Here's an example from this morning.
 
- I see a post about some updates. 
- Even tho I installed without CCC, I fire it up to see if it will show me anything
- CCC doesn't remember me.  My SSO ID/password combo don't work
- I go directly to the Cakewalk site.  No prominent notice of updates
- I go directly to my account/products
- The only way to see if there are updates is to click thru each item and notice if the version numbers have changed. 
Are you f-ing kidding me?
- I find this unacceptable, so I go to contact support ... then click, "No the FAQs don't answer my question".  I'm pretty sure by this point that I've seen my question asked frequently in the fora, but the total silence on the subject from Cake employees is another topic.  I just want to type a message right now.
- OK, finally.  I enter my name, email addy and such -EVEN THOUGH I"M LOGGED INTO THE SITE.  YOU KNOW WHO I AM-
- I launch Sonar to get my serial number THAT YOU ALREADY F_ING KNOW AND I CAN"T EVEN COPY/PASTE THE GD NUMBER.  OK, I've manually typed and double checked my serial number.  Jeez
- I click OK and ... NOW WTF?  I don't have a support account?  WTF is this?  I have to retype my name and email info that I just typed on the previous page to create Yet Another Account?  And you can't even be bothered to carry information forward from the previous form?
 
I finally got my question typed after way too much aggravation.  Part of the aggravation comes from a horrible process, part of it from the fact that I shouldn't have to be asking the question to begin with.
 
From step one, CCC should have allowed me to make my own installation choices.  EVERYTHING from that point forward has been a complete waste of time for users trying to deal with this.  I would say it's been a waste of time for Cake employees too, but they won't even spend the time to acknowledge the situation, so I doubt a second thought has been given to this.
 
C'mon guys.  Details matter.  It's like you're TRYING to bombard your users with as many avoidable niggles as you possibly can.  Have any of you actually gone thru some of the forms and use cases we're expected to follow?
 
I'm sending the bill for my blood pressure meds to Gibson for payment.  You know what I want to do?  I want to fire up Sonar, click a few things, plugged a couple things in and make music.  I do NOT want to have to keep a list of **** work-arounds to make use of the software and keep it up to date.
 
Are there ANY adult decision-makers around there?

Man, I hope there is a simple answer, or that this was some kind of temporary glitch, because it sounds a bit onerous.
 
I will say that some other manufacturers have different accounts and/or logon information for their sales, support, and forums and I have never understood that.  At least Cakewalk has one the single sign-on route.  Maybe some of the paths just aren't worked out.

Yea I complained about C3 more than once in these forums now. The concept is great, and if default locations are OK you are good. But if not, it becomes unusable since it won't even recognize anything installed outside of it, even to default locations! So after a manual install, it won't tell you if there are new updates.
 
I'm sure this is just a v 1.0 issue, but it is frustrating when CW won't at least acknowledge the issues with it, and let us know whether they are working on fixing this significant oversight.
 
I'm about to install on a brand new system which has dedicated OS, application and sample drives, so it seems I will be forced to go the manual install route which means I can't even use C3 to manage updates.