Nero 7.5 Ultra Edition

Nero is the leaner and meaner suite, which is reflected in both its lower price and smaller resource footprint, and it only installed two startup apps and one Windows service on my PC. The installer did automatically install DirectX 9.0c on my computer, however. Although it does less than Roxio, it still does more than ever before.

You can access various Nero programs via its SmartStart launcher (in addition to the Windows Start menu). These programs are grouped by tasks, such as Photos And Video, Audio, Data, and so forth, but you can’t resize the window, so it sometimes feels small and overstuffed with icons. An alphabetical list of all the Nero applications and a CD and DVD task selector (which thins out the launcher’s icons) are also available. Tool tips help you keep the various apps straight.

The “classic” tools (Nero Express, Nero Burning ROM, and Nero Vision) are all still here, but Nero has updated them so that they can burn Blu-ray and HD
DVD discs (ditto for Roxio’s Easy Media Creator). Even though Roxio’s Media Creator lets you specify different gaps between individual tracks, creating “gapless” audio CDs is an all-or-nothing affair with Nero. In many ways this is typical of the different operating philosophies between these programs: Roxio’s Media Creator usually has more options, but they tend be less useful in the real world.

Nero can’t copy copy-protected DVDs (nor can Media Creator), but it can import video from a DV camera, a nonprotected DVD, a TV tuner card, and other analog video capture devices. You can reconvert such video into a portablefriendly format (for a PSP, video iPod, or smartphone) and “broadcast” it to another Windows Media-equipped PC or Xbox 360 on your LAN or burn it onto a DVD (complete with menus, chapters, and so forth). The DVD authoring tools are straightforward to use and filled with useful tool tips, but all of this feels somewhat basic. Budding filmmakers may want to look elsewhere, but Nero’s tools will get the job done for the rest of us.

System and file backup are now major components of both products, and Nero’s BackItUp 2 program has many sterling qualities, yet it possesses a potential Achilles’ heel. As to be expected, BackItUp 2 lets you select files, specify a backup destination (usually optical media, but network and external storage options are available), and set a schedule. You can also back up drives and partitions, including the active Windows partition. Although backing up Windows from Windows is usually a no-no, BackItUp 2 managed the job without error, but restoration was tricky. Nero can burn a bootable backup / restoration disc (based on Linux), which is a very good idea; however, it always froze in the middle of the restoration job on one of my test computers
when using DVDs. Unreliable system backups are worse than no backups at all.

[tags]Nero, Burning Software, Backup[/tags]