Well, I like to voice my opinons on things, but I am not really active in this forum. However after reading this thread with pure positives, I wanted to thow a *slightly* differnt perspective to it. Before I do, I just wanted to say, "Bravo" to JimH's post about goals. :clap: That was well said and rare to hear now-a-days.
Given what JimH wrote, I am not sure if what I am about to say will be helpful. However, here goes. I would have
never bought MC if it wasn't for DHill's MC plugin for Meedio. Even after I was demoing it (with the plugin) I still wasn't sure it was worth it. A couple of reasons:
As has been stated broadly here, there are tons of alternatives which are free. Yeah, MC might have a few more features but I can pickup 99% of those extra features with freeware utilities. Also, with other products, I would be able to use far better MP3 tagging library than YABB. YABB, well, its not good. Not one of my Chinese or JPop MP3s has YABB been able to identify. Whereas freedb, for example, gets 40-50% of them. So IMO, to sell more MC licenses, J River must find a way to differenciate itself from other products. Also offering an alternative tag lookup option would be key (I might be off here as I haven't gotten atagger working right yet and don't know what databse it uses).
The big issue for me though, is the update policy. Its my general rule to never buy software that charges for updates (some call 'upgrades' but its almost always just an update) within 1-1.5 years after I buy it. The only reason I ignored that this time is, for the first time in a while, I found a software that was charged correctly at $USD24. I know the reduced price is because of the $10 charge for the MC11 update but I, currently, have no intention of updating. Again IMO, to sell more licenses a 1 year grace period should be instituted on updates.
Anyway, there's a different perspective
. All that being said, I do like J River and am very happy with my purchase. Anyone who hasn't seen J River and Meedio in action should give it a go, just for the experience if nothing else
.