Software Reviewed

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ArtStudio Pro 2.0, Twisting Pixels - by Darrel Priebe, February 2008

ArtStudioPro 2.0 is an easy-to-use digital art program for both PC and Mac, which brings art treatments like oil and watercolor paintings, and chalk and charcoal drawings to digital photographs. www.twistingpixels.com

askSam, Version 4.1.2.356 - by Garl M. Satterthwaite, May 2002

askSam is easy to use for the beginning database user, yet it can meet many needs of  experienced users. I would recommend this program to a user that needs to track and search many free form documents. www.askSam.com

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Color Efex Pro 3.0, Nik Software - by Darrel Priebe, March 2008

This program really rocks! With 52 filters and, according to Nik, over 250 effects found in Color Efex Pro 3.0 Complete, you can perform high quality retouching , color correction, and endless creative enhancements to your photographs. CEP is an easy, fun, creative and powerful set of filter effects for Photoshop and Photoshop Elements that will take your images and digital darkroom work to a new level of excellence. www.niksoftware.com

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DFine 2.0, Nik Software - by Darrel Priebe, October 2007

Nik Software's Dfine 2.0 is a powerful and easy-to-use noise reduction filter which installs as a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. www.niksoftware.com

Digital Image Pro 10, Microsoft - by Pete Padilla, November 2004

From start (installing software) to the finished photo, you will find it very easy and rewarding to be able to complete the picture with the extras you get when using this program. Digital Image Pro10 has over 200 filters and over 3,000 projects, and templates to create brochures, newsletters or flyers to help you with a business or club.

Digital Image Suite 2006, Microsoft - by Barton Koslow, March 2006

Microsoft Digital Image Suite (MDIS) is a comprehensive photo editing, photo organizing, photo sharing and photo projects program. I recommend this program for all but very advanced photo enthusiasts and professionals. www.microsoft.com

Diskeeper Version 8 Home Edition, Executive Software - by Arlene Kapner, December 2003

Diskeeper is an easy-to-use program, essential for the health and well-being of your computer. It will automatically defragment computers and works in the background, so you can continue to do whatever computer work you want to do. www.executivesoftware.com

Diskeeper 9.0 Professional, Executive Software - by Barton Koslow, April 2005

Diskeeper will defragment or optimize your drive on a regular basis. Once you install Diskeeper, you set it and forget it. Diskeeper does all the work in the background on a continuing basis. www.executive.com

Diskeeper 10, Professional Edition, Diskeeper Corporation - by Dean Burnett, April 2006

Diskeeper 10 Professional is easy to load, set up, and run. ...  When running on Set It and Forget It, it runs unobtrusively in the background. www.diskeeper.com

Diskeeper 2007 Pro Premier - by Bart Koslow, January 2007

Diskeeper is a program that automatically defragments your hard drive partitions, in the background, without interfering with the operations of other programs on your computer. www.diskeeper.com

Diskeeper 2008, Professional Premier Edition, Diskeeper Corporation - by James N. Brown, March 2007

Diskeeper 2008 is a defragmenter. Diskeeper 10 Professional is easy to load, set up, and run. ...  When running on Set It and Forget It, it runs unobtrusively in the background. www.diskeeper.com

Dragon Naturally Speaking 7, ScanSoft - by Karen Warren, August 2003

Issue computer commands. Dictate at 140-160 words per minute. Speech recognition software for professionals. Comes with head phones. PC Magazine's Editor's Choice. www.scansoft.com

Dragon Naturally Speaking 9, Nuance Communications, Inc. - by Larry David, August 2007

Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 Preferred software is voice recognition software that allows the user to talk to the computer using a normal speaking voice.  The software includes the ability for the software to learn the nuances of each user’s speaking style. www.nuance.com

Drive Image 5.0, PowerQuest - by John C. Lee, February 2002

Create an exact copy of your entire hard drive or partition on a Zip, Jaz, CD-RW, another partition. www.powerquest.com

Drive Image 2002, PowerQuest - by Ed Allen, November 2002

Drive Image 2002 is a recovery, backup and system upgrade program. www.powerquest.com

Drive Image 2002, PowerQuest - by Sheldon Hoffman, August 2003

An application for creating backups of the all hard drives, any hard drive, or any partition of a hard drive. The backup files can be located on any local hard drive, on a networked hard drive, or written to a CD-R disk for archive storage. www.powerquest.com

Drive Image 7.0, PowerQuest - by John C. Lee, December 2003

Drive Image 7.0 is a disaster recovery and backup application developed by PowerQuest Corporation specifically for Windows 2000 and Windows XP systems. www.powerquest.com

DVD Copy2 Platinum - By Bart Koslow, July 2004

You can use DVD Copy2 Platinum to copy DVD files from a disc or your hard drive to multiple output formats. This is a simple program to use. Even a beginner can quickly master it. www.intervideo.com

DVD Copy4 Platinum - By Bart Koslow, May 2006

DVD Copy 4 rapidly copies non-copy protected movies to DVDs, IPods and PSP devices. This first-rate program is simple to use for neophytes and powerful enough for advanced users. It is highly recommended. www.intervideo.com

DVD X Copy Platinum, 321 Studios, March 2004

DVD XCopy is designed to make a backup copy of any encrypted DVD-Video movie. It will not copy decrypted movies. The program is easy to install and easy to use. www.321studios.com

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Easy CD & DVD Creator 6 Platinum Edition, Roxio - by John Lee, June 2003

Easy CD & DVD Creator 6 is a comprehensive digital media suite. In addition to the 4 basic CD recording and rewriting programs, namely Creator Classic, AudioCentral, Disc Copier, and Drag-to-Disc, there are several new programs which cover photo editing, DVD recording, CD and DVD label making, a CD and DVD player, and other supporting utilities. www.roxio.com

Easy Media Creator 7, Roxio- By John C. Lee, September 2004

Easy Media Creator 7 (EMC 7) is the latest version of Roxio’s all-in-one digital-media suite. www.roxio.com

Easy Media Creator 7.5, Roxio- by John C. Lee, July 2005

If you are looking for a general-purpose media suite with wide coverage of media applications and broad selections of new features, EMC 7.5 would be hard to beat. www.roxio.com

Easy Media Creator 8, Roxio - by John C. Lee, January 2006

Roxio’s EMC 8 is a well-organized all-in-one media suite with impressive video and photo capabilities and an intuitive interface. Its streamlined interface is the most user-friendly among all the EMC versions. www.roxio.com

Easy Media Creator 9 Suite, Roxio - by Bart Koslow, November 2006

This Roxio digital media suite includes photo, video, music, burning, authoring applications, and more. Whatever your media task this Swiss Army knife of multimedia applications is bound to have a solution. www.roxio.com

Easy Media Creator 10 Suite, Roxio - by Yvonne Luce, January 2008

Roxio Creator 10 Suite is a comprehensive and highly creative media package. Not only can you burn disks, you can convert your analog vinyl into digital, send audio mixes to your iPod and PSP, and create slideshows or videos with music and or narration. This program is a smorgasbord of multi media creativity. www.roxio.com

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GoLive v. 6, Adobe - by Leslie Monahan, July 2002

Adobe GoLive is a web site design and development tool. www.adobe.com

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InDesign CS2, Adobe - by Eli Spater, October 2005

Although InDesign CS2 is a professional publishing program, it is also quite usable for publishing of a four-page club newsletter. www.adobe.com

InDesign CS3, Adobe - by Eli Spater, February 2008

If you are seriously involved with desktop publishing and expect to expand your requirements as you learn to use the software, I doubt that you will find a program more capable and expandable than InDesign CS3. www.adobe.com

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MediaOne Gallery Platinum, InterVideo - by Bart Koslow, October 2006

GalleryOne is a file management and multi-media application. It manages pictures, videos, music, documents, data, and hardware devices, and has an Internet browser that enables downloading media. www.intervideo.com

Money Premium 2004, Microsoft - by Bart Koslow, November 2003

Money is a comprehensive personal finance program which covers all the essential areas of personal finance. It is easy to setup and use. www.microsoft.com/money

My DVD Studio Deluxe 6, Sonic Solutions - by Mike Mathews, December 2004

In addition to video editing and burning to DVD, this program will rip CDs to MP3s and then burn a CD of your favorite songs. www.sonic.com

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Nero 5.5 Burning ROM, Ahead Software - by Eli Spater, March 2002

Nero goes beyond the basics of creating CDs (CD recording) by including a suite of programs that include a cover design program for your jewel-case and CD labels, audio editor, media player and a Tool Kit which determines and controls the speed of your CD drive. www.nero.com

Nero 6 Ultra Edition, Ahead Software, Inc. - by Richard Hall, April 2004

Nero 6 Ultra Edition will do just about everything needed to create quality CD’s and DVD’s of many different types. It has the power, the functions, and utilities to accomplish this. www.nero.com

Nero 7 Ultra Edition, Nero, Inc. - by Dean Burnett, January 2006

Nero 7 Ultra Edition is a suite of programs dealing with the manipulation of audio, video, photo, and data files. Using these programs you can burn, copy, search, organize, manipulate, playback, share and backup audio, photo, data and video files using your hard disk, DVDs, and CDs. www.nero.com

Nero 8 Ultra Edition, Nero, Inc. - By Peter Lazarov, December 2007

NERO 8 Ultra Edition not only records and backs up data, audio and video files, but is quite helpful when I have to create, edit, convert and share, multimedia projects. www.nero.com

NovaBackup Version 8 Business Essentials, NovaStor - by Ed Shuttleworth, September 2007

This is a powerful backup program for those using PC’s in a small business or home installation with multiple computers. It allows users to perform backups of their valuable data, pictures, music, email, documents and files to a multitude of storage devices. www.novastor.com

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Office 2003 Standard, Microsoft - by Justin Pipkorn, February 2004

Microsoft Office is the most commonly used office suite available today. This review covers the Standard Edition 2003 which includes Word, Excel, Power Point, and Outlook. These modules provide the user needs for a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation creator, personal organizer and email client.

Office XP, Microsoft - by Leslie Monahan, January 2003

Office XP is a suite of programs that includes a word processor (Word), spreadsheet program (Excel), slide presentation program (PowerPoint), very comprehensive e-mail / calendar / contacts program (Outlook), and a database program (Access). www.microsoft.com

Office 2007, Microsoft - by Eli Spater, June 2007

The new interface doesn't force you to rethink the logic of your work, because Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Publisher, and Access all work basically as they did before—only more intuitively. www.microsoft.com

OmniPage Pro 12, Scansoft - by John C. Lee, January 2003

OmniPage Pro is an optical character recognition (OCR) program created by ScanSoft Inc. to convert text images to editable text using OCR technology. After OCR, the resulting editable text can be saved to word-processing applications, copied to the clipboard, or sent as mail. www.scansoft.com

OmniPage Pro 14, Scansoft - by John C. Lee, May 2005

OmniPage Pro 14 is the latest version of the leading ScanSoft optical character recognition (OCR) program. www.scansoft.com

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Pagemaker 7, Adobe Systems Inc. - by Eli Spater, October 2003

Adobe PageMaker 7.0 provides powerful tools to create a wide variety of publications, from simple one-page flyers to complex reports and compilations. You can build your own publications from scratch or take advantage of hundreds of customizable templates. www.adobe.com

Paint Shop Pro 8, Jasc Software - by Leslie Monahan, October 2003

Paint Shop Pro is a great program not only for photo-editing, but for creating your own graphics from scratch. www.jasc.com

Paint Shop Pro 9.01, Jasc Software - by Jim Brown, February 2005

This is a many featured program. This program is more for the middle range user and not the advanced user that wants to produce commercial quality work. Paint Shop Pro has some drawing features that are not found in other photo programs. www.jasc.com

Paint Shop Pro Photo X2, Corel - by Kathren Masten, April 2008

Corel Paint ShopPro Photo X2 is a complex photo editing program designed to allow a user to make simple corrections or perform total manipulation of images. www.corel.com

Painter IX, Corel - by Lilly Lazarov, June 2005

Corel Painter is a valuable tool for fine art, photography, and all forms of image manipulations. The Program is easy to manage and is a pleasure to work with. www.corel.com

PaperPort Deluxe 8.0, Scansoft - by Bea Edmiston, July 2002

PaperPort Deluxe brings static paper documents into the digital environment enabling you to scan, store, organize, retrieve and use paper documents on your computer along with all of your existing PC documents. www.scansoft.com

PaperPort Professional 10, Scansoft - by Bart Koslow, February 2005

This is a large, comprehensive document management program with many useful features. PaperPort Professional is an excellent program and is highly recommended. www.scansoft.com

Partition Magic 7.0, PowerQuest - by Maria Lienett, February 2002

Create, resize, merge and convert partitions on your hard disk without destroying data. Run multiple operating systems. www.powerquest.com

Partition Magic 8.0, PowerQuest - by Ed Allen, September 2003

Partition Magic 8.0 is a great program for creating new or larger partitions on your hard drive. The program has three main features: PartitionMagic, BootMagic and DataKeeper. This is an outstanding program; I would recommend it to any serious computer user. www.powerquest.com

pdfCreator 3 Professional, Nuance Communications Inc. - by Chuck Johnson, January 2006

PDFC3 is definitely a competitor for Acrobat 7 at a greatly reduced price. For a small office or an individual who does a lot of presentations and wishes to disseminate information through a standard like PDF, this program is a great tool to have in one’s repertoire. www.nuance.com

pdfFactory Pro 2.40, FinePrint Software - by Chuck Johnson, April 2005

pdfFactory Pro is a program that takes the printer output of most application programs, and most windows that can be right clicked on and printed, and generates a PDF file readable by Adobe Reader. www.fineprint.com

PhotoFrame Pro 3, onOneSoftware - by Darrel Priebe, February 2007

PhotoFrame Pro 3 is a fun and easy-to-use plug-in for Photoshop or Photoshop Elements to give your photographs exciting frame or edge effects.  With over four thousand frames to choose from, you’ll find it addicting to try and find an even better or more colorful alternative for framing your favorite pictures for printing, DVD shows or web display. www.ononesoftware.com

PhotoImpact 8, Ulead - by Richard Hall, April 2003

PhotoImpact 8 is a total image editor for the PC to enhance and manage your digital photos. It will also create impressive graphics and produce high-end web pages. PhotoImpact 8 includes PhotoImpact, GIF animator 5, PhotoImpact Album, and Photo Explorer. www.ulead.com

PhotoImpact 10, Ulead - by Christine Gorham, February 2005

This is a great piece of software for beginners to intermediate users....This software offers a lot for a small amount of money, and for that reason I recommend it. www.ulead.com

PhotoImpact 11, Ulead - by John C. Lee, July 2006

PhotoImpact 11 is excellent image editing and web design software. It offers abundant editing tools and programs and a large-collection EasyPalette with virtually thousands of images, templates, photo effects, masks, frames, DVD menus and labels.www.ulead.com

PhotoImpact 12, Ulead - by Marika Panczel, May 2007

Ulead’s PhotoImact version 12 is an image editing software, offering tools for managing, editing and sharing digital media files. The program is packed with features, suitable for the novice and advanced digital photographer, artist and web page designer. www.ulead.com

Photoshop Album 2.0, Adobe - by Christine Gorham, April 2004

Photoshop Album is an audio and video cataloging system using fast drag and drop technology. www.adobe.com

Photoshop Elements 2.0, Adobe - by Roger Houston, December 2002

The Elements program is a system for creating, editing, managing, and printing images. It's a good, medium capable, photo-editing program. www.adobe.com

Photoshop Elements 3.0, Adobe - by Pete Padilla, February 2005

Adobe Elements 3.0 is one fantastic value. Anyone who is serious or even semi-serious about digital photography will want this product. www.adobe.com

Photoshop Elements 3 for Windows, One on One - Book Review by Barton Koslow, July 2005

"I doubt if you will find a better introduction to using Photoshop Elements 3. I highly recommend the book to all beginner and intermediate users of Elements." www.oreilly.com

Photoshop Elements 4.0, Adobe - by Jim Goodwin, February 2006

My general impression is that the program is composed of a number of generally good procedures stitched together to make up the program. The Photo Browser section of the Organizer is great. It provided all of the organization that I hoped for, and it was easy to work with. www.adobe.com

Photoshop Elements 5.0, Adobe - by James Nelson Brown, April 2007

Adobe Elements is Adobe’s stripped down version of Photoshop. I like the program because little technical skill is needed to improve photos and assemble them in a variety of interesting album formats. www.adobe.com

Photoshop Elements 6.0, Adobe - by Justin Pipkorn, February 2008

Elements started with a photo editing tool set derived from their long experience with the full featured Photoshop program designed for professionals. Each version has expanded the tool sets and added complementary modes to assist the amateur with organizing and assembling products. www.adobe.com

Photoshop CS2, Adobe - by Darrel Priebe , Tina Carlson , Chuck Johnson, and Hugh Warren, August 2006

Reviewing Adobe Photoshop CS2 is a lot like reviewing Italian art. Simply put, there’s more to it than you’ll ever get to in one lifetime. But that doesn’t stop me, and it shouldn’t stop you, from learning and enjoying one of the most magical and powerful software programs available for today’s digital photographer. www.adobe.com

Photoshop CS3, Adobe - by Darrel Priebe, June 2007

Photoshop is hands-down the best photo management and image enhancement program on the market today. It’s not for the person who takes occasional snapshots. It is for the dedicated photographer and student of photography who loves the joy of discovering beautiful pictures through the magic of the digital darkroom. www.adobe.com

Power DVD 6 Deluxe, Cyberlink Corporation - by Barton Koslow, December 2005

Cyberlink Power DVD is a software DVD (and CD) player for use on your computer. It has many controls and features similar to home DVD players, and advanced video and audio features and controls not usually found on home DVD players. www.gocyberlink.com

Print Shop Pro Publisher Version 15, Broderbund - by Martin Trujillo, April 2003

Print Shop Pro Publisher is oriented to manipulation of templates and photographs and then merging them with stock graphics into a printable page. www.broderbund.com

ProShow, Photodex - by George “Hutch” Hutchison, October 2006

ProShow is a slide show program. "Within minutes of downloading the trial version of the ProShow Gold 2.6, I was up and running with a very nice show, including beautiful transitions. A short time later I had an even more impressive customized version with a perfectly timed music track. My family, seldom moved by my technological wizardry, was astounded." www.photodex.com

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Quicken 2002 Deluxe, Intuit - by Bart Koslow, March 2002

Quicken is a program to manage every area of your personal finances. Quicken enables me to know on a continuing basis my net worth, my bank, credit card, mutual fund, broker account balances, and my investment profit and losses. www.intuit.com

Quicken 2003 Premier, Intuit - by Karen Warren, December 2002

Quicken 2003 assists people in the management of their personal finances.  It includes tools for managing bank accounts, credit cards property, loans, investments and taxes. The Premier edition gives users tools to push management of personal finances to a higher level. This release has significantly improved over the previous version. www.intuit.com

Quicken 2004 Permier, Intuit - by Justin Pipkorn, January 2004

Quicken started 20 years ago as a DOS program modeled after the personal checkbook and has incrementally morphed into a full personal finance manager. Quicken interfaces with Intuit Turbo Tax and is fully integrated with the Internet giving access to a highly supportive Quicken.com web site. www.intuit.com

Quicken 2005 Deluxe, Intuit - by Bart Koslow, November 2004

In addition to tracking your financial transactions, Quicken has programs to track your home inventory; organize your emergency records; plan for retirement, college, home purchase, debt reduction, etc.; setup budgets and cash flow forecasts; a complete tax planning program; a complete investment program, and a comprehensive reporting program. When it comes to personal finance there is little that is not included and more than most of use will probably use. www.intuit.com

Quicken 2006 Premier, Intuit - by Justin Pipkorn, October 2005

Quicken claims to be the #1 selling personal financial program of all time. Quicken started 22 years ago as a DOS program modeled after the personal checkbook and has incrementally morphed into a full personal finance manager. Quicken interfaces with Intuit Turbo Tax and is fully Internet integrated with access to a highly supportive Quicken.com web site. www.intuit.com

Quicken Premier 2007, Intuit - by Darrel Priebe, November 2006

Quicken Premiere 2007 offers an affordable, convenient and powerful way to stay abreast of your daily and long-term financial picture. www.intuit.com

Quicken Premier 2008, Intuit - by Justin Pipkorn, December 2007

Quicken is one of the largest selling personal finance programs. Starting as a checkbook program almost 25 years ago, this program now includes investment management, property and debt management, and a number of special calculators. www.intuit.com

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RecordNow MAX 4.0, Stomp, Inc. - by Sandy and Marty Trujillo, May 2003

This CD/DVD burning and ripping package supports multiple formats that allow users to create Audio, CD, DVD, Video, Data, and MP3 recordings. www.stompinc.com

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Shadow 3.0, NTI - by Chuck Johnson, April 2006

NTI Shadow offers real-time, continuous backup of your valuable files so every time a change occurs, your files will always be protected. www.ntius.com

Sonicfire Pro 4, SmartSound - by Darrel Priebe, February 2007

Spyder2Pro, ColorVision - by George Hutchinson, March 2005

Colorvision^® has been making an effort to bring accurate, affordable color calibration to amateurs and professionals alike. Anyone interested in digital video, photography or could otherwise benefit from color monitor accuracy would be well served to consider this product. www.colorvision.com

Streets & Trips 2003, Microsoft - by Ed Allen, May 2003

Microsoft Streets & Trips 2003 is the easy and effective way to plan your next family vacation. It's a powerful, yet easy to use map program. www.microsoft.com

Streets & Trips 2005, Microsoft - by Jim O'Dell, March 2005

Even though there are several "free" online programs like MapQuest and Yahoo that will get you from point A to point B with good directions, Streets & Trips provides considerably more information about places and far more customization than those programs ever could. www.microsoft.com

Streets & Trips 2008 with GPS Locator, Microsoft - by Bart Koslow, December 2008

I have found Streets & Trips to be a versatile, easy to use program that I have come to depend upon whenever I travel by auto. www.microsoft.com

Studio 7 DV, Pinnacle -by Bart Koslow, February 2002

If you have a Camcorder and a yearning to make home movies, Studio 7 makes it easy. www.pinnaclesys.com

Studio 8, Pinnacle - by Leslie Monahan, May 2003

Studio 8 allows you to create your own movies.  You can shorten and rearrange clips, add transitions, menus, titles, sound effects and background music.  You can burn your movie to DVD, copy it to video tape, or save it in various video formats. www.pinnaclesys.com

Studio Plus 11, Pinnacle - by John C. Lee, October 2007

Pinnacle Studio 11 Plus is one of the three product lines of video editing and authoring software recently released by Pinnacle Systems. The Studio 11 family has solved much of the instability problems that had plagued its earlier versions.  It has also built in a safeguard that enables you to continue working on the same project after rebooting from a program crash.  www.pinnaclesys.com

System Mechanic 6, iolo Technologies - by Ed Shuttleworth, July 2006

This is a software “suite”, or maybe it is better described as a set of software tools for optimizing your computer’s performance.  It has 6 complete software products in one package to fill all your security and optimization needs. www.iolo.com

System Mechanic 7 Professional, iolo Technologies - by Bart Koslow, March 2007

Iolo System Mechanic 7 Professional (SM7) consists of five programs with a common interface. They include the System Mechanic PC utilities program, anti-virus, firewall, file recovery program, and Drive Scrubber to permanently remove files. www.iolo.com

System Suite version 4.0, Ontrack - by Sandy Tsutsui-Trujillo, February 2002

In addition to System Suite's full suite of diagnostic, repair, optimization, cleanup, and protection utilities, the program comes with Power Desk Pro (file management) and a Zip Magic utility. www.ontrack.com

System Suite V, VCom Communications - by Bart Koslow, November 2003

System Suite is a complete collection of utilities to protect, optimize and fix your computer. It has been reviewed by many as the best utility suite. www.v-com.com

System Suite Professional 6.0.2.6, VCom Company - by Hugh Warren, September 2005

System Suite 6 provides security, optimization and maintenance tools within the Windows operation systems 98SE, Me, NT, 2000, and XP. www.v-com.com

System Suite Professional 7, VCom Company - by Bart Koslow, January 2007

System Suite 7 (SS) is a comprehensive set of utilities to maintain, protect and optimize your Windows operating system. It has a firewall, anti-virus, anti-spyware protection and groups of utilities to Diagnose, Fix and Maintain, Optimize, Cleanup, Recover from problems and lost files, Uninstall, Backup and Restore, Zip (compression) files and folders, and more. www.v-com.com

System Suite 8 Professional, VCom Company - by Hugh Warren, January 2008

System Suite 8 Professional is a large and well organized collection of tools to keep your computer running smoothly, including security and maintenance tools. www.v-com.com

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True Image 8.0, Acronis - by Roger Houston, October 2005

True Image is a comprehensive utility for creating full and incremental backups of any drive or partition. www.acronis.com

True Image 9.0 Home, Acronis - by Bart Koslow, June 2006

Acronis True Image is a versatile backup program that can create backup images and file backups, and restore them as needed. It can perform full, incremental and differential backups to a variety of media. In the event your partition is unusable, you may restore the image and have the partition exactly as it was before the backup. www.acronis.com

True Image 10.0 Home, Acronis - by Bart Koslow, November 2006

"I continue to be impressed with the depth and versatility of this complete backup and recovery program and with its ease of use. I do not believe you will find a better or more complete program for this purpose." www.acronis.com

True Image 11 Home, Acronis - by Bart Koslow, October 2007

Acronis True Image 11 is a versatile backup program that can create backup images and file backups, and restore them as needed. www.acronis.com

Turbo Tax for Tax Year 2004, Intuit - by Bart Koslow, January 2005

This is a great program. Don’t prepare your taxes without it! www.intuit.com

TurboTax Deluxe 2005, Intuit - by Bart Koslow, December 2005

"As much as I hate preparing my tax returns, I love TurboTax. It diminishes the pain, saves lots of time, and prevents errors. I highly recommend it even to those with little knowledge of taxes. Personally, I would find it difficult to survive the tax season without it." www.intuit.com

Turbo Tax for Tax Year 2006, Intuit - by Don Slight, February 2007

This year, as it does every year, TurboTax has made improvements to its software and added new features. Of note is a new Deduction Maximizer Center which has two options for entering your deductions and credits. www.intuit.com

Turbo Tax Deluxe for Tax Year 2007, Intuit - by Bart Koslow, January 2008

There is a new, much improved interface. Instead of immediately showing all the Easy Steps for preparation, you see one screen at a time, which makes it simpler for many people. www.intuit.com

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Video Studio 8, Ulead - by John C. Lee, November 2004

VideoStudio 8 is the latest version of the popular Ulead’s video authoring and editing software. Ulead has incorporated a host of impressive new features into this version which was awarded the PC Magazine’s Choice for video-editing programs. www.ulead.com

Video Studio 10 Plus, Ulead - by John C. Lee, October 2006

VideoStudio 10 Plus is the latest release of Ulead’s popular video-editing and DVD-authoring software. VideoStudio 10 is an excellent program and easy to work with, once you have spent enough time to work through each of the multitudinous options and dialog boxes. www.ulead.com

Video Studio 11 Plus, Ulead - by John C. Lee, August 2007

This video editing and DVD authoring program is easy to work with, once you have spent enough time to familiarize yourself with each of the multitudinous options and dialog boxes. www.ulead.com

Vivenza, Nik Software - by Darrel Priebe, April 2008

Viveza is a powerful, easy-to-use tool for Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, which gives the photographer precise control of the color and light in a photographic image without the necessity of creating selections or layer masks. www.niksoftware.com

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Windows XP Annoyances - Book Review by Bart Koslow, May 2004

Whether you are a beginner, intermediate or advanced user, you will find the book to be invaluable. Windows XP Annoyances shows you how to customize and troubleshoot Windows XP. www.annoyances.org

WinDVD 7 Platinum, InterVideo, Inc. - by John C. Lee, October 2005

WinDVD 7 Platinum is an excellent A/V playback application with a host of attractive features. But there are a number of glitches that need to be ironed out. www.intervideo.com

WordPerfect 12, Corel - by Arlene Kapner, April 2005

WordPerfect 12 is quite suitable for anyone who uses word processing for even the most basic project. This is such a powerful program, however, that it also allows the most demanding user to incorporate columns, tables and even the most complex research tools using tables of contents, indices, footnotes and endnotes. www.corel.com