5 comments about Microsoft Visio Standard 2002.

1. No doubt, Visio is a powerful program. But I'm here to advocate a different approach to diagramming. With the release of Office XP, Microsoft has made PowerPoint so intuitive, precise and powerful that - for the vast majority of us - Visio is overkill.

   I do lots of business flow-like diagrams. I've worked with Visio in the past, but I feel like the following method works far better for me:

   1) Start by building a rudimentary version of what you want in PowerPoint. True, PowerPoint doesn't give you the snap-and-lock type features that are at the core of Visio...but you can closely approximate it with various easy-to-learn techniques. The best thing about PowerPoint is that every action is completely intuitive. I've been able to build some pretty complex things without once looking at online help.

   2) Now, once your rudimentary version is in place, you can go back through and punch things up with appropriate graphics. Microsoft provides a great online tool for this purpose called "Design Gallery Live." You have access to it as part of your Office XP purchase. Say that at a certain place, your diagram calls for a picture of a CPU. Bring up Design Gallery Live through the "Clips Online" option of PowerPoint and put 'CPU' in as the search term and, voila, there are four pages of images for you to choose from.

   3) You can go beyond Design Gallery Live with the help of Google. Their (relatively) new Image search feature is a boon for anyone putting together a presentation. The other day, I needed a generic image of an ATM. I put "Automated Teller Machine" in as a search term for a Google Image search and got nine pages of images back.

   4) Back in PowerPoint, once you drop these images into place, you can double-click on them & go to the 'Size' panel of the 'Format Picture' dialogue box. Play with Height & Width parameters to get to proper scaling for each of the images you've selected (keep the ratios equal, though).

   5) You can use the various 'Alignment' options (available through the Drawing menu at the left-hand corner of your screen) to line up the various objects as you see appropriate.

   I suggest you give this approach a try as well before committing extra money to buy Visio. You'll be surprised at how powerful Powerpoint has become & how you can assemble professional, eye-catching presentations in a very short period of time.




2. I've been fiddling with the OpenOffice.org and StarOffice features for a while, then took a look at the Draw program. I was blown away. It's like a mini Visio Elements -- it's got the connector lines you need and really good control over positioning, plus it's got a gallery where you can store prefab shapes.

   Seriously, download OpenOffice.org if you're not a huge Visio power user. You'll be really surprised and impressed, and of course OpenOffice.org is free, so that helps.




3. I totally agree with the other reviewer; I use OpenOffice.org for most of my diagramming needs and it works really well. Visio is fine most of the time but I prefer to have more interchangeable formats and OpenOffice.org outputs to EPS etc. and I've just found it to be really great for my technical diagram needs.

   So yes. Power users, maybe spend the money on Visio; "regular" people, download OpenOffice.org and try those connector lines and the gallery where you can put all the existing shapes you need.




4. Save your file regularly and it will still manage to loose the data and destroy hours of work. If the developers of this product can't even manage to design a file load and save mechanism that can recover from errors, then how do you expect them to design a user interface? 1/2 of the time wasiting is from the useless user interface, 1/2 from the loss of "saved" data.
   I will never use it again. I wish emacs had a structured drawing mode.......



5. Once again Microsoft is putting out {garbage}. I use Adobe Illustrator and Visio is not even in the ballpark as far as ease of use or capability. Even for the most simple functions Visio is cumbersome, clumsy and difficult to use. One example is text that is not scaleable. Why would anybody in their right mind want a graphics program where the test does not scale with the graphic? Selecting objects and using layers are both absolutely horrible. The interface is also very not intuitive! Microsoft, please put this foolish excuse for a graphics program out of it's (and our) misery!

5 comments about Microsoft Digital Image Pro 9.0.

1. This is one of the better photo editing programs I have used. It is very simple and easy to use, yet very powerful. Most programs such as photoshop, and even elements are very hard to use. Although this isnt quite as powerful, it makes up for being so easy to use. Its nice and cheap 2, what could be better?



2. This a good editing software. I think I got my money's worth. It is worth the $15 they are charging now too. I would have been really pissed if I had paid the full retail price. It's like a lot Microsoft software pretty good but no spectactular. Basically, they had a few billon laying around and they decided to dabble in photo editing software.



3. This software does not provide even the basic red eye fix. It turns them a light shade of grey, maybe. It is horrible. This to me renders it useless.
   
   It is for the most basic of users. There are no real manual functions to speak of, and my free software does a better red eye and also lets me do red eye manually when they cannot detect it.
   
   It has some neat functions but since it could not provide the most common need correctly,I would say do not buy. Seller was great, product is poor.



4. I run two websites using this program, easy learning curve, I recommend it to all my newbie friends that need a simple, workable program. Ignore the crittics, this is a nice program.Only wish in batch editing I could do multiple web page saves.



5. This is one program that in my opinion you get more than what you pay for I have several Immaging programs that I use for several different things. This one is a delight to use and does a great job taking most of the work off the user. Its a microsoft program that is very user friendly and easy to use. However you do have to be some what computer savy, (like know where to turn on the computer kind of thing) not like some of the 1 star comments that were made here by other folks. I would recomend it to all people that need a simple to use program. Its not what you pay for something its what you do with it after you get it.

4 comments about Bob the Builder: Bob Builds a Park.

1. ~My three-year-old son loves Bob the builder. That is the reason I bought this game. However, this product is just blow the bar. Poor graphic quality and boring game design. Compared with the kid software made by Disney or other company, this product is not refined enough and gives people home-made feeling. I gave it 3-star instead of 1-star because it is still a Bob the builder and my son likes to play with it. If you want to buy a Bob the builder PC game, this is one of the only two on the market.~~ If you just want to get some really nice pc game for young kid, look for something else.~



2. My son is an expert on this game and he is 3. In today's world, with kids so much more computer-literate, this game is really quite simple. Great for a 2-3 year old that loves Bob.



3. I am so sorry I bought this game, its such a waste of money for us. My 3 1/2 year old likes Bob and has videos and toys so I thought this would be good for him. But the games are very limited so they get boring quickly, moving around is very confusing and even the graphics are very bad. There's much better stuff out there for the kids. Reader Rabbit is the best we've found so far.



4. My 3 year old grandson completed this game to the end by himself and enjoyed it. Just alittle guidance one time and he mastered the game to enjoy the fireworks show at the end. He felt he helped Bob do the park all by himself. He has played it over four times and he knows he can do it by himself without getting bored or unable to do it. It is worth the money to let kids be successful playing the game by themselves and do all the jobs correctly.

5 comments about Computer Music Starter Kit.

1. For a little extra money, you get some very powerful software that allows you to easily write music, save to MIDI file, edit your existing MIDI's and provides a MIDI cable to connect your music keyboard. If you have some downloaded MIDI files, you'll get a kick out of turning on and off tracks or making your own remix. Pumping the MIDI files through an external MIDI source via the included cable (I used a Yamaha EZ-30) produced incredible results. It even takes MIDI files and converts them to sheet music which you can print out and save! For getting your feet wet in digital music, there's nothing I've found that's better or more robust. However, if you don't have an external MIDI source, then you won't get the maximum benefit from this bundle.



2. If you have a newer computer using USB connections, don't buy this kit. The cable they supply won't work, and you have to find a USB to MIDI adapter somewhere else. I got fooled when I saw it was designed for use with Windows XP, and didn't realize that they meant it could be used by older computers that have upgraded to XP.
   So, I've got to spend more money. ... The software is useless without the right cable connection.
   I was also disappointed to learn from the manual that their software won't convert the MIDI files to .WAV format for creating my own CDs. Voyetra recommends you buy some more of their software ("AudioView") to do that job.
   This product may have some value if you have an older computer, but it is not what they claim to be. It does not include "everything you need to create great sounding music..."



3. I agree with the Jan. 3rd 2003 reviewer. The enclosed cable will not work with my 2002 Dell laptop.[] This is double the price of the Software, which, by the way is OK. If the correct cable(s) were included, the package as a whole gets 4 stars...



4. I used voyetra orchestrator for over 5 years. I think it was a great learning tool for both digital audio and midi. I record 100% digital and wanted to replace my older version with a newer one. I found this starter kit and thought that it was basically the same as I had before because I looked all over the box and couldn't find anything that said it only includes 4 digital audio tracks. (how can anyone get started with two stereo channels?). I wouldn't have purchased it if I would have known that. Now I am stuck with it. If all a person does is midi, I guess this will work, but if you want to "start" incorporating digital audio, you should buy something else. I don't enjoy it when companies try to slide one by it's customers by not listing important info that should be disclosed even if it ends up hindering sales. shame on those Marketing people!



5. The cable didn't work, but if you have a floppy-drive on the keyboard, it's not necessary. I have already made a bunch of tracks. I really like this product. Its easy to use if you are thorough with music and notation. This is the best MIDI software I can find cheap. I also got jamgrid with this kit. I like the MIDI Orchestrator, but not JamGrid.

5 comments about Flash MX [Old Version].

1. I agree, the price tag is a little big if you are not an expert commercial buisness animator person, but it is a great product. It is not as hard to learn as everybody says, the interface is great. IMPORTANT: IF YOU ARE ANY STUDENT/TEACHER/MEMBER OF A ELM., MIDDLE SCHOOL, HIGH SCHOOL, OR COLLEGE/UNIVERSITY, YOU CAN BUY THIS PRODUCT FOR ONLY 100$. This is a lot less, 300$. Good Luck.



2. I agree, the price tag is a little big if you are not an expert commercial buisness animator person, but it is a great product. It is not as hard to learn as everybody says, the interface is great. IMPORTANT: IF YOU ARE ANY STUDENT/TEACHER/MEMBER OF A ELM., MIDDLE SCHOOL, HIGH SCHOOL, OR COLLEGE/UNIVERSITY, YOU CAN BUY THIS PRODUCT FOR ONLY 100$. This is a lot less, 300$. Good Luck.



3. Caution: MX2004 is out. Personally I prefer flash 5. It was intuitive and you didn't need two monitors to use it effectively, but I guess Macromedia have to make a buck somehow and are following the Microsoft/Norton software release model. (MX2004 PRO, MX 2004). The only thing the MX2004 software release in 2003 confirms is that MX wasn't that mature.



4. If you have used previous versions to Flash MX 2004 and are not an actionscript programmer- DO NOT BUY MX 2004. MX 2004 has done away with the "Normal Mode" in the actionscript editor and has replaced it with another screen hogging panel called behaviors. Instead of having a wizard like interface to aid in fast prototyping of sites and such, you will be forced to learn Actionscript. Unless you understand the code structure and syntax of either Java or Actionscript 2.0, prepare to not accomplish much. If you are a programmer, Flash MX2004 should suit you fine. If on the other hand you are a designer that uses MX or even Flash 5 and do not have the time to learn how to program- STAY PUT! Flash MX 2004 is not the designers tool any longer. Because of Flash's prominence, MX 2004 is now a programing interface for creating advanced appliances more than it is a creative tool.



5. It is an extremly useful product wihich I would immensly reccomend BUT the price is extremly high so it is impossible for normal people to have.

2 comments about Medianow CD & DVD Burning Suite Medianow Cd & Dvd Burning Suite.

1. don't waste your money on this product. it promises a lot, but is actually just several low end products packaged together (almost like the ones that come with the computer). you get errors with no explanations and ZERO support. best to stick with Nero or another package that has proven its self.



2. I dont know why the other reviewer had problems but i just got my software today and it works absolutely great...it copies movies, and i have already converted avi's to dvds with no issues....it seems to be alot like how roxio used to be back in the day for those who know what i am talking about...but it is definetely great for the money and better than nero in the sense that u can install media now as many times as you'd like instead of nero allowing a few times.......

No comments about Pop-Up Greetings - Makes Great 3-D Cards.

No comments about Pro DJ Audio Editing & Mixing Software - Become a PCDJ!.

1 comments about Calendar Creator 4.0 (Jewel Case).

1. Despite the program's low price it is not worth the cost in frustration. For some reason this program often renders event files unreadable. The problem is that there is no way to recover the entries and one has to start over. After suffering from this inumerable times I have discarded the program.

5 comments about Epson StoryTeller Photo Book Creator -- 8in x 10in (10 pages).

1. I read the other reviews and have to say that I loved the storyteller. I use an epson printer and it wasn't hard to print. It works better when you use the user defined custom setting to print the cover instead of the panoramic. I also printed the pages borderless and it looks like I sent it out to a professional printing service. Thanks Epson



2. User friendly, but could have more options with Fonts and size of print. A wonderful idea to replace scrapbooking.



3. This is a easy way to put together a photo album or write your own story book with your own pictures. Note that the pages are heavy photo paper and printable on just one side.



4. I have a Epson C82 printer. So far I spent 5 hours trying to get the program to print correctly. Tech support slight help, but still not able to print. Good Luck if you try it. Bob



5. We find that this is a wonderful way to make a history of visits with our children and grandchildren and give to them so their memories stay fresh. We can't visit them as often as we would wish due to distances involved and this is a great way to keep relationships meaningful. Great product and easy to use.