Roxio Easy Media Creator v7.5
$99.95
Roxio
www.roxio.com

Easy Media Creator made a big splash last year by becoming a popular solution for managing media. Now, with version 7.5, EMC gives you the power of a tidal wave to manage digital media.

You can still use EMC to burn CDs, edit photos, and edit digital videos from your camcorder. Now with several additions from Sonic, which acquired Roxio last year, EMC is an even more comprehensive solution.

First among the Sonic additions is MyDVD Slideshow, which lets you create DVD-compatible slideshows from still photos, complete with background music and transitional effects. Now you can share slideshows of your children, travels, or historical family photos with loved ones--and they won’t even need a computer to view them. Once you’ve created the slideshow and added effects, just burn it to a disc. It’s playable on a standard DVD player.

Other new DVD tools include CinePlayer, which enables you to play DVD movies and games at a higher quality; DivX-to-DVD conversion; and DVDInfo Pro, a tool for testing drives and media. That’s in addition to Roxio’s DVD Builder, the DVD-authoring tool.

Another nice enhancement is the LP and Tape Assistant. Many of us older folks have favorite tapes and LP records that, for one reason or another, haven’t been released on CD as of yet. This assistant helps streamline the process of digitizing and cleaning up tapes and LP recordings, complete with diagrams for connecting your turntable or tape deck to your computer (sound card required). The Easy Audio Capture Utility records and cleans up audio such as Internet radio, and the enhanced Sound Editor lets you create custom mixes.

EMC 7.5 also includes Sonic’s Backup MyPC Deluxe to protect and preserve data, as well as a Disc Image Loader that mounts disc images as a virtual drive to ease disc change requirements of programs, particularly games.

Add PhotoSuite photo editor/ publisher and VideoWave video editor to the DVD, audio, backup, and disc-burning features of EMC, and the array of media tools becomes even more impressive. Then when you consider the $99.95 price tag, purchasing Easy Media Creator becomes a no-brainer. Owners of version 7 can upgrade for $29.95 direct from Roxio.

Punch! Professional Home Design Suite, Platinum v8.0
Free 15-day trial, $99.99
Punch! Software
www.punchsoftware.com

So you want to update your home or landscape? Save yourself some money and get two home design programs in one package. PHDS (Professional Home Design Suite) from Punch! Software includes both a landscape/deck designer, as well as home designer/remodeling program. Master Landscape Design helps you plan landscaping changes and includes Ultimate Deck, the suite’s deck design software. Professional Home Design Suite designs all areas of the home, including foundation, HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning), electrical, and plumbing planners.

PHDS is based on the same platform as Punch!’s Architectural 4000 series, letting you create professional, accurate plans and designs. Additionally, PHDS includes a 3D graphics engine to create a photo-realistic walk-through of your project.

PHDS offers a 15-day, limited-feature trial. The trial is enough to let you know that this product is professional grade and isn’t for the casual user. Whether creating home remodel designs or landscape designs, it requires measurements of walls and property lines. You can import a photo of your existing home or landscape, add design embellishments, and then view the results.

The deck designer includes wizards to step you through the process of creating simple or complex multilevel and/or multistory decks, choosing railing or baluster options as you go. Then, landscape around the addition, choosing from over 2,000 plants, trees, and shrubs in the Plant Finder catalog.

Punch Professional Platinum can be tricky to use at first but is an excellent value for helping to visualize significant changes to the interior or exterior of your home.

Webroot Spy Sweeper v3.5
Free 30-day trial, one-year subscription $29.95
Webroot Software
www.webroot.com

Protecting your identity and maintaining privacy has become one of the biggest concerns to Internet users. No one spyware sweeper does it all; the best protection means having a few anti-spyware applications on your system and running them at least once a month. Therefore, adding Webroot Spy Sweeper to your arsenal is a smart decision.

Spy Sweeper isn’t the fastest scanner, but it scans thoroughly for spyware and malware. Though it’s faster to start it up just before you go to lunch and let it scan during the idle time, you can continue to work on your computer as Spy Sweeper scans in the background. It also minimizes to the Windows Taskbar, so it doesn’t compete with your other applications for space.

Spyware protection, like antivirus protection, requires regular updates to a definitions file. This keeps your computer protected even as new spyware and malware is created. The cost of a one-year subscription is $29.95, a moderate price for updated protection in a nice, modern Windows interface.

Spy Sweeper’s main advantage is that it offers real-time spyware blocking, called shields. These are effective in stopping infestations before they occur. Shields run in real time and notify you when changes are being made to your system. You then have the opportunity to accept or reject the change, such as a change to the Startup page in Internet Explorer. In this regard, Spy Sweeper includes some of the benefits of a software firewall, for less than $30 per year.

This real-time protection does take up a bit of memory to run, but most recent PCs shouldn’t have a problem. We saw minor performance degradation only when running multiple graphics-intensive programs. This protection is a more-than-worthy trade-off. Those with PCs that have memory problems already may want to consider turning off the real-time shields.

MatchWare Mediator 8 Std
$69
MatchWare
www.matchware.com

Home users can get professional results with Mediator 8 Standard. Whether you’re showing off your newest collectibles or the latest antics of your children, creating multimedia presentations on a budget is easy. Mediator 8 Std contains just the right features to streamline the process of combining images, video, and text effects into auto run CD-ROM presentations.

The included templates make it easy to get started. We also recommend viewing the video tutorials. (The tutorials are in WMP format; download them from the Mediator Web site.) Between the two, we created our first presentation in about 20 minutes.

There’s no programming involved to assign actions to buttons. You can use drag and drop to program a presentation to continue to the next page when the viewer clicks a button, for example.

Version 8 also includes a multimedia catalog that includes multiple page and navigation templates, plus resizable buttons and vector-base illustrations. The program also includes a large clip-art library with dozens of images, including graphics, buttons, and animated GIFs. A spell checker is another new feature in this version.

Mediator’s biggest attraction, however, is the ability to export presentations as HTML or Flash (SWF format) animations. If you’ve ever wanted to spice up your Web site with pictures from your last vacation, Mediator lets you create an interactive feast of pictures, text, and video. Then, with the click of a button, export it in a format that can easily be published to your Web site and viewed by family members.

Mediator 8 Std is a rather specialized program and isn’t a must-have for most users. Most of us at one time or another, though, have felt the urge to show off a bit for our friends and family. At only $69, Mediator gives you the ability to create fancy multimedia presentations without having to be a programmer. So feel free to make a splash.

by Cyndy Bates-Finnie

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