MusikCube is indeed a “vanilla audio player for Windows,” but some of us like vanilla best, especially if it means slicing away unsavory bloat for speed and organization, which this dynamite little music player does. Though the open-source, Windows 2000/XP-only musikCube, see the related wxMusik Linux-based version at musik.berlios.de, lacks tools some audio fanatics won’t live without, developer Casey Langen purposely designed musikCube with a focus on fundamentals, not flash.

After loading your music via traditional methods or using the Synchronize tool, which auto synchs files between your directories and musikCube’s library at startup, musikCube uses an embedded SQL-flavored SQLite engine and musikCore backend to quickly catalog your tunes based on tagging data. The app then gives you a quick, searchable database, plus automatic detection of mass storage devices you can create synchable libraries on. I did this on two Creative and one SanDisk MP3 player, plus four thumb drives, without problem.

Read more »

From a power-user perspective, some of you may view Registry Mechanic as a serviceable option when something more comprehensive like, say, SystemWorks isn’t available. Still, there are those, some power users included, who don’t like digging their hands into Windows’ guts for fear of mucking things up. For such users, RM is a capable, good fit.

The numbers suggest as much, as PC Tools reports there are 300,000-plus RM downloads a week. Many of these downloads are people getting RM’s trial version, which, like many similar apps’ trial versions, is limited to a handful of fixes. Repairing everything means a $29.95 registration, getting you a year’s worth of new versions and updates. Is it worth it? Yes, if you want something fast, straightforward, and with decent configuration and automated abilities. Although CCleaner and TweakNow RegCleaner Standard deserve mention as free alternatives, neither can match RM’s polish, presentation, and ease of use.

Read more »

Considering Adobe’s resources, it’s hard not to expect more from its products. The excellent Premiere Elements 3.0 does nothing to taint such expectations. In fact, by adding a storyboard-like Sceneline tool and HDV (import and editing) support, PE3.0 may be the best video-editing / DVDcreating app now available for home users.

Adobe bills Sceneline as being easy as aking a slideshow, but it has truckloads ore flair and potential. An alternative to he Timeline, Sceneline lets you arrange ideo clips, stills, audio, and narration with rag-and-drop ease. Transitions are a rightclick way, while effects, enhancements, title templates, and audio clips reside inside intuitive menus that refrain from shoving very bell and whistle down your throat.

Elsewhere, the Monitor is a great addition hat lets you edit and preview from one window. Overall, the wide-ranging weaks you can apply to individual frames dd considerable pro-level touches to projects. Besides splitting / trimming frames, adding text, and doing basic photo fixes, you can configure motion and opacity raits, set transition durations, add borders, and much more. There’s plenty here to keep you entertained, including new stopaction tools, which won’t make you Wallace and Gromit worthy but are great fun.

Read more »

Acrobat 8 Pro’s excellent execution of the five Cs : create, combine, collaborate, collect, and controlably demonstrates why it’s the Mecca of PDF tools. Of the Cs, collaboration may be A8P’s defining characteristic, as tools such as Acrobat Connect prove. In all phases, however, A8P exudes the range, power, and stability you’d expect from a venerable, $500 program.

Detailing each A8P function here is impossible, but new and old users should appreciate A8P’s larger workspace; quicker AutoCAD file conversions; improved search abilities; and Getting Started, a launch pad that opens at startup for common PDF chores—Create PDF, Combine Files, Review & Comment, etc. Adobe also added the capability to permanently eradicate sensitive data and easily browse for and merge several files into one PDF package. Better, sorting and searching these packages is easy. So is converting a package’s files to Smaller, Default, and Larger sizes and keeping intact security settings and digital signatures for individual files.

Read more »

Diskeeper Corporation was Executive Software. Its defragging app was Diskeeper 6, 7, 8, etc. The defragger is now Diskeeper 2007 and comes in six versions ranging from Home to Administrator. Name changes aside, Diskeeper is a longtime favorite of those who know why defragging is important. Defragging is still a tough sell, though, to less-informed newbs and power users set in their defragging routines. Ultimately, DK2007’s new background defragging ability is an excellent match for anyone who wants an effective defragger he can turn on and tune out.

Diskeeper calls its on-the-fly defragging ability (on by default) Automatic Defragmentation. New InvisiTasking technology powers the tool by grabbing idle, otherwise wasted system resources. With AD on, drains on my system were barely noticeable while running a video editor and other apps concurrently. To track resource use, DK2007 includes a real-time chart, comparison charts, stats, reports (one lists your most fragmented files), and a Dashboard tab to configure your AD schedule.

Overall, DK2007’s three-pane interface couldn’t be much more intuitive. A Quick Launch pane puts the essentials in one area, plus walks you through manually analyzing and defragging volumes. Power users will appreciate the gory details the Computer and Volumes panes offer and DK2007’s support for software and hardware RAID arrays, running multiple defrags at once, keeping the swap file near a volume’s front, and defragging system files that Windows typically won’t let you touch after startup via the Boot-Time Defragmentation tool.

Read more »

This Next Gen version of PowerProducer offers HD DVD (up to 15GB) and BD (Blu-ray disc; up to 50GB) authoring at up to 1,920 x 1,080 resolution (25Mbps MPEG-2). It also covers DVD, editable DVD±VR), SVCD, and VCD, and it offers 61 menu templates, many with motion. However, authoring options are drastically limited for at least BD: PP4 did not let you edit a BD menu at all.

Still, there’s just about every feature a beginning or intermediate home DVD maker will want, including options to fade out background music when the video ends and automatic pans and zooms for slideshows (although you have to create a slideshow in the included liteware Power Director Express 5 to apply this). PP4 also supports animated thumbnails with transparent frames in DVD menus, as well as first play video. There’s direct-to-disc and broad capture support, plus several Magic editing and image enhancement tools, including antishake and automatic video creators.

On the whole, PP4’s interface is simple, friendly, and relatively easy to pick up.

PP4’s Blu-ray capabilities was tested using Windows Vista Home Premium with a Sony BWU-100A and CyberLink’s Build 1311 patch. InterVideo WinDVD 8 Platinum wouldn’t play the disc, however, and neither app allowed a non-HDCP Radeon X850XT to decode it. PowerProducer 4 lets you make very basic BDs and HD DVDs along with very nice DVDs. It’s an early app for the blue laser formats, which are still a pain to work with on a PC, so keep things in
perspective before you buy.

Tags: CyberLink

The world of computer virtualization (the ability to simulate one computer running entirely within another computer) is getting crowded. At one time, VMware Workstation was essentially alone in this world, but competition from Microsoft and Parallels, along with kernel support in Linux, and now even hardware built into Intel processors has crowded the field. Even VMware has its own free virtualization tool, VMware Server, that’s been horning in on its ever-popular VMware Workstation. Fortunately, the development of Workstation continues, culminating with the release of version 6.0 beta.

The biggest news in this latest release of Workstation is that it supports 32-bit and 64-bit Windows Vista as a host OS and guest OS. VMware also adds full support for the latest versions of Ubuntu, Mandriva, Netware, SuSE, Solaris, and Red Hat OSes. When you install the proper VMware tools into the virtualized OSes, there’s much better drag-and-drop support. Also new is multiple-monitor support, which lets you indicate how many monitors you want the virtual machine to detect, no matter how many monitors you attach to the host.

Under the hood there are direct hooks to common programming debuggers that make it easier for programmers to look at low-level emulated hardware and operating system issues. Virtual machines can now fully run “in the background,” and each machine also acts as a VNC server without the hassle of installing any specialized VNC software in the guest. As always, there are several networking options, which even let you develop a small, private network on a single PC among multiple virtual machines each running different OSes.

Although there’s a long list of known issues in the Readme file, the beta feels free from problems. The debugging code, however, does render VMware Workstation a little slower than its previous versions.

Read more »