Learning Company Kid Pix Deluxe 4 (Version 2)
by Encore Software
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List Price: Category: Software See more product details and other editions |
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Software Reviews of Learning Company Kid Pix Deluxe 4 (Version 2)
Customer Review: a good product
Summary: 4 Stars
a good product overall. fun for the children to use.
also used in school, allow creativity.
Customer Review: Wonderful
Summary: 5 Stars
Very good product for kids! All my children ages 4 and up use it and love it!Customer Review: Buggy program, zero support = refund request
Summary: 1 Stars
I bought this for my son, since it is ostensibly the same program they use in his kindergarten. Unfortunately I made the mistake of buying the electronic download version, which requires a horrid program called appstream. The first problem I have is that this appstream program isn't just for the download, it installs itself to always be running, and is required to be running to use the Kid Pix application. Further, it also must be able to connect to the internet each time you want to use the program, so it is impossible to use it on a laptop in disconnected mode. This restriction alone (which is not mentioned during the purchasing process) was enough to make me decide to return it for the "normal" version on a CD.
But then I found that I could not even use the program. When I launch it, I find that the Kid Pix executable completely saturates the CPU on my fairly fast laptop, and takes more than 5 minutes to fully load. And when it does finally come up, it has a constant CPU load of 85-95% for just this one executable, which makes it unusable. So I sent a simple support request to Broderbund, which was to ask them if it was a known issue, and was I likely to see the same thing with the version on CD. (In essence, asking if it was the very same program on CD.)
I won't go into the screen resolution issue that others describe, but of course I was affected by that as well. As it was running on a laptop, changing to a non-native resolution isn't an option. This will be true for LCD monitors as well, where non-native resolutions have horrible viewability. The is presumably because this application has an archaic interface based on fixed size bitmaps, and they can neither scale their user interface nor display it in a window.
What I got back was a useless response telling me to defragment my hard disk. Clearly they aren't willing to support this product. Perhaps its modest level of quality and low price point make real support not cost effective. Nonetheless, I'm off to find a better alternative for my son. For now he can go "old school" and use crayons. :-)
UPDATE: And to top off all of that, I just got a solicitation call based on my registration information I had provided.
Customer Review: BAD
Summary: 1 Stars
Lousy product--won't install, NO online support. Downgraded to Kid Pix Deluxe 3 by MacKiev-easy install, plays nicely.Customer Review: NO!
Summary: 1 Stars
Mac users - Purchase Kid Pix 3 (which is nothing like the original Kid Pix 3 that came out years ago) from MacKiev dot com. Their version is elegant and beautiful!
The Riverdeep version of Kid Pix 4 is nasty and freezes constantly.
***Once you get the product (either MacKiev or Riverdeep version), you have to enable flash in your Quicktime preferences in order to get the stickers and animations to work.