Easy CD Creator 5 Platinum [Old Version]

by Roxio

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 10 x 10 x 2.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00005AC56
• Item model number: 1874900
• Date first available at Amazon.com: February 15, 2001
• Average Customer Review: 2.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (387 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,931 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #6 in Software > Video & Music > CD Burning & Labeling > Mastering & Burning
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Review

Admit it: After installing your first CD burner, you transferred every byte of audio and data on your hard drive to CD simply because it was so cool that you could. Whether you're an audio-CD burnaholic or simply perform the occasional hard-drive backup, Easy CD Creator 5 offers excellent options for getting the job done. This powerful program delivers an exhaustive collection of data transfer and formatting options behind a super-slick interface.

Pick just about any file format and this program provides an innovative way of storing it on CD. Burning an audio CD is a piece of cake for this tool, as is creating a video CD and picture slide shows, transferring audio from a cassette or phonograph to CD, and archiving a hard drive. A nifty CD label creator helps organize your archive as well.

As expected, audio CD burning options are comprehensive. In addition to CDA-formatted audio (playable in most CD players) a great feature converts MP3 tracks into CD audio (and vice versa) and pumps up the audio quality of MP3 files lost during compression before transferring the batch of tracks to disk. A sound-transition control allows you to fade songs out or in, add a gap between tracks, or crossfade songs (great for mixed CDs featuring live recordings). For those party-mix CDs culled from various sources, a normalizer function smoothes each track's volume levels across the CD.

Easy CD Creator 5 is much more than an audio-CD burner. A photo-sharing tool frames pictures into self-running slide-show presentations that can be backed with music. Videophiles will enjoy the video-CD capabilities. You can add any Quicktime, AVI, or series of still images to the layout interface, configure the layout, then burn the CD as an MPEG-1, viewable in compatible DVD players.

CD burning is a CPU-taxing endeavor that'll spit out flawed disks if the hardware isn't up to the task. Easy CD Creator 5 requires a 200 MHz CPU or faster, and the recommended 64 MB RAM should be doubled to avoid those annoying buffer-overrun error messages. But if your system is up to par, Easy CD Creator 5 should churn out CD after CD of beautifully formatted disks. --Eric Twelker

Product Description

Roxio Easy CD Creator 5 Platinum can be registered and upgraded . This is the full retail version not an Educational, NFR, or OEM version.

Roxio Easy CD Creator 5 Platinum is the most complete and powerful CD burning software! Now you can burn and share anything on your CD, your music, your photos, your videos even back up your critical data. Design your own CD labels and jewel cases. This platinum version is so complete it comes with Sound Stream 2, Take 2, Direct CD, CD Spin Doctor, CD Label Creator, MP3 support and much more. This includes the User manual and Getting Started Guide. Part Number 1874900.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

257 of 274 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Easy CD Creator 5.0 Platinum Appears to be Working Fine, January 2, 2002

By 

T. Lindsay Foster (Charlotte, North Carolina United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Easy CD Creator 5 Platinum [Old Version] (CD-ROM)

After I installed Windows XP Home Edition on my Dell 8200, I decided to update my 5.0 Basic edition to the Platinum edition. It appears to be working well after I installed it and its patches. However, do not restart the computer after installing the main program and after each patch as Roxio suggests or the program will not work. First install the main program, then xp_up_platinum.exe, then ecdc_v502c_up.exe. Finally, restart the computer.

78 of 82 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Warning Windows 2000 Pro Users, December 11, 2001

By 

Richard Shope (Lisle, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Easy CD Creator 5 Platinum [Old Version] (CD-ROM)

WARNING

If you try and load Easy CD Creator 5.0 Platinum edition on a computer (running Windows 2000 professional and boots from a SCSI hard drive using an Adaptec Controller card) put your (money) back into your pocket and step away from the product.

Here is my horror story. I had been running Easy CD creator 4.0 and was interested in version 5.0 for some features that would help me in transferring my old LP collection to CD. I tried to get an update, but I guess the fact that I had 4.0 registered on line was not sufficient to qualify. The ongoing emails were not worth the cost savings, so I decided just to shell out the (money) and get a full retail version. Since Version 4.0 was purchased when it was part of Adaptec (and now is was Roxio), I guess computer registration information doesn't translate between companies.

On Saturday I was in (a local store) and decided to purchase the full version. It would have been less painful for me to just burn the (money) instead of going through the events of the following week. I want to point out the packaging clearly states this product works with Windows 2000. The only disclaimer is that it won't work on Windows 2000 server. I went to upgrade from version 4.0 to version 5.0. Most well written software, from the same vendor, knows how to handle an upgrade from one version to another. Not in this case, after the reboot the screen put up an error message stating no supportable CD/RW device was detected. After further investigation, the event log reported errors that DCOM could not find specified file. I then read the installation instructions that said to uninstall version 4.0 first. With that information I knew I needed to uninstall version 5.0. First it told me it could not uninstall because it did not have rights to delete a registry key that the installation process created. I had to go into the registry to change the rights on the KEY so I could manually delete it. Now, I could complete uninstalling version 5.0. Then I removed version 4.0 with out any problems. I rebooted the computer and tried to install Version 5.0 and got the same results it did not work.

I then visited Roxio's WEB site and downloaded the patches that were posted. I uninstalled version 5.0 and had the same rights issue with the registry. Now I tried to install version 5.0 using the instructions from the WEB. The instructions say to apply both patches before doing the reboot of the computer. The first patch loaded fine. The update patch said no valid version of Roxio product was detected on this machine or something to that effect. I rebooted thinking maybe the registry needed to be refreshed and tried to load the update and got the same error message.

I am now into Sunday with this problem. I decided that since the computer has been running for over a year with no major problems that maybe the registry has some corruption. So, I reload the Windows 2000 operating system. Same result as before, version 5.0 still does not load correctly.

Now my weekend is gone, and I am at work Monday morning. I decide to call Roxio's tech support line. The line is not toll free. I was on hold for one hour before a technician came onto the line. I tell him the problem and the configuration of my computer. He tells me he has heard of this before, and said the fix is to uninstall the Adaptec SCSI card and load the software. He also says that I need to go into the registry and delete any key that makes reference to Adaptec. This sent shivers down my spine!
My problem is I have no IDE drive and boot from the SCSI subsystem. At the technician's suggestion, I removed the Adaptec drivers replaced, them with the generic drivers, hacked the registry, and loaded version 5.0. I rebooted the computer and got the same error messages. Now I have a new problem. The computer detects the Adaptec card and wants to load the appropriate drivers. So, I do. Every time I reboot the computer it detects the Adaptec controller and wants to load the drives. This obviously was a result of hacking at the registry. To fix this problem, I had to reload Windows 2000.

Monday night I decided to go to Roxio's WEB site and post the problem on line. I can't afford an hour of long distant charges to their tech support. I recap the problems and ask for a document that would allow me to take this product back to (the store) and get my money back. (The store) will not take back software they will only exchange software with bad media for same software.) This is not bad media, just bad programming. Wednesday I get e-mail from tech support suggesting something else to try. There is no mention of me getting my money back. I try the suggestions, same results. I went back to the WEB site, posted the results. It's been almost a week now and all I have for my (money) is a shiny box the software came in, an hour of long distant phone charges and an unstable computer from trying to load Easy CD Creator 5.0. I have a feeling, the ploy at this point, is to keep running suggestions to me until the free support runs out so they can charge me more money. I am not that stupid Roxio.

Save yourself and stay far, far, far, far away from Easy CD Creator 5.0. At this point I will not even install Easy CD creator 4.0. I am researching other CD burning software solutions.

Rick Shope

53 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars If you have XP, Easy is GARBAGE, GARBAGE, GARBAGE!!!, December 20, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Easy CD Creator 5 Platinum [Old Version] (CD-ROM)

This is without a doubt the worst software upgrade in the history of CD software, from a software company whose cred was shaky to start with.

I just upgraded to XP and subsequently had to upgrade to Roxio's Sleazy CD Destroyer 5 (Easy CD Creator 5) from version 4. While 4 has been *OK* for the past few years I have been running it, I can't say enough bad things about version 5 with XP. The software doesn't work... the patches for XP don't work... MS still won't put their seal of approval on it for good reason. It blew up numerous times for no apparent reason, it has no new functionality over v4, locks your system up repeatedly and slows it down to excruiciating levels, AND the UI is more poorly designed than in version 4.

And you wonder why this product is 33% off retail?