No comments about ACDSee Pro 2.

No comments about Print Artist 6.0 - Windows 95/98/NT.

5 comments about Adobe Photodeluxe Business Edition 1.0.

1. With a minimum use of the help menu, I have been importing photos from my scanner and my digital camera. Have used scaling, sizing, and various saving/exporting features. Have had NO problem saving as JPEG, am unsure what one reviewer was talking about! I really liked reducing the photos and saving them as JPEG's to use on my web page, and to send friends and family. The Adobe family works seamlessly with all my other software and devices.



2. First let me correct a comment made about Adobe PhotoDeluxe Business Edition 1.0: It works just fine with JPEG (.JPG) images in fact I use it to import other graphic format files and then save them as .jpg files. PhotoDeluxe Business Edition does everything that 90 percent of folks need to do. Plus they can do it easily because, unlike so many other graphic programs, PhotoDeluxe is completely user friendly and easy to use. Every task from touching up old photos to making photo collages have guides to take you from step one to the finish. This is the program I always use for scanner output and it has camera and photo processing support as well. This program has templates to make your photos work with cards, calendars, business cards, and much neat and fun stuff but the real news is how easy it is to use PhotoDeluxe in every basic aspect of manipulating images. By using guides and filters to do things like "warp" or "sharpen" or edit with paint tools, you are firmly in control of your task. There are too many tools to list them all here. I use this program without templates because it is my primary image editor. Once I have a finished product in PhotoDeluxe(with or without text added) I am ready to share my graphic output with others as email attachments or web graphics. If you make your living as a graphic designer please do use other very expensive tools. But if you are a recreational home user or a serious soho user, this is the only program you need and forget all those other graphics programs that are so complex they are of no use. You buy this, you will use. My credentials? I have a BFA (a fine arts degree) and have been doing computer graphics since 1983.



3. I bought this software program because I thought it would be good to use to make fliers, brochures, and stuff for the real estate business. I was impressed with the review and the product information. But when I recieved the software and tried to use it, i couldn't get the projects to work. I was only able to view the different pictures that were on my computer.

   I think that I am going to try PrintShop Deluxe instead. I heard and read that that Adobe PhotoShop is the big daddy to this -- Adobe PhotoDeluxe, but I can't afford that right now. I think that the Adobe PhotoDeluxe BE 1.0 needs some improvement. But I do love Adobe products.




4. Adobe's Business edition crashes easily when trying to print to my 24" wide HP designjet plotter. It could be file size or something else, but I'm no teckkie, so I don't really know. Adobe offers no help.

   Other than that, HP's bundled software (PhotoPrinting) is much easier to use but it doesn't support the large format.




5. This is a really great product. It is easy to use and I have had little trouble with it malfunctioning. I would recommend this product to anyone who wants a simple program that offers a wide variety of creative tools.

5 comments about MusicMatch Jukebox 7.0 Deluxe.

1. Despite the overall positive reviews you'll see here, BUYER BEWARE. This software is by far the least user-friendly and most cumbersome CD burning program I've owned. Eventually I had no problems learning how to rip and burn CDs, but it still requires too many steps and clicks to get to the action.

   My complaints largely center around 2 issues: Burning data CDs and storing track lists. Burning data CDs is truely a pain in the arse using MusicMatch. Programs such as this should have simple drag-and-drop options. But if you're trying to update a data file already on the CD-R, it is not that easy -- it requires extra steps to manually delete the old versions of your data. I have many many data CD-Rs for both work and home, and burning/updating them was an extraordinarily burdensome process.

   In regards to saving track lists, I'm an audiophile, and I prefer listening to stored tracks in their original track listing order. If you prefer this too, do not buy MusicMatch. It can only store tracks by name (alphabetically), and does not allow you to listen to the tracks in album track # order. This makes listening to classical, jazz, or any other instrumental album really undesirable. It also makes burning music CDs a pain, because you have to drag-and-drop each track in the desired order. This should be automatic! Freeware like Real Player even lets you store tracks in album listing order...Why not this? Ugh.




2. note: if i could give it negative stars i would have given a -5!
   When i got it i thought it would be awesome. I realised the problem right away...
   When you add tracks to your music library, the tracks are put into alphabetical order. I HATE this. There is no way around it. FOr example: the cd tommy by "the who" has to be played in a certain order for you to understand the story (it's a rock opera if you dind't know) in alphabetical order, it's all messed up. Musicmatch also looks ugly, and is very clunky. I am not a mac person, but i would say that itunes is FAR superior to musicmatch. save yourself the money and download itunes for free. It is SOOOOOOO much better. You'll agree with me if you see both. (trust me)



3. I have been a MusicMatch user since version 4, so maybe I am one up on new users, but I find that this program is spectacular! A lot of people have written reviews stating that they can't play songs in order by track number... these people need to open their eyes! MusicMatch allows you to list many different aspects of the tagging information in your library listing (just double click on the library window to edit), among them are MP3 encoding bit rate (so you know what quality the MP3 is) and track number.
   If you want to list your songs by track number, you can do it by simply clicking the arrow at the top of the column. If you want to list your MP3s by artist, each of the artist's albums, and by track order within each album, just click the sort arrow at the top of each column in THAT order! How simple is that?
   This newest version has a lot of other wonderful features too, such as supper tagging and file renaming (to create standardized file names). It also continues to use MusicMatch's wonderful album-art-as-part-of the-tag feature! I love this! Everytime I listen to an MP3, the album art is displayed on-screen as I listen. This is especially fun when I rip MP3s from old 7" singles, and scan in the original covers! :)
   MusicMatch is also fast and reliable: if the error-correction feature is enabled, it will notify you if it had trouble encoding something, which will allow you to verify the quality of THAT encode, without having to double check all of them.
   I admit that it is a little big and boxy, but it CAN be minimized during playback, and there are a LOT of easy-to-download skins that are smaller and less boxy than the default skin (frankly, I like BLOOP, but I miss the Paisley skins from versions 4 and 5).
   For less than 15 bucks, this product is REALLY fantastic... and if you purchase the lifetime upgrade key, you need never worry about not having the latest version! A+++++!!!!



4. if you're happy buying cds and now downloading them over the internet through musicmatch's download service, then you should stick with version 7. i found version 8 a step down from version 8. this has absolutely everything that you would want in a media player, you can rip, listen to and burn cds very easily. it has very good track tagging so you don't need to go typing out the names of your mp3s. although some users might not need or want many of the features on musicmatch, i find that musicmatch is the best all-in-one player out there for people with large music collections. I've explored many different media players, including windows media player, but i have always come back to musicmatch.
   as for people saying that you had to play the tracks in alphabetical order, this is not true! as long as you have the track number written on the track tag, then you can select an option to play in track order.
   as well as its many features, you can also download a programme called evillyrics which is compatible with musicmatch. while you listen to songs, evillyrics will find the lyrics for you and you can view them beside musicmatch. it's brilliant!



5. I had the free version for years, then upgraded.
   
   The free version is full of bugs. Naturally tech support is arrogant and unhelpful, and basically consists of "buy the upgrade (Jukebox) because that is what we support."
   
   Finally I did buy Jukebox at about version 5 or 6. Unfortunately, most of the same annoying bugs exist, and the tech support is not any better. (The web site help is usually down.)
   
   The worst thing is that the program (both free and purchased) is too stupid to recognize that your computer is already connected to the internet, which is vital to take advantage of the program options and save tons of time when ripping. So easily three-quarters of the time you just quit in frustration from trying to convince ("trick") the program into realizing you ARE on the net already!
   
   Ripping is easiest when the program locates on the web the album & track info. This is very hit and miss. If someone has submitted that info a few days ago (it takes a while to get into the system) up to several months ago (the info often drops out of the system after a few months), then when you put in your CD (and IF the program knows you are connected to the internet), the info pops up right away and you take off ripping. If this is not the case, you spend a lot of time typing in all of the info; worst of all, often the program will send your typing to the net but not enter it into the tracks you are ripping!!! (In this case, you end up going into the tagging feature and retyping it all over again! Plus you really need to go change the actual computer file names as well!---VERY annoying.)
   
   
   
   Some other specific comments:
   
   Yes, you do get 5 free burns with the free version---they are worth every cent you pay for them, absolutely nothing! They are terrible, usually full of annoying skips. The good news is that if you buy the upgrade, the burning is very good.
   
   It is true that "suborganizing" is possible in spite of what some have said. In the library you simply click the window/column heading to resort by track number, album, or any other sub-category, just like you would in any program/file window.
   
   
   It is true that there is a lot of neat tagging info you can enter to have an incredible, comprehensive library with all kinds of background, your own ratings, etc. The bad news is that even a very minor computer crash will wipe all of this work out and you end up with nothing. There is no way to save this info to files, so if your software becomes corrupted and you have to reinstall, you've just lost and wasted all of that time with your great tagging.
   
   Playlists are similarly sensative. While being able to create some super playlists (I've had some thousands of songs long!), you will lose them in a computer crash. (You're supposed to be able to save them as a file that can be backed up, but it doesn't work.) In fact, just upgrading from 7 to 8 or 8 to 9 will destroy your playlists. You have to figure out ways around this annoying problem. I burn CD's for any playlist short enough to fit on one CD (which I can then rip and recreate after a crash). For any long playlists, I end up writing them out, and then physically recreating (a bother but not too bad) after an upgrade.
   
   It is true you have no control over how and where files are ripped. You will end up relabeling, resorting, and re-nesting/imbedding folders to fit a descent organization system; however, I don't know that any program would do this acceptably anyway, you'll want do you own sorting to make things workable. (And you have to delete from your library and re-add any moved files.)
   
   When burning CD's, Jukebox often makes errors about how much will fit on a CD. It will tell you that you still have room, but when you add one more song, during the burn the program will tell you that the disc is full and all songs could not be reocorded! (Worst, the one song that gets dropped off is NOT the last one you added, but a randomly selected one between the first and last!) It's best to do your own math adding up the song times to know how many songs will fit on your CD.
   
   I upgraded to 9 recently. It is nice how easy it is to plug in your key for the free upgrade from one version to another, or from the free version if you have to reinstall after a computer crash. I can't say that there has been any improvements over the versions to the bugs in the BASIC functionality, especially the problem of not recognizing being already connected to the net.
   
   It is true that the program is much better than Windows Media Player, but com'on, what kind of compliment is that? Idiots can make something better than Microsoft. For the last five years I've only used MM, so I have nothing recent to compare to. After all the time and effort of getting used to the quirks of Jukebox, I find myself very reluctant to go through another Huge learning curve-so in a way I'm stuck with Jukebox.

1 comments about Toontrack Latin Percussion EZX Latin Percussion Sample Library.

1. Lots of instruments that sound awesome, and play great. You call them up in EZDrummer and you can mix them in the EZDrummer mixer. There are multiple examples of tamborines, cowbells, ect. The great thing about these is they are multisamples of real instruments, so they don't have that synthbox feel. They feel totally real. If you need percussion bad enough that you are looking at this, definitely buy it. Sounds better than Battery3, and in my opinion it is easier to use.

No comments about ACID Pro 6 Boxed Upgrade.

No comments about Sibelius 5 Educational & PhotoScore Ultimate 5.

1 comments about 3D Home Architect Landscape Designer 6 Deluxe.

1. This is to hard to use. Do not buy it unless you have about a year to figure out how to use it.

5 comments about Microsoft Picture It! Premium 10.0.

1. I owned a couple older versions of this program. I bought this becuase my older software wasn't compatible with my new XP operating system. I was very disappointed when I found Microsoft has dropped many of the functions such as artistic edges and text enhancements such as shadows. I loved these features and found they recommended an "upgrade" to the Digital Image Suite. I thoguht I would do this, but I found you can't "upgrade." You have to buy the full version of Digital Image Suite for the full price. Ridiculus! I went ahead and purchased Adobe Photoshop Elements. I recommend you do too.



2. I decided to go with Picture It 10 based on Consumer Reports on this and other photo editing software. So far it has proven better than I would have expected. Pretty easy to get into and use from scratch. And it has many features new to me and has been easy to learn. Glad I got it.



3. Lots of features and very simple to use.



4. I liked the older version better. I have a hard time making the projects I used to do easily.



5. Microsoft had a great interface with Picture it 99. It was intuitive and projects could happen quickly. Digital Image pro 9 (Which I upgraded to) removed some of the key features of the former software. Some of the most powerful features, being the ability to stretch text and make size adjustments in real time were taken away. Insane. Now all I want to do is go back to the former system. I tried to install MS Picture it 99 only to find that it wouldn't install with all the XP updates etc. This is what I find discouraging about Microsoft products, just when you get used to a piece of software's interface, they change everything and remove other key features. Pure stupidity in my opinion.

2 comments about Roxio Easy Media Creator 9.

1. Had to get a patch from Roxio just to install it. Many features don't seem to work with windows vista, poor customer support, I am rather dissappointed because I liked the creator 8 suite on my windows XP. Creator 9 has me tearing my hair out.



2. This product got one star only because it contains functions that I need and can use. With that said, this product installs a lot of junk that I don't need and you can't uncouple it from the installation. I don't need to open up my computer so everyone can access it. Like Microsoft, it installs all the useless self serving things that just compromise your system. If you want to open up your pc to the world, and wants to make use of your dvd writing capabilities, this is an ok product to use. However, I would not recommend this product even if my life is depend on it. I will fine another product to do dvd/cd authoring soon.