Deep Fritz 8

Rating:
Summary: a great program yet over-hyped and costly
Review: deep fritz is a great program for playing chess. it is not the best though.
for most people the ordinary fritz8 will run faster and it costs less--you do not have a motive to spend so much money on this software unless you already use a specialized computer system with dual cpus(like two xeon chips instead of a single pentium4, eg.). otherwise the extra coding in the software for the second cpu will actually slow down playing performance strength by at least 2-5% on a single processor system.

if you want the best chess playing program consider purchasing shredder8 or deep junior8 from the same publisher because either of these two have beaten deep fritz8 in world computer championships and have a different opening book than fritz does so you will enjoy another style of play.
this is the golden age of chess software. you have many glorious choices to savour-- i do not believe any choice is really bad. but don't spend too much money in the mistaken belief that you are getting 'the best and only' software to have because that sets up disappointment and unreal expectations from a machine.
use the money that you save to buy endgame tables or extra opening books for your chess engine if computer performance is your central issue. otherwise consider purchasing chess training and teaching software to learn tactics well-- you will see a marked improvement in your playing strength and purchase satisfaction if you choose this course.

Rating:
Summary: Good Program But...
Review: It seems to have everything you could want in a chess program, but the instruction manual really is poorly done. It takes an inordinant amount of time to locate the information which will tell you how to set it up for your preferred style of play. I have only had the program for 3 days, but the manual is infuriating-maybe it'll get better as I get used to it. If the manual had been done better, I would have rated it a 5.

Rating:
Summary: Good program, bad support
Review: The program is pretty good, but it isn't much better than Fritz 7, and isn't much faster either, so it doesn't seem worth the extra over just the normal Fritz8. I'm also really annoyed about the support - my CD came without a user manual, which means that I don't have a product key to register my copy, and can't play online. Amazon blamed the publisher, and the publisher blamed Amazon, and I still don't have a manual or a product key.


Rating:
Summary: SPEECHLESS!
Review: Well for one thing, this is by far the strongest program in the world. It is not cheap, but it is worth every penny that you pay for it. They lie about it drawing Gary, it beat him! I am rated 1870 currently in uscf and i put the setting on 1900 rated play, and it plays exactly like a 1900. After playing with the 1900 for a while, I noticed i was winning many more games than i used to! Buy this program!