RE chessbase light

[Milos]

SCID is great for what it is, but you are the only person I have ever heard argue that it is the equal or better than ChessBase and Chess Assistant. I love free and open source software, some of it is absolutely unparalleled. Winboard in my eyes is every equal of the other Windows based ICS clients, and Crafty has obviously had a great impact as I pointed out. That doesn't mean I have some sycophantic view that because something is free or open source that means it is instantly just as capable or better than any closed source alternative. I am not an expert, but I am sure there are plenty of things people could point out to you that they use ChessBase or Chess Assistant for that SCID doesn't support. For me, one of the major problems is the interface, the rest of the functionality be damned. If the software I am using is difficult or cumbersome, and I have to spend half the time trying to figure out what I am doing, it isn't worth the effort. I would rather spend $200 than waste hours of my time trying to figure something like that out, it's a factor of time vs money. If you are happy with SCID, fantastic, but that doesn't mean the rest of us are "suckers" just because we pay for software. I would rather spend those hours improving my chess game rather than improving my ability to use a piece of software. However, maybe I am mistaken. Instead of ranting, can you point out any features SCID, chessdb, Jose, or ChessX have that make them superior to the paid alternatives? Perhaps some examples would go a lot farther to further your argument than calling the rest of us "suckers".

You are asking things that you know I cannot answer.
As I stated I've never bought nor I will buy any CB product. So I cannot evaluate advantages of SCID compared to (full) CB.
However, I have to point out that you are comparing apples and oranges.
If you compare free SCID and free version of CB (CB light which is btw. the topic of this thread) there is really not much to compare.
CB light is just crap, and that's a fact. The only advantage is audio/video commentary which is nothing but an advertising makeup ("oh it's so great to hear Anand commenting the game while you go through it" type of marketing hype).
SCID is just a bit over the 2004 level when it stopped development. Ask yourself where was CB in 2004.

You obviously belong to group of users that like nice and shiny visuals and do not want to invest a minute of their time to evaluate other free alternatives. As you state yourself you would rather pay 200 bucks than invest couple of hours to learn how to use the full potential of the program.
With that kind of approach I am not sure you can make use of real CB potential and looking from that perspective that's money wasted.
We obviously have different philosophies and there is not much to be done about it. However, as you have the right to believe that since you paid something, that must be better than a free thing, I have also right to believe that the same thing is crap because you have to pay to get what you can get for free.

[Nimzovik]

If two programs are equal yet only one of them has the extra feature of shiny visuals - IMHO- I then prefer the program with the shiny visuals. Oh my - we must be really bored.

[Matthias Gemuh]

If two programs are equal yet only one of them has the extra feature of shiny visuals - IMHO- I then prefer the program with the shiny visuals. Oh my - we must be really bored.

John 7:24

Code: Select all

24 Judge not according to the appearance, ...

[tomgdrums]

SCID is great for what it is, but you are the only person I have ever heard argue that it is the equal or better than ChessBase and Chess Assistant. I love free and open source software, some of it is absolutely unparalleled. Winboard in my eyes is every equal of the other Windows based ICS clients, and Crafty has obviously had a great impact as I pointed out. That doesn't mean I have some sycophantic view that because something is free or open source that means it is instantly just as capable or better than any closed source alternative. I am not an expert, but I am sure there are plenty of things people could point out to you that they use ChessBase or Chess Assistant for that SCID doesn't support. For me, one of the major problems is the interface, the rest of the functionality be damned. If the software I am using is difficult or cumbersome, and I have to spend half the time trying to figure out what I am doing, it isn't worth the effort. I would rather spend $200 than waste hours of my time trying to figure something like that out, it's a factor of time vs money. If you are happy with SCID, fantastic, but that doesn't mean the rest of us are "suckers" just because we pay for software. I would rather spend those hours improving my chess game rather than improving my ability to use a piece of software. However, maybe I am mistaken. Instead of ranting, can you point out any features SCID, chessdb, Jose, or ChessX have that make them superior to the paid alternatives? Perhaps some examples would go a lot farther to further your argument than calling the rest of us "suckers".

You are asking things that you know I cannot answer.
As I stated I've never bought nor I will buy any CB product. So I cannot evaluate advantages of SCID compared to (full) CB.
However, I have to point out that you are comparing apples and oranges.
If you compare free SCID and free version of CB (CB light which is btw. the topic of this thread) there is really not much to compare.
CB light is just crap, and that's a fact. The only advantage is audio/video commentary which is nothing but an advertising makeup ("oh it's so great to hear Anand commenting the game while you go through it" type of marketing hype).
SCID is just a bit over the 2004 level when it stopped development. Ask yourself where was CB in 2004.

You obviously belong to group of users that like nice and shiny visuals and do not want to invest a minute of their time to evaluate other free alternatives. As you state yourself you would rather pay 200 bucks than invest couple of hours to learn how to use the full potential of the program.
With that kind of approach I am not sure you can make use of real CB potential and looking from that perspective that's money wasted.
We obviously have different philosophies and there is not much to be done about it. However, as you have the right to believe that since you paid something, that must be better than a free thing, I have also right to believe that the same thing is crap because you have to pay to get what you can get for free.

Oh I get it. You aren't Glenn Beck! You are an actual politician since you change your reason and/or argument every time some one makes a logical statement!

[Kirk]

If two programs are equal yet only one of them has the extra feature of shiny visuals - IMHO- I then prefer the program with the shiny visuals. Oh my - we must be really bored.

Simple solution - own ALL the GUI's

I do. Keeps one from getting bored

Chessbase Light is great when studying ancient books written only in Descriptive Notation for example.

I still have the Rebel 12 version for Chess Partner so it is fun to break that out.

Sometimes you feel like launching Arena or Shredder, whatever. The Triple Brain can be fun at times especially comparing two Shredder personalities at once

Variety is the spice of life. Why limit oneself?

[poisonedpawn]

well i did indeed download CB light, but i really do not see what features it has that fritz 11 doesn't have and is a database limited to 13,000 games sufficient? fritz gui also has fairly decent database support, and this is as far as i know (although i could well be wrong) not limited to x amount of games as is the case with CB light. so, all in all i am still in the dark as to what features it has that fritz does not have. so i think i am soon going to uninstall it.

[alpha123]

Sigh. You need to pay attention. I _never_ complained I could not create a new database. Look through the thread. I went straight to complaining about not being able to do anything.

Peter

Such as?

Well, creating a new database is a big one, using chess engines is another.

How about, instead of me giving a list of things it can't do, you give a list of things it can do. Less reading for anyone browsing this thread.

Peter

[Nimzovik]

If two programs are equal yet only one of them has the extra feature of shiny visuals - IMHO- I then prefer the program with the shiny visuals. Oh my - we must be really bored.

Simple solution - own ALL the GUI's

I do. Keeps one from getting bored Chessbase Light is great when studying ancient books written only in Descriptive Notation for example.

I still have the Rebel 12 version for Chess Partner so it is fun to break that out.

Sometimes you feel like launching Arena or Shredder, whatever. The Triple Brain can be fun at times especially comparing two Shredder personalities at once

Variety is the spice of life. Why limit oneself?

Bold emphasis mine.
I agree wholeheartedly that variety is the spice of life. I definitely need to use different boards frequently.

Note : I love the triple brain feature as well. You say you run rebel 12? In what OS? Perhaps you use Dos Box or some such? I loved Rebel. I had several reincarnations of the program. Unfortunately I run win xp pro 64 bit and cannot run it any more. I am too dumb (lazy?) to set up Dos Box et.al. Would love to run all my old dos programs. I say there is money to be had in terms of a 'one click sets up all ' program for one's OS in regard to setting up dos. Deep Sigh....

Your idea of CB light reading descriptive notation was a mechanism I had not thought of. Interesting possibility that.

[James Constance]

http://freechess.50webs.com/chessbaselight.html

It's a great program! It looks a lot better than SCID, in particular the notation pane, and looks are a major part of an interface that, after all, you look at!

[Kirk]

If two programs are equal yet only one of them has the extra feature of shiny visuals - IMHO- I then prefer the program with the shiny visuals. Oh my - we must be really bored.

Simple solution - own ALL the GUI's

I do. Keeps one from getting bored Chessbase Light is great when studying ancient books written only in Descriptive Notation for example.

I still have the Rebel 12 version for Chess Partner so it is fun to break that out.

Sometimes you feel like launching Arena or Shredder, whatever. The Triple Brain can be fun at times especially comparing two Shredder personalities at once

Variety is the spice of life. Why limit oneself?

Bold emphasis mine.
I agree wholeheartedly that variety is the spice of life. I definitely need to use different boards frequently.

Note : I love the triple brain feature as well. You say you run rebel 12? In what OS? Perhaps you use Dos Box or some such? I loved Rebel. I had several reincarnations of the program. Unfortunately I run win xp pro 64 bit and cannot run it any more. I am too dumb (lazy?) to set up Dos Box et.al. Would love to run all my old dos programs. I say there is money to be had in terms of a 'one click sets up all ' program for one's OS in regard to setting up dos. Deep Sigh....

Your idea of CB light reading descriptive notation was a mechanism I had not thought of. Interesting possibility that.

Hey Alex!

Rebel 12 is running on the Lokasoft Chess Partner GUI. No DOS BOX needed! But now, of course, you can just buy the Windows GUI by itself and download ProDeo for free. But still fun to revisit the past.

http://shop.lokasoft.nl/product.php/2/1

I like collecting historic chess books. Some have been updated, but there are still others that you can only find in descriptive. CB lets you read in DN that so it is easy to compare analysis with the old grandmasters while you read.

It is interesting to see the thought process as they did not have computers to compare, so they old had each other and their noggin

One is example is 500 Master Games of Chess by Tartakower. As far as I know that book has not been updated. And some updated books I have seen have too many typos to make it worthwhile. So I like being chess "bilingual"