Shredder classic v deep

I'm looking at buying shredder for my Mac.  I like to play against the pc and also analyse my games to see any blunders or where i went wrong.

Will shredder clasic be enough to do these simple tasks?  I dont see what benefit deep shredder would be to a casual player like myself.

Both will do.  All engines above 2600 should be able to give u a right evaluation.

The link comparing the different versions that JoseO provided is very helpful.

Deep Shredder: 100 euros.

Shredder 12: 50 euros.

Shredder Classic: 30 euros. 

It seems to me that Deep Shredder is massive overkill for your needs. It would only make a difference if you had multi-cpu hardware and were doing state-of-the-art analysis. It doesn't sound like that's what you want to do.

It seems to me that your real decision is between Shredder 12 and Shredder Classic. Shredder 12 costs 20 euros more than Classic. For that extra 20 euros, you're getting:

1) An almost 3000 elo engine versus a 2800 elo engine. Not a significant difference if all you're going to do is check your own games for blunders.

2) A 5-piece Shredderbase set in the Shredder 12 gui versus a 4-piece Shredderbase set in the Classic gui. Shredderbases are Shredder's proprietary type of bitbase files.  Of course, a 5-piece Shredderbase set is better than a 4-piece Shredderbase set, but I doubt if you'd really notice much of a difference. And either gui can still use up to a 5-piece Nalimov tablebase set from your hard drive.

3) A bigger opening book. Having this larger "official Shredder" opening book might be important to you, but it's not really all that bad to not have it. There are a few free opening books in bkt format that you can get off of the internet. The late Harry Schnapp made a few that should be fine.

The bottom line - It seems to me that Shredder Classic should be OK for your stated needs. 

Thanks for the replies.

i just looked at Hiarcs (covering all bases), and it is available for the Mac.  Do i need a separate chess "GUI" to use Hiarcs (its not clear to me on the Hiarcs site), or does it come with its own?  If i need a separate GUI as well as Hiarcs, are there any free ones?

Right now, Hiarcs 13 is engine only, and you'd have to come up with your own Mac-compatible gui. (Can't help you with that one.)

However, the Hiarcs 14 engine will be out very soon, AND a brand new gui, Chess Explorer, will also be out very soon (Windows and Mac compatible). No idea on the pricing or how it will be bundled with engines. Mark Uniacke hasn't been making very many progress reports on this, but he did make a progress report on the gui today. You might want to head on over to the Hiarcs forum and check it out.