I tryed Proshow Gold before buying PTE. This is what i thought of it JUNK-JUNK! It would crash all the time and the show made with it would do that too. I thought it mite be my puter till i look around on the net and found that many people were realy mad at photodex over the fact that they could not get help from them. With PTE i had a problem with my first show and wnsoft got right back to me to tell me that it was my music that was making the problem. So winsoft help fix my problem even though it was not a PTE problem! Now i have only played with PTE 5 some but 4 kicks butt! Yes, there are more types of fade available in proshow (to many in IMO) but you can make your own fades. The other thing that sold me on PTE was although it has a steep learning curve there are tutorials, guides, documentation, and how to, that get you up and going very fast. By doing that i know how to build a basic show before i even bought PTE.