Can't recommend it highly enough

My 3 year old son loves this game and often asks for it over (I think) less educational games such as Scooby Doo. It encourages the children to learn letters, numbers, as well as letter and number sequence, sorting, patterns, deductive reasoning, time, and lots more all at their own pace. There were sections of the game which my son didn't play when we first got the game but as he has got older he now happily plays all of them and actually wants to do the alphabet race, or counting games, things that if I said lets sit down and practise your alphabet he'd run off laughuing!

Unfortunately he figured out very quickly by watching me how to change the levels on the games himself and sometimes does a level that's too easy for him - I figure he's still enjoying himself and building confidence but if you wanted to use this as a strict learning tool then I would advise only changing the levels after all children are in bed!
Highly recommended software, I am now looking at the Year 1 package for him.

Still crashing after all these years!

I've been buying Studio version by version since v8 six years ago and I'm hoping one day they'll have a really saleable product. v11 is far less prone to crashes than the earlier versions but don't let anyone tell you it's bug free. About two crashes an evening is par for the course. What a shame though - the user interface is really good it's so simple to learn. Far, far easier than iMovie and on this product the help screens do just that (unlike iMovie's). Windows Movie Maker (FREE) is still better than Studio for some things like accessing various file types on disc but Studio allows a bit of class with frame-by-frame positioning of the cursor and pretty useful (if fiddly) control of sound levels.

Let's hope they get this app ready for sale soon!

POWERFUL PC, TECH` SUPPORT-(many hours/days),..--P` ELEMENTS 4 A DISASTER!!

My view, as the title intimates, Premiere Elements 4 DOES NOT DO WHAT IT SAYS `ON THE BOX`, this product was obviously NOT tested on `real world` pc`s, I have 3 SATA discs, QUAD cpu, Gigabyte 8800GT, 4GB fast memory and have done everything suggested by the friendly Adobe support staff, SOUND OUT OF SYNC, NO CURE, my view is DON`T TOUCH PREMIERE ELEMENTS 4 WITH A BARGEPOLE (unless you want grey hairs),it simply cannot handle High Definition material,... DON`T JUST TAKE MY WORD FOR IT,CHECK OTHER SITES,..there are very few praises for this product.

Adobe Photoshop is a great product, ADOBE PREMIERE ELEMENTS 4 IS A DISASTER AND COMPLETELY UNUSEABLE FOR HIGH DEFINITION, believe me, I have tried it extensively!!

Outstanding

As an IT engineer, I test various security products so I can give an unbiased opinion to my customers. I have to say that this version of Zone Alarm really does shine. It offers everything you need in one package. You don't need to be very techy to understand it, although some of the menus can seem a bit confusing. Scan times are a bit longer than other products but not vastly so. It may not be the lightest on system resources so you need a PC with at least 512 MB of RAM or 1GB preferably. You can't really go wrong with this suite, its antivirus engine is from Kaspersky and its antispyware scanner really does the job well. Antispam, like most of them can be a bit of a lottery, but should do for most people. The firewall is simply the best there is, but that has always been the case with Zone Alarm. It now doesn't pop up asking you for what can and can't access the internet at every moment, a great move.

All in all for the price you pay, you get a great security product that will protect you well from all the nasties out there. Again, in my opinion, it is at the moment the best out there.

good content if you have a couple of spare computers and isp acounts

Content of the book is good and really in depth and comes with a 180 day evaluation version of Server 2003 but to complete some of the exercises and Labs in the book, you could do with a couple of spare pc's, phone lines, and isp accounts. Some of these exercise can be replicated using Virtual PC software (with a few minor adjustments), but the Routing & Remote Access and NAT sections are a bit more difficult to complete unless you have the necessary resources.

For example the start of Chapter 10...
" Before you begin
to complete this chapter, you must have
- networked two computers, named Computer 1 & Computer2, each running server 2003...
- a separate phone line available to each computer (recommended)
- two internet service provider accounts, or one account that can be legally be used to connect two separate computers to the Internet simultaneously..."

Lightroom - with some room for improvement still

Firstly I have used most workflow software in my photography business includis media, acdc, Adobe Bridge, Aperture and most creative imaging software including PaintShop Pro, Corel, Photoshop and Capture NX so I think I have the feel for this type of programme. Further I had the beta version from Adobe when it was in trial mode.

Likes, well its a lot like Aperture in layout and I like the look. You can customise the look also to what you want and thats a cool feature. The grid and loupe features allow you to have the screen as you want it and its so easy to load in a few images to compare. Lightroom also gives you the opportunity to do some immediate modifications for example you are easily able to change white balance, sharpness, contrast and crop. A great feature which make it stand out against the rest.

Dislikes, well loading images from a camera/disk can be a pain if you do not follow procedures. A few times I have loaded up, forgotten to make a file on my computer and the images are imported into Lightroom without a folder being made. The images are still there but you have to go to"last import" to retreive them and its a bit of a game then to make a file and transfer them.

To get the best from this software you really do need to read a good book - such as Scott Kelby's Lightroom for Photographers or join an online class like www.lynda.com. However, both cover version 1.1 and latest version is 1.3 and the interface has changed substantially in my view so beware that not all chapters in the book or lessons on the web are up-to-date.

How do I rate Lightroom. In my view, even with the parts I do not like, its probably the best bit of software for workflow on the market. I have ditched Aperture, since it is RAM hungary and still slow and use Lightroom instead. But since I am a Nikon user I transfer my images to Capture NX first, do any modifications I need there first, then transfer to Lightroom. Part of the reason for this is that Capture NX will transfer black and white images I take on my camera whilst if I use Lightroom first, Lightroom converts then back to colour. I am sure Adobe can fix this but no doubt another update is needed.

So there you have it. Great software but you do need to put in some time to learn even the basics to get the best from it.

A big step forward

Many folk resent change and the new interface will put off some users. Things do take a bit longer to begin with, but once you get used to where things are, the new ribbon feature actually speeds workflow.

The new packages are great to use, and apart from the well-documented Excel bug, the packages appear stable.

Don't be put off by change, give it a chance and you will find it a big leap in a good direction. There are backward compatibility issues though if you have old documents you still need to use, despite the 'compatibility mode'. Check how this will affect you before taking the plunge.

Lots Of Fun With A Few Glitches

This version of Adobe Photoshop is full of cool tricks and some frustrating ones as well. I take a lot of underwater photos without a strobe, so the colors can be too blue or flat. The Photo Editor works great bringing back the original colors, contrasts and shadows. I don't like to change a photo too much and you can get very precise with any change you make. There are lots of ways to alter or manipulate photos here. The regular non-water photos also edit very well. The skin tone option is amazing and the `tagging' and `drag & drop' features are very easy. The learning curve was a bit much at first, but once you have a half dozen controls down, it gets easy very quickly. The slide show feature is what I truly bought this for and there are almost too many options. I try to keep the special effects to a minimum to not detract from the show. The blank slide feature with storyboard/text makes the show more entertaining and personal. The program does have its glitches. It takes quite a while to simply load Photoshop and I have a fast computer with tons of memory. The editor takes more time to load than I expected as well. I did have a few photos"fail" when I changed too much, but there is a `layer' feature that can prevent this. Everything is well organized and easy to find, however. With nothing else to compare this to, I'd say it's a good choice if you don't mind the download times.

How did this ever get released?

This has got to be the worst piece of software I have ever used, and I make a living supporting Microsoft software!

The interface (on Mac) is clunky and cumbersome.
There's no obvious way to create a new invoice template without first creating an invoice against a sale, and even then random bits of text get stuck in the overall design and can't be removed.

One obvious problem is that you can't enter the license key until the trial period is over, meaning that if you're on the road a lot (like me) you need to carry they key around with you on the off chance that today will be the day that you need to enter it.

I've gone back to using spreadsheets and junked this ghastly package.

Could be great....

Magix Audio Cleaning Studio seems to be the current market leader for cleaning up old LP's etc - and it's pretty good. In terms of the balance between effective cleaning and retention of sound quality, it's not quite as good as Steinberg Clean (Versions 3 or 4, not the problematic Version 5). But Steinberg, anyway, seems to have disappeared.

What Audio Cleaning Lab has over Steinberg is that it's much more flexible. You can experiment with effects without clogging up your hard-drive with redundant files, and for complilations you can adjust individual volume and equalisation settings. You get both a standard equaliser and a parametric equaliser - the latter allowing you to adjust literally whatever frequencies you choose.

Some of the other effects are also useful, though a fair number of the 40 odd effects claimed by Magix amount to little more than variants on the loudness control theme.

But there is one major negative with this package: no 'go to next track' button. If you're working on a compilation, this can drive you to distraction. Every time you need to move to working on the next track, you've either got to go via 2 drop down lists, or zoom out far enough to get the relevant track into the picture. This ommission is surprising; it's a fairly standard feature with most other packages.

The expectation that this would be put right was my main reason for buying Version 12 when I'd already already got Version 11. If you've got 11, there's not a lot of reason to shell out for 12. The main additions are a second de-esser - more adjustable than the basic one, but still essentially a treble-muter, and a 'pycho-energiser' which I won't comment on because I don't understand it well enough to get it to do anything useful.

The other bonus is that when you open the programme a picture now flashes up of a nineteen-year-old female eyeing you seductively from under an enormous pair of headphones. Perhaps the marketing genius who thought of this might conjure with the idea that it's actually trivialising - not of 'women', but of the people who built this software and the people who use it.

Adobe Photoshop CS3 - Wonderful

Photoshop CS3 is wonderful and a real joy to use. We were not naive enough to feel it could run on an older less powerful machine. We purchased a new PC especially to run Photoshop CS3, with a lot of memory and running XP Professional, and have hardly anything else running on this machine so that other software does not clutter things up etc.

CS3 loaded very easily. After installing the upgrades - 260MB - we started to use it for our day to day image processing. You download your images directly from your card into Bridge and then open them as RAW files. Camera RAW 4.1 is amazing and you will find your images benefit greatly from using this software. After this processing in Photoshop CS3 is smooth and very reliable.

We have now been using this software for a while and have had absolutely no problems at all. Photoshop CS3 is dream imaging software.

Great Security Product

Had Norton 360 on my laptop but was still infected by a downloaded Rar music file when opened.Norton did not stop this.Ran Norton scan and it found various viruses and trojans but could not remove them and my internet was badly affected.Eventually was able to download Avg 8 free version and ran scan .It detected all the viruses and worms and successfully deleted them and now my system is clear and running faster than with Norton 360,which I have uninstalled and have upgraded to the 30 day trial of Avg8 internet security.This has loads of security features and is working perfectly and will buy at the end of the trial.Try it,I don`t think it will disappont.

DO NOT BUY!!!!!

okay i bought this product thinking"yes i have finally got a converter that works well" i was completely wrong. for one thing i couldnt even install the thing because there was error after error and it always had some kind of flaw so please please please do not buy this product it is the worst converter ever so please dont waste your money on this!

Superb word recognition dictation system.

I have been using voice recognition dictation systems for years. Initially I purchased the IBM voice recognition system nearly 10 years ago at a cost of £1000 for the programme. It worked reasonably well and over the years I have upgraded several times now to version 10.

Recently because of frustrations with IBM ViaVoice, with the niggling little problems, I purchased Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 (Wireless edition) and I have to say it is quite superb. It is far and away better than the IBM system I have been using and seems to be intuitive in its recognition of your needs and dictation.

Like any new tool, you need to put in a little time for it to get used to you (it is intelligent working on algorithms) and for you to get used to the various commands it is programmed with.

You really can do all of the claimed options, including accessing and dictating into e-mails with ease.
What a shame I did not find out about this system before, it has already saved me time and given me quite a lot of pleasure.