Author: Peter Stein
Date: 09:31:24 12/03/98
Rebel 10 has the following bug: 1. In a bishops of opposite colors ending Rebel 10 stopped play at the 163rd move with a pop-up message that flashed "maximum move count exceeded". 2. I saved the game via the menu, but when I later tried to retrieve the game from the database it could not be found. A thorough search of the database revealed that the game was never saved! Other serious problems include: 1. Random crashes. These seem to occur with a specific combination of settings, unfortunately I've not had enough testing time to zero in on exactly which combination. 2. Extremely poor play when using the Fischer clock. When I play 2/6 I've noticed that Rebel 10 plays endings very poorly often losing dead drawn endings. Sometimes it hangs pieces before we even get to an ending! This maybe in some way related to the random crashes. At any rate this product did not undergo very rigorous quality control before being released. Rebel 9 was much more stable. If the addition of new features and enhancements destabilizes the software I think it's fair to say that the vendor does not have a software development process in place. For the record, I'm both a professional software developer and a NM so I think I'm reasonably qualified to assess software, particularly chess software. On that subject I would encourage our professional software reviewers to be a bit more thorough. Time and time again I've read glowing reviews only to discover the most basic user interface bugs were not detected. Reviewing software is a little more work then simply checking off the list of new features and issuing a few mouse clicks. Peter Stein nbi@xnet.com
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