Cheap Chessbase 9.0 Starter Package (Software) Price

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Customer Reviews of Chessbase 9.0 Starter Package

ChessBase 8 was better
I regret paying for this program and am thinking of going back to using Chessbase 8 (the previous version). There are bugs and annoyances that the previous version didn't have. <
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>One of the most annoying bugs is when you click in the upper right corner to exit a game annotation. The program asks if you want to save it, and if you click yes, will often overwrite some other game in the database. It's unbelievable they haven't fixed this problem yet, as it can cause someone to permanently lose their work. Using Ctrl S to save the game works though, so there is a workaround. I was used to the other method in ChessBase 8 as it worked there, and is faster. <
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>Another annoyance occurs when searching for games in the reference database. You set up the position, click on 'edit', select 'find the position in', and select the database you want to search. If you select the reference database, you are not prompted for any other parameters (like players, tournaments, etc.) and the search just takes off. This didn't happen in the previous version, you were given the option to further subset the selection criteria. The workaround on this is to have the reference database also selected as the current working database, and click on that for the selection. This method is time consuming, as you will almost always have another database highlighted when you want to do a search. <
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>If I didn't have Chessbase 8 to compare against, I might not be complaining. The product is practically a necessity for anyone that wants to research games and openings. It's ability to open many boards at once, outside the environment window, is a nice feature that most other database programs don't have. <
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>About the only feature I use, that the previous version does not have, is the ability to click on column headings to change the order in which games are displayed. <
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>Overall, I didn't see much of an improvement in this product over the previous release. That, along with the bugs, made it a dubious purchase to me. <
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>Postscript: 10/03/07 <
>Chessbase now offers a newer version called ChessBase Light as of somewhere around June of this year (2007). That version appears to have all the features of the ChessBase 9.0 program, but costs half as much. Also, the bug involving hitting x to end an annotation, seems to be fixed on that version. I don't know why they called the new version 'light', as if anything, it's an improved ChessBase 9.0. ChessBase light can be downloaded for free from their website. After it's installed, there's an option to register it on-line which will unlock all the features.