Meta-data issues...

Has anyone else had difficulty with the meta-data application in c1p 5.x? I find it horribly difficult compared to the ease of c1p 3.x. The lose of certain fields makes it useless with some of my clients. I need to apply data to 3000 images in different folders quite often, but need to go to other programs to accomplish this. How do the rest of you feel about this issue?