5 comments about Punch! Home Design Architectural Series 4000 v10.

1. I love this product. I am living in a house I designed with it. I also use it to plot survey coordinates at work. So why one star? My XP computer died and the program will not load on Vista. I think it is because of the program load being based on Adobe Acrobat 5, which Vista cannot recognize. I would need a patch to install before I load it. Punch site says it's Vista compatible. Not.



2. After using this product for basic stuff [floor plans], I found that the 3D functionality to be far too complex and not really accurate. To create roof, ceiling and floors to create a realistic version of your floor plan, the process seemed too cumbersome and the elevations never quite seemed to be right. The pictures they show you are obviously done by the "professionals" on this software and mine never turn out quite realistic.
   
   I also have found that the gallery of objext to be very limited and a little confusing. Why there are twenty different towel bars and candles I do not know. Plus, there aren't many 2D images to place in floor plans.
   
   If you are a hobbyist, this program might suit your needs, but if you are using this for a function, don't bother.



3. I have experienced Non Compatiblity w/Vista & Poor Support from Punch with respect to email response and problem solving for their product.



4. Though I am a couple years away from the actual building of our home this product gives me a place to play with my design in such a way that moves me towards fulfilling my dreams. I'm happy to report that though I am not computer literate in many ways I can use this product with ease. I'm grateful for the opportunity to fine tune my design before its on the land.
   Rosie Kuhn, Ph.D. Author of Self-Empowerment 101.



5. I received defective CD disk. The second and third disks failed to load to my computer. I tried on another 2 computers, and the same thing happened. I contacted Punch Technical staff but did not get any response.
   I don't recommend this product because no any support will be provided.

5 comments about WinDVD 9 Plus.

1. I've used windvd for a lot of years, mainly because it is well-behaved and seems to play the wide variety of media that I want to play without complaint. This version is no different. I'm using this both on win xp and vista and have had no problems on either platform.
   
   One thing that I really dislike about this version however are the controls. Everyone is familiar with vcr-style controls. Play, pause, stop, fast forward, fast reverse, and skip to next/prev chapter. So why dork with that? *boggle* But no, Coral decided that it would somehow improve the interface to remove the fast forward/fast reverse buttons and combine that functionality with the chapter forward and back. The net result is that it is a lot harder to use, and much less intuitive.



2. Crashes immediately when All2HD (upsampling) is enabled. Unable to play DVDs until WinDVD is reinstalled.



3. The two commercial survivors WinDvd and PowerDvd have parlayed all the free distributions into a large market share and their costs have become astronomical and their software so complex it locks up... Might I suggest a freeware HIGH DEFINITION alternative, the VLC DVDPlayer as well as another no cost player the AVS DVD player... The VLC DVDPlayer can play MKV extensions and a ton of other formats. To test it, I watched a Spiderman I HD disc rip (.mkv) on my computer and it was beautiful....You don't always have to pay for hyped inferior software



4. Upconverting to HD type quality is a great feature, however, there is one main reason to buy WinDVD, and it's a good one:
   
   Time Stretch
   
   For several editions now, WinDVD has had a feature called Time Stretch. Essentially, this allows you to watch a movie faster than its original time. For example, a 2 hour movie in only 1.5 hours. You could even watch a movie TWICE as FAST as it normally would be (2 hours becomes only 1) but then everyone sounds like chipmunks, and the action is very fast. This allows you to watch more movies in less amount of time. When time is short, this can be very helpful.
   
   That being said, this version of WinDVD doesn't seem to have keyboard shortcuts to speed up the time, forcing you to use your mouse to speed it up. Previous version(s), 4 in particular, allowed you to press a key on the keyboard to speed things up or down.
   
   Great program that would be made better if this keyboard shortcut was re-implemented.
   
   Walt D in LV
   
   P.S. If I have somehow missed this keyboard shortcut, please let me know my error. I really love the TimeStretch feature.



5. IT appears that Corel has messed up the WinDVD product.
   
   My problems:
   
   1) Trial version will not work on Windows XP x64, PowerDVD trial does.
   
   2) Tech support responses are the standard dribble you can query online.
   Even if youmention you tried the online help, you still get the same
   response from tech support.
   
   3) No Blu-Ray trial available from Corel WinDVD. I need it for seeing how
   well blu0ray plays. I would have to assume the blu-ray plays correctly.
   Not much of a problem since the trial will not work.
   
   PowerDVD does have a Blu-Ray trial available
   
   4) Unable to download a new trial. Repeatedly tells me my trial period
   has ended. Removed everything per their help/tech support and still
   unable to trya new trial. So I am unable to see if they have a newer
   version that works under windows XP x64
   
   Personally I should not have to be looking at getting a newer version, but the powerDVD one that came with the blu-ray player only does 2 channell audio. This is done on purpose and extremely annoying as they want nearly $70.00 for an upgrade and all I am getting is 5.1 surround which has been around for MANY years. This should come as a default part of version that comes with your Blu-Ray Drive.
   
   Another user said it, they are overcharging for the Blu-Ray option and high def oriented software. With only 2 vendors in PowerDVD and WinDVD your choices are too few. PowerDVD's sound options are limited even under the full version, not impressed with either product.

5 comments about Cinescore.

1. Movie lovers and film makers all know that it takes more than excellent video to make a good movie. Excellent video combined with mediocre sound quality and an average musical score always results in a disappointing movie viewing experience. Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" provides a classic example. Try watching the famous shower scene with the sound turned down. Without terrific music, the scene is transformed from bone-chilling to mundane.
   
   You may not have a composer like Bernard Herrmann to score your video production, but with Cinescore from Sony Creative Software, you have access to thousands of musical possibilities that can be custom-matched to your video.
   
   I recently produced and edited a 52 minute video production using Vegas Pro 8 (another amazing product from Sony, but that's a different review). The visual flow was engaging and appealing. The audio quality was likewise excellent. But a killer score was needed to give the viewing experience emotional impact. The deadline loomed. No time to create and produce the essential musical soundtrack. This is the point where many independent filmmakers take the risk of using someone else's copyrighted material. Cue the "Theme from Dragnet".
   
   Enter Cinescore. After careful (but quick) research, Cinescore was selected. Cinescore ships with 10 primary themes (songs) that can be extrapolated into thousands of musical permutations all with a few mouse clicks. Cinescore is user friendly and intuitive. I was adding high quality customized music to my video within 20 minutes of opening the box.
   
   Here is what is so amazing about Cinescore. You don't have to be a musician to use it. In fact, no musical training is necessary at all. The process is simple. Select the scene you would like to score and consider the emotion you wish to induce in the viewer. Is it funny? Scary? Dramatic? Somber? Inspiring? Then, audition the available themes in Cinescore to find the best match for your scene. You can easily alter the mood, intensity, and tempo of your selection to create unique music for your scene. Then, click on "generate music" and Cinescore creates a musical selection that is precisely matched to the length of the video scene. It's literally that fast and simple.
   
   If you have more time and a creative appetite, Cinescore provides many point-and-click options that enable you to tweak the musical selections into sonic perfection. The resulting audio is commercial CD quality and royalty free!
   
   Although Cinescore can function as a stand-alone score generator, I installed it as a Vegas Pro 8 plug-in. This enables Cinescore to open seamlessly within Vegas. And it was a crash-free experience.
   
   Although I am an amateur, products from Sony Creative Software (Vegas and Cinescore) gave me the tools I needed to create a pro quality video production. The proof? After viewing my video, many people assumed that I hired a professional production house to create the video. That's the ultimate!



2. As a professional ventriloquist and magician, I have long struggled with the issues of obtaining rights to use music in my performances. No more! This tool is terrific for creating background music for my magic effects as well as "bumper" tracks that play while I transition ventriloquist characters. And it's all royalty free. It's easy to use, produces final songs with terrific audio quality, and lets you go back and make changes as needed. If only writing jokes were this easy!



3. I bought this for my son for his birthday. He had done research into the specifics and was pretty sure this would do what he needed. Well, we all know how that goes. You get it and install it only to discover it's not nearly as easy to use or versatile as they claim. Not so with this product. My son has raved about it and shows it to anyone who sits still long enough.



4. I could only find one category that I would consider good -- the rest were annoying to painfully bad. If you want some soft mellow background music, you are mostly out of luck. Oh, you can order some more packages of terrible music on-line. The only one I could stand was the Wedding Package, but I don't see any weddings on the horizon. And they are expensive. Just go to the Sony web site and listen to the sample music and it is representative of what is in this software. Total waste of money. Pinnacle Studio has far better selections, but obviously they don't work with Sony Vegas Pro 8. Otherwise, it works as advertised. I just do not understand whey they didn't offer more variety for other generations of music lovers.



5. So far I've only used it on a few videos, however the comments from viewers (unsolicited) were that the music was very professional and fit the action. Only drawback is that it is not easy to alter the music at a precise point. Have to score smaller scenes to do it. However, for the most part after only a few uses (and I expect to get better with it over time) the product performs as I expected and I'm pleased. Web site has good tutorials as well.

1 comments about Adobe Flex Builder 3.0.

1. Adobe Flex Builder is a pay for plugin for the Eclipse IDE for developing Flex based UIs. The problem with this is that Flex is a subset of Flash, and a very small subset at that. Flex out of the box does not give anywhere near the range of features and controls that are available in Flash and seems to be quite immature. This product does not work with the latest verion of Eclipse at all, and I had great difficulty integrating it with a pre-existing installation of Eclipse on my mac. It has also appeared to disable several Eclipse function for me to do with source code reformatting.

No comments about Adobe Illustrator CS4 [Mac].

3 comments about 3D Home Architect Home Design Deluxe Version 9.

1. Received our first order. Software would not load. We run Windows XP, so it was not our system. Received a second order, software again would not load. Second disk also appeared to be blank. Would have liked to review the product, but the manufacturer did not bother to make sure disks actually contained software. Avoid this product.



2. Over the last several years I have used 3D Home Architect to design offices and homes. The version being reviewed has deteriorated significantly from prior versions in functionality and features. It seems the company buys a new version of the software from 3rd parties and calls it "3D Home Architect" resulting in absolutely no file compatibility with prior versions. I'm pretty disappointed with the current version and would not have purchased it if I had known how bad the product is. Don't waste your money!



3. I guess I'm one of the lucky ones, my disc was not blank (I didn't read the reviews first), but it didn't help much because the first step before you can use the product is to register it, using the license code.
   
   Unfortunately, there is no license code anywhere to be found. Not on the box, not on the disc, nor on the website.
   
   There is no customer support to ask.
   
   Hence, the product is totally unusable. Thirty bucks down the toilet.
   
   
   [Edit February 10th]: Okay, in all fairness I did manage to get the program to load and run today. Let me explain how, in case anybody else comes up against this. The fine print in the installation instructions indicates that you have to provide an "organization" name, even if you're just a private individual. If you fail to do so, your registration will fail at the very end, without any explanation as to why. The only opportunity you get to enter an organization comes at the very beginning of the registration process, and it is not marked as mandatory at that point -- but it is.
   
   Once I entered a fictitious organization, and typed in the 9-character code on the box (which is not labeled as a "license code" and hadn't worked before so I assumed it wasn't), my registration finally went through. Geez, would it have killed them to make this the least bit obvious?!?
   
   After all that, I've been playing with the program and have managed to make it work, after a fashion. It took me a couple hours to find the "objects" (furniture, fixtures and appliances shown on the box), but they ARE in fact included (hidden under the "library" option). The software is pretty basic and it's buggy and it renders kind of slow, but I guess I have to retract my earlier statement that it's "totally unusable." It has some very odd limitations -- you can create gables on your roof but you can't cut out the roof beneath them or add sides, ceilings are merely the underside of your roof, table lamps by default are added at floor level, there's only one style of door and window, and so forth -- but I've had the same exact complaints with Punch software for 10 years. They're not going to fix anything.
   
   Would I buy it again? Probably not. The product could be completely transformed with 5 minutes of better instructions, but it's still a dog in pajamas.

2 comments about Anti-Virus 2008.

1. 
   AdwareAlert anti-virus program is the best. I can run a full scan and
   eliminate all parasites in a matter of seconds. I recommend this product
   very highly.



2. I bought CA Antivirus 2007 because of CA's good reputation and because the program doesn't hog resources. I've used it for almost a year now and have barely noticed its presence ... until 3-4 weeks ago. Now every time I start my computer, and even at random times, I get pop-ups saying that my antivirus program expires TODAY. I also receive e-mails at least once a day from CA saying the same thing. My subscription, however, doesn't end for another 2 weeks. When I contacted CA about the problem, they made no apologies and helped me by telling me to ignore the pop-ups and e-mails. Thanks. I won't buy CA products again.

5 comments about Adobe Photoshop 7.0 Upgrade [OLD VERSION].

1. For the past 3 years, I have been using Adobe Photoshop 2- which I must say, gave me a lot of satisfaction. Very simple to use, of course, but also provides the user with rapid results. The essential functions are there and if you use them properly many aspects of writing a page are taken care of.
   With Photoshop 7, new dimensions are achieved. If you already know Adobe 2.0, it is very easy to become familiar with 7.0. Also, the precision and accuracy of the various functions reach a higher level and the additional possibilities leave more flexibility to individual creativity. This powerful software is becoming for me a must in all digital works and I cannot give it less than five stars. Michel Doret



2. Although this update is not as big as the one from 5.5 to 6.0, it is still worth buying. Actually the healing brush/healing patch tool itself is worth the price of the upgrade. When you think of it, how many of us digital photographers would gladly pay that price for a plug-in that helps us fix blemishes, scratches and wrinkles in a couple seconds?

   Another nice addition is the file browser. See all your pictures at a glance, rotate them, classify them, rate them, etc. You can also view all the metadata (data added by your digital camera), such as date taken, exposure, color profile, and others.

   Adobe also reworked (OK... fixed) Contact Sheet, Web Gallery, and Picture Package. Those actually work now, and they'll do exactly what you want them to. I agree it should have been done right in the first place, but I'm just too happy they are usable now.

   Photoshop 7.0 also lets you save your workspace. You can now place all your tabs and windows just the way you like them, and save the positions. I have 3 or 4 different workspaces I toggle through, depending on what I'm working on. This is a huge time saver. Once again, this could have been done before, but I'm glad it finally found its way to Photoshop.

   Conclusion: the healing tool itself is worth the price. Think of the rest as a bonus. :)




3. Photoshop remains my favorite painting program. I'm a Photoshop 6.0 veteran, been using it since it came out, and I've learned my way around pretty well.

   As an upgrade, I give 7.0 four stars. Why? There's just not that much more for that extra star. I was expecting a jump in features like the one between versions 5.5 and 6.0. Pretty much, they give you a new tool for repairing photos (this is great and worth it if you're interested in digital photography, of course: but for a web designer, it's useless), a few upgrades, and a prettier interface. As a web designer, I didn't find a whole lot more that's useful, so for the fellow web designers out there, it might not be worth it at all. But for the digital photographer with the extra money, grab it. That brush will probably be very useful to you.

   As a new program, without a previous installation of Photoshop, FIVE STARS. GET IT NOW. I can't stress this enough. Photoshop will be worth it if you're looking to do this professionally; it is THE graphic design program out there right now. If you're just a home user that wants to fix up a photo or two, I don't think it's worth the $600+ just for that.




4. I AM A FREELANCE PHOTOG, 90% 0F MY STUFF IS WITH REUTERS. IN PHOTOSHOP 7.0 WHICH I OWN, THERE IS A PROBLEM IN THE CATAGORY SECTION IN FILE INFO. THE SUPPLMENTIAL CATS. DONT SHOW UP ON THE DESKS PICTURES IM SENDING TO THEM??? I OPEN THE PICTURE IN PHOTOSHOP, GO TO FILE INFO, THEN TO CATAGORYS AND THE SUPPS ARE THERE BUT THE DESK IS SAYING THEY ARENT???? GUYS USING PHOTOSHOP 6.0 ARE NOT HAVING ANY PROBLEMS AT ALL.I WAS TOLD TO GO TO SIX OR IS THERE AN UPGRADE FOR THE 7.0 I BOUGHT AND IT MIGHT GET RID OF THE PROBLEM?? NOW I HAVE TO SPEND $119.00 TO BUY 6.0 TO GET RID OF THE PROBLEM. HAVE YOU HEARD OF ANY GLITCHES ON 7.0?
   H E L P, JON WAY



5. Photoshop is a really good piece of software. Only thing is - don't expect anything like reason from Adobe. EG - If you have a disk crash and must reinstall Photoshop you cannot install 7 upgrade (just supplying disk from previous version as proof of ownership). First you must completely install older version, THEN install upgrade on top. Lots more time and effort because ? - because it's the way Adobe wants it. Fortunately ther's plenty of free support around the net - all kinds of resources- tutorials, brushes, actions, fills, etc.

No comments about Adobe Creative Suite 4 Master Collection.

No comments about Corel Photo & Video Bundle.