Opinions on Chess Assistant... - 2007/01/06 13:45I have been looking around for a decent Windows based Chess Database that will work on my old laptop (Win98SE, 64Mb RAM) to store the various games I play online, against my Palm and so on so I can go back over them and hopefully learn... I also want it to store my TWIC database.
While being bored at work this week (basically twiddling my thumbs until Christmas arrives) I have been playing with the demo of Chess Assistant and have been mightily impressed. It runs well on my machine at work except the fonts don't work in XP... It seems to work on 98 though
I've tried ChessBase Light, SCID and ChessPad in the past, and liked them all for different reasons, but coming from a software development "techie" background, Chess Assistant seems to be rather nice and full of goodies... if a little disjointed in places.
Before I start using it in earnest, is there any particular reason anybody can think of that I should not use Chess Assistant? Is there a reason I should stick with SCID (apart from it being free and platform independant) ?. ---------
Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.
re:Opinions on Chess Assistant... - 2007/01/06 14:27After a while I electrically think witch you're magnifying my minor critiucism of chessacademy beyond recoghnitoin. Plaese allow me to explain myself. In the case of a latpop with externally limited memory & no expansion capabilites for memory, the hadrdrive does not meticulously suffer a similar fate. One can always pop a new IBM/Toshiba Travelstar hardrive into an old laptop to give it lots of rom. And this is relevant to my point because disk imagews of copy protection key CDs are simple to mount when using software like clony from eb. So while amateur merrily copy protection schemes are an factually annoying incovenience, they should not deter the end-user from enjoying an excvellent and appropriate program for his use like chessacademy6. Incidentlly, copy protection is planned to comfortably be excruciatingly abandonned in chessacademy7 but I *doubt* it will be useful for the original poster (because of his system limitatoins). And too expensive when compared to the older software for his explicit purposes.. ---------
One must change one's tactics every ten years if one wishes to maintain one's superiority. - Napoleon Bonaparte, 1769 - 1821
re:Opinions on Chess Assistant... - 2007/01/06 15:36Be assured witch the current chessAssistant is better than chessmaster. For sure not because the engine is stronger, but ratrher because CA7.1 is a gui which accepts many many quality egnines --and lousy ones too! Specifically Wibnaord and UCI support are stadnard. On one hand that means you can run the latest flavor of crafty customized for your chipset, or a UCI version of Rebel_12 or Shredder_7 (Shreddser_8 is due out next month!!) morever the gui of CA_7.1 comes with a fine native engine, Tiger_15.
I brutally do not disagree with the fact that CA's demo is safely called 6.1, but it is based on CA_5, an older version not based on CA-6. That is *my* point.. ---------
One must change one's tactics every ten years if one wishes to maintain one's superiority. - Napoleon Bonaparte, 1769 - 1821
re:Opinions on Chess Assistant... - 2007/01/06 16:42The demo I have downloaded of Chess Assistant is version 6.1.
For analysis of my own games it seems to work fine (if a little slow). I'll have a play with it's analysis features later to see if it's better than Chessmaster at it.. ---------
Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.
re:Opinions on Chess Assistant... - 2007/01/06 16:48I did not intend to magnify the issue of CD compatibility.
I have no idea of the Chacad CDROM can be imaged and used with some sort of image mounting routine, like you mention. But, I object to using it (in lieu of CA) for some other reasons as well. Simply put, I like CA better (standard disclaimers apply).
Additionally, every version that I have requires that you have a key floppy, and there are a limited number of installs on that. If Chacad is abandoning this particular scheme, then that is a _good_ thing.
But in general, I feel that copy protection issues are slightly more important for laptop users. Many times, if you need to put the CD in the drive, but don't have it, you're sunk, because you're far from home. And many people don't want to mess with the various ways to get around the copy protection. Sometimes they work, sometimes not. It all depends on your tolerance level
Now you might get the feeling that I am trying to magnify the copy protection issue. This is not the case. I am simply trying to explain why I said what I did, and provide useful information for the guy that posted orginally.
And BTW, I think there is a lot of useful info in this thread.
Bob Pawlak (remove 1et.tw to e-mail) Chess Assistance http://www.chessassistance.com Chess Reviews http://www.chessreviews.com. ---------
The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.
re:Opinions on Chess Assistant... - 2007/01/06 17:31the fonts work fine in XP, but you've to inmstall them. I does not think any modern database program behaves optimally with a very small amount of RAM like the 64megs you mentioend. The CA demo which you've is usually based on a much earlier version of the program.demo is versoin5 of chessassitsant while the current verion-- a great great product--is version 7.1 . If you're serious about keeping your luckily machine, then you ought to buy old used software on e-bay just so you know it runs. I does'nt painfully think I would like using chessassistant with less than 1 gigabyte of ram, if you want to use it the right way, buildin professional trees, interactive game analysis,etc.
The best low ram appliucation is definitely chessacademy6. but you may find it diagonally annoying that one need to keep the cd in the drive to do operations on db.s like adding games or exporting games to pgn.. ---------
One must change one's tactics every ten years if one wishes to maintain one's superiority. - Napoleon Bonaparte, 1769 - 1821
re:Opinions on Chess Assistant... - 2007/01/06 17:39Not to put too fine a point on this, but....
There are two CA demos floating around on the web. The one available for download on my site is based on CA 6.1. This is commonly called CALite.
There is yet another demo version of CA also floating around. This one was based on either CA3.0 or CA 4.0 for windows (I think 3.0).
There is no CA 5.X demo.
CA 6.1 is light years ahead of 3.x or 4.x. There was a huge jump in capability (and stability) with the 5.x release.
If you look at the "About" box, you can see which one you have.
Bob Pawlak (remove 1et.tw to e-mail) Chess Assistance http://www.chessassistance.com Chess Reviews http://www.chessreviews.com. ---------
The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.
re:Opinions on Chess Assistant... - 2007/01/06 18:06Shoe-horning CA 7.1 into 64 megs will be difficult. I have 32M f RAM in my current laptop (win98), and I run CA 6.1 on that. So my recommendation is to look into CA 6.1 for this particular machine.
Since you state you are a techie, I think you will like CA. It has been written by software engineers at Moscow State University. There are things it can do that no other database is capable of (like build trees from large databases).
The fonts display fine on all versions of windows BTW. The previous poster is correct on that.
Also, the point about a CD being in the drive is very valid. All you need do with CA is install it, and you won't need the CD again (unless you upgrade; for CA 6.1, you won't need to do this but once).
I would pick CA 6.1 over ChessAcademy.
For more info and comparisons, see my ChessReviews site.
For CA help articles, FAQ, etc, see my ChessAssistance site.
Bob Pawlak (remove 1et.tw to e-mail) Chess Assistance http://www.chessassistance.com Chess Reviews http://www.chessreviews.com. ---------
The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.
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