Customer Reviews

DVO Cook'n Deluxe 6.0 - Ultimate Recipe Organizer

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

Were it not for the glitches, this would be a great piece of software.

My main complaint is that each time I update it with their latest software (which includes new recipes), instead of overwriting the existing recipes, it simply adds them again. So, after the installation and two updates, I now have 3 of every recipe.

This is annoying on many levels. I've contacted customer support and their seeming automaton tells me to update to the latest version. Well...that's what is causing the problems.

I'm a Microsoft engineer so I'm not computer-stupid. The software has some serious flaws.

Buy at your own risk.

old interface, many bugs, user extremely unfriendly, a complete waste of money for overpriced piece of cooking software developed by some unexperienced software writer, that is lucky to get away with such an unsatisfactory job! Get living cookbook software instead, instant download online, it is the best one by far.

I never write reviews of software, or anything for that matter. However, I felt compelled to warn others before they throw away 40 bucks on this software. It is very hard to install if you are missing some .dll files. You have to scower the internet to find and download the right ones. Also, I bought the combination package that had two other recipe cd's included. If you load these in the wrong order, watch out as well ! Once I finally got everything up and running, it worked for about a month, then crashed. I finally got tired of fixing this program, and decided to use the cookin' delux cd's as drink coasters. Beware.

I am disabled and have used this software for about 60 days. My daughter is getting married and I wanted to create something she wanted that was substantial [not money]. She has built an expensive home and there is not much to give. She always wanted a copy of the family cookbook. My aunt had the original and it was held together with rubberbands and a plastic newspaper bag.
When I saw this I thought WOW, I can't give her any greater a gift than that of my time and our ancesters.
I have input over 4,000 recipes. I have played with the software, broken it, fixed it, lost a hard drive, recovered the files. The program is easy to learn, use, copy, e-mail and print [that was tricky!].
Now the problem is finding a box large enough to hold all the recipes.
I have been disappointed with the support. Downloading from other sites is foggy and DVO is not quick to reply. They say 'Go to the Web Site' but once there there is no help. They have to work on that, but the program is FUN!!!!!!!!

I've used the CookN software for about 3 years now, and I have to say it is the best! The technical support is fantastic -- yesterday's email question was answered within an hour.

This software has WONDERFUL recipes from the Current catalogs and calendars and other cookbooks, too. Real food for real people! I've added tons of my own recipes and haven't had a problem with incorporating them into meal plans and shopping lists. The software is organized as cookbooks and chapters, just like the my books on a shelf with the added capability of searching across all or some of them for ingredients I have on hand.

I agree with the other reviewer that the store categories were somewhat confusing, but it took all of 20 minutes to go in, edit all the categories changing them to aisle names in my store, and now I can print out a shopping list in the order I walk around the store. WOO HOO!!!!

I, too, have had the errors pop up where I had shut down inappropriately and corrupted some index somewhere. But, by downloading the latest updates (FREE!) and following the instructions on the website, I was back up and running in less than 15 minutes with all my old recipes intact. And, the new software promises this won't happen as much.

As far as importing recipes, there is a freeware program available (Meal Master) that lets you read in MasterCook recipes from the internet and then you can upload them directly into Cook N. I was able to load 2 or 3 cookbooks full last night, in about 10 minutes (a cookbook at a time). Not too shabby!!!

All in all, this one does it all. A glitch here and there maybe, but hey, I'm only human! :)

I was very disappointed in this program and do not plan on buying any other programs from this company. I've worked with it for several months now, but have only been increasingly dissatisfied with it.

I have a metabolic disorder, which requires careful attention to my diet, so I bought Cook'n primarily for the nutritional analysis. I've found, however, that there are frequently glaring inaccuracies in the analyses. The most obvious is a tendency to list sodium as being 400+ mg. These errors happen even when all the ingredients in the recipe have full nutritional information in the database.

When I followed their instructions for importing recipes (using some Meal Master recipes I downloaded from the internet) the program reacted very strangely and started giving me serious problems. For instance, some of the cookbooks disappeared, and the screen look changed. I uninstalled, then reinstalled it. For some reason that only partially corrected the problems. I never have been able to get the original program I worked with back up and running, even after installing the upgrades.

As noted in earlier reviews, support is pretty much nil. All I was told was to go to their website, in spite of the fact that I explained that I had already been there. The website help section is small and has very little information. It was not at all helpful to me.

Overall, I wish I'd listened more to the negative reviews when I was researching this prior to buying it. They detail, for the most part, exactly the sort of problems I've been having. I've given up on Cook'n and am now looking for another program that will give me the nutrional information I need, with more flexibility in downloading, and more accuracy in nutritional anlysis.

#1) The user interface is okay, but not intuitive. I am a technical writer, web designer and software support specialist, and it took me a while to figure out how things were organized. Right or wrong, I expected something of a Windows format, i.e. the FILE menu lists functions specific to filing, the EDIT menu lists things like copy and paste, etc... I'm not a big fan of the Microsoft Monopoly, but I have to tell you that most people expect things to look like Windows these days.

#2) The shopping list function does not reliably pull every ingredient from a recipe, and the entire "have it" column will clear whenever you try to modify an ingredient. This was particularly frustrating to me when I was working on a weekly menu list and had a huge number of things checked! The software does not give you a "modify" button or something similar when you've checked all of your "have it" items, so that the only way you can look at just the things you need to buy is by printing out the list, which is a huge waste of paper if you have to make changes. When I tried to print a week's shopping list, the list came out in 12-point font which took up three pages (way too big! it's got to fit in a regular pocket or handbag, remember), and listed the items in a very confusing, hard-to-read format, with the section title (example: fresh produce) on the left, followed immediately underneath by the ingredient, and then to the far right is the actual item to be purchased. There's no line to guide the eye, and the formatting was rather clumsy so that you have to stop and stare at the list to figure out what you're going to buy, not to mention the fact that it seems silly to list the ingredient twice (i.e. "celery, 1/2 cup" and then to the right, "celery, one package").

#3) Entering or modifying foods is way too complex and extremely undwieldy. I wanted to go through the lists and take out the brand-specific names because I bargain hunt and don't buy any one particular brand. I found the brand names annoying, especially since they pertain largely to mid-west grocery chains that don't exist in California. I have so far found no way to list all the items; one has to search for them individually, and frankly, that's way too much effort just so the software can do what I want it to do.

#4) The recipes are all submitted by different people, and no one has taken the time to standardize them. I'm looking at one now - "Toad-in-a-hole" - in which the author tells me what kitchen utensils I'll need, and then tells me how to grease a pan and scrape the sides of a blender. I'm pretty sure I can figure out that I want to use a skillet all on my own, and I've been greasing pans for quite a few years now. It seems a bit unprofessional. Another recipe that I came across recently (sorry, I don't remember which one) left out a major step in the preparation of some chicken dish. I've found typos and incorrectly listed ingredients and other problems, and of course there are quite a few bugs in the interface between the recipe bookshelf and the meals section and the weekly planning section. I don't like that I can't copy a recipe straight into a book, but can only copy a chapter, even if I hate every other recipe in that chapter. I hate that the recipes seem to go out of their way to add fat and calories (fry in one cup of oil, mix in one cup of mayonnaise..... eyewwwww) and that there's no healthy section that I can find. I don't like how the recipe book shelf is organized, in that I find it overwhelming to choose a recipe from the list of books that don't seem to be organized in any particular fashion. I don't like how hard it is to populate the weekly menu with my own choices, instead of choosing their ready-made weekly plans. I don't like that when I click on a recipe in the weekly menu, I get the meal card and not the actual recipe, and I have to go to "edit" on the meal card and click on the name of the recipe there in order to get to the recipe. The software is full end-to-end with problems of this nature, and they, unfortunately, make it very clumsy and hard to use.

#5) The software has a lot of bugs. When I first installed it, the install didn't work right and a database was corrupted, which required I reinstall the software. Every fourth or fifth time I open it, I get some error message that I'm usually able to work through. If I try to open it after a copy is already open on my desk, the software isn't smart enough to tell me that a copy is already open, but instead gives me code error messages.

It just felt like DVO wanted to save some money, so they cut out the focus groups who might have given some really necessary feedback, and they employed really young and inexperienced programmers...

The recipes included with the program are very good, and it is easy to add your own once you have figured out how to add a cookbook and the chapters. It was confusing at first. The grocery list works fine until you want extra items, and then it has difficulty when you print it out. I have found it easier to copy to a word processor and them add my extra items.

The more I learn about this software and the company that created it, the more impressed I am. They created the first version 12 years ago and cooking software is all they do.

Rather than selling upgrades every six months to make a buck, they fix problems and add new features on a monthly basis and let all of their customers download updates for free. What more could you ask for?

I bought this because it sounded neat but now I must say that I'm a believer. The software works great and the company supports the product very well. They send me a free monthly newsletter with cooking tips and recipes that I can download right into my software. The President himself even gives out his e-mail address and encourages his customers to send feedback.

I've checked out some of the other brands like MasterCook but none of them even come close to Cook'n.

I highly recommend this product.

The software allows you to add pictures into the recipe database. Sound like a good idea right!! But there is no way to view the pictures with the recipe or to print them out. My goal was to keep our recipes organized, but also to print them and have them in a binder. Having a picture of the meal you are cooking is very useful, but not possible with this software.
Save you money, don't bother with this software.