I agree with you. I hate some things about Crystal, especially the older versions, but you can do so much with it.

Some of the nastiest comments I've heard about CR are rooted in version 8.5, and the initial version of CR.NET that came with VS2003. Yes, those versions were quite bad. CR also DROPPED features from version 7, leading to many developers sending some nasty communications to whoever was making it at the time (I forget if that was Crystal Decisions or BO at the time).

But that was several years ago and things have gotten better, so there needs to be a statute of limitations on bashing an old bad version!!!