A few years ago I received the most wonderful gift from my Dad. My JVC camcorder. I use it all the time, it's wonderful. However, the software it came with is not. PowerDirector Express was the original software. I used that for about a year before I got my bearings with the whole movie editing thing. It worked, but it lacked a lot of the simple effects I desired. Like titles, and a black and white effect. Both of which are basic effects that video software has. The following Christmas I upgraded to PowerDirector 9. Only to find that not only did it still lack the simplistic black and white filter, but it had some serious glitches. I couldn't make DVD, a feature proudly displayed on CyberLink's website. And I have lost several movies (hours of cutting clips, adding transitions and music) to this program. I believe Meghan O'Toole can vouch for me when I say it's frustrating. She's has sat through many rants about this damn program. During the first few weeks of using this software I found all of those defects and complained to my father about them. The program had cost around sixty dollars which is an obscene amount of money to pay for something that doesn't work. I went to the internet forums to see if others were having the same problems, and they were. Someone mentioned a patch offered by CyberLink to fix the program and included a link. The only problem? It cost an additional twenty dollars. I wasn't going to pay another twenty bucks to fix something that came broken. So I powered through the angst caused by this damn video editing software until now. Now, I'm fed up.

My family just got a new computer. It's amazing and all of that. My father bought the software package offered with the computer. It came with a transfer disc to get things from our old computer, photoshop, and PowerDirector 10. A step up from my old software. Which I never actually got a hard copy of, so it's gone forever along with our  monster computer. The next version is obviously better than the one that came before it, right? Wrong. I used it for the first time last night, and after importing my video files guess what popped up on the screen. A notification saying that I needed another piece of software in order to have sound on my movie clips. I clicked on the link given to me thinking it'd be this free software. I have this habit of underestimating CyberLink's ability to screw people over because that shit software was going to cost me an additional seventy dollars. I was not in the mood to yell at my computer last night so I downloaded the trial version of PowerDirector 11. Still the same crappy software, but this one came with two whole title templates in 3-D. So it's basically word art on my movie. I had to edit a video for my sister because she wasn't able to come home for Thanksgiving this year and I wanted to say that I missed her. The titles didn't really matter. I finished editing the whole thing and uploaded it to Youtube, only to find that this trial program watermarked my video. Right above Storytime With Lincoln & McClellan it says "CyberLink PowderDirector Trial Version."

This business has not only stolen money from me, with it's accompaniment of the JVC camcorder and general simplicity, but from other people as well. They correct the problems with other products you're forced to buy if you want to be able to use the feature affected. It's frustrating, especially if you don't have the money to buy the patches. But this is how our economy works. How it's "stimulated." Americans are notoriously wasteful. It's who we are as a whole, and probably a contributing factor in why most of the world hates us. Would a person with a steady income think twice about purchasing a twenty dollar patch in order to participate a hobby they enjoy? No. Would someone whose income is currently nonexistent? Yes, and they're the ones who have to suffer because the company couldn't get it right the first time. It's completely backwards.

~Margaret