"Excuse me, but I used to use Max and had nowhere near the trouble I have with P5."

That doesn't really change anything. Like P5 some peopel have huge problems with Max 6 for instance that had no problem with Max 5, Maya peopel have the same complaints. On most machines it works fine, on some it barely works at all with others falling in between. It is exactly equivlelent.

"Maybe so but I hang around forums for many other software packages and have never seen the tide of complaints and problems like P5 has had. Not even close"

I have, all the time :) It's a semi religious issue - go hit Slashdot sometime and see them complain about windows, office and anything else they dislike. You'd be amazed windows runs AT ALL after listening to them.

"Soulhuntre, it's obvious to me P5 works well for you and many others. But it should be just as obvious to you that it doesn't work very well for others. I worked in software and hardware installations and instructions for over 15 years and have never seen anything as bad as P5."

Then your experience is limited.

I have seen tools much more expensive than P5 that were much "worse", I have even seen machines where Max and Maya were much, much less stable than P5 is on the same machine. Life is like that. If your experience is as extensive as you claim then you must be aware that whether or not a machine can run "office" for instance is not a great diagnostic tool for a complex 3d application.

"Making excuses and blaming the user and/or his/her machine doesn't help get the problem fixed."

And making blanket, untrue statements that the software is universally problematic, buggy or unusable doesn't do it either. The reality is that on SOME machines P5 is horrible but on others is is just fine.

Just like most other complex software systems.

When someone says "I couldn't get P5 to run on my machine" I rarely if ever comment that they are wrong. When someone says "P5 doesn't run on my machine, therefore it is a defective piece of _____ that no one anywhere can ever use" I have to step in and correct their assertion.

BTW - I have no problem supporting the idea that CL should remove WinME and Win98 from the list and simply say that it "may" run on those systems. They are obsolete and no longer actively supported - they should simply die like the dinosaurs they are. Supporting them is a waste of time and resources for CL.