I see that now there is version 12 being promoted. 

Having upgraded a few times, I am worn out by promises of greater compatibility. I would settle for a few less features in exchange for more reliablity. Any opinions on version 12? Is it worth the whole hassle of the uninstall/reinstall routine----again?  Has anyone tried the latest Roxio suite, or others?  I realize every product has it share of users who swear by it, and swear at it. 

The bottom line, at this point in time, what would be the the most reliable, useful product for a casual user, who wants to made a few home videos per year with added narration and music tracks.  (Yes, I know the Roxio Suite has other features that Studio does not claim to have.)

I think pinnacle has learned there lesson, studio 12 is stand along, meaning you can install 12 and then uninstalling 8,9,10 or 11 is not supposed to break 12 Yea. When I get my copy of 12 I'll let you know how this all works out. Having studio 11 for some time now, I found on my computer studio 11 to be very stable. Had a few transition's problems, but other then that everything work well.

But I think people have different results depending on what there trying to do. For me, my video comes from a DV camera, and I usually end up burning DVD from all this. I do a lot of editing of the video, and slide show with pictures from my 7.2Meg camera. You can check my computer spec's there are a lot faster computers but mine is fast enough for what I do. I played around with some AVHCD footage, and found my computer to be way to slow to work with this. I could get video's made but it took all night.

WayneD10:

what would be the the most reliable, useful product for a casual user, who wants to made a few home videos per year with added narration and music tracks.

If you have purchased S11, that should be good for your purpose. If you have not. Its the best time to get 12 and future proof. We took S11 and made it more feature packed and added new features. Make sure you check the system requirements first before taking the plunge.