The Winner is …
I’ve written a couple of times comparing the merits of Chess Assistant and ChessBase. Since I’m no GM and so don’t get my copies for free, I can only afford to keep one database going and up to date, so which one will it be?
(drum roll, please)
Chess Assistant.
Why? A lot of factors played into this, but here’s the deal, as the short mad one used to say:
Updates. The plain fact is CA databases are easier to update, especially when, like me, you don’t do updates every single week, but sometimes let a month go by before updating. If I want to do a 5-6 updates from TWIC into CB, for example, I have to download the files, unzip them, open the individual databases and copy them into the main twic database I have here. With CA, I just download the files, go in to CA, hit “Join…” and point the program at the downloaded zip files. It does the rest automatically. Oh, and the program itself is easier to upgrade — you can download the upgrades after purchase, instead of waiting for a package with disc(s). This is important to me since I had a disc from CB that went bad, and it was a month-long hassle that began with the assumption that I was a thief, which, I’ll have to admit, was another factor in the decision (but since most software companies treat their customers like thieves, that doesn’t prove a serious objection). Easily better than CB.
Analysis. CA ships with Deep Rybka, CB with Fritz 6. This one isn’t even close.
Cost. Gotta admit, money is a factor; like I said, GM’s may get a free ride, but I don’t. CA charged $100 to upgrade it along with the 4 million game hugebase. Chessbase wants $140 just for the program. their large database, megabase, is sold separately. It’s at least another $50 to update the megabase.
Does that mean I won’t miss CB? Of course not. I absolutely love the opening report you can build with CB; never saw anything like it anywhere else. But that’s about the only feature of CB I’ll miss. Oh, wait…except for the nice way it lines the test positions I print out up in nice neat columns and rows. CA still hasn’t figured out how to do that; the positions are off by a line or two from one column to the other.
Considering I don’t do a lot of opening reports, and CA10 has now fixed the silly bug that kept it from printing diagrams without moves, there’s no good reason for me to spend twice as much.
May 2nd, 2009 at 12:43 pm
HI Arlen,
I can’t argue the cost analysis, but if you buy Mega2009 it comes with a free upgrade feature which lets you download new games into the Megabase automatically. Most of the games are in TWIC but not all. I think the header editing in CB databases is much more consistent than CA (and different than TWIC). Personally I prefer the game display of CB to CA though it is a matter of taste. Both are excellent programs, however.
Also, the older standalone teaching programs sold by CA do not function in my Vista system. The fixes on the CA website did not work for me and although CA tech support was very prompt and friendly, they could not fix the problem. So I still “borrow’ my old laptop with XP from my wife to use CT-ART etc.
May 2nd, 2009 at 10:32 pm
That may play into it with Windows 7, if I do the upgrade, but then even XP would be an upgrade for me. I have a copy of Win2K here on my laptop (inside Parallels) for running designs against IE6 and that’s where I park some of the CA programs. Aside from that, the CA programs all run fine under Ubuntu Linux. It’s possible I’ll upgrade to Win7, and if you do you might get CT-ART back, as MS stole yet another page from Apple’s book and will be shipping an XP “compatibility box” with Win7, so you could run them in it.
CA has more consistent player names than CB but that’s partly because CA keeps names in a separate table in the database. There’s a lot of “nice touches” in both db’s — the way CB lets you fold up blocks of analysis, the way CA automatically picks up transpositions. By themselves they’re not enough to sway the decision.
I keep thinking about building one of my own, maybe using Ruby, but then I figure it’s not worth the hassle. I have what I need.