I had the free version for years, then upgraded.
The free version is full of bugs. Naturally tech support is arrogant and unhelpful, and basically consists of "buy the upgrade (Jukebox) because that is what we support."
Finally I did buy Jukebox at about version 5 or 6. Unfortunately, most of the same annoying bugs exist, and the tech support is not any better. (The web site help is usually down.)
The worst thing is that the program (both free and purchased) is too stupid to recognize that your computer is already connected to the internet, which is vital to take advantage of the program options and save tons of time when ripping. So easily three-quarters of the time you just quit in frustration from trying to convince ("trick") the program into realizing you ARE on the net already!
Ripping is easiest when the program locates on the web the album & track info. This is very hit and miss. If someone has submitted that info a few days ago (it takes a while to get into the system) up to several months ago (the info often drops out of the system after a few months), then when you put in your CD (and IF the program knows you are connected to the internet), the info pops up right away and you take off ripping. If this is not the case, you spend a lot of time typing in all of the info; worst of all, often the program will send your typing to the net but not enter it into the tracks you are ripping!!! (In this case, you end up going into the tagging feature and retyping it all over again! Plus you really need to go change the actual computer file names as well!---VERY annoying.)
Some other specific comments:
Yes, you do get 5 free burns with the free version---they are worth every cent you pay for them, absolutely nothing! They are terrible, usually full of annoying skips. The good news is that if you buy the upgrade, the burning is very good.
It is true that "suborganizing" is possible in spite of what some have said. In the library you simply click the window/column heading to resort by track number, album, or any other sub-category, just like you would in any program/file window.
It is true that there is a lot of neat tagging info you can enter to have an incredible, comprehensive library with all kinds of background, your own ratings, etc. The bad news is that even a very minor computer crash will wipe all of this work out and you end up with nothing. There is no way to save this info to files, so if your software becomes corrupted and you have to reinstall, you've just lost and wasted all of that time with your great tagging.
Playlists are similarly sensative. While being able to create some super playlists (I've had some thousands of songs long!), you will lose them in a computer crash. (You're supposed to be able to save them as a file that can be backed up, but it doesn't work.) In fact, just upgrading from 7 to 8 or 8 to 9 will destroy your playlists. You have to figure out ways around this annoying problem. I burn CD's for any playlist short enough to fit on one CD (which I can then rip and recreate after a crash). For any long playlists, I end up writing them out, and then physically recreating (a bother but not too bad) after an upgrade.
It is true you have no control over how and where files are ripped. You will end up relabeling, resorting, and re-nesting/imbedding folders to fit a descent organization system; however, I don't know that any program would do this acceptably anyway, you'll want do you own sorting to make things workable. (And you have to delete from your library and re-add any moved files.)
When burning CD's, Jukebox often makes errors about how much will fit on a CD. It will tell you that you still have room, but when you add one more song, during the burn the program will tell you that the disc is full and all songs could not be reocorded! (Worst, the one song that gets dropped off is NOT the last one you added, but a randomly selected one between the first and last!) It's best to do your own math adding up the song times to know how many songs will fit on your CD.
I upgraded to 9 recently. It is nice how easy it is to plug in your key for the free upgrade from one version to another, or from the free version if you have to reinstall after a computer crash. I can't say that there has been any improvements over the versions to the bugs in the BASIC functionality, especially the problem of not recognizing being already connected to the net.
It is true that the program is much better than Windows Media Player, but com'on, what kind of compliment is that? Idiots can make something better than Microsoft. For the last five years I've only used MM, so I have nothing recent to compare to. After all the time and effort of getting used to the quirks of Jukebox, I find myself very reluctant to go through another Huge learning curve-so in a way I'm stuck with Jukebox.
P