WHAT IS THE BEST CHESS SOFTWARE

It appears that there are number of softwares avalable. Some of them free and some you pay.  This Chess.com forum has many geniuses, grand masters and experienced players. I am new at this and need some advice, in buying a software, that is user friendly and quick to get started, up and running. I also believe that some softwares have training features to learn. I think the foloowing needs attention.

1. easy to use and good for all levels of players to study, learn, analyse and so on.

2. Some software, that allows annotating with colorful arrows.

3. easy for training.

I hear people talking about stockfish,rybka, chess base, houdini. 

SCID seems to be great. Is there any other like SCID available ,free or to buy.

Incidentally where do you buy these.

Thanks.

Murthy

see depends what you want, as average player no matter is it rybka, hydra, fritz...not about version, i sometime still use fritz 6 and still is good enough to analyze (i used to say if someone called G Kasparov could prepare himself with Fritz 5 with some weak Pentium in end of 90's, then what s wrong with my fritz6 at even much powerful computer)

well lets stay on fritz or chessbase, these programs are tools, powerful and very practical for use, with huge databases where you can search positions, openings, endgames - everything. i think chessbase gives annotations with arrows,  for trial you can download from chessbase.com, either fritz demo or chessbaselight. and they are very good for analyze, particularly tactical possibilities.

for training, more precize, for playing training games i can recomend chessmaster (or something similar if there is ), i used to play at old CM's now I still sometime use CM10th edition, and this program is not tool, managing with databases or opening trees is very hard and unpractical, but playing against it's ratings is extreme pleasure, due to - various styles. all these you can adjust in fritz but i still find it to crude for playing any training games against it.

naturally it is best way to play against humans, but if you play against computer program you'll improve yourself in many ways, but the most is to realize importance of every move and position which can arise, because - silicon monster does not forgive!

Dear Chess Booster:

Thanks for your help. I tried Chess master trial version, seems to intersting and valuable. Do you recommend buying CM 10th edition, for training openings and playing with computer to improve. I am still confused how to learn openings with the limited time available. 

People talk about CHessbase 12 software. Which version do you recommend, it seems expensive.

Do you have a technic of printing color diagrams of openings/positions.

Thanks.

Murthy

so, I do not know what is your opening knowledge, but some book would be better than computer program, just raw trees of variations will not help you much, but books with text comentaries, the most important is to learn the basic principles and possible dangers in opening positions, later you improve yourself with variations.

naturally that the newest Chessbase is the best, it is up to date of course, but it is not enough to buy the most sound programs for progress....still I use old fritz6 interface which is still able to open all the PGNs and it is enough for mee, i have my opening folder with the filles (french this, french that, kid, rlopez...) i have created a decade ago, and still updating the same with the new plans and ideas...

but whatever you buy (or try download somewhere), i recomend you chessbase product or something 100% compatibile, it is todays standard, also buy CM, think it is very cheap nowdays.

do not understand much about printing you asked, but there are lot of possibilities in chessbase for printing diagrams what you want to see on paper