talks about the disk issue.
Chessmaster or Fritz?
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I have Chessmaster 10 on my notebook. To run it without the disk, I had to install updates downloaded from the UbiSoft forums (an odd place to make updates available, but that's how they do it). As I am running Windows 7, I had to right-click the update and run as administrator. It works fine now.
Go to the link for for F12. My experience with many older versions of the program, is that it will ask for the disk one or two times the first five or times the program opens, then it works fine. (Loomis, too, mentioned this experience in the other thread.)
Chessmaster XI Grandmaster Edition(http://chessmaster.us.ubi.com/xi/index.php) tutorials have text that is the same as the spoken audio. The only problem I can see that you might have is that some portions of the tutorials move the pieces around or have graphic highlights/arrows in sync with the spoken audio or after the spoken audio finishes up, and there's no indicator to tell you when to click to move to the next section. Rather than text in subtitles in sync with the movement/highlights, the text is in a window in paragraph form which would be difficult for me to follow without the audio, but you're probably more adept at coping with that sort of thing than I am. I haven't messed with the tutorials a lot but they appear to be pretty extensive.
I bought the download version, so there's no disc to start mine up. Don't know if you have to use the disc to start up the disc-based version or not.
chessmaster. it contains audio and texts. fritz on the other hand has audio visuals.
Check out Shredder. There is a download so that you can try Classic 4 on their website before buying. Much more realistic in my opinion, than Chessmaster 11. http://www.shredderchess.com/
I used older versions of chessmaster years ago, was never very happy with it. Maybe they've improved it since then, I haven't tried more recent versions.
I currently have Fritz 12 on my computer, bought last year. My biggest complaint is with the way menus are set up, not intuitive at all. And it seems to take way too many mouse clicks to access common features. There was a major investment in time figuring out how the program works, but otherwise I've been happy with it.
Most of the time Fritz runs fine without the CD but it did make me insert it recently to do a deep analysis on a game. I don't mind it so much as long as it doesn't have to stay in the drive all the time.
To be honest, I've hardly used Fritz at all since I discovered chess.com. Mostly I use it when I don't have access to the internet.
I don't like software which requires you to access a website to enable it. I've gotten burned in the past when I've gone to reinstall a program after a hard drive failure only to find out the company got rid of the page to enable it. Even though the software was bought and paid for and I had a copy, they refused to help, said I had to buy the new version at full price. So I now refuse to buy any software which a company has to enable via the internet after installation.
BigHickory wrote:
I used older versions of chessmaster years ago, was never very happy with it. Maybe they've improved it since then, I haven't tried more recent versions.
I currently have Fritz 12 on my computer, bought last year. My biggest complaint is with the way menus are set up, not intuitive at all. And it seems to take way too many mouse clicks to access common features. There was a major investment in time figuring out how the program works, but otherwise I've been happy with it.
The Fritz menus seem quite sensible and intuitive to me. Not so with Chessmaster after 9000. The old Chessmasters had sensible menus, not the current version. What is intutive to me (as person that has been using chess software for more than twenth years, and daily for ten) might be counter-intuitive to someone else.
I just recently bought Chessmaster off of Steam ( http://store.steampowered.com/ ). As someone else mentioned, when you do it this way, no disc is included or required to install or play. I can confirm that the tutorials (including the excellent Waitzkin ones) have text as well as audio. I've been pretty happy with the program so far; $20 well-spent.
Hi, I'm thinking of getting either program for my computer, but I have a netbook & don't keep a hard drive with me when I lug it around. Does either or both work on a computer without a disk to start it up? Also, being deaf, do the tutorials on either require sound, or do they have text also? Any info is appreciated.