Admit it: After installing your first CD burner, you transferred every byte of audio and data on your hard drive to CD simply because it was so cool that you could. Whether you're an audio-CD burnaholic or simply perform the occasional hard-drive backup, Easy CD Creator 5 offers excellent options for getting the job done. This powerful program delivers an exhaustive collection of data transfer and formatting options behind a super-slick interface.
Pick just about any file format and this program provides an innovative way of storing it on CD. Burning an audio CD is a piece of cake for this tool, as is creating a video CD and picture slide shows, transferring audio from a cassette or phonograph to CD, and archiving a hard drive. A nifty CD label creator helps organize your archive as well.
As expected, audio CD burning options are comprehensive. In addition to CDA-formatted audio (playable in most CD players) a great feature converts MP3 tracks into CD audio (and vice versa) and pumps up the audio quality of MP3 files lost during compression before transferring the batch of tracks to disk. A sound-transition control allows you to fade songs out or in, add a gap between tracks, or crossfade songs (great for mixed CDs featuring live recordings). For those party-mix CDs culled from various sources, a normalizer function smoothes each track's volume levels across the CD.
Easy CD Creator 5 is much more than an audio-CD burner. A photo-sharing tool frames pictures into self-running slide-show presentations that can be backed with music. Videophiles will enjoy the video-CD capabilities. You can add any Quicktime, AVI, or series of still images to the layout interface, configure the layout, then burn the CD as an MPEG-1, viewable in compatible DVD players.
CD burning is a CPU-taxing endeavor that'll spit out flawed disks if the hardware isn't up to the task. Easy CD Creator 5 requires a 200 MHz CPU or faster, and the recommended 64 MB RAM should be doubled to avoid those annoying buffer-overrun error messages. But if your system is up to par, Easy CD Creator 5 should churn out CD after CD of beautifully formatted disks. --Eric Twelker
Spotlight customer reviews:
Customer Rating: Summary: Disappointed with Roxio makers of Easy CD createtor 5 Platinum. Comment: I am extremelly disappointed with Roxio, the makers of CD Creators; especailly Easy CD Creator 5. I purchased Easy CD Creator 5, sometime back from an affiliate of Amazon.com. It was dispatched promptly and in very good condition. I installed it on my computer running Windows 98. After some initial problmes it was running fine.
A few days back I installed Windows XP professional on my computer, and I got a message that the CD Creator was not compatible with this version of Windows. It hinted to contact Roxio. I tried contact Roxio with the help of the link, but found it impossible to send them my message. They have an automated "Roxann" that is so difficult to understand. Next they invite you to a "Webticket" and you are supposed to mention your problem on it. But when you submit your query or complain, nothing happens. The site just stares at you dumbly!! There is no way to obtain Roxio's mailing address either. So now I am stuck with this "Easy CD Creator 5" with no help from Roxio?! Customer Rating: Summary: Burn CD's, not your money. Try other products first. Comment: The first version of Easy CD Creator I used was CD Creator 4 basic. It was okay, pretty much what it said it was: basic. I got the upgrade to that from an Ebay auction and it worked pretty good. Later due to lack of support by the manufacturer for new CDRW drives in good old version 4, I upgraded to CD Creator 5 Platinum (The version being sold here.) This too worked pretty good - for a little while. Then the operation was moved over from Adaptec to Roxio, and from that point onward, things have been more thorny than rosy.
Roxio will REQUIRE you to register the product in order to download the (ONE) utterly essential update to keep this thing running. Perhaps you don't mind that, but I feel it's a somewhat minor invasion of privacy. Plus you have to keep track of your password to the website and if you change ISP's you will have to RE-REGISTER. A hassle to say the least. Also , since Roxio took the reins, there are no further updates being provided. Instead Roxio tries to "encourage" (read "browbeat") you into getting the software upgrade for even more money. This upgrade will NOT work on Win98SE, which I still use for various reasons. So IF I were to upgrade the software AGAIN, I would also have to spend the extra money for a new operating system with all the faults and foibles that can introduce with other apps that I need and still use. If you have money to burn along with all those shiny round coasters you are going to be making, I applaud you. I prefer to keep a little cash for retirement.
It is difficult if not impossible to get support from any real carbon-based life form, and the website gives little or no support for some of the issues you may face, such as getting "Illegal Request" errors from Direct CD, or inability to format or erase CDRW's that was once possible in version 4. Also, any CDRW's created in version 4 MAY NOT be readable with the new software, or at the least there are some technical issues with this. At any rate, it is not neccessarily all that "EASY" unless you are fairly technically inclined and understand (or are willing to learn) some of the finer technical points in CD recording technology. I prefer not to be bothered with it, I just want to create some CDs.
I now find that some functions do not work appropriately at all, especially Direct CD, a program that originally provided the ability to do "drag and drop" writing of files to a Read/Write CD. Now I find that Direct CD is non-functional, and the only CD's I can write are CDR's, and there are problems growing in that area as well. Speed of the CDRW or brand of the recording media does not seem to be the issue. The software simply refuses to work as it once did.
It shouldn't be called "EASY CD Creator". Perhaps "IRRITATING" CD Creator would be more appropriate.
In Summary: This does not deserve stars. Perhaps a few "BLACK HOLES"? While I once would have given wholehearted supported this product, regrettably I cannot support it with the same enthusiasm now.
Customer Rating: Summary: No support; No updates; Nero incompatability Comment: I spent the last 3 hours trying to get support for this product. Although the site did not reject me it sent me through loops to get an "update" that when run, errored out as soon as it began. Customer Rating: Summary: Don't bother. Support bites! They only seem to want you to upgrade to latest version Comment: This program is average to below average in it's abilities.
That said, just hope you don't need any Roxio tech support.
Why? because Roxio's support bites!
You CANNOT contact anyone online or by email for help;
whenever their dis-functional "web portal" [web-based support] system traps you in an endless loop.
I needed an couple simples updates for a pc that is NOT ALLOWED on the internet.
It used to be you could download Roxio's PATCHES from any pc having internet access.
Then burn patch[s] to a CD, or copy to floppy/jumpdrive.
Then "sneakernet" the patches to the pc needing them.
NO MORE.
What happened today was that their webpage was apparently trying to download/patch a roxio product directly on MY pc.
[EZCD5 doesn't exist on my pc].
Instead of simply letting me download it somewhere, like to my hard drive, vs patchging it directly from their webpage to my pc,
[which won't work in my case as I'm not using roxio, nor have it installed on my pc];
apparently the morons that did the roxio webpage coding make the download/patch process STOP/END and proceed to send the customer back to Roxio's initial patch download page.
When you need a patch, all these endless loops and support games
are enough to get me looking for a different product/different company.
If you want to minimize human contact with customers, fine.
But let folks at least download the patches they need in order to keep their pc going.
Don't hand over your customer support system [almost] completely to a WEB SERVER.
That ignorant arrangement works about as well as when companies try to save a few pennies and get rid of phone receptionists for customer service telephone calls.
Then they let customers wade through a 100 layer deep voicemail system to find the answer to a simple problem.
IT JUST DOESN'T WORK.
If a company won't provide access to PATCHES,
even after I have logged into their website with username and password, [so they know is accessing their patches]
AND they don't offer any type of
FTP site as a download backup option, then
I sure as heck won't be buying anymore of their products.
I see why Roxio bought up CeQuadrat and other companies.
[Though I hate to see such quality companies be devoured like that].
When a competitor has a better product, why fight to improve your prodsuct's quality/features, when you can buy the other company out.
Thank goodness Nero is not under the Roxio umbrella.
Customer Rating: Summary: Will Not Load onto XP Comment: Despite many attempts and a complete reinstall of Windows XP, my XP machine refused to load Easy CD Creator 5 Platinum, rendering the progam disc and all update discs useless.
Probably if you already had the program running in a 98 environment and then upgraded to XP you could keep it running with patches and updates. So take statements by resellers that they provide update discs with a grain of salt. If you cannot install the primary program, the update disc is of no use.
The program is a good one but you have to run it on a 98 machine.
![Easy CD Creator 5 Platinum [Old Version]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51NBKE52SPL._SL160_.jpg)
