Great potential, but bad software :\
Written: Apr 08 '06
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Lots of neat capabilities, such as CD text, etc.
Cons: Hangs & crashes computer - even corrupts drivers & operating system.
The Bottom Line: Don't try to use Easy Creator 6 with Windows ME, or Windows XP Media-Center!
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| graphics_guy's Full Review: |
I've tried this on an older Toshiba laptop with Windows ME, and also on a brand new (2006) Sony Vaio RC210G with Windows XP Media Center, and had various hangs & crashes with each.
Here are the details...
On the old Toshiba Laptop:
Several years ago I bought a brand new Toshiba "Satellite 1735" laptop w/ 700MHz processor, and Windows ME pre-installed. I bought an external SCSI HP CD recorder drive, and an external SCSI 100Gb disk drive.
Easy CD's box said it worked with Windows ME.
I installed Easy CD, and every time I'd try "ripping" songs from cd's, the computer would hang for long periods of time, and sometimes even crash the comptuer, if the external scsi drive was connected. And the real gotcha with the crashes was that it (on at least 3 occasions) corrupted the cd player device drivers so they wouldn't play cd's anymore - being Windows ME, with little/no 'restore' capability, I ended up re-installing the operating system from scratch (at least 3 times).
Finally, my only workable solution was to never have the external harddrive connected when I was ripping songs (which was a pain, since the laptop only had a 10Gb internal drive).
Also the Easy CD software wouldn't let me control where/how to put the songs like I wanted (I'm "old school", and I like creating my own folders, and putting my songs in them - but this version of Easy CD wanted to force me into checking them into a fancy database thing.) To get around this problem, I ended up just using the "Easy CD Creator Classic" (so why did I pay all the money for the new version?)
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On the *new* Sony VAIO:
So, after limping along on my old laptop for several years, I was really hoping this Easy CD software would run correctly when I got a new computer with a better operating system -- I finally got the latest/greatest (spring 2006) Sony VAIO RC210G, with Windows XP Media Center Edition.
I first applied all the latest windows updates.
I then Installed Easy CD 6. It was able to "duplicate" a disk just fine (this was a disk I had previously created on my laptop - an audio cd, with cd text). Then I tried to create an audio cd from scratch. When it got to "Disk Progress 8%", it just hung, and never un-hung. A few days later, I tried starting from scratch again, and same thing happened.
Ok - so when this software came out, Windows XP Media Center wasn't around, so I figured maybe Easy CD had some updates I needed to apply. I go to their website, and finally found where to install updates (most all of the links try to get you to pay $50 to "upgrade" your "Easy CD 6" to "Easy CD 8", rather than just updating with the latest patches). And, after applying the latest updates, and trying to make a music cd, Easy CD said it couldn't find my CD drives -- upon further checking, nothing on my computer could find the drives anymore. Looks like the Easy CD 6 updates *toasted/corrupted* my CD drive drivers!
After much cursing, I did a "restore" to the point before I downloaded the Easy CD updates, and my CD drives started working again.
So, I guess I just can't use my Easy CD 6 with Windows XP Media Center Edition operating system - bummer :\
(Of course, the system requirements on the box only say it will work with Windows XP - it doesn't specifically say it will work with Windows XP MCE -- although you would think they'd be just about the same thing...)
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
graphics_guy
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Reviews written: 35
Trusted by: 3 members
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