Quick Review of Chessbase 10

[ChessCommunity]

Hi Folks:

I received my new copy of Chessbase 10 in the mail this morning. I thought I'd briefly comment on what my first impressions are so far.

First I guess I'll start with the positive:

The graphics have been improved (of the boards) over version CB 9. I really liked the anti-aliased view of Fritz 11 and CB 10 has the same anti-aliasing of the pieces. The 2-D pieces look really nice.

The compression (the backup compression) seems to be better with CB 10 than with CB 9. My Megabase 2008 (with several CB Mags: 122, 123, 124 added) was compressed by CB 9 to: 672 megs. CB 10 compressed the same database down to 492 megabytes.

The Negative:
I ordered the "upgrade" edition of Chessbase 10. I'm not sure about the other editions, but the upgrade edition of CB 10 does NOT include a year at Playchess.com (maybe that was written somewhere and I missed it, but I was expecting the year free).

I get some kind of weird "refresh" every time I resize the program or change tabs (by refresh I mean the program 'flashes' as it tries to rewrite the program to the screen). I have a 4 core processor with 3 gigs of ram and an Nvidia 8800 with 512 megs of video ram so I don't think its my computer lacking any power.

Activation - the program must be activated if you want to use the online database. I understand CB is trying to cut down on illegal copying of their software, but its still a pain because I do a lot of beta testing and have to re-ghost my computer a lot.

If you buy the upgrade edition of CB 10 you are not able to use the "NEW Games" function in CB 10. I did understand that before I purchased it. I had hoped I guess that since I own Megabase 2008, that I might be able to use that functionality. If you click on it (the new games button) I have the option of activation or buy now. Since I don't have an activation number, if I click on the "buy" button I am NOT taken to a page to purchase an activation code (it just takes you to a regular chessbase page with products on it, but nothing to do with activations).

Neutral:

I haven't been able to notice any significant change (positive or negative) in the speed of searches and performing other actions. (Error checking a big database, like Megabase 2008, still takes a long time... ).

Verdict:
If you REALLY want anti-aliased pieces, the upgrade is nice.

If you are not that concerned about anti-aliasing, and if you already own Megabase 2008, I don't see any attention grabbing reason to upgrade.

Matthew

[AdminX]

I noticed that Hashtable size maxs out at 793MB when using Chessbase 10, however under Chessbase 9 I can go as Hight as 3039MB. I am sure its a bug, but given some of the other bugs (See Link) I have heard of, I think this might have been rushed to market.

http://rybkaforum.net/cgi-bin/rybkaforu ... l?tid=5166