software and used it. I signed up for about 75 sites to distribute my articles. Half the sites removed my live links and so many of them had different criteria it was a pain in the butt. After all was said and done I had about a dozen or so actual sites get my article listed in Google. Now I just have a handful of about 12 popular and effective sites that I know will get my articles into Google with my links intact and I do those sites by hand. The fact is there are sooo many places you can submit your article that only the more popular ones are going to make that much of a difference. My recommendation is to save your money, find 10 good popular article distribution sites and use those. That will be the best use of your time as opposed to wasting time with 50 rinky dinky sites that will never get your article noticed.
I used the demo, and while it worked as advertised, it was too much of a labor-intensive process for me. A viable alternative would be using an article submission service - this allows you to outsource *all* of the article submission tasks necessary, including directory registration. I can recommend 'Article Marketer' if you're interested in pursuing it further - I paid $80.00 for a one-year subscription, and I can submit unlimited articles, all of which are submitted to hundreds of directories, news groups, and opt-in lists. Best of luck. Sam