Roxio's Flagship CD Software Is Not Heady For Prime Time - Easy CD Creator 5.0 Platinum - Software Review - Evaluation

Computer Technology Review, March, 2001 by Hal Glatzer

I don't have a test-bench, so I can't--and don't--review new products by confirming or refuting their specs. But I do sometimes try out new products to see how they work; and if I choose to write about them, it's usually because I like them. Sometimes, though, I have to hold a product's feet to the fire.

I really wanted to like Easy CD Creator 5 Platinum, the latest version of CD-writing software from Roxio, nee Adaptec. It was previewed for me last year and is being promoted as a great improvement over its predecessor, Adaptec's Easy CD Creator 4, which is also the software most-frequently-bundled with new CD-RW drives. (Hereafter I'll call the new one "5", and the previous version "4".) Then in February Roxio gave me the full-featured retail version of 5--not a beta--and a pamphlet called a Reviewer's Guide, in addition to the User's Guide documentation in the package.

In some ways 5 certainly is an improvement over 4, which I've used--and have kept updated by downloading patches--for almost two years. 5 presents a more up-to-date-looking "skin" (that's youngsters' slang for the on-screen user interface) and it incorporates features that have become important recently, such as compressing .WAV (CD Audio) files into MP3 files, which raises the song-carrying capacity of a disk ten-fold.

But buyer beware. Easy CD Creator 5 Platinum's installation procedure is counter-intuitive and possibly disruptive. And OEMs and VARs and IT managers need to be aware that there is conflict between 5's important Direct CD function and DVD-writing programs such as Software Architects' Write DVD.

"Sentence First, Verdict Afterward"

That was the Red Queen's judicial procedure in "Alice In Wonderland." But perhaps she also worked on Roxio's development team, because when you go to install 5, the first thing it asks you to do is to un-install 4.

The Reviewer's Guide says it's "recommended" to do this, but in fact the installation will not proceed without it. And anyone who purchases 5 at retail will find nothing about this in the User's Guide. This runs contrary to conventional installation procedures.

Most apps that self-install from distribution disks create a new default directory for their .exe and other files to reside in. They prompt the user to either accept that default or change it, after which they install themselves in the designated directory. Then and only then (and only very rarely) will an app's installation procedure advise the user to un-install the previous version.

Not only is the situation with 5 confusing, it can actually be a bad thing. Sometimes, for a variety of reasons (and it happened to me) Windows' "add/remove programs" utility fails to remove all the files associated with 4. And 5 won't install until all (or enough) of the 4-related stuff is gone. If for whatever reason 5 then fails to install, there's no working version of Easy CD Creator left in the computer for the user to fall back on.

I phoned Roxio tech-support and was walked through a manual un-install routine that involved editing the Windows registry. That did remove 4; but it also apparently removed some ASPI files that my computer needed to talk to my TWAIN scanner. A subsequent call to tech-support fixed that problem. But the entire inconvenience and second call could probably have been avoided by not requiring the removal of 4 in the first place.

My hat's off to Roxio's tech-support staffers, who are extremely intelligent and professional; indeed, one staffer offered an especially ingenious solution to this problem--about which more in a moment.

"This Town Ain't Big Enough For the Both Of Us"

That's what outlaws tell sheriffs in grade-B Western movies, just before their guns blaze. I have a DVD-RAM drive, which came bundled with Software Architects' Write DVD program, which formats DVD-RAM disks and (yes) writes to them. Midway through the installation of 5, the screen prompted me to un-install Write DVD because, if I did not do so, then the Direct CD function of 5 could not be installed.

Conceptually, Direct CD and Write DVD are similar. Both utilities empower the computer to perform packet-writing, which treats rewritable phasechange optical disks (CD-RW and DVD-RAM, respectively) as if they were floppies. That, in turn, enables the user to access those disks directly, through their drive-letter, for "drag-and-drop" or "save-as" copying, etc.

The formatting and packet-writing requirements for their respective operations are different, of course; just as the media's capacities, the drives' data transfer rates, etc., are different. But why should these utilities so forcefully conflict that they cannot coexist in a computer?

If Direct CD were a trivial feature of 5, the issue would be trivial too. But it's an important and desirable feature, and the problem has long-term consequences not only for OEMs, VARs, and users, but for Roxio itself. Many people now have (or have access to) more than one computer; and if those computers can all write CD-RW disks, then interchanging updated files among them is a no-brainer. Cable-connected or wireless programs such as LapLink can accomplish that task, but the computers have to be in physical proximity to one another. Swapping disks makes distance irrelevant.