Customer Reviews

Nero 6 [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(29)

 

 

Product box leads you to believe that you can rip CD to MP3 and then write a CD with tracks you like. As soon as you start out they inform you that in order to rip more than 30 tracks you will have to give them more money. I could find no mention of this annoying restriction until the software was installed.

I've tried both this program and Roxio's latest Easy CD Creator Platinum edition. Both have their pros and cons, however, in this reviewer's opinion Nero has the competition beat hands down.

The biggest thing Roxio has going for it is the extremely user-friendly interface. It's basically CD & DVD burning for dummies. Roxio also has a very simple to use utility for mixing songs on a CD that works great! Roxio's DVD authoring software is actually pretty great too... and, again, easy to use.

Nero has a bit of a learning curve because it is loaded with so many features and settings, but it is (by far) well worth the patience! In the long run you will be much happier with Nero because you can do almost anything you want and it burns PERFECT CDs every time. EVERY TIME! I don't know what some of the other reviewers were talking about when they complained of buggy behavior and difficulty installing and un-installing. I have never had a single problem with any of these situations.

My biggest disappointment with Roxio's Easy CD Creator is that it does NOT support overburning of CD's and the amount of editing capabilities is limited. Like I said before, Nero takes some getting used to, but once you do, the editing option are really pretty cool! I burned my share of frisbees with Roxio and that's always discouraging. By far it's one of the most common complaints I've heard of Roxio users.

Nero, on the otherhand, does allow over-burning (program recommends a setting or user can set it to whatever they want) and tons of editing features! Not to mention, I have never burned a frisbee with Nero. NEVER! It's really that good! Nero also burns FAST and makes perfect CD to CD copies! It also has a great backup program. The DVD authoring utility, while a little more complex than Roxio's, does work quite well. Great program!!!

Some users have complained about Nero's InCD program. Personally I don't use it, but I have used it before. It's true that it seems to have chellenges in Windows XP, but I have gotten it to work and work fine! I think it has something to do with how Windows XP handles packet writing. I have not used Roxio's equivalent to this either so I can't adequately compare the two on this point.

Nero's latest release is also far easier to operate compared to older versions, but all the stability and functionality of the older versions remain intact. Old fans of Nero will have no argument with the new layout. In fact, there are two interfaces that users can toggle between; an expert mode and a beginner mode. Vetrans of Nero will feel right at home with the expert interface, while newbies will take right to the beginner interface. Not to mention the fact that Nero has also included a nifty Start Smart guide (similar to Roxio's control panel), which makes it so easy to get right where you want to go. And who uses manuals these days anyway? Play with the program for several minutes and you'll be burning CDs in no time. The layout is not the most user-friendly, but it is intuitive and if you have a clue about anything you'll catch on in no time.

Nero is also totally stable and does the job wonderfully! I don't care what the nay-sayers say here. I believe I am (what you could call) an experienced user! I have used both programs quite extensively (on multiple systems) and Nero is still my absolute favorite! It's not buggy like users of Roxio's program (myself included) have frequently complained about. Roxio has improved their program considerably compared to older versions and it is more stable and burns faster than older versions. In fact, specs show that Roxio beats Nero just by a fraction on burn speed. I do agree that non-savy computer users will also appreciate Roxio's almost idiot-proof interface, but I still must recommend Nero over the competition. It is, by far, the most complete, most stable, most feature-laiden CD burning program available!

I wish Nero had an OEM version like Roxio does, but even at $80 bucks, it's still worth every penny!!! GET IT!!! If you want to burn perfect CDs EVERY TIME, buy Nero and forget about Roxio!

Nero 6 immediately crashed my extremely stable Windows XP (Service Patch 1) system right after installing it. That system had no other CD/DVD software on it, and thus no conflicting software. I had to go to the Nero web site and download over 40 MBs!! of their "updates". It then has worked fine (so far) and actually looks to be quite good. Nero clearly rushed this product out to compete against the new version 6 of easy CD and DVD Creator. If you purchase this product be sure to get all of the "updates" from the Nero site before trying to do anything at all, including just browsing the menus.

I recently purchased an "OEM" version of this software, which I am seeing many resellers posting here on Amazon at about half retail price. If you're considering opting for that, note that this is NOT the same as the full retail version, although you'd really have to dig (as I did) to discover the differences. Only in the PDF help files which appear after the installation will you see the difference explained.

First, and very importantly, the OEM will not support MP3 encoding of any kind. You can't rip any of your CDs with this software, and there isn't a patch available from Nero which will let you do so. Note that Nero will mention on their website that the MP3 encoder patch will work with versions "higher than 5.5", but even though the OEM is technically v.6., it isn't compatible. I wasted 20 bucks learning this lesson.

Second, OEM has only the "Nero Express" interface. Nice enough, but clunky for power users used to the old v.5 look.

If your needs are very basic, OEM Nero will work fine for you. I'm running it on XP and haven't encountered any bugs yet. But if you're ripping a lot of music to MP3, better get the full retail version or download a different encoder. Thankfully, the resellers on Amazon are itentifying their copy as OEM.

The DVD/CD burning engine Ahead has created and their very reliable Nero Aspi make it an excellent straight up burnder, especially for making archive copies of movies. I've not--knock on wood-had any coasterizations using it. Whereas the crappy burning program my six months old Vaio PCV-420 came with created a number of coasters and finally had to be relegated to the dark corner of the hdd.

However in the "advanced" or "ultra" features than Ahead so touts you discover that you cannot use them after paying your $75 bucks. To full use their MPEG-4 creator, their re-authoring package or even their DVD viewer (!) you have to cough up at least $50 more bucks--and, and another reviewer noted, that's not even couting the $19.95 you have to pony up to be able to rip MP3s--which is just plain stupid when there are good free progs--or far less expensive ones--that can do all these things at least as good--certainly not WORSE than Nero. I'm talking about DVD-Shrink (which has an excellent burner), DVD-Decrypter and many others. Check out doom9.com's site for the full information of DVD/CD burner software and LEGAL archiving of DVDs.

I got my copy of Nero Ultra as a gift and that's the only way I'd take it. It is utterly ridiculous--but seemingly a common tactic of German companies--to provide tantalizing goodies only to hit you with a laundry list of must-buy options that cost more than the original package.

Not only that, but beyond the Tools, Nero Burning ROM and Nero Express, the rest of the "tools" are not terribly intuitive and far more timeconsuming to learn that the freeware products mentioned above. The reauthoring tool of DVD Shrink had me actually doing it whereas after twenty minutes of NeroVision I was hopelessly lost.

Not only that but trying to use the authoring prog (Nero "Recode") gets you the following messages:

"Due to copy right reasons Dolby Multi-Channel and Decoding are not available except for purchase...." which leads you to Ahead's website where you have to privelege of plunking down another $19.95 EACH.

The second message informs you. The MPEG-4 convertor has a similar message.

In short, the basic engine is great. The company's bait-and-switch attitude is a real turn-off and rip off. And finally, excepting really only Burning ROM, the rest of the products lack any real feel for "ease of use" or a sense of how Newbies and casual repeat users can quickly go about their work--assuming they've paid the extra $50 to $75 bucks on top of the $74.99 to get the package full functional.

Because for that price you should never get ANYTHING but the full package. Ahead's Prez Fabian clearly has a low opinion of his customers. We're only wallets.

That's what gets this product a two instead of a three. 90% of this "D" grade is due to the numerous demands for more cash to enable basic functionality and lack of a spirit of "ease" of use" in the more advanced products.

All in all, corporate greed and lack of innovative feel and touch turn what should be a great package into a grossly, crassly expensive con-game.

Nero 6 is 99.9% effective but has a tendency to corrupt now again simply because it has a vast configuration system. Nero is a core burning tool. This means that several backup packages out there will actually find Nero on install and use it for burning. One example is DVDshrink that runs Nero in the background while backing up DVD movies on DVD-R. I/O errors with these programs, including DVD Decrypter, are usually the result of a configuration problem with Nero. One example is updating your firmware. Sometimes this requires you to reinstall Nero. This problem however is the only bug I have found with Nero. Just on the side - I highly recommend a Plextor external DVD burner for reliability and Imation, Memorex, Verbatim as relatively cheap good second class media (80% or higher burn success rate). DVD is still in its early days of development and some media is garbage so don't blame Nero or the Plextor if you make coasters (half burned DVD-R Discs that are useless to you) with this software. I also recommend a healthy supply of at least 3 DVD-RW Discs for TESTING your burning so that you NEVER make a coaster and waste money. Okay, now back to Nero.

Nero Burning Rom is the real tool in the bundle. It is the most configurable burning tool in the package while Nero Express is for those who do not know a thing about burning and works like a Wizard. A word of advice is to stick with the Rom and learn it without using the Wizard. You can choose from burning 12 CD formats and 6 DVD formats, including several variations of each format. There is not a Disc format you can not Burn with this program. The Plextor burners have great hardware based error correction systems and in conjunction with the Nero software make a perfect burn almost every time. Nero also happens to be extremely fast, if not the fastest out there, however fast is also in terms of how fast your burner is, but the software package requires little to no processing before a 8GB DVD is being pulled onto your HD. You can create ISOs with Nero and even use Nero to open up ISOs so you can read the content (However Daemon Tools does that better). There is an amazing amount of free software out there that uses this burner as their base and rightly so. It is the best burning software out there at this time of writing.

Pros:

- If you can learn tutorials for all types of backups then this and a DVD burner will change your life if you play games and watch movies.
- Solid performance. With good hardware and media almost flawless burns every time.
- Nice configuration. Can even backup your PS2 Games.
- All burning formats.
- About 70mb in size.


Cons:

- Let's face it. DVD burning and backup does have a bit of a learning curve. Read plenty of tutorials that use Nero to do specific backups.
- Corrupts if hardware and other software is updated. Needs to be reinstalled again.
- You really need a top of the range machine to backup a DVD in less than 2 hours.

To sum up my Nero 6 Ultra Edition experience:
1. The user interface is NOT user-friendly.
2. The program documentation is in two different and unrelated places - Windows help and three different pdf files found only on the installation disc.
3. When I have a problem, I have yet to find what I am looking for in the included program documentation.
4. The Nero suite is not integrated well. The user must already know which programs in Nero do exactly what the user wants to do with CD burning... and pray you know how to do your desired task.
5. FAQs at the website are not helpful
6. There is no telephone tech support included in the purchase price. You can get it, but it will cost you per minute!
7. The included Tech support is only available via email with a 5 - 7 day wait between your submission and the Tech reply. Email tag is reduced if you are VERY CLEAR about what you need to know or do.
8. There is at least one good thing about Nero 6 Ultra Edition... I have yet to make a coaster.
9. GOOD LUCK NEW USERS!

After getting an Iomega CD-RW and suffering from it's HotBurn application, I decided to give Nero a try after hearing so much good things about it from everywhere.

Both installation and running of the application are smooth and easy on my IBM T-30 with P4 1.6Ghz running XP. My satisfaction is primary with the CD burning and Back-Up utility (onto my external HD). I haven't tried other extensive functions.

From what I see, many people using the retail version that was released earlier are having problems. However, I think the current online version 6.0.19 is running very well. I will recommend people to purchase it online even though it's $10 more expensive than the retail one. I think it'll save a lot of trouble getting errors and finding update patches.

I used the retail version of Nero 5.5 for 2 years. The learning curve on Nero 5.5 was rather steep (compared to EZ CD Creator), and I ended up just using it to burn CD's and VCD's while using other software for MP3 encoding and video/audio editing.

I recently bought a DVD burner and now need DVD-savvy software. The DVD and video tools in NeroVision Express (NVE) that came with Nero 5.5 didn't impress me. I have Magix Video Deluxe 2.0 for video editing, and it came with DVD burning tools, but it was so buggy at dealing with large MPEG files that I desperately had to look elsewhere. So I have been trying out Nero Ultra 6.3.1.15 for the past week strictly on the DVD functions, since I know that CD (and VCD) functions worked flawlessly in Nero 5.5. The basic Nero Burning Rom user interface in 6 Ultra isn't much better than 5.5, although it's prettier. The Nero StartSmart interface is a lot better than Nero Wizard. It took a few minutes to get used to StartSmart, but now I'm sold on it.

NeroVision Express 2 (NVE2) is quite an upgrade over NVE, especially since the DVD encoding tools don't require an extra-cost add-in. I was able to pull in large (1 Gb) files with only a few seconds delay for loading each file (Video Deluxe can take up to 10 minutes each), split/crop them inside NVE2, add chapter markers, and create decent DVD menus.

I made a 2 hr 10 min (4.2 Gb) DVD using a mix of clips from 8mm video via an ATI All-In-Wonder analog capture card, MiniDV, and photo slideshow output from Video Deluxe (it has a lot more transition effects than NVE2, and still works pretty well for small files of up to a few meg). I was able to burn them to DVD+RW and DVD-RW with only minor startup issues on a 1.1GHz Athlon and NEC ND-1200AD DVD dual-format burner with Windows 2000. The 4.2 Gb file took 15 hours to encode to DVD format files on the hard drive. But actual burning takes 25-40 minutes depending on media type. There was little online or help documentation to explain the benefits of encoding to the hard drive, but it will save time if you need to burn the same project multiple times. Most notably, I am able to do almost everything using the tools in Nero 6 Ultra - something not possible (or at least with satisfactory results) with Nero 5.5.

Nero Cover Designer is quite handy. It's powerful enough for the enthusiast, with basic text, image, and database tools. But it's not for professional graphic artists who need borders around text, translucent fills, or aligning objects with each other.

Small problems I ran into with the DVD creation process:
1. One bug I found in NVE2 was not being able to splice more than one movie clip back-to-back with one another on-the-fly - it allows you to do it, but produces an obscure error at the start of the burn process. The workaround was to add each movie clip separately and list them as separate movies (with their own chapters) on the DVD menu, or use NVE2 to combine multiple clips, export them to a single clip, and then use only the new combined clip.

2. Another more annoying bug with NVE2's DVD encoding is that audio will sometimes lose sync with the video by a few seconds. I'm not sure what exactly causes this or how to fix it, but I can live with it for what I'm doing.

3. Nero Cover Designer has an annoying bug in the user-defined Paper Stocks utility where you are not allowed to specify paper orientation, yet it defaults in portrait (which is useless for doing something such as a custom DVD insert stock). You can't modify the predefined stocks either.

These are relatively minor problems. It was very stable, and never crashed Windows. I'm satisfied enough that I will spend the money to upgrade from 5.5 to 6.3 just for the new DVD features in NVE2. But if I was just burning CDs, VCDs, and MP3s, I'd stick with Nero 5.5. I would have given it 5/5 stars if it didn't have the audio/video sync problem.

I am getting the dreaded "error:6" message as well. My email to Nero has been ignored and I WILL NOT pay $1.29 a minute to help AHEAD debug their poorly written software. BTW - has anybody received a solution from AHEAD?

I switched to NERO from EZCD Creator because of Roxio's buggy software but now I am in the market for a new CD burning product. Why can't these companies get it right or at least provide decent tech support?