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By
Avanquest Software
 Marvelous, 2005-07-13
I could already type before I got this, so I can't really comment on how good it is for people learning right from the beginning. I got Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing 15 to help me brush up my skills and to improve my overall speed, and it has certainly done that. The program installed easily. Once installed it is really easy to fire it up and get going on your practice. I must say that using Mavis Beacon 15 is a whole lot more fun than the way I learned to type some (cough) years ago on an old manual typewriter! The voiceovers are pleasant, and the games are pretty good too. The thing I have found most useful though is that you can have Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing 15 running whilst you are doing other typing tasks, such as writing emails or word processing. Your speed and accuracy are recorded as you go along so you get a much better idea of your typing skills in real world situations.
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List Price: £4.99
Our Price: £8.95
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By
Avanquest Software
These fun and exciting quests and daring rescues present Maths without numbers where children can learn mathematical thinking skills including hypothesis testing, algebraic thinking and set theory. Win 95/98/200/XP. NOT MAC compatible. Ages 7 to 12.
Zoooooooooooombinis!, 2005-07-25
I can remeber playing this when I was in middle school too and we could only play it at lunch times or near the end of term, when I knew you could get a home edition, it's not just available to schools, I HAD to get it!
My favorite level is the pizza level too and when they got to zoombini island,awww! Great game, buy it, not for your children, for you!
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List Price: £19.99
Our Price: £21.89
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By
Arobas Music
Amazing guitar software, 2007-12-29
Guitar Pro is such a brilliant programme, i had a copy of it, but has been corrupted (wasnt a legitimate copy). It is extremely accurate and you can essentially write whatever you like, guitar, bass, drums, saxaphone, and a load of other sounds. it uses real sound, so a guitar sounds like a guitar, rather than power tab, which is just a synthesised sound, i think. it is well worth the money, definitely buying another copy when i have money. You can add several tracks, so if your in a band and you are composing the whole song then you can compose it all and print the parts off as proper tablature and give it to them. it also comes with the manuscript version of your tab above it.
it's excellent!
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List Price: £44.99
Our Price: £37.69
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By
Serif
Websites untangled - great software for non HTML experts, 2008-08-10
This software is just I what I was looking for. I've been struggling with html and css for months. Positioning elements properly took ages to work out but when I looked in another browser my carefully worked out design was all jumbled up. I never got the results I wanted.
Serif WebPlus X2 is very simple to use. You can use the templates to create a professional looking site in a few hours and if you have some experience of html then you can insert specific instructions into your pages very easily. What I like most about WebPlus X2 is that it's wysiwyg. Previously, I'd take an educated guess at what mark up I'd need for a given result and then have to view it in another programme. Anally retentive programmers probably learn reams of code off by heart to circumvent this but, me, I've got better things to do. With WebPlus X2 you can see what you're doing while you're doing it. You can also view your work in different browsers if you really want to check.
WebPlus X2 seems to be designed with people like me in mind. We know what we want to achieve but don't have the budget to employ an html/css coder or the time to bring our expertise up to their level. In addition to vastly reducing the time and expense that it would take to accomplish the same result by any other means, WebPlus X2 gives you the benefit of many presentational tricks that would take years of programming experience to achieve. My re-vamped site has already drawn favourable comments about its better navigation, layout and graphical design, all achieved in a fraction of the time thanks to WebPlus X2.
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List Price: £59.99
Our Price: £35.99
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By
Pinnacle Systems (UK)
 At Last!, 2008-11-13
Having taken a great deal of camcorder footage on a recent touring holiday in Canada, I turned to my long owned(but little used)Pinnacle Studio 9 editing package. After some initial difficulty,I eventually captured the project into the software. That's when the problems started!
It took many,many attempts to edit the first hour of video because of repeated hangups/crashes, which meant computer restarts each time.
However,after sheer dogged determination, and taking each editing process very slowly, I achieved the desired edit and moved on to the movie capture stage to start the process of transfer to DVD.
Hours and hours of attempts to render for this purpose caused variable crashes everytime!
My computer specifications met all the requirements on the box, but the program would not work and left me Very frustrated after so many lengthy periods of abortive effort.
I decided to try the free trial offered by Sony of their editing package, which looked fine and certainly appeared much more stable, and was very close to purchasing that package. However, there is something about the Pinnacle software which drew me back to try once more, and when I saw the Amazon much reduced price for the basic Studio 12 package I gave it another go.
Oh Blessed Relief!!
The project already created transferred easily to the new version and the movie was processed and burnt successfully to DVD on the first attempt. Also subsequent captures and editing has proceeded smoothly without problems and the earlier frustrations have almost been forgotten. Therefore, it's thumbs up from me to Pinnacle 12.
But, Pinnacle, I cannot give you the full stars because of the earlier pain.
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List Price: £39.99
Our Price: £19.98
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By
Adobe Systems Inc.
- Produkt Version: 7.0
- Sprache: E
A great photo editing package for home users - but not an essential upgrade for version 6 users, 2008-09-05
Presently on PcPro's `A-List', Adobe Elements is a cut down version of Adobe's £500+ Photoshop/Photoshop Extended CS4, and costs considerably less while still having a lot of useful photo editing capabilities. Photoshop CS4 has a steep learning curve, but Photoshop elements is far more home-user friendly. A lot of the program is geared towards image storage and management of the photos on your hard drive, helping with emailing, web output and scrapbooks of your images. The program can auto-downloads your images from the camera to folders, set up using the date, and can even process the images, say automatically removing red-eye, while it does it. Using stacks you can set up image databases [smart albums] using keywords like names, places, events, etc.., and you can even search using visual tags within the image. That said, I shun the image database options offered by Photoshop Elements and Extended, preferring the simplicity of logical folder names instead. Also, like PhotoShop, the image database side isn't seamlessly integrated into the image editing side [to the point where it's actually annoying].
New to Elements 7 is a new Quick Fix tool to soften surfaces while keeping the edge and detail sharp - i.e. a blur tool, which can help to remove unwanted image noise. Plus there's a new Scene Cleaner tool that can brush away undesirable objects from a photo [so you can ditch that car or tourists from the view] and there's now a Smart Brush which lets you instantly apply effects to a selected area of the image. Plus Element's 7 sports a new single step `whiten teeth', 'make grass greener' and `make the sky blue' tool - but this is little more than streamlining tools within Quick Select and Adjustment Layer Presets that were available on Elements 6. Besides Adobe's suggestion of using the tool to whiten teeth and add a suntan to say Aunt Doris's face may make her look a little ridiculous. Also new in Element's 7 will be a free subscription to Photoshop.com, a special service Adobe has devised to bring friends together by providing quick access to on-line backup, storage, and sharing capabilities. You get 2GB of on-line storage, `enough for up to 1,500 photos', so you can view your photos from virtually anywhere. Thus Photoshop Elements goes `Facebook', allowing you to share your photos `in fun, interactive ways via invitation-only'. For these `Online Albums' you will get new [quite fun] animated templates delivered to Elements on a regular basis. There will also be a Photoshop.com ` Plus' membership offering 20 Gb [15,000 photos] of on-line photo storage, but that will require you paying an annual fee. The first year's 20 Gb subscription is included in Adobe's `Elements 7 Plus' [but not this standard version].
All the old Elements tools are there as well. For editing you have a set of 'quickfix' options or you can load the full image editor for greater manual control: such as adjust sharpness, correct camera distortion, levels, hue and skin colour. Naturally you have standard tools like crop and adjust image size (pixels) as well. You can now do things like brush away wrinkles with the spot healing/healing brush, use clone overlays, make improved B&W images, add image vibrance and clarity, make composite pictures, copy and even blend parts from different images [to say swap faces from a series of photo's so that all your kids are smiling at the camera in one image, i.e. using the PhotoMerge tool]. You also get a layers palette for composites, shapes, text effects and frames. Plus there are step-through guides [guided edit] to help you get there. The software will also integrate with scanners twain interfaces if you are into scanning film, and the Fill Light [shadow/highlight] tool is pretty essential for bringing out detail in shadows from any slide/negative scan. Plus Elements can handle RAW camera images, although I use TIFF/jpg (Elements can save in any common image format).
System requirements are quite high: CD drive, 1Gb system RAM, XP or Vista, 2GHz processor, and a Direct-X 9 graphics card [and Adobe installers can reject systems that don't meet the minimum spec]. Elements 7 perhaps isn't a crucial upgrade from Elements 6 or even 5, but for new home users, or those with older versions, it's very powerful photo editing and image database software from the market leaders. The new 'Scene Cleaner' tool should have been the 'killer app' for those considering upgrading, but it is little more than Elements 6's old PhotoMerge Group application and it requires a series of photos where one has the background free to copy across [and it sometimes gets the exposure wrong making the added bit look rather obvious]. Sadly Adobe's upgrade pricing makes this an expensive option, as typically a full licenced version is only £10 more.
Adobe Elements 7 has only two real competitors at the price: Paint Shop Pro X2 and Serif PhotoPlus X2. Both these programs are also excellent and worthy of consideration, with PhotoPlus's strength being it's about as powerful but rather cheaper to buy and upgrade. Likewise Corel Paint Shop pro X2 occasionally offers a bit more than Elements [layer masks, and curves], is also cheaper and a tad easier to use, although it can be buggy [not Adobe's strong point on first version release either - so install those patches]. Professional users and some SLR enthusiasts will still head towards Adobe's semi-automated PhotoShop Darkroom 2.0 and the fantastically expensive Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended, although even at work we have Adobe Elements on a few imaging workstations for casual users, where the high cost of PhotoShop CS4 Extended simply isn't justified. That said experienced Photoshop CS4 users will rapidly find Elements 7 lacking in a few key features they are used to.
Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 is also available to buy as a cheaper double pack with the updated Adobe Premiere Elements 7 video editing software, which should be even better value than this upgrade. Plus this double pack qualifies for a large educational discount for non-commercial use if you, or a child in the house, are in full time education [from primary school to college]. Similar large educational discounts apply to much of Adobes software. Those buying for College/School department use will save even more.
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List Price: £64.62
Our Price: £63.99
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By
Focus Multimedia Ltd
BEWARE THIS IS ONLY FOR USE WITH DVD OR CONSOLE, 2008-09-13
I was looking for the most up to date driving test practice media i could find and this seemed to be the newest on the market. I have previously been using the driving test success 2006/2007 on my PC and was well impressed but had wanted something more upto date. As i looked at the product I saw the system requirements were windows 2000, vista and XP so immediately thought these were for use on the PC....
Be warned these discs are NOT for use on your PC they are for use on DVD player or console!!!
Very slow compared the the Cd rom. This would be great for anyone who doesn't own a PC but not for anyone who has experienced the CD rom version.
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List Price: £12.99
Our Price: £7.97
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Rated: Universal, suitable for all
By
Acronis Inc.
True to its image!, 2008-11-13
I couldn't ask for more with this product, it did exactly what it claims to do. On my XP laptop I managed to create a backup, replace the hard disk and then restore my disk image. My laptop was working again within about 15 minutes. Superb!
If you are doubtful after reading some of the awful reviews here, just download the trial version direct from Acronis and try it before you buy. Experiment with making backups, using the incremental features and so on. I did just that and didn't hesitate to part with my money afterwards.
Worth every penny for such peace of mind!
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List Price: £29.95
Our Price: £25.19
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By
Nero
great new features, 2008-11-06
Excellent product full of great features
This is a great product! I have used Nero 7 and Nero 8 and thought it would make sense to get Nero 9. Then I discovered that Nero Backitup 4 was included, so after installation I scheduled automatic backups in advance so each night my entire system is backed up! It's so easy and it really works! Another fab feature in the latest version restoring data from damaged discs and even files that have been deleted from USB sticks. I actually restored photos on memory cards that I thought were long gone! This feature alone paid for the product plus you can also cut irritating ads from recorded TV, although we all know that sometimes the ads are better than the programs! well worth it
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List Price: £59.99
Our Price: £34.97
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By
McAfee
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List Price: £29.99
Our Price: £28.99
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