How Nero Sucks.

I mean Nero the company that makes CD- & DVD-burning software.

These people used to make a great product.

It started as free and then came with seemingly half of all disk burners you would buy.

And the program wasn't expensive.

Now they're incompetent--bordering on evil.

I had an old version on my work PC--no disk around, it was lost in the annals of time.

I downloaded a demo to look at new features. It uninstalled the old version. The software doesn't back up the old version--as responsible software designers do.

The messages during the process assured me I could go back: a complete lie.

Then the demo wouldn't run. The serial number had "expired."

I downloaded it that day.

Phone support was very casual. "Oh that happens sometimes. Wait a while and download it again."

Me: "What's 'a while'? Five minutes? A month?"

Support: "Two weeks. A new demo is uploaded to the site every two weeks."

Could I talk to someone else? No. Would this problem be fixed--ever? No.

So Nero's basic message is: try our product, we'll lie to you and destroy the version you bought and paid for, sorry if it doesn't work, twiddle your thumbs for two weeks and maybe the new version will work.

It's like the old Lily Tomlin satire of Bell Telephone: "We're the phone company. We don't care--we don't have to."

'We're Nero. We make software that comes free with every DVD burner. That pays us so much that we don't care if our product works or not."

Perhaps there's a logic to it: the cost of a burner with the software is less than the cost of the software.

Why would anyone pay this company money? You're better off just buying another piece of hardware.

But why would anyone believe the product the sell is better engineered than the product they demonstrate?

Another good company gone to hell.

--E. R. O'Neill

P.S. Someone in our office had bought Nero 7. I installed it. But the program I need (Recode) keeps crashing. Incompetence? Not Giving a Damn? Malice? You decide!