Review by ConsumerAdvocate (dakotad555) at (gmail) dot (com)

My experience with this software is fraught with frustration which ultimately led me to uninstall it. It’s doubtful I would ever buy another ROXIO product at this point. In theory, burning DVDs should be relatively easy, after all, the DVD is pretty standard these days, and BY DEFINITION, Apple uses standardized hardware (I’m not starting a flame war, but suffice it to say that there are pros (standardization) and cons (the Apple Tax) to that practice), so Roxio doesn’t need to make their software compliant with every single DVD burner out there, just those that come in Apple machines. In theory at least.

Installation completed without a hitch, and upon launching the program, it looked as though the software was going to perform as advertized. Except that every single time I started a DVD burning project it would hang. It didn’t matter what media I used (I tried several different disk) or what I was burning (I tried doing just one 2 minute file to see if that would complete) the burn would fail midway through.

A product that fails this miserably at one of it’s primary features is hardly worth my time. I don’t want to spend hours troubleshooting software that clearly has major bugs. If I were the only one with this issue, I might consider that the problem is with my machine and not the software, but my 12 years of computer experience (including a professional level of aptitude at both hardware repair and software and OS troubleshooting) tells me that it is this software and not my computer. I can burn DVDs through Apple’s native software, including picture slideshows, DVD movies, and DATA cds. I can do none of the above with this program.

Read all of the reviews of those with similar issues, and ask yourself if its worth plunking down the money on a product that MIGHT work. Will you be one of the lucky ones? Also ask yourself if you want to do business with a company that is intentionally opaque about whether Toast 11 supports burning HD content to standard DVDs–if you want that feature be prepared to pay even more for something you thought you were getting all along. I give my money willingly to companies that provide a good product at a reasonable price, advertized correctly and detailing what the program will and won’t do. ROXIO doesn’t fall into that category. Thankfully I received my copy for free from the Vine program, so financially I have lost nothing but my time. Consider the above before you spend your money on this product–I hope to save someone not just time buy money as well.