Fireball CyberProtection Suite 2.0 Review - 10/27/2003 Need a firewall? Throw a Fireball -- RedCannon Security's new hacker, spyware, pop-up, and porn blocker -- at online bad guys. SmallBusinessComputing.com's Wayne Kawamoto says this $50 package earns points for telecommuters' virtual private network (VPN) support and keeps track of Microsoft's endless flow of security patches for you.
ArcSoft Ships ShowBiz DVD 2 - 10/27/2003 Digital video, analog video, digital-camera images, multiple audio tracks, titles, transition effects, slide shows, customizable menus and chapters -- ArcSoft's updated video editing and Video CD/DVD burning package lets you present your content your way.
PlanPlus 2.0 Adds More Power and Productivity To Outlook - 10/27/2003 Microsoft Outlook is a habit of many not-highly-efficient people. FranklinCovey's updated, Office 2003-compatible add-in turns Outlook into a match for the company's popular paper planners, with extra note-taking and information-organizing options to balance daily schedules with medium- and long-term goals.
PC-cillin Internet Security 2004 Combines Antivirus and Firewall Protection - 10/27/2003 Trend Micro says your desktop or laptop can enjoy the same protection as big corporate networks, with an antivirus/firewall combination that also fights spam and smut -- and proactively warns you when new threats crop up.
System Mechanic 4 Professional Review - 10/20/2003 Quick, name a PC utilities package. Yeah, yeah, you said Norton Utilities. But while Symantec's hard-disk housekeeper hasn't been updated in a dog's age, Iolo Technologies has not only bolstered its Windows maintenance, cleanup, and tweaking toolkit with new features, but added potent antivirus, firewall, and file-recovery protection. Should it be the first $70 in your software budget?
Diskeeper 8.0 Home Edition Review - 10/6/2003 Just as you might not realize you have high cholesterol, you might not know how fragmented files are slowing your PC's performance and shortening the life of your hard drive. A new release of Executive Software's famed disk defragmenter adds extra protection and convenience -- but the cheaper Home Edition is no bargain compared to the Professional package.
Adobe Photoshop Album 2.0 Offers New Features, Free Version - 10/6/2003 Digital camera owners will cheer as Adobe upgrades its easy image cataloguer, organizer, and card/calendar/slide-show maker with new viewing options and photo fixes. Penny-pinchers will cheer as a limited trial version is made available as a free download.
New Photoshop CS and File Management System Lead Adobe Creative Suite - 9/29/2003 Adobe upgrades its flagship image editor -- and its drawing, Web authoring, and desktop publishing packages, bundling the lot in a new suite with enhanced file and workflow management tools for busy designers, editors, and art directors.
Sonic RecordNow 6 Boosts CD and DVD Burners - 9/29/2003 Sonic Solutions' upgraded CD and DVD mastering software offers everything from unlimited MP3 ripping and volume leveling to drag-and-drop file backup, while the Deluxe version makes glamorous slideshows and videos on CD and automates the job of archiving important data.
Quicken 2004 Premier Home & Business Review - 9/29/2003 After two decades, Intuit isn't finished improving the program that invented the concept of balancing your checkbook on your PC. According to SmallBusinessComputing.com's Wayne Kawamoto, the latest edition of the personal-finance pioneer is, well, quicker to set up and does a better job of tracking investments -- but its small-office-accounting aspirations trail archrival Microsoft Money's.
Quicken Lawyer Personal Is Now Quicken WillMaker Plus 2004 - 9/22/2003 A new name headlines a new version of Nolo's estate-planning software, designed to safeguard family, property, and pets at a fraction of the cost of consulting an attorney.
Sonic Announces MyDVD Studio Deluxe 5 Creative Suite - 9/22/2003 Burn on: The newest CD and DVD creation toolkit from Sonic Solutions (also sold at retail by Adaptec) offers everything from integrated video editing and Dolby Digital audio encoding to exact disc copying and easy audio-CD creation.
Macromedia Ships New Flash Player and MX 2004 Lineup - 9/15/2003 Whether you're creating rich Web sites, optimized online graphics, or interactive animation and multimedia projects, Macromedia's upgraded MX 2004 product line brings faster performance and time-saving tools to Flash, Dreamweaver, and Fireworks. As always, the latest Flash player is a free download.
DataViz Brings Native Word and Excel Files to Palm PDAs - 9/15/2003 Pocket PC handheld users boast that their PDAs can edit and transfer Microsoft Word and Excel files directly, with no special translation step. The newest version of DataViz's popular Documents To Go does the same for Palm OS PDAs.
WinDVD Platinum 5 Review - 9/15/2003 Sure, your PC came with a software DVD player, but would you like to see movies with better quality and sound than you thought possible, shuffle bookmarks and screen grabs like a maestro, and be a wizard of instant replay or able to watch a 100-minute movie in 75 minutes? This deluxe player fulfills film buffs' fantasies.
Peachtree Premium Accounting 2004 Review - 9/8/2003 You've finally decided to computerize your small business's bookkeeping? Peachtree is ready to help, beginning with setting a budget for your accounting software -- $100, $200, $300, or $500. SmallBusinessComputing.com's Wayne Kawamoto sorts out the differences and examines the new features in the newest version of this perennially popular, especially-good-with-inventory accounting solution.
Benign Strips Evil Code from Incoming E-Mail - 9/8/2003 The people who bring you MailWasher Pro introduce another aspirin for e-mail headaches -- a utility that filters out worms, Web bugs, scripts, and other malicious, self-launching, or spyware code before e-mail reaches your inbox.
ABBYY Says FineReader 7.0 OCR Boosts Accuracy 25 Percent - 9/8/2003 If you've got to turn printed documents, spreadsheets, or PDF pages into editable, archivable, and distributable PC files, a new version of ABBYY's optical character recognition software offers sharper recognition and support for the latest Hyper-Threading and Office 2003 XML technologies.
Symantec Adds AntiSpam to Norton Internet Security, Password Manager to Norton SystemWorks - 9/8/2003 Improved virus, worm, and spyware protection joins venerable PC utilities and a new network and Internet password manager in Norton SystemWorks 2004, while Norton Internet Security 2004 teams Symantec's antivirus and firewall tools with a new barricade against junk e-mail.
The Print Shop Turns 20 - 9/2/2003 It's not just about printing personalized greeting cards (though it has some nifty new cards with 3D graphics and cut-outs): Broderbund's ageless The Print Shop gets ready for 2004's twentieth anniversary with up-to-date features like IM support, DVD burning, and a small-business forms creator.
Intuit Adds Contact and Client Managers for QuickBooks Users - 9/2/2003 Intuit says 89 percent of its QuickBooks small-office-accounting users regularly track customer information, but fewer than 13 percent use big-office CRM software. So it's made an at-a-glance contact manager and project organizer with easy, seamless links to Outlook and Excel as well as QuickBooks data.
Previewing Microsoft Publisher 2003 - 9/2/2003 SmallBusinessComputing.com editor Patricia Fusco continues her look at Microsoft Office 2003 Small Business Edition with a look at the new suite's major refresh of Microsoft Publisher. Has the consumer-friendly page-layout program finally earned the right to be considered alongside desktop-publishing powerhouses like QuarkXPress or Adobe's PageMaker and InDesign?
Quicken 2004 Manages Your Personal Finances in Minutes - 8/25/2003 Why do only three in 10 PC-owning families use personal finance management software? Because, says Intuit, it's a pain entering account and transaction info -- unless you let Quicken 2004 do all the work and offer insight into your spending, investments, and net worth automatically.
Corel Updates WordPerfect Family Pack - 8/18/2003 Families with kids in school, budgets and digital photos to manage, and only $79 to spend will want to check out the new edition of Corel's home-computing bundle, which teams WordPerfect and Quattro Pro with virus and privacy protection and creative and educational tools.
Paint Shop Pro 8 Review - 8/18/2003 Would you pay $99 for the second-best image-editing program in the world? Well, since the first is Adobe's $609 Photoshop, you should: This top-to-bottom upgrade of Jasc Software's classic adds both more artistic-precision power and more friendly, accessible, digital-snapshot touch-ups to stay one step ahead of imaging newcomers.
Panicware Says New SpamWasher Sends Unwanted E-Mail Down the Drain - 8/11/2003 The makers of the popular online ad blocker Pop-Up Stopper turn their attention from your browser to your inbox, introducing a spam fighter that uses patent-pending technology to simplify operation and improve accuracy.
Microsoft Money 2004 Review - 8/11/2003 The annual upgrade to Microsoft's personal-finance manager polishes an already pearly interface and adds valuable credit-management and capital-gains help, but can it really stretch from checkbook balancing to company bookkeeping? SmallBusinessComputing.com's Wayne Kawamoto finds out.
Cross-Platform Drawing and Diagramming Tool Challenges Visio - 7/28/2003 Computer Systems Odessa launches a Windows version of its popular Mac diagramming and design package, suitable for both executives sketching org charts and engineers and network administrators designing complex flow charts and blueprints.
Macromedia Contribute 2 Adds FlashPaper, PayPal Support - 7/21/2003 Just six months after its debut, Macromedia's easy-as-pie package for updating and maintaining a Web site gains faster, more reliable connection and quick document-embedding technology, as well as Mac OS X and PayPal e-commerce support. But will users view the addition of Microsoft-style product activation as a pie in the face?
Sony's Screenblast Division Revamps Movie- and Music-Editing Programs - 7/21/2003 Sony's Vaio PCs have long come with sophisticated, house-brand video and audio software. Now Sony Pictures' Screenblast online and retail offerings step up with a powerful video-editing and DVD-authoring solution and hip-hop- and techno-ready audio-remixing package.
Spam-Fighting Software Learns To Tell Good E-Mails From Bad - 7/14/2003 Audiotrieve LLC says its InBoxer add-in for Microsoft Outlook builds a unique e-mail language model based on your message folders, outsmarting traditional rules and lists to achieve 99-percent accuracy in stopping spam while letting through desired messages and newsletters.
Canvas 9 Adds Over 100 New Features for Technical Illustration and Presentation - 7/14/2003 With near-infinite scale, zoom, and floating-point coordinate precision, the program formerly known as Deneba Canvas has been upgraded with ultra-high-end vector illustration, page layout, and Web and presentation tools for engineers, architects, and scientific publishers in applications ranging from medical imaging to oil and resource exploration.
Adobe Premiere Upgrade, New Suite Lead Video-Editing Blitz - 7/7/2003 Having released a DVD authoring program and acquired a professional audio editor, Adobe Systems completely remakes its Premiere video editor and upgrades its After Effects motion-effects package to build a spectacular suite solution for studio-quality digital video creation and DVD mastering.
MYOB Plus Version 12 Review - 7/7/2003 It doesn't pay to try managing a small business without a accounting package, but does it pay to look beyond the popular Peachtree and QuickBooks? According to SmallBusinessComputing.com, the latest edition of MYOB US Inc.'s $229 underdog makes its case with improved inventory management and ample reporting options, but falls short in e-commerce areas.
Netscape 7 - 7/1/2003 The latest official release of the Netscape web browser suite
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.
