Application Install Guide

Project Musik musikCube 1.0

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 lo...

PC Tools Registry Mechanic 6.0

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 t...

Adobe Premiere Elements 3.0

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 ...

Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional

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; quicke...

Diskeeper Corporation Diskeeper 2007 Professional

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...

CyberLink PowerProducer 4

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 ...

VMware Workstation 6.0 Beta

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. Fortunate...