Ashampoo Burning Studio 7: Burn, Baby, Burn Restoration Hardware; Put It on Disc Wayne N. Kawamoto
Restoration Hardware
Version 7 of Ashampoo Burning Studio also offers improvements to its file backup and restore functions. You can now specify the size of backup files and, when restoring files from backups, choose individual files or folders that you want to restore instead of having to restore everything. As before, you can automatically split files to fit on individual discs and apply password protection and compression.
Audio ripping features now include an integrated MP3 encoder that lets you rip songs directly into MP3 format as well as to WMA or lossless WAV. The program also retrieves album and track names from Internet databases.
The program copies CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs and offers a feature that erases any rewritable media. If you like, you can save projects as files to conveniently burn the same discs later. A big addition for power users is a "Modified Copy" function that lets you select and insert additional files and folders before you burn a disc. It's easier in version 7 to create new versions of bootable installation discs, and a new feature lets you build bootable discs by importing boot images.
The Ashampoo Burning Studio 7 interface is intuitive, clean, and easy to use and offers clear options for burning files and folders, backing up or restoring files, burning or ripping music, burning movies, copying discs, creating disc images, and more. Selecting files is a simple matter of dragging and dropping them, and a gauge at the bottom of the screen indicates in a visual way how much space is left on your target disc. Also, as you work, the program serves helpful advice on burning options.
Put It on Disc
When you purchase a standalone DVD burner or a computer with a disc burner, you'll often receive a utility that performs many of the functions of Burning Studio 7. For many, these utilities will probably be adequate.
But when you're feeling limited by the utilities that you already have, it's worth considering Ashampoo Burning Studio 7. Here, Ashampoo helps by letting you evaluate its software for free for 30 days. You can't go wrong. And if you already own version 6, the upgrade to version 7 is worth it if you can use the video burning features or the esoteric copy and boot features.
Ashampoo Burning Studio 7 retails for $39.99 ($24.99 upgrade).
Pros: 30-day free trial, easy to use, rich set of features for power users, easy to select and burn files into formats that you wish, wide support of disc formats
Cons: Non-power users may find the $39 price tag too steep for features they don't regularly use
