newbie

I don't know much more than you so please bear that in mind as I share some hard won knowledge.  You need more than just an engine.  Kind of like a car you know?  The "more" is called a GUI or graphical user interface.  If you go commercial and pay for a program, generally they come together in a nice neat (not necessarily easy to use mind you) package.

Do I have to spend my hard earned money or can I get something free?  Sure you can.  If you're the adventurous type there are free downloads right here on chess.com (listed under "more").  Arena and Scid v. Pc are 2 of the more popular free GUIs and engines are almost a dime a dozen although Houdini 1.5a and Stockfish are very popular. Stockfish is reputed to be the most "human" of the free engines.

As for commercial, Fritz is popular, comes with a decent engine and you can put other engines into the program.  Older versions are cheaper.  They're coming out with 14 in a week or two so 13 is discounted and 12 works fine as well if you can find a copy.  Plusses?  There is a wealth of material showing how to use it.  Minuses?  Not intuitive at all; still I can muddle through it.  There is something caled ChessKing which is more of a "learn to play chess" program but has analysis functions which I admit I've never used.  You can't change engines with it and it's dismissed as a children's program by many (which is probably why I like it).  I just downloaded a copy of HIARCS last week because I was bored.  Ok, it has supposedly the most human like engine of all.  Downloading was easy, but then you have to cut and paste in the activation code which of course didn't immediately work.  Lovely program though.  Bit tidier than Fritz, maybe not as feature rich.  I also haven't tried analyzing with it, but fun to play against and will give you hints if you want it.  Fritz of course is the champ at giving hints as long as you don't mind the program making fun of you.  Hope that helped mate.  Good luck.

EDIT: I forgot Chessmaster, the oldest and used to be most popular of them all.  Ubisoft apparently lost the rights to some of the material on it and also hasn't bothered to update it in years os it unfortunately is no longer on the market and copies which used to go for$10 are getting stupid prices now.  Crappy engine but very human like explanation.  Stay away from used copies of the Grandmaster edition.  Ubi put a protection scheme on it that only allows you to install it twice.  If it's used it probably doesn't work. 10th works fine but good luck finding a copy at a decent price.

I didn't really try out all the programs, I use LucasChess and it came installed with a few engines (i think most GUI do) and the plusside is that it has a lot of puzzles/training mates. A lot of GUI aren't really intuitive, but with LucasChess it is really newbie-friendly.

EDIT: Just google your question and a few chess.com topics will show up with a list of programs/engine (hopefully with links), this question gets asked all the time. I would recommend install LucasChess, and if you really want install Houdini 1.5a engine for free

Is this really true? I can't remember ever hearing this before. I'm happy with CM10, but if the CM11 prices ever come back to earth, I might be interested in getting CM11 for the extra tutorials.

@EscherehcsE:

Yes it is true.  I remember Ubisoft being roundly condemned by reviewers when they came out with the scheme but then it faded into nonactive memory.  I purchased and installed the Grandmaster edition because I liked 10 and had a relation with Chessmaster going way back.  Nothing special over 10 although "The King" seemed to hang up the program a little less often.  

My crappy "what's the cheapest thing you've got?" computer died on me and I "Best Buyed" another cheap computer (dual core-whoopeee).  You know how it is when you set up a new computer and transfer all your old stuff over.  Well maybe you don't; it's both scary and empowering somehow for those of us with limited computer skills.  Comes time to install Grandmaster (the second time) and everything works fine but at the end of the installation a little notice comes up saying such and such file is corrupt.  Can't have that on my new computer now can we?  I decide to reinstall, having completely forgot about the 2 and done scheme.  It wouldn't and then I remembered the review.  Bad words were said, many of them...

So I guess the installation DVDs would have to be rewriteable, otherwise there's no way a limited install scheme could work across different PCs?

That's what I assumed.  It turned on my burner and toasted some file.  I can laugh about it now.   I'm lying.

Well, thanks for the heads up on CM11. I had no idea about the "2 installs" scheme. (I'm guessing that Ubisoft also has some copy protection scheme that prevents someone from making duplicates of the DVDs before installation?)

I think I'll just forget about ever getting CM11. Using CM10 for the tutorials and CM9000 for playing mode is good enough for me.

@ the OP, sorry about hijacking the thread.

So did we help at all, or did we just add to the confusion?

Here's a couple of links to sites that describe free GUIs. The first one is a few years old and no longer updated, but it still has some useful information. The second link is current.

http://freechess.50webs.com/

http://adamsccpages.blogspot.com/p/graphical-user-interfaces-for-computer.html

If you want some links to free engines, let us know. (There are more sites for engines, and some of them scattered about, depending on which one you're looking for.

The problem is, not many GUI/engine combinations will give you a natural language explanation of the engine analysis. Most will just spit out move variations and numerical evaluation numbers.

Well, not the engine, but the GUI...As baddogno mentioned, Chessmaster tries to do it with limited success, and I think Fritz tries a bit. I'm not really aware of any other GUIs that try to do that.

Yeah, it was also released for the PC. Chessmaster 10th Edition was compatible with Windows 98, ME, and XP. Ubisoft didn't guarantee that it would run in any other Windows OS, but it ran OK for me in Windows 2000 and Windows 7.