Looks like Chessbase decided to have a download version of Chessbase at a reasonable price.
Its listed at $99 euro I guess. Not sure what that would be if ChessbaseUSA starts selling it. It only comes with the “online database”. But there are plenty of free, if smaller databases floating around the internet. Of course, one could combine a bunch of smaller databases into a single larger database. (Especially helpful when downloading a bunch of small databases that cover specific openings.)
ChessbaseUSA doesn’t have it listed yet. I’ll presume they’ll have it within a few weeks, in order to cash in on the holiday crowd.
Edit: I’ve been wanting Chessbase 11, but the $189 price for the starter package was too expensive. So $99, or close to that, would put it more in my price range.
It will also be interesting to see what ChessBase does as Anroid, MacOS and IOS continue to eat away at Windows’ market share. Not that Windows isn’t the 800 pound gorilla, but how many ChessPlayers would be interested in even a CB “lite” for a tablet?
As far as mobile/tablet OS. They would almost certainly do with just the online database. Mainly due to smaller storage capacities. I think there are enough smaller, free, chessbase format databases floating out on the internet to satisfy someone wanting to have an actual database on thier smartphone or tablet.
-I’d say a high quality 500,000 game database, focusing on a range of openings, should be fine for a smartphone, if they also have online access to the 5 million game database.
Franky, considering how small the Windows Pocket PC market was, and how big the iPhone and Android market is… very suprising the Chessbase hasn’t already released a version of Fritz and Chessbase on those operating systems.
Last month (Sept), when I went to the cable TV office to pay my bill, some guy came in, mad as hell. The manager asked the customer to go to his office, but the customer was hell bent on having an angry conversation where everybody could hear it.
Turns out the guy was told twice already to stop downloading illegal content, and after the 3rd time, they canceld his internet account. Neither the manager or the customer specifed what exactly was being downloaded illegally.
This downloading of files is a gray, murky, and some would say shady area. As yet, the authorities have not shut the sites down. Billwong has just stated a fact of the internet. The sites operate as file sharing operations. A subscriber pays a fee to access files - videos, books, software - that interest him and which have been uploaded by others. The assumption, perhaps dubious, is that the uploader has purchased the item he has uploaded and wants to share it with others in exhange for stuff that he is interested in. The people who do this upload/download business look at this as bartering. They claim it is no different than buying a book and exchanging it with someone else for their book.
To me it looks a little shady, but the authorities have not seen fit to spend money to investigate and prosecute. Chess sites are low in priority compared to the music and movie business who spend tons of money trying to protect themselves. When one of these sites goes down, a bunch of others pop up in its place. Assuming you could shut down all of these sites here in America, they would likely just appear in China, who is more loosey goosey on protecting intellectual property and copyrights, or in some other offshore operation. I am a bit jealous that the 2500+ books and the videos and software I purchased over a 40 year span can be downloaded by a 13 year old in the course of a few evenings of downloading at the cost of a few DVD’s. He has no idea whether what he gets are nuggets or junk, he just downloads everything.
There is usually “trust among thieves.” I am told that the people who run these sites are usually careful about checking for viruses. It is not in their best interest to get a reputation for having tainted stuff on their site. The “customers” are a little savvier (otherwise they would not have found the website), and know they will be tracked down by the others if they upload tainted junk. Hackers and these download artists have a certain code of honor among themselves while having a complete disrespect for authority, legalities, and organizational structures. They are a strange and fascinating subculture in the “shadow economy.”
I clean up enough client computers to know that there is no honor among thieves. And this isn’t a gray ethical area. Unless the person in question is getting rid of their DVD, CD, or software program after uploading it and making sure it goes to only one other person, it is stealing.