Monthly Archives: October 2003
FastTrack – Magix Audio Cleaning Lab Deluxe 2004
Music can make your heart sing, it’s the food of love, it lightens the very soul. But not if your poor old scratched and battered vinyl has more snap, crackle and pop than the Rice Krispie leprechauns themselves. If that’s the case it’s more likely to drive you to distraction and beyond, into, erm, even…
Plextor – PX-708A DVD±R/RW drive
One can’t help thinking that if the VHS and Betamax video manufacturers had got together in the 1970s and sorted out their differences, it might have been possible to have one machine that played both formats. OK, it’s unlikely, but that’s the situation we’re now facing in the writeable DVD battle. There are plenty of…
V Communications – Partition Commander 8
“For worry-free partitioning”, boasts the box copy on the back of V Communications’ latest, “Partition Commander is the only choice!”. That’s not true, as users of PartitionMagic can testify. But it’s nonetheless it’s a choice worth considering, thanks to a well-thought through, wizard-driven system and a happy capability to get the job done. Partition Commander…
Xerox – Phaser 6250
The latest addition to the Phaser family of Xerox business lasers, the Phaser 6250 can print in high resolution at an impressive 24 pages per minute. More than that, it can print both monochrome and colour pages at this speed with the first page appearing, on average, in under 12 seconds. It’s also an easy…
Microsoft – Money 2004 Financial Suite
Perhaps it’s an indictment of how far Money 2004 is from the usual user-friendly Microsoft approach; the firm includes a tutorial book, Microsoft Money Made Easy, with the Financial Suite edition we’ve got on test here. It’s not that there’s anything particularly wrong with the package, but where other programs from the House of Gates…
Codemasters – Colin McRae Rally 4
Arguably console gaming’s finest rallying experience ever, the Colin McRae franchise is now settled into a cycle of heading for the dedicated games machines first, with a PC version some six months down the line. And, frankly, the fourth incarnation of the game is an absolute stunner – assuming you didn’t get the last edition……
MP3Surgeon.com – MP3 Surgeon 2003
Finding a strong application to do a job isn’t necessarily a case of heading to your nearest PC World replete with a Visa card that’s been warned to expect the worse. The growth in broadband Internet access has led to more and more applications being made available solely online, and often they can do a…
Corel – WordPerfect FamilyPack 5
At an attractive price point, Corel’s WordPerfect Family Pack 5 is clearly battling the likes of Microsoft’s Works Suite, throwing in seven applications at a surprisingly decent cost. That Corel sweetens the deal with a total of nearly 7,000 images, fonts and photos does the value for money aspect no harm at all. Still, if…
Teco – Relisys TL775
This particular flat panel display is one groovy looking beast, with its swish silver contours, not to mention the circular cluster of menu buttons which are backlit with neon blue and look like the window of a Tie Fighter. At least they do to us. Then again, we do holiday on Tatooine and have a…
Map & Guide – Top Cities Europe (PDA)
Ever since AutoRoute Express was launched for Psion’s 3a palmtop in the mid-1990s, route planning and city mapping software has been very popular for palmtop computers. It makes sense, really. Rather than carrying a bulky guidebook or laptop with you, just rely on your PDA to tell you where you are and what restaurants, clubs…