Cook'n 2000

Amid these tools, the lack of a genuinely powerful search engine is a glaring omission. While it is possible to filter recipes to some extent, it is hard to search for particular ingredients. On the plus side, Cook'n 2000 is compatible with everything from a 486 computer to a PalmPilot, and it comes with an extensive gallery of recipe photographs and helpful videos.

Cook'n 2000's interface is simple and easy to navigate, with a series of clearly labeled buttons at the top, and recipe information compiled in the remaining screen. The database reflects a beginner's approach to cuisine. There are sections both for inexpensive dishes and ones that can be prepared on the run, and many recipes include prepared foods, such as cream of mushroom soup. Instructional videos cover basic cooking techniques and processes already familiar to more experienced cooks. The program allows long-term meal planning--if you want to work out a food schedule a year in advance, Cook'n 2000 will happily do so for you. This advance planning allows the program--and the user--to save time and energy with canny strategies called "dovetailing techniques." These entail tactics such as cooking twice as much macaroni as is needed for Monday's dinner so that users avoid repeating the same effort when Thursday's scheduled pasta dish rolls around.

These features make Cook'n 2000 the perfect cooking database for college students, new computer users, or anyone just learning how to plan and prepare meals. --Alyx Dellamonica

Amazon.com Product Description
Cook'n 2000 helps you prepare meals with speed and ease. With over 6,500 recipes from 70 cookbooks, you can create daily, weekly, and monthly menus, as well as reduce your preparation time. The software assists in creating shopping lists from your menus, and your lists are downloadable to your PalmPilot. Nutritional information from over 10,000 food labels ensures that you are satisfying your family's dietary needs.

The only two suggestions I'd advise is: Drop the "register or Die!" mentality - look - I DON'T WANT TO REGISTER the software no matter how many perks. I like my privacy. Second, no good EXPORT routines for the major products like MasterCook. When you're not the Big Kid on the block you need to read/write in MasterCook 4/5 format.


software really needs improvement   February 20, 2000
 34 out of 37 found this review helpful

When you first look at the box, it seems like a very good software. They offer over 6000 recipes, from about 50 cookbooks. As for the recipes themselves, they are not anything special that you wouldn't find on the internet or in other cook books. The software itself has a number of capabilities. The biggest draw back is the constant error messages, no 800 number for tech support. These error messages cause the software to shut down, and many times your computer does as well. Their website indicates that there are no known problems. This either idicates that people didn't want to be bothered with informing tech support and just returned the software like I did. Or they know about the problem, bud don't have a fix. This software contained some funny video bloopers, and gives a number of video tips. However, I would have prefered more pictures of the finished product and less tips and bloopers. I most certainly would NOT recommend this software, because of the drab boring recipes and the glitchy software, that is so full of error messages that you can barely look at 3 recipes before it shuts you down.


Software needs improvement   January 19, 2000
 58 out of 61 found this review helpful

The Cook'N 2000 software needs lots of improvement. First, The interface is not intuitive and there is no user manual included. I met or exceeded all the system specs for this product, yet I received database errors that froze up the program when logging-in, after updating just one recipe. Mulitply this by the constant "reminders" to register the product with DVO enterprises:a register.exe command is inserted in your win.ini file, causing the reminder to pop-up even when you aren't using the program. There is also the requirement that the CD must be inserted into the drive to run the program, already installed onto your PC, adding another straw to the camel's back.

I have since purchased a MasterCook 5.0 product and have been extremely happy--it has a very user-friendly and intuitive interface, comes with a detailed user book (if you need it), you can easily add your own recipes, it delivers wonderful recipes, runs without the CD inserted, and costs about the same.