Exeter Chess Club: Fritz

I am now on my third version of Fritz and am still not entirely happy with it. It pays a mean game of chess, and has an attractive screen, but has some clunkiness which I would resent in shareware, let alone full-price commercial software.

Fritz gripes (relevant to version 3, but most are present in all versions)
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STARTING UP

- I get a persistent "EMS error" message on startup (which takes one
key press to remove - it doesn't disappear after a delay and I can't
disable it - I have trialled shareware which pestered me less than this!)

[EMS is incompatible with Windows, so you have to reconfigure
 the whole machine to get Fritz to work in optimal mode, then change
 it all back to use Windows - or get this message every time]

- Auto-analyse has to be switched off every run (this takes two key
presses to close) Although Fritz does save information about colour
and sound and animation, it doesn't save this as a preference. 

- The set level has to be moved up every run (two key presses)
Although Fritz does save information about colour and sound and
animation, it doesn't save this as a preference. 

WORKING WITH FRITZ

 - You are given only a 3-line comment box to annotate moves, rather
than open-ended pop-up text window; a pointless restriction.  

SAVING GAMES

- If I have unsaved changes in current game, I'd like Fritz to ask:
really load new game?  This would have saved a lot of lost work at
times... 

- I type in one of my league games, and type in 3-figure BCF grade -
but the machine won't accept a three-figure grade.  A pretty pointless
restriction in itself, but... 

- I still want my UK grade information, so I convert 113 BCF to ELO
1504, type in ELO 1504... then ELO comes out at 2780 after a save!  

- Fritz' books recognise an opening's ECO code, but the openings
classification it uses for reports is much cruder and idiosyncratic.
This is inconsistent and annoying.

- Fritz books recognise ECO, but Fritz doesn't offer the ECO code it
clearly knows about as a prompt in the save screen

- The save screen prompts the current year, even if you are entering
a 1884 game! The opening ECO code is always right but date is often
wrong - why does Fritz prompt the date & not the opening? 

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This document (fritznbg.html) was last modified on by

Dr. Dave