Nero 9, a fiddle in Stradivarius clothing

Many of you know that I have supported Nero Burning Rom since it's early days, when the only place to get it was http://www.ahead.de.

I have even pushed it on my family members.  I have upgraded religiously and for the most part have used every tool they offer.  I started to get concerned with size and bulkiness of Nero 7, and when 8 came a long at 328MB it was just too much in my book; however I was having some problems with bugs in 7, and a colleague told me that they had been addressed in 8, so I figured I should upgrade.

I will admit, for the most part I have been happy with 8; although I honestly don't use it as often some others may, it seems to do the job, and if you install it correctly by disabling the Nero Scout, then speed is usually not a factor.

However there comes a time when software companies seem to be more interested in making money than they are in turning out good software, and Nero 9 definitely fits that bill.  At a whopping 537MB, this latest folly by Nero AG is far from a quick download, unfortunately even on my multi-T1 (not DSL or Cable mind you, but a CIR guaranteed circuit) it took almost 30 minutes and this was in the early morning hours to boot.

After the download completed, I was able to watch two recorded episodes of The O' Reilly Factor before the installation completed.  I am not kidding, on my personal workstation, a custom built Dual Pentium 4 with 4GB RAM running Windows XP Pro 32-bit, it took almost an hour to install!

After the install was complete, it required a reboot (Windows, go figure) – so after rebooting, I was anxious to start using this new program, so I immediately clicked on my launch icon for Nero SmartStart and low and behold, I thought something went wrong, because it looked just like Nero 8.  Except for the start-up splash screen (loader) which is now a wavy bezier line, instead of a the spinning circle, nothing, I mean nothing about the interface has really changed.

I will admit, there are some new features; for instance the launch center now supports playing audio and video files; however I already have iTunes and Microsoft Media Player, so I personally don't need that, also it seems that Nero is trying to get into the PC Television market, by offering tools to watch and record television on your computer, and the BackItUp tool is now a separate download.  Also, Nero Scout seems to have disappeared, at least it wasn't in the list of programs to install when I did my custom install.

So, it is with a heavy heart that I say to you, it's apparent that Nero has gone the way of all good software companies after they start to see a little money, make it bigger, more bloated, and whatever you do, make sure you churn out a new version every year.

If you were looking for the Stradivarius of DVD/CD burning software, you will unfortunately not find it here.  As I write this blog post (on my laptop) I have been uninstalling Nero 9 on my desktop, and so far it is still not done!  There is something to be said about a software application that takes almost an hour to install and uninstall 🙁

However; as often is the case, I have found a new DVD/CD burning software that much like Nero did when it was young, seems to do one thing and one thing very well.  So far I am quite impressed, for one thing, the 8.7MB download was very promising.  It's still too soon to call, but I have downloaded the trial of Oront Burning Kit 2 and will let you know how I make out.  If you want to check it out for yourself visit this link.

Regards,
jim®

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About jim®

James A. Restucci is the author of this blog. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 Internal License.

2 Responses to Nero 9, a fiddle in Stradivarius clothing

  1. jimr says:

    Just a quick update to let you all know I am very happy with Roxio CD Creator 9, if any of you are interested in getting a copy, visit http://www.roxio.com

  2. jimr says:

    Well folks although Oront Burning Kit was decent at some things, it definitely lacked in the DVD Making department. So I did some research and found that Roxio CD Creator 9 was a better bet.

    I haved installed the full version and am very happy, much happier than I was with Nero. BTW so you know, Nero 8 and 9 are a real pain to uninstall. They seem to want to permeate every part of your OS, especially File Associations. After I removed Nero, I had a number of problems with file associations, and wound up having to install an AutoPlay Fix tool, which I have included as an attachment to this blog.

    Good luck, and if you need help, feel free to drop me a line.