ZoneAlarm Pro 4.0 Review - 6/30/2003 We suspect the majority of Zone Labs' users rely on the famous free version of its ZoneAlarm firewall, but its $50 deluxe package gains more allure with every upgrade — including a limited-time-offer price of $40. The latest ZoneAlarm Pro packs extra protection against online hackers, e-mail booby traps, and pesky pop-ups, yet is still simple enough for your modem-phobic grandmother.
Fetch Files and Stay Secure with LapLink Gold 11.5 - 6/30/2003 How would you like your remote control of, and access to files on, your PC back at the office -- over a Web-based subscription service, a fast USB-cable connection to your laptop, or even via software that comes preinstalled on a pocket-sized USB flash pen? The latest version of LapLink's file-transfer and remote-control utility gives PC-shufflers maximum flexibility.
Ahead Software Announces Biggest-Ever Upgrade for Nero CD Burning - 6/23/2003 Multimedia masters and audio- and videophiles will salivate over Ahead Software's Nero 6 Ultra Edition bundle, which combines cutting-edge CD/DVD burning with full-featured video editing/authoring, audio CD production, DVD and MPEG-4 playback, backup, and utility tools.
SystemSuite 5 Offers Virus, Firewall, Spam Protection, and System Recovery - 6/23/2003 V is the Roman numeral 5, and V Communications -- new owner of the Fix-It Utilities and SystemSuite titles formerly sold under the Ontrack brand -- lives up to its name with new Version 5 releases that add flexible disaster recovery and spam- and snoop-fighter tools to an already strong antivirus, firewall, and hard-disk housekeeping bundle.
Corel Updates Consumer Graphics Lineup - 6/16/2003 Whether you're making signs for a family garage sale or crafting a Flash animation for your Web site or artistic Photoshop image for a desktop publishing project, Corel's six newly repackaged and price-trimmed graphics programs can make the job easier and more fun.
Don't Attach 'Em, Embed 'Em: New Utility E-Mails Photos Fast - 6/9/2003 How does SendPhotos Gold make e-mailing images easier for beginners, classier for businesses, and up to 25 times faster for dial-up modem users? By replacing conventional file attachments with custom-designed messages containing specially embedded and compressed photos.
Scopeware Vision Update Adds New Views, Filters To Info Organizer - 6/9/2003 The radically free-form file-finding and data-perusing tool, Scopeware Vision, gets both a facelift, with new skins and screen backgrounds, and more searching flexibility, with a tabular list view and the ability to annotate or add content to search streams.
Atlantis Ocean Mind 1.5 Review - 6/9/2003 Would you dare use a word processor other than Microsoft Word? How about if it offered all the features you need every day, though not extras like tables and footnotes? How about if it was fast, compact, and Word-compatible? How about if it cost $35? We check out a major upgrade to this shareware cult favorite.
Sygate Personal Firewall - 6/4/2003 Bridge the gap between proxy servers, firewalls, and VPNs affordably
Microsoft Money 2003 Deluxe Review - 6/2/2003 The newest edition of Microsoft's easy-to-use, Web-friendly personal finance manager adds a promised $160 worth of services, such as a free year of online bill-paying, plus extra investment-management power. How does it stack up to Intuit's class-leading Quicken, and can the small-business version really substitute for an accounting package? This SmallBusinessComputing.com test drive has the answers.
Kodak Upgrades Free Digital Photo Software - 6/2/2003 While it's optimized to work with Kodak digital cameras' EasyShare image-transfer docks, the company's cool photo-browsing, -organizing, and -printing software is free for any digicam owner -- and newly enhanced with drag-and-drop CD burning, on-screen photo-album building, and Outlook e-mail address-book import.
Symantec's pcAnywhere 11.0 Lets IT Managers Reach for the Remote - 6/2/2003 Moving way beyond mere telecommuters' access to files and remote control of applications, the latest version of Symantec's PC-extension-cord solution lets administrators perform everything from distant software installations to Registry editing and background file transfers.
PentaSuite File Manager Offers Compression, Encryption, CD Burning, and More - 5/19/2003 Need more -- way more -- than simple file compression? PentaWare's flagship file manager combines compatibility with dozens of archive, document, and image formats with PGP encryption for secure transmission of compressed archives, not to mention scripting, scheduling, CD burning, and FTP support.
RedBox Organizer 5.0 Review - 5/19/2003 Looking for something other than Microsoft Outlook? inKline Global offers an affordable ($40) personal information manager that takes several steps beyond the names/addresses/appointments basics, adding a dash of project management and a generous helping of eye candy. But while it does plenty to keep you organized, could this PIM use a little more polish?
Jasc Paint Shop Photo Album 4 Review - 5/12/2003 The maker of Paint Shop Pro gives you a way to get a handle on your digital-camera images before you get down to serious image editing: Paint Shop Photo Album, a handy $49 toolkit for organizing, finding, printing, and quickly touching up or customizing your collection of PC pictures.
Corel Painter 8 Lets You Create Colors and Brushes - 5/12/2003 Serious digital artists, rejoice: Corel Corp.'s flagship paint program adds over 400 new brushes -- not counting the ones you can create yourself -- as well as sketch effects, enhanced Adobe Photoshop compatibility, and color mixing with no turpentine required.
Corel WordPerfect Office 11 Review - 5/5/2003 Tired of waiting for Microsoft Office 2003 -- or not planning to upgrade from Windows 98SE, Me, or NT 4.0, which rules out Redmond's next suite? As this article from SmallBusinessComputing.com reveals, Corel Corp. has combined enterprise-class XML capability with an array of minor improvements in the newest version of its more-affordable-than-Microsoft productivity package.
Dragon NaturallySpeaking 7 Preferred Review - 4/28/2003 Do you think upgrading your office suite will improve your productivity? Consider keeping your existing suite, but give it a good talking-to: A new edition of the leading speech-recognition package resets the standard for PC dictation. We say which new features are fizzles -- and which are remarkable advances in touchless typing.
Visible Light Brings DVD Video To PowerPoint Presentations - 4/21/2003 OnStage DVD for PowerPoint helps turn stale slide shows into irresistible pitches or compelling briefings by seamlessly integrating windowed or full-screen DVD video with your Microsoft PowerPoint presentations.
Scopeware Vision Review - 4/14/2003 Imagine all the files and e-mail messages on your PC, fanned out like a magician fans a deck of cards. Now imagine finding the ones that relate to a certain topic or person, almost as quickly as the magician finds the ace of spades. That's the promise of Scopeware Vision, a $30 utility that offers a new way to view and search documents and images. Can it pull an organized rabbit out of a jumbled hat?
Blue Squirrel Says Nuts To Spam - 4/7/2003 It's an irresistible idea: The next time some sleazy marketer sends you spam, let Blue Squirrel's new Spam Sleuth 2.0 send back a polite message billing them for your time. The auto-configuring and -updating program also offers new ways to analyze incoming mail and block the bad junk.
Adobe Announces DVD Authoring Package for Fall - 3/31/2003 It won't ship until the third quarter, but Adobe Systems' DVD creation program -- offering seamless integration with the company's Photoshop for menu backgrounds and Premiere for video chapters -- promises to combine professional-quality controls with entry-level simplicity.
Namo WebEditor 5.5 an HTML Heavyweight at a Light Price - 3/24/2003 Don't plunk down the cash for Macromedia Dreamweaver or Microsoft FrontPage just yet -- Namo Interactive says the addition of built-in, vector-based (SVG) Web graphics makes its visual HTML authoring package an even bigger bargain at $99.
Adobe Photoshop Album Review - 3/24/2003 Got a digital camera? You've got pictures -- images filling your PC's hard disk, hiding under cryptic names in buried folders, photos and wallpapers stashed as messily as snapshots in a shoebox. Adobe's $50 organizer lets you manage, search, and share those images -- assigning keywords and finding long-lost shots in seconds, or touching them up and turning them into slide shows, Web albums, and more -- with style.
Diskeeper 7.0 Second Edition Review - 3/17/2003 We don't care what excuse you have for not flossing your teeth or checking your car's tire pressure, but Executive Software keeps eliminating excuses for having a performance-sapping, fragmented PC hard disk. Here's a look at a minor but welcome upgrade to what could be a savvy Windows user's favorite set-and-forget utility.
ScanSoft's PaperPort Pro 9 Helps Office Paper Shufflers - 3/10/2003 A new office-workflow edition of ScanSoft's desktop document manager combines scanning, searching, and OCR with the power of PDF -- even dragging and dropping pages from multiple documents of multiple types into a single PDF file -- to help networked businesses organize and share information.
Roxio Puts Pics on Discs with PhotoSuite 5 Platinum - 3/10/2003 Whether you just want to touch up a dim or red-eyed digital portrait or creating Video CD slide shows, an updated version of Roxio's beginner-friendly photo manager offers a variety of creative controls and projects.
Kaspersky Labs Ships Hacker-Fighting Firewall - 3/3/2003 The virus and spam fighters at Kaspersky Labs add Web and e-mail snoops and hackers to their targets -- or rather, keep you from becoming a target with a new Anti-Hacker firewall that both tracks all Internet-related application activity and provides system-level filtration of all inbound and outbound data packets.
Do-It-Yourself Version of Data-Recovery Service Saves Lost Files - 3/3/2003 Kroll Ontrack, provider of electronic evidence solutions and emergency recovery of computer files when all other rescue attempts have failed, offers an under-$100, do-it-yourself software solution that can snatch back as many as 25 files lost due to hard disk or power failure, virus attack, human error, or disappearing disk partitions.
The Latest Ways To Talk (and Listen) To Your PC - 3/3/2003 Your PC isn't about to replace that pesky "Can you hear me now?" guy from the cell phone commercials, but brand-new versions of the pioneering Dragon NaturallySpeaking and Fonix iSpeak lead the pack of applications that let you interact with your computer out loud. Here are four ways to make your PC listen to you or vice versa.
ActiveWords 1.9 Review - 2/24/2003 Have you always secretly felt you can be more productive with the keyboard than with the mouse? A time-saving new utility agrees -- and lets you launch programs, type boilerplate text, send e-mails, and perform Web searches with just a few keystrokes, no matter which application you happen to be using (even Solitaire).
Macromedia Contribute Review - 2/18/2003 It's called Contribute, but it should be called Delegate -- Macromedia's $99 program lets Webmasters and HTML designers focus on important site- and page-design jobs, while enabling nontechnical users to make minor changes or even add new pages and links to Web sites, as easily as they'd work with a word processor (and with plenty of page-protection and site-rollback safety features).
Roxio Ships Easy CD & DVD Creator 6 Platinum - 2/18/2003 It's not just Easy CD Creator anymore -- for one thing, Roxio's classic CD burner is now called Easy CD & DVD Creator, and for another, the new Platinum version 6 adds everything from a photo editor and organizer to a complete digital music center and sophisticated video DVD production.
Corel Boosts Technical Graphics with Designer 10 - 2/10/2003 Most users don't need more than a conventional drawing package (and Corel is happy to sell you one, CorelDraw). But product designers and technical graphics experts need ultra-precise illustration, editing, and workflow tools -- the kind found in the new Corel Designer 10.
Name a Browser, and Pop-Up Professional Supports It - 2/3/2003 IE and Netscape users have long relied on Panicware's Pop-Up Stopper to quash those annoying pop-up and pop-under ads. The new version can smooth out surfing in other browsers such as AOL, MSN, Opera, Mozilla, and NetZero, with automatic, on-the-fly updates and enhanced cache cleaning and privacy controls.
Caligari TrueSpace 6.5 Adds Animation Engine to 3D Modeling - 2/3/2003 Realistic rendering gains an extra dimension as Caligari Corp.'s 3D multimedia authoring package adds nonlinear animation for game designers or video projects. Static modelers will appreciate new controls for replacing objects and subdividing and overlaying surfaces.
602Pro PC Suite 2001 Review - 1/27/2003 We’ve tested affordable home-PC productivity packages from Microsoft and Corel; now we’ll conclude our search for who-needs-Office? alternatives with a word processing, spreadsheet, image-editing, and photo-organizing combo that’s as affordable as you can get -- free. Are an unbeatable price and impressive functionality worth few frills and no hand-holding?
Corel WordPerfect Family Pack 4 Review - 1/21/2003 Last week, we sampled Microsoft’s Works Suite. Now our quest for powerful-but-not-overpowering home PC productivity turns to Corel, which has teamed its business-class word processor and spreadsheet with an array of family tools and templates for an amazingly low price ($49 after rebate). Is this a smoothly integrated bargain, or random rummage sale?
New WeatherBug 5.0 Enhances Taskbar Forecasts - 1/21/2003 What's the weather like? More than 17 million PC users keep WeatherBug on their Windows desktops, and now a new version of the free forecaster and real-time local monitor offers even more meteorological news, radar, and live weathercam images, with both local and travel forecasts just a click away.
Microsoft Works Suite 2003 - 1/13/2003 It seems like heresy, but let's admit it: Most home PC users and families don't need the muscle and bulk of Microsoft Office. In this first of a three-part series, we look at the software giant's more affordable alternative, Works Suite 2003 — and find lots to like, one lopsided negative, and the best program that Microsoft refuses to market.
