HDR Efex pro 1.0

Apparantly I'm not the only one who thinks this piece of software is not as good as it could be.

Yesterday at 21:06 I sent the following message to Nik Software:

Perhaps HDR efex was released a bit too soon.

I'm running it on an AMD x2, 240 @2.8 ghz with windows 7 and 3gb ram.

I'm on day 5 of my trial now, I've processed maybe a dozen pics so far.

HDR efex has crashed 4 times, invariably taking CS5 with it. On 3
counts it acted wonky and vivenza crashed twice (which it never does)

Processing from selecting 5 images in bridge until a completed image
takes 5 minutes easily.

OK, granted, you guys have show the world, including the people behind
photomatix, that it is possible to produce good HDR software with a
nice user interface. Shame it's still very buggy and requires a very
high end intel box to run.

I don't think I'm going to buy it, this is not 160 euros nice.

Now, within an hour I got this reply from Josh, a product manager at Nik (note the misspelling of my name, this makes me believe it's no autoreply)

Dear jereoen,

Thank you for contacting Nik Software.

We have run into a few issues that we are currently working to resolve. The issues you indicated you are having with HDR Efex Pro are affecting a small number of our users, however the update that we currently have planned for early next year is planned to resolve these types of issues.

Please keep an eye out for when this new version comes out, as it should be both much faster as well as much more stable for your system.

So... I'm curious to see how early next year this may be.

Since HDR Efex pro 1.0 runs fine on a friend's Intel based laptop I would advice anyone to try the trial version before buying this. If it runs it's very nice.