3 comments about My Type Artist.

1. Used this for many many newsletters for teachers. It is a very fun and easy way to make the headlines stick out. It has an index of samples of all the fonts, the same fonts broken down into categories, and even a favorites section! Type Artist is an ultimate tool for creating awesome headlines.



2. I like using this product - It jazzes up your work and it's easy to use - Love it! However, I would like to have the option of changing more than just the background color.



3. You couldn't ask for anything faster. The only time-consuming thing is selecting the design you want to use from 90,000+ combinations. It's so quick and easy, you can create several designs and pick the one you most like. Easily change colors and fonts. It's simply fun to use. I guarantee you'll like this software!

5 comments about Microsoft Visio Professional 2003 Upgrade [Old Version].

1. Visio has always been an excellent solution for technical diagramming. Version 2003 is no exception and improves upon its predecessor with support for the web and integration with other Office applications. The program still lacks certain elements of Microsoft Office which I feel concerned about. Users are able to import Native Auto CAD drawings directly into Visio, and use the Visio tools to further customize and edit drawings to their hearts content. You can create custom stencils save them and share with other Visio users over a corporate network. You can export diagrams as a webpage so that users who don't have Visio installed locally on their machine can View diagrams through web browser at different resolutions with ease. The program enables IT Adminstrators to create Diagrams for Active Directory role outs for Windows 2000 Server and Server 2003. SQL Server or other third party database products such as Oracle and IBM DB2 can use the Visio functionality to outline a companies storage of data through active digrams that automate how data is stored and used. You can create simple project management task, and also export other Visio digrams to PowerPoint and further edit within PowerPoint or Word.Other features include searching for stencils online in the program, which makes it easy for you to find that particular diagram. Visio still lacks certain elements such as native support for WordArt. Overall, this upgrade is a must have for existing Visio 2000 or 5.0 users, but some 2002 users might not see any need for some of the functionality and might wait first to see if their diagramming and network infrastructure needs demand the new functionality and technology that Visio 2003 has to offer.



2. I have been using the Visio diagramming software since the 2000 version. In my mind this upgrade is the best I have purchased.

   The interface with the rest of the Office XP 2003 Suite is vastly improved. I can now take a diagram created in Visio and drop it into Word documents, PowerPoint Presentations and e-mails without having to reformat it. In the past the transfer was never clean.

   Once the diagram is embedded, I can emphasize and clarify key points, gather input from team members and even share documents using SharePoint services. This is a huge timesaver for me.

   If you embed your diagrams in other documents, you will love this upgrade.




3. I just purchased this thinking that "of course I can upgrade to Visio 2003 Pro from Visio 2003 Standard". Nope. This is just plain silly. I still am trying to figure out if I can even upgrade my Visio *2003* Standard version to Professional.



4. I found this upgrade to install easily and well perform as expected. Help function is good but lack of hard copy manual or availabilty of one is a disappointment.



5. Disappointed to find out that you cannot upgrade Visio 2003 standard edition with this product. You have to have an "older"
   version of Visio 2000 or 2002. Why Microsoft doesn't allow this
   upgrade is makes no sense but at $200 for the standard version and $250 for the professional uograde and now another $429 for the full professional version, I guess it does make cents after
   all

No comments about Total 3D Home.

No comments about Funny Face Art.

4 comments about American Greetings CreataCard Select 6.

1. I have been reading through a few American Greetings Creatacard reviews and have found the same thing to be true with this version ...it's just not worth your time or money. When I first started using the program, it worked fine. Then, without any rhyme or reason the program started to corrupt itself. Even it's own programs/templates were corrupted. Everything becomes elongated, fonts change in the middle of typing, the program doesn't full uninstall ...and the list goes on. It's really very basic and has a limited amount of clipart. I would even second guess using it if it was given free to me. If you value your work and want things done right the first time, don't bother with this program.



2. I've owned 2 different versions of Creatacard software. I believe my first was the original and now I own version 5 Platinum. I'm currently just shopping for an upgrade because I LOVE THIS SOFTWARE!! I've never had a bug or a hitch, except once when my computer had a virus. I think the other reviewer should look into that possibility! This is fantastic because you can import your own artwork, photos, etc. It has an adequate photo editing program -- good enough to create custom envelopes by clipping images, etc., from the artwork being used. My only beef with it is that it isn't possible to do any sophisticated photo editing, like object removal.
   
   I've tried a couple of other printshops out there for greeting cards, and this is definitely the easiest, most straight-forward one I've found. I'm just ready for an upgrade :)



3. I bought this software with trepidation, having read some negative reviews about it by people who, just like me, wanted to update an older version of CreataCard with it. However, after reading equally negative reviews on practically all other greeting card software available, I decided to go for it, since it really wasn't expensive compared to others. Once I installed it, I was pleasantly surprised with the ease of operation and improved navigation compared to CC Gold 3. I loved my old software and got used to its different and often frustratingly incompatible features, but as this newer version is made by a different company, it seems more compatible with other Windows components while still sporting the old look I'm so used to. The only frustrating bit is the newer version's incompatibility with the older version, so if you want to buy this to update your older CC, you'll have to redo everything manually (Forget-Me-Not reminders, addresses, saved cards etc.).



4. I have attempted to use other greeting card software and I find the American Greetings CreateaCard the best. I will use it the year round sending cards to my children(4) and grandchildren(9)
   Jack Vax

3 comments about Disney's Magic Artist Cartoon Maker.

1. I've just spent the last two hours playing this game with my children. What garbage. I guess for $7.99, you get what you pay for. Here are some of my complaints:
   1) The game is crashing the computer every 10 minutes or so. The computer locks up so badly, even Ctrl-Alt-Del doesn't work: I have to turn the power off and then back on again to reboot. I'm not having this problem with any other program. (Note that I'm running on Windows 98 SE with 196 MB of Ram, so I'm running at way more the minimum requirements.)
   2) The program is very hard to figure out. It's completely non-standard for a Windows program. There are no menus, and no labels on any of the animated buttons. There is a help system, but it is not available while the program is running. I can launch the help system before the program and press Alt-Tab during the program to open up help, but this sometimes freezes help.
   3) The help system is compiled HTML, but there is no way to print out the whole thing. It let's you print individual pages, but I didn't try that.
   4) The animation capabilities are very limited. There are lots of characters that do a simple thing standing in place, and my kids liked this at first, but quickly got bored. (So Mickey can jump up and down, and even be instructed to laugh. Big deal.) But the primary animation feature of controlling one character and making him (or her) move through the background doing different things was very hard to figure out and very limited. (I'm a professional software developer and I've worked with many graphic packages, but none were ever as confusing as this.)
   5. Based on the box, my kids were expecting to make movies. This was not so, and they were disappointed. If you think of this as Disney Magic Artist Deluxe (which comes with it) plus some small animated extras, then for $7.99 it doesn't seem so bad.
   6. Disney makes great films. I wish there was some thought put into making the program stable and easy to use.



2. this game is really fun and it lets you imagine the way you want to. i recommand it. its not short its as long as you make it to be you can even put food commercials and have a special guest. you have very little to choose from the commercials and special guest but who cares i dont mind you shouldnt neither!!!! buy it you can make like 100 cartoons and it would save em all. warning:addiction may occure. :-)



3. Another product for my artistic daughter and son. They both love it!
   
   It is very basic, with pre-made drawings and characters, but still some flexibility in free-style cartoon making and drawing.
   
   If you have a young budding cartoonist who likes Disney, and is learning the computer, you can't go wrong with this software!

5 comments about Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer Deluxe.

1. Home Designer is a great tool for preparing to build a home. The hard copy manual has a lot to be desired. Also this program should have a laminated quick chart for the symbols on the design page.
   There are a lot of things that the program takes for granted that you should know. I guess if you would have started with one of BH&G cheaper versions there may have been a better learning curve that would carry over to the deluxe.
   
   It's like taking Chemistry 2 without taking Chemistry 1. Hope that makes sense.
   
   Overall....very happy I purchased this software...
   Dan Manley
   Commercial Photographer
   Plano, Texas



2. I have owned this product for about two weeks, so this is a very preliminary "first look" type review. Background.. I am an aerospace engineer (not an architect) but have some experience with simple generic drawing programs (eg, Visio), and am very computer savvy. The reason for this purchase is my wife and I are buying an abandoned 10 acre farm (with a very rough, 1880s style farmhouse) and I wanted to sketch out possible floor plans for renovation and additions to the house.
   
   Why this program? I struggled over this and really the only other option, Punch Home Design Arch Series 18 in this price range. Reviews from various sources had these two about equal. I chose the BHG/Chief Architect app simply from the website information available. While the BHG site listed all of their various home design program applications and a detailed feature list with checkmarks, I never did find the same level of information on the Punch website - it was more glittzy than informative. So I went with BHG.
   
   OK first off, I am the type that DOES read the instruction manual :). So the first thing I did was read through the book. It wasnt that bad, maybe an hour or so to get the "jist" of how the program worked.
   
   It installed flawlessly. My system: 2.4MHz Intel, 4GB RAM, 40GB HD, Win XP. I did not bother with the tutorials - never opened the CD case that held them. The program immediately (upon online registration) identified that a patch was available, and this also downloaded and installed without a hitch.
   
   Since I had read the instruction manual, and also was familiar with how toolbars worked, I had no real difficulty in sketching out the outside walls of the house (I had previously taken actual dimensions of the old house). To me, it seems very intuitive. You click, drag and it appears. Interior walls are easy to create and they snap to the closest outside or inside wall. Click on a wall and drag it one way or the other and watch the inside dimension arrow until you get it where you want it.
   
   I have spent about 16 hours with the program so far. The areas where I actually had to access the online help or go back to the manual were dealing with stairwells (they automatically generate but its a bit tricky to get them to "open" to the floor below), and the automatic roof generation (which works adequately, but not a lot of freedom to modify, but that may be a good thing). File size may be an issue. I have saved several different configurations of the overall plan, and each seems to take up about 3-5MB of hard disk space. Delete that old Sims game and all of its expansion packs before you fire this puppy up!
   
   The 3D views are cool, but they do take a while to redraw. My simple plan already has over 50,000 surfaces, that need to be redrawn with each view. Watch out for rooms that do not start their elevation on the same "baseline" or have the same room height. This was a pain to deal with non-standard 9-foot ceilings, and changing the foundation height after the entire plan was constructed was a bad idea on my part.
   
   Overall, I am very pleased with how this has turned out. The files generated will transfer to other more robust architectural programs. Our plan is to give this to our architect electronically so that she can "fix" the problems in my design. Four stars because I'm sure there are better, more expensive programs, but this is just the right level of complexity for me that balances with the capability I need.



3. I purchased Home Designer Deluxe to help remodel my home. My wife and I are doing a major kitchen remodel and are considering moving some interior walls and bumping out an exterior wall. In addition to exploring different floor plans, we wanted to try different furniture arrangements for the living and dining rooms. Rather than hiring an architect up front, we figured we could explore many options on our own and minimize the architect's time. Home Designer Deluxe enabled us to do all of this. It is an excellent product for the price. It has a low learning curve and allows creation and modification of floor plans very quickly. But its biggest benefit was the ability to get a three dimensional view of walking through the house. The camera views give one a sense of proportion and mass, of openness and closeness. In the kitchen we tried different cabinet layouts and appliance locations and found some of the ideas we thought would be great looked terrible; and vice versa. I feel Home Designer has been instrumental in evaluation of a wide variety of remodel ideas and has given us a much better idea of what we want; and what we don't want.
   
   With any program there are limitations, most of which I could get around and most of which are included in the Home Designer Professional version. For example, I could not change the thickness of the walls so I found either the size of the interior rooms would be off by a couple inches or the overall dimensions of the house would be off. I opted to make the rooms their exact size so I would have their exact interior dimensions for the architect and let the overall length and width of the house be a bit off. I was not able to draw our angled walls in something other that 7.5 degree increments. But this was not a part of the house I was changing so it didn't matter. I was not able to create an angled staircase. Home Designer has some CAD tools but it is not a CAD program. When trying to so a site plan I found the dimension tools would attach to the roof lines rather than the ground level sidewalks I was trying to dimension. I also found dimension lines could not be attached to an arbitrary point on an object, the program always wanted to determine where to end the dimension line. So I drew my site plan with other tools.
   
   There is one major item that would be very helpful to include in this version of Home Designer Deluxe. The inability to change multiple similar items at the same time was very frustrating. I wanted to be able to change all the kitchen cabinets along one wall to add 4 inches to their depth, and I wanted to change their materials. I had to change every cabinet individually which was a lot of work given how many parts of each cabinet I had to change, multiplied by the number of upper and lower cabinets. It became very time consuming to evaluate more than a few different cabinet ideas. The ability to change multiple objects at one time would add a lot to this version of the program.
   
   Overall, it's a very helpful program.



4. its easy program i am happy in the first time i like to decorate and renew my house by design it and decorate and built another 2 floors i can see by trying and drwong in 3d thats is easy and any any body can use this program you can make a plans and can build your own house from exterir and enterior desighn and biuld its great and its include all the furnutures and beds and kitchen products to complete the house its very very nice to see how is you house will be befor you do it thanks for this program



5. I think this product is great! I don't know any "technical" lingo when it comes to architecture so I was a true novice. I could still navigate the program and, thanks to the tutorials, I managed to find my way around the program and learned how to use the tools. I was interested in a remodel to our current house and had no idea of what I wanted for sure and how it would work and look with our current house plan. This program enabled me to do this work on my own without hiring it done and I was able to make decisions and change that decision and then change that decision again! I do wish it had a few more options that I was looking for, and maybe it does and I haven't stumbled across them yet. It does the job -- it gives me the basic house plan to take to the contractor and they can give it the fine tuning it needs.

No comments about Spectrasonics Stylus RMX 1.5 Virtual Instrument.

1 comments about Proventure Label Maker.

1. This is a review of ProVenture Label Maker v4.0, which may be the product that some Marketplace sellers are selling here, here, here, here, and here. Amazon may display this review on the page of another version of this product, for which this review may not apply. After reading this review, please click on the links and e-mail the respective Marketplace sellers to find out what version they are selling, so that you can be assured that the product this review applies to is the same one you thought it was for.
   --------------------------------------------------
   
   I will be reviewing ProVenture Label Maker v4.0, which was released in 2006 (according to the copyright date on the blue and white box).
   
   Product Information
   * Developed by: ProVenture
   * Published by: Avanquest
   * UPC: 018059051249
   * Serial/SKU/Model: 5124
   
   System Requirements:
   * Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
   * Pentium III or higher
   * 95 MB disk space
   * 128 MB RAM
   * CD-ROM Drive
   * Inkjet or laser printer
   
   I bought this product because I wanted to have a 32-bit replacement for the label making component of the old 16-bit Print Shop Deluxe that I've been using (it came out in 1994 and was designed for Windows 3.1!!!). I saw this on the shelf at MicroCenter, and although I don't buy boxed software anymore (at least not without downloading a trial first), I couldn't resist the ten dollar price tag, so I bought it.
   
   This review will actually be a quick list of notes I wrote up as I was testing out the program. Some are criticisms, and others are notes on using the program. These are somewhat organized in the order in which you'd come across these issues when installing and running the program, though the information on the registration nag is at the end so it is easier to read.
   
   -- Run setup.exe to directly install the program without having to go through the trial screen interface (trial copies of other programs are available on the CD). You still will be nagged to install a payment service (to accept credit card payments for your business) and the NewsFlash program (used to send you company updates). You can easily say NO to both.
   
   It would be nice to not have ANY kind of nags like this.
   
   -- The program doesn't copy the clipart folder from the CD to the hard drive, even though it makes an empty Clipart directory in the program directory.
   
   -- Some program settings are found in mylabels32.ini in the C:\Windows (or C:\WinNT) directory. This file is not deleted if you uninstall the program.
   
   -- The program saves _FOUR FILES_ for every saved label (the files have the extensions .lbl, .bcf, .fsif, .msif). Even if you just have a label with one piece of data on it, and nothing in the databases, it still saves it as four files. For a simple label with just a name and address on it (no database entries), the combined size of the four files is 35 Kb. Other label making programs save only one file, with a size between 1 and 6 Kb.
   
   This is the primarily deal-breaker for me. This is the reason why I'm no longer keeping the program. If I make 10 labels, I will have 40 FILES(!) to deal with. That's just not right.
   
   Unfortunately, MicroCenter won't take the item back because they don't take back opened software (as is the usual policy for most stores). I can't take advantage of the publisher's 30-Day Money Back Guarantee because I didn't get a chance to install the software until a bit more than 30 days after I bought it. Granted, ten dollars isn't a big loss, but it's still a loss.
   
   -- To print an entire sheet of labels containing the same data on each label (just a single name and address - hard-coded to the design, not from a database), you must set the number of copies on the Print dialog box to the number of labels on the sheet (30 for the Avery 5160/8160/8660/6460 layout). This is not very intuitive, as the Copies field normally selects the number of PAGES to be printed (as it is standard in all Print dialogs for ALL Windows programs).
   
   This is the other deal-breaker, especially since the number of "copies" resets to 1 every time you run the program (as that is what Windows normally does in the Print dialog window of ANY program). So every time I open and print one of my labels (as I tend to create labels with singular data, not from databases), I have to remember to change the number of "copies" to 30. The program won't even save that information to any of the four files that it creates for each label.
   
   -- If there are multiple records in your database, and you just want to print one, select the record you want to print by entering the same record number in both From and To fields in the Print Range.
   
   -- How to remove the registration nag without registering (which is free but shouldn't be necessary): Amazon wouldn't let me include the text in my review that you'd need to copy and paste into Notepad, so you'll have to go to this product's forum (near the bottom of the product's main page) and read the instructions that I posted there. Look for the topic entitled "ProVenture Label Maker Registration Nag" and you'll get all the information you need. I wish I could have included that information in my review, and I really tried, but Amazon blocked all of my efforts. Shame on you Amazon!

No comments about Total Training - Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro Essentials.