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I am installing a Carolina Windom Short 80 and am not sure which way to
orient it.

The company which sells the antenna says that because the antenna has a
vertical section which radiates; the antenna is omni-directional.

But others say that it radiates best in the direction of the ends.

Some disagree saying that a dipole is a dipole and so its antenna
pattern would be optimally broadside to the antenna.

Since the antenna is not center-fed; if it were a dipole the lobes along
the longer section would produce more signal; is that the case here.

Is this a good antenna or just so much bs?

I am not sure what the short 80 is. I have a home built one that is up
about 50 feet and installed as flat across the top as two end supports and a
middle support will let it be. It is about 80 feet on one side and 40 feet
on the other side. The coax drops 20 feet down from the 4:1 balun to the
current choke.

It seems to work fine for me on 80 meters, the only band I normally work
with it. I have an 80 meter dipole up about 40 feet on one end and 20 feet
on the other end at right angles to it. In just about all cases the OCF is
beter than the 80 meter dipole. Only problem is when I run an amplifier the
4:1 balun overheats and the swr goes way high when I run more than about 700
watts ssb. The balun is rated for 1.5 KW.
When I had it fed with rg8X and a low power balun without the lower current
choke I could not tell much differance. I was only running 100 watts then
as I did not have an amplifier. There did seem to be some rf in the shack as
the computer speakers would make noise, but not with the current choke in
the line with the new antenna. Both antennas were ran to a 5 way antenna
switch just inside the window I was passing the coax through. The shack is
in a walkout basement and the switch has a wire ran outside to a ground rod
and that rod is also connected to another rod about 10 feet away and also to
the house ground rod about 10 feet in another direction.
With the choke and larger rg8 coax there does not seem to be any rf in the
computer speakers.

It seems to work well in all directions. I don't know if it is because of
the vertical section or just because it is only 50 feet up.
The lower 80 meter dipole seems not to be very directional either.