No comments about Amazing 3D Font Maker.

2 comments about PC CAKEWALK GUITAR TRACKS PRO 3.

1. This is just what it claims to be - Cakewalk, tailored to the guitar player! I really like it, because I can capture whatever will feed into my soundcard, but it's made especially for guitar players, with the pedal, etc.
   
   Anyhow, it's a lot of fun. Get one!



2. Somebody at Cakewalk must be doing something right. Guitar Tracks Pro 3 is an amazing upgrade over the older versions.
   
   The new interface is silky smooth. The metronome actually works.
   
   And, I can finally record at 24 bit 96khz, which I couldn't do with a lot of competitor's software.
   
   A lot of great new effects (look under GT FX). Really good new reverb, equalization (called "Q"). The new plugins look like expensive rack mount units that you drool over (but dare not buy) at music stores.
   
   Okay, minor complaints that the software defaults are kinda weird (sound on sound record, among others) which are leftovers from the old Guitar Tracks software. Also the record button is tiny tiny tiny.
   
   But all in all, for the basic recordist, this is one hot piece of software. If your not at version 3, definitely upgrade. After about an hour of twiddling around, you will be all grins.
   
   And as we all know, Cakewalk actually includes a printed manual that a normal human being can use and understand.
   
   Hats off to Cakewalk for an excellent upgrade.

No comments about Director 11 for Windows - 1 User.

3 comments about Adobe Premiere 6.5-MAC.

1. Features

   Premiere 6.5's editing screen consists of a number of free-floating windows. Premiere tools are video preview, timeline and storyboard. The floating palettes has additional features that help you monitor, modify, and enhance your work. You can hide and rearrange the palettes to organize your workspace. Premiere has a new feature allowing for the insertion of hyperlinks to your video.

   Familiar Adobe environment

   Premiere will look familiar if you've worked with other Adobe applications. The command menus at the top of the screen, windows to perform your assembling and editing, the toolbox, and the floating palettes. The Premiere toolbox contains tools for selecting, editing, and viewing your clips.

   Useful Improvements

   Adobe Premiere 6.5 adds useful improvements to its digital-video editing application. This includes real-time preview and a title designer. Premiere can take video input directly from digital and analog video cameras and store it on your hard drive. You can edit it, and output to a variety of video formats, including MPEG-1.

   Project Window

   Listed in the Project window are all the clips that you import into your project from video, still image, sequence, and audio. Every project has only one Project window; if you close this window, you close the project. The Project window is customizable, so that you can sort and view your clips.

   Wide variety of capture options. The capture interface allows you to control the camera directly. When you find points you want to capture, you simply punch-in and punch-out on the video to select.

   Premiere allows you to use the television as a monitor. This makes it so you can see your work on a bigger screen and allows the hardware codec in your camera to do the display work. Connect your camera through your FireWire/IEEE 1394/iLink port to my iMac and then connect the analog A/V connectors to a television set.

   One of the simplest is the way Premiere handles transitions. Just place the transition between the clips and it handles the transition automatically.

   Audio Mixer. This feature allows you to adjust sound levels as the audio and video tracks are playing. DV support is native in Adobe Premiere 6.5, providing built-in support for all types of DV devices. New tools, such as the professional-level Audio Mixer and the innovative Automate to Timeline feature, encourage creativity and experimentation.

   Closes the DV to Web gap.

   Web export plug-ins for one-step Web output. The save for web method lets you output multiple files optimized for streaming or progressive download in popular formats including QuickTime, RealMedia, Windows Media, MPEG and others by exporting the timeline directly into a special version of Terran Interactive Media Cleaner software.

   Final Notes

   A simple and powerful video editing tool, Adobe Premiere a great choice for any skill level. It is easy enough to use for anyone wanting to put a nice touch on their home-produced movies. Adobe Premiere 6.5 does everything a professional grade program like Final Cut can do for less money. The depth of features makes it a great tool for the video editor who needs to make a professional quality production.




2. While Premiere 6.5 is easy to use, it is very unstable. I have used Premiere 6 and it was not nearly as unstable as 6.5. 6.5 is not a good upgrade from Premiere 5 or 6. I would suggest going directly to Premiere Pro. Invest in Total Training for novices, it's well worth it. I wouldn't waste my money on Premiere 6.5. However, most of Adobe Premiere Products are great and have excellent features, and they interface wonderfully with Canopus.



3. ok this is an awsome product. I use it for makin movies. It is good for everybody but u have to get used to it.

No comments about Copy & Convert 3 for PC.

5 comments about Microsoft Picture It! Publishing 2001 Platinum.

1. I almost didn't buy this product because of the reviews that had been written about it. But I did and I was very careful, cleaned up my hard drive and made sure I had the room, (I only had 6 gb of hard drive) and when I installed it I followed Microsoft's recommendations and instructions to the "t". I never run it with other programs open. It runs better that way. But you can do just about anything with this program. I was very impressed, and very glad I bought it!



2. During installation this program deleted important system files. I installed on a "clean" system and still ended up having to run scandisk and restore lost files. So, buyer beware!



3. I really love all the different arrangements and reading this programs does for me. I am able to run all my other programs and extentions through it and with it. Many other programs I have used, are not as conjunctive. I highly recommend "picture it" to anyone who likes to play with and share photos.
   I was fortunate to have had "picture it express" included with my computor purchase. ...



4. I too am very upset with the bad software from microsoft. I can't even load the program. It claims to be Windows 2000 compatible. When attempting to install I get an error message telling me I have -2048MB of memory and 32MB is the minimum. In fact, I have 2048MB or 2GB of memory. Again a stupid assumption on the part of microsoft that nobody would ever have that much memory. With a minus memory amount the program will not load. After reading the reviews I guess I should be happy, but like most I am out of pocket for the cost.



5. The item that I purchased was in excellent condition, and the sell did a great job as far as sending it to me on time. I am very happy with my purchase form her, and give her a thumbs up, you did a great job. The item was what I expected, and in new like condition, I would buy this way again.

3 comments about PianoHead.

1. This is a Win/Win product for teachers and students. With over 30 years experience, and a large studio of successful students, I can attest that Piano Head taps into the quick visual perception both honed in today's youth by video games, and required by successful music readers. Kids are further motivated by the challenge to appear on the Worldwide Scoreboard, which entices them to practice their note and interval recognition to the desired level of automaticity. I have many students who have leaped to a higher level of understanding and enthusiasm for playing the piano, as Piano Head has lifted them beyond the mundane level of "hunt and peck". At a time when national studies show that a large percentage of piano students drop out after two years of lessons because they cannot read music, I cannot recommend this product highly enough!



2. Pianohead has been a great addition to regular piano practice time. One student in the family has a strong ear for playing and she is having fun getting to know her notes and intervals better. Both students are encouraged by the knowledge gained through the game and the confidence earned. We strongly recommend it for others that are learning and playing the piano as it creates another dimension to learning that may not be achieved through just practicing on the keyboard.



3. This is a must for piano students and music majors alike! The authors did a fantastic job of making the entire experience intuitive. It was totally easy to install. You don't have to read a single manual to get going. I don't think I've ever used the 'help' feature, nor do I know if it HAS a help feature.
   
   This product can be best thought of as a game that is divided into lessons. Each lesson is a variation on the same game with varying degrees of difficulty. The objective is to get the best score you can. After a few minutes of playing the first lesson, I could actually close my eyes and play, and still scored high!
   
   I only found two draw backs. It runs hot on my laptop - I suspect this may have something to do with the way the graphics are managed, or perhaps the game loop - it eats 45% of the CPU on my dual core machine. The other issue is that I was hoping my MIDI keyboard would work with it, I'm not sure if I misinterpreted the literature, but, even so, I still find significant value in the lessons anyway.

3 comments about Recordnow 9 Music Lab [LB].

1. I should've known I was in trouble when it took the software over five minutes just to start loading. After loading the software, it took my computer forever to reboot, and the program itself took forever to open, and to open various options within the program itself. Things only got worse after this. My computer was taking ten to twenty minutes to load, my task bar was locking up, and I could not use my computer. When I was finally able to remove the software (the program itself didn't contain a self "uninstall" option), my computer still took forever to load. I don't know what it did, but I can only warn you...stay away from this program.



2. I heard it said that installing a Roxio product is like letting a box of snakes loose in your computer. This proves it. It brought my computer to a halt. There is a roxwatch program it installs that hogged over half a gig of RAM and and all CPU power. I tried disabling it from the start up tray, but it came back to life. You can terminate it in the task manager. Maybe advanced users can disable it in registry. There is no update patch for this anchor. I don't feel Roxio cares about what they put their customers through.



3. I agree with the other negative reviews about this software. I became concerned when it took so long to load, and then found that it was trying to load a lot of components I did not want. It froze my computer when I first tried to use the program. I realized that I wanted no part of it and luckily was able to remove it using the Windows software removal utility. I hope it didn't do any permanent harm to my computer.

5 comments about Photo Explosion 2.0.

1. If all you want is to 'fix up' a photo and print it,this will do you just fine. If you want to add a funky frame, or simple special effects, it's good. If you really want to get artistic, you need to keep looking. It's very good at doing the basic things, but you can't really expect to get sophisticated results. It is very easy to use, and does do a great job on refining brightness, contrast, etc.



2. I bought this for the fact it said I could made dvd type photos. I have searched every inch of this program and cannot find out how to do that. I feel I have now wasted my money on this.



3. If you are buying this for making alterations to your photos its not bad
   But if you are like me and you want to burn your pics to a dvd slide show with music forget it. Tech support is rude too- on the bright side they are free (to my understanding) but perhaps thats why they are rude.
   either way the program does not support mp4's (it does support mp3 and wav) what i tunes uses so you can forget music with your slideshow and then in order for your computer to support the program for burning you will have to remove whatever other program that is using your burner there is no flip flopping- a lot of work little reward



4. I thought it was excellent software. Very easy to use and great for whatever project you need to do.



5. Great program for the beginner and advanced, very user friendly. Lots of options and choices. I highly reccomend it.

5 comments about Acronis True Image Backup 9.0 [OLD VERSION].

1. I purchased Acronis True Image Backup 9.0 last week and, when I tried to register it, found that it had been replaced by Ver. 10 and couldn't be registered at the Acronis site.
   
   Also, Acronis saved a few bucks on tech-writing... the instructions are so poorly written that I would have been terrified to try out the application on my critical business PC. After going to the trouble of developing a good application with a user-friendly interface, why skimp by not engaging a professional native English-speaking technical writer to create clear instructions and an effective application help system?
   
   Fortunately, I was able to experiment with my son's crashed gaming machine. Automatically copying the HD image to a new HD went safely and without a hitch. The Acronis user interface (at least, for this process) is very simple and straightforward. Plugging the new HD clone into a different PC (the old one was dead) resulted in the usual licensing and driver problems, which we were able to address without too much fuss. The the clone drive is now working fine in the new PC.
   
   I then cloned the HD on my precious business PC using the Automatic mode - the other procedures were too poorly documented to risk - and the clone drive works fine on the same PC.
   
   There are multiple ways of launching the Bootable Rescue Media Builder - both from the Programs Menu and from within the Acronis application, but I never succeeded in getting the process to work, either on his PC or on mine, and the Acronis site did NOT any provide support for Version 9.0. Not an acceptable state of affairs for a newly purchased application!



2. I have spent too much money and time trying out all kinds of backup software that fails in one way or another. My OS is Windows 2000, which does not have System Restore. Therefore, a functioning backup program is critical to me.
   
   The problem with other software is that they produce a list of error messages stating that various files could not be backed up. What good is that? I don't have that problem with Acronis True Image 9.0.
   
   Other restore programs attempt to overwrite the backed-up files on top of the existing files, creating a bad mix of the files you want with the files you don't want. Acronis solves this problem by totally wiping your hard drive during a full restore, and then reinstalling all of your backed-up files on a clean drive. No fuss, no muss. As a result, all the restores I've done so far have been flawless.
   
   The fun thing about Acronis True Image 9.0 is that I can now experiment with all kinds of new software I've wanted to install and try out. I no longer have to worry about someone's nasty program horribly messing up my computer. Now, if the worst happens, so what? All I have to do is boot my computer using the Acronis Rescue Disk, and then instruct it to reinstall the backup located on a second storage drive. In less than 10 minutes, my computer is back and happy the way it was before anything happened.
   
   After purchasing this product, do not install it. Instead, go to their website and register your license code. There's an available free upgrade to download. Install that instead. It has a few additional features which Acronis felt necessary to program in.
   
   Acronis True Image 9.0 is very user-friendly, and not cluttered with hundreds of complicated options.
   
   REVIEW UPDATE (March 2008): This software is now being given away for free by Seagate under a different name. They're calling it DiscWizard. This is not the same DiscWizard they had several years ago. When you install and run the program, Acronis' name is all over it. Seagate has added a few additional features, but it is 100% Acronis True Image 9.0.



3. I purchased this product after going through numerous reviews. I opted for an older version after ensuring that it meets my basic needs. The Acronis Secure Zone, a separate partition for backing up data, had been safely protecting my data for a number of weeks. You should try this product if you are on a budget. Otherwise, the newer version might be better - though I did not have a chance to try that out.



4. There is NO back-up software that is comprehensive and yet VERY simple to use. But this software does a good job of keeping it relatively simple.
   
   On the advice of a knowledgeable friend, I purchased this version 9, which is out of date. Buying a later version just means you'll pay more, but get only "bloatware."
   
   This software does a great job of supporting good back-up practices, and got great reviews from the computer magazines and web sites.
   
   I use it to create complete images of my XP drives. When my drive finally fails, I'll be able to pop in a new C drive and in an hour or so be doing exactly what I was doing on the failed drive.
   
   Get it and you'll know why.



5. This older version of Acronis works well with WIN 9X and 2000 as well as XP. The newer version doesn't work with 9X. This is one more instance of a product that won't work with older OS versions. What's the point of buying a new version if I see no need to upgrade my OS?