I've been using Reason since v.1.0 and was awaiting v.3.0 with an anticipation built upon the previous -always very positive- experience.

So, I downloaded Reason 3.0 Demo - and started it up. After telling me that is a Demo, that I can't save and that it will quit after 20 minutes, it quit immediately, because REX wasn't loadded properly. Say what?

Well, soon after that, I restarted my PowerBook in the target mode (for backing up), and after restarting "normally", I tried the Reason 3.0 Demo again, and now it loaded properly. (Hmmm... and here I thought that the days when the whole system has to be restarted for a newly installed app to run were gone with the wind.)

So Reason started up, and presented me with the "built in" song. On the first glance, you just have to admire the nice and shiny updates on the graphics. And then I hit "Play"... and after a few seconds of playing, Reason told me that my PowerBook (G4 @ 667MHz, w/1Gb RAM) was too slow. Well, I know it's not a dual-G5 @ 1.5 GHz, but even just for the dinky lil' "built in" song?

So, I thought, maybe the "built in" song uses some really involved effects; why not try something I wrote? So I did. Of course, Reason 3.0 did not know where I kept my refills, so it prompted me to find them. And, owing to the changed interface, I wasn't able to define default file locations on the fly, but was content to just locate them one by one.

Ahem. Except that they all now have "bad format". Huh?

Not just one; all of the 600+ Mb (not much, but still...)? Presumably, I'll have to recompile them, somehow (?) or reload recompiled refills?

Well, sorry. Back to Reason 2.5, which handles all my work and all my refills with no hiccup, even at ~30 devices in the rack and plenty of parameter automation, and which needs optimization at the expense of latency only for a few of them.