Tacx TTS3.0 DVD

First off, its not clear why the price of this is way above tacx list price, which can be found on the tacx website. More importantly, don't buy this software at any price. Here's why:Anyone interested in a Tacx Trainer should surf on over to tacx dot com, click on service, and enter the forum. Take a look at the section called "Tacx Trainer Software ("TTS") 3 software support", and count, if you can, the number of problems with Tacx Trainer Software. You will not be able count the entire number of problems. These are not small problems either. These are problems that render your brand new multi-thousand dollar Fortius trainer useless. Whats worse is that when Tacx gets around to trying to patch the problem, the patch makes it worse. Again, go to the forum and look what happened when Tacx went from version 3.01 to version 3.1. Chaos and crashes. Now buggy software is something we are all used to, but imagine you are 30, 40, or 80 minutes into a 2 hour training ride, and all of the sudden the Tacx craps out on you. You lose your training data, and your computer crashes, causing you to prematurely stop your workout. Of course this presumes that you are lucky enough to actually get the software running -- because that in itself can be miraculous depending on what version of TTS you are running. O.K. you say, they will work out, and this trainer will be smokin hot. Not so fast. This is Tacx Trainer Version 3.0. After you have poked around the forum looking at TTS 3.0, then go have a look at the Tacx Trainer Software 2.0 - 1.0 forum. Tacx trainer software 2.0 was so bad, that they gave up on it, and released TTS 3.0. But here is the kicker -- they charged the owners of 2.0 $65.00 to "upgrade" to 3.0. This was on top of the $40.00 charge they charged to upgrade from 1.0 to 2.0. The problems with 2.0 lasted for at least two years before they finally gave up on it. There is no reason to think that once Tacx relizes that 3.0 is unfixable, they will charge you another 40, 50, 60, hundred bucks to "upgrade" to TTS 4.0. I have had my Tacx trainer since 2003. It has very little mileage on it because the software makes it largely inoperable. I paid $130 for tacx trainer software version 1, another 40 for 2.0 and another 60 for 3.0 -- thats $230.00 on top of the cost of the trainer for software that simply does not work. Tacx is located in the Netherlands, and you can not contact them directly. Sadly, while the Tacx USA representatives are extremely nice (i suspect they deal with a lot of disgruntled Tacx customers) there is no getting contact from Tacx Netherlands. So the frustration of having spent a ton of money on something that if it worked - would be so awesome -- only compounds.I was patient with Tacx for 7 years. I purchased all of their downgrades, i purchased ten of their videos, i am out about $2500 for a trainer that i can not rely on to work. I am out countless hours -- and I mean at least a weeks worth of time in real hours, in trying to get Tacx software to work. I've even gone as far as buying a single computer dedicated solely to running tacx software. I've had to do enumerable operating system reloads, tacx software reloads, driver updating software updating, etc. I am not a computer expert, but i have had to learn a heck of a lot of computerese just to try to get this stuff to work. Finally, tacx will tell you that it can't really be as bad as I say, and that thousands of tacx users have no problems whatsoever. I would suggest going to their forum, reading their comments, and making your own decision.

It is true that the TTS software had some growing pains and was pretty buggy for quite a while, but as of v3.6 (now upgraded to 3.8) it is pretty solid. I have been using it a lot on a Windows Vista system and it crashed once only in the entire time. It has a few quirks with the UI that make it kind of annoying to work with sometimes, but it never has crashed ever since that one crash when I first installed it.What I miss in v3.0 is the loss of the ability to run GPS or arbitrary slopes rides in a real VR environment with turns and landscape. It has a poor substitute for that in Catalyst with no real feel for the road. That easily brings it down from otherwise 5 stars.On the plus side, no software crashing, easy and simple multiplayer, quick and easy race of the month is great. I have had no crashes or problems at all with the Google Earth plug in.If you are seeing old reviews by people who had buggy early versions, you should ignore them. Your only decision now is, do you buy this 3.x software or sit and wait for 3.4 which is on the way. I can't wait for 3.4, so I got 3.x, but I'll certainly get 3.4 when it arrives.