Author: Lawrence S. Tamarkin
Date: 18:23:37 10/31/99
Although I am not suffering the kinds of dissasters that some other CM7000 purchaser's are, I spent a little more time today (about 2 hours), with this program, and here are my observations; *The layouts are very customizable, and the look & feel can certainly be nicer than CM6000, but I could not find a way to keep any selected layout or piece set from room to room. (probably is not a way). I did not find a successful way to save setting either. (though, I suspect this can be done, it was not obvious to me). * Where is the music! Seems that this has been completely removed for this version. Very dissapointing to me. Also the 'spoken commentary' seems to be a default setting. Unless I can find a way to save desired settings, I find this a very irritating default. * Great selection of classic games with good notes (for average player's such as myself) - But no way to search on these games in this list. (How can I remember where that Rohde-Kogan game is, or what year it was played?). Even though it is 'only' 1500 or so games, I consider this a bad fault. * When replaying a game, you have to hold down the ctrl key & R key at the same time. One would think that the Chess Master designers, would have realized by now that being able to replay the game with just the right arrow key is a huge (& easy), improvement they could have made. Again, a dissapointment. * Though there is a number of tutorials, I found them very confusing to navigate. I know there is 10 or 12 Waitzkin games, but I could only remember how to find 3 of them today. Also the 'John Nunn's favoright puzzles', appears to have crashed on me. * The 'Rate my play' with illustrative games seems to have also been taken out for this version. Another of the (IMO), better quiz/tutorials in past versions, that is evidently gone. Over all CM6000 seem a much more 'pollished', and complete entertainment chess program to me. CM7000, though it has an up-front fresher & newer look, quickly gets stale with what it is lacking. I consider it unfortunate that Mindscape could not have produced a superiour new program (& CM7000 seem more a new program, than an strait-foward upgrade), with the best from its previous program(s). It strikes me as ironic that a previous version of this same companies program is more 'complete', in almost every way. Larry - the chess software addict!
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