Easy Macro Recorder is a simple program that allows you to record and create macros very easily. Sure it may not be the most advanced or intelligent macro program but the strength of this program is how simple it makes it for noobs, like me, to create macros.

Easy Macro Recorder does not have a program window per say - it works out of the system tray. When you run the program no window will open; rather the program icon will show up in your system tray:

If you right click on the system tray icon, you will see this menu:

To start recording a macro, click on "Record". A window will pop up asking you to name your macro. You can also change the location of where you will save the macro:

There are two things to note here:

1. The default location for the macro will always be the "Easy Macro Recorder" folder under Documents/My Documents. I have tried to change it to other locations, such as my desktop, but have had no success.
2. As soon as you name your macro and hit "Save" the macro will start recording so be ready for it.

Once you hit "Save" the macro will start recording all your mouse and keyboard strokes; also, a little window will appear at the bottom right of your window:

Once the macro has been started every movement and click you make with your mouse is recorded. Any keys you press with your keyboard is also recorded. So do your thing and setup your macro (i.e. just do the task that you want to automate like you would normally do it then stop recording the macro after you have finished that task).

While setting up your macro keep one thing in mind: all mouse movements/strokes are recorded at a superficial level and not an in depth level. What I mean is the programs records where your  mouse moves where you click relative to the screen. It does not record what you move to or what you click on; the macros that are recorded are not program specific. So, for example, you create a macro while you are on your desktop. This macro goes and clicks on your Firefox icon which is located in the very top right of the desktop. As long as your Firefox icon is there, whenever you run this macro while at your desktop the macro will successfully launch Firefox. However lets say you have a folder open and maximized so you are not at your desktop. If you run the macro then, the macro will still make your mouse go to the top right of your screen and click. However Firefox will not be launched because you are not at your desktop; rather whatever is located in the top right of the screen at the time, probably the "X" button, will be clicked upon. Do you get what I mean? What I am trying to say is that the program does not record what happens but rather how it happens. I know I didn't explain it very well - you just need to use it to understand what I mean. Also keep in mind that I discoverd that Easy Macro Recorder is not able to record any scrolling done using my mouse wheel.

That being said, my suggestion when recording macros is if you can use the keyboard instead of a mouse to complete a task, use the keyboard because you will get more accuracy. For example, keeping with the Firefox idea from above, instead of creating a macro that makes your mouse go to the very top right of the desktop and double click on the Firefox icon, you can create a macro that opens the start menu, types in "Firefox" in the search box and runs it (you can do this by pressing windows key on your keyboard, typing in "Firefox" and hitting "Enter" when you are recording the macro). Now whenever you run the macro, it will not matter if you are on the desktop or have some other window open: everytime you run the macro, the start menu will open, "Firefox" will be typed in, and Firefox will be run. Note that this keyboard method is actually Vista specific because XP users don't have the nice little search box that we do but I hope you get the point I am trying to get across.

You macro can be a mix or mouse and keyboard strokes. It can be as long as you want it to be. When you are done, press Ctrl+Atl+S to stop recording the macro. There will be no confirmation window or anything of the like telling you that the macro has been done recording besides the fact that the little yellow window will disappear.

After you have stopped recording your macro, you can run/playback your macro by just double clicking on/running the macro icon. Unfortunately, there is no way to assign hotkeys to run each specific macro.

That is basically how you setup macros with this program. While it may not be the most intelligent macro recording/execution method, it is very simple and easy to setup; also, the macros will generally work if you are intelligent about how you run them.

Besides being able to record macros, an interesting feature of this program is the "Macro Editor":

With this macro editor you can do two things:

1. You can edit a macro you already created.
2. You can create a macro manually w/o ever recording it first.

Honestly, editing a macro you already recorded is fairly complicated because you have to sort through all the mouse movements and key strokes:

It is only recommended if you really need to do it and you and comfortable with lots of line of "code".

However creating a macro is another story. I really like how you can create a macro manually that will launch programs one after another. Just click on "Open Program/File" and keep adding programs that you want launched. Then save your macro and run it - all the programs will be opened one after another instead of you having to otherwise manually open each other. For example, I can create a macro that will launch Firefox, then FileZilla, then Digsby, then Outlook. This way I can just run the macro to open all four of these programs instead of having to open each of them individually. You can also create macros that will launch websites or other macros for you. The advantage of doing these macros manually as opposed to recording them is that no mouse or keyboard movements are involved so there is little to no chance of error when you run these macros.

Lastly, there is the options menu:

While there are a lot of options you can mess around with, I would like to highlight one: the "Playback speed" under "Playback options". By default it is set to "Normal" therefore whenever you playback/run a macro, the tasks the macro does will be done at a normal pace, i.e. just as if you were normally doing it. However you can set the "Playback speed" to "Fast" or "Very Fast". This will make the macro playback faster then if you would do it normally thus not only automating your tasks but also speeding it up. However keep in mind that if your task involved something like loading websites, increasing the macro speed may mess up your macro because sometimes websites load times may vary - if a website loads a little bit slower then when you recorded your macro, a macro with "Playback speed" of "Fast" or "Very Fast" will mess up when running because it will try to click on a part of the website that has not loaded yet.

Okay so, overall, I give this program a thumbs up. Yes I agree that it is not the most complex or intelligent macro. Yes I agree it does not have many bells and whistles that other programs have. Yes I agree there are features the developer can add. However the strength of this program is that it makes creates macros so very easy that almost anyone can do it. Then the "Macro Editor" gives the more advanced users some candy allowing them to do a little more then just basic macro recording. But, as I said, I agree that there are some features that the developer needs to add. The main feature that I would like added is:

• The ability to assign hotkeys to run/playback specific macros.

In addition to that, the program should be able to recognize scrolling done by mouse wheels and it would be nice if the developer moved away from the recording "how is it done" to "what is done".

Magic Collage is a collage maker that allows users to create pictures collages. The collages are more mosaic than a typical photo collage in the sense that the collages are based on either a graphic or a text rather than being a random collage of images.

This is what Magic Collage's main program window looks like:

Using Magic Collage is very easy:

• Add the images you want to make your collage out of. This can be done with the "Add Picture" button (you can select multiple images to add at one time) or by clicking the down arrow next to the "Add Picture" button and selecting "Add Folder" to add all the images in a folder. The developer is not very specific as to what image formats are supported as input only caring to state "Picture File" when browsing for images. As per my tests, JPG, PNG, and GIF are supported; other formats may also be supported.
• Configuring the collage settings. This can be done from the "Shape & Option" and "Appearance" menus located at the right of the program window:

A handful of key things to note when configuring collage settings:

• You can create your collage based on a graphic or based on text. If you decide to base it on a graphic, you can select from 25 graphics that come with Magic Collage, import your own...

...or even draw your own:

You may also edit the graphics that come with Magic Collage if you feel the need to customize them.

If you decide to base it on text, you can type in the text you want and select the font type.

• Under "Option" there is a setting to control how many images will appear in the collage. This number is at 300 by default, and can range from 2-1,500. If the number of images you loaded into Magic Collage is less than the "Pictures" number under "Options", then your images will be repeated as needed. If the number of images you loaded into Magic Collage is lower than the "Pictures" number under "Options", then not all pictures will be used in the collage.
• Under "Picture Property" you can control the size if each individual image. By default it is set to 150 px but can be as low as 2 px and as high as 500 px.
• You can set the background of the collage to be transparent, a solid color (it is white by default), or use an image for the background.
• As you change the settings of your collage, you can view how it looks via the "live preview" feature:

• When all is ready, simply hit the "Output" button had save your collage. You can save as JPG or PNG.

Truly the only major problem with Magic Collage is that it is extremely memory inefficient. Indeed, at one point Magic Collage was using 1.4 GB of RAM after I loaded about 2000 images into Magic Collage. Of course, 2000 images is a bit of an extreme I would say, so that much RAM usage is not typical. However, even 200 images causes Magic Collage to use around 200 MB of RAM. Similarly, you may run into errors like the following:

The first error means that you are trying to load too many images into Magic Collage. I was able to max out at about 2020 images. The second error means that you need to either lower the amount of images in the collage ("Options" -> "Pictures")  or lower the size of each individual image ("Appearance" -> "Picture Size"). For the second error, I have noticed that the more images you have loaded into Magic Collage, the lower you have to set your "Pictures" and "Picture Size" values; so you may be able to keep with the same amount of images and the same picture size if you load less images into Magic Collage.

This review was conducted on a laptop running Windows 7 Professional 32-bit. The specs of the laptop are as follows: 3GB of RAM, a Radeon HD 2600 512MB graphics card, and an Intel T8300 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor.

Memory Washer, as the name implies, is a memory optimization program that claims to be able to "increase the amount of available memory your computer has by up to 95%". While 95% is a bit of a stretch of the truth, Memory Washer does perform extremely well in terms of freeing up memory.

This is what Memory Washer's main program window looks like:

The interface of the program is fairly aesthetically pleasing with a nice green colored theme going on. The program itself is also very easy to use; the only real problem in terms of interface is the fact that the main program window is not resizable. So, if you have a small resolution desktop, you won't particularly appreciate Memory Washer taking up most of your real estate and you being unable to resize it.

As you can see in the above screenshot, on the main program window, under "Memory Optimizer" section (the section you see in the above screenshot and the window that appears by default every time you run the program), there are a handful of meters and graphs shown to you. The graphs show RAM and CPU usage, while there are meters showing RAM usage, page file usage, and a "system" meter. Underneath the meters at the bottom of the program window is what we are really interested in - the controls for running the memory optimization feature:

The meter controls how much memory Memory Washer will try to free for you; by default Memory Washer will be set to a value (I am not particularly sure how this value is determined) but you can always increase or decrease this. Keep in mind that the more memory you try to free the longer the memory optimization process will take. When you are ready to run the memory optimization process, hit the "Clean Now" button and Memory Washer will attempt to free up some RAM for you. There is no "confirmation" message displayed after the optimization occurs, but the optimization doesn't take very long (took about 15-20 seconds to run when I tried to free the maximum amount of RAM possible). What you should note, though, is how the RAM freeing process occurs.

CleanMem, a freeware memory cleaning program, cleans your memory by only turning on when it is needed (it is not always running), and it calls a Windows API to free RAM, thus using little to no computer resources itself. Memory Washer, however, uses some other method (not specified by the developer but it looks like a dump of your RAM into the page file). This other method involves - literally - using up all/most of your computer resources while the optimization occurs (the actual amount of computer resources usage depends on the optimization mode being used - but expect near 100% RAM usage and 50%+ CPU). The reason I bring this up is because if you are using your computer and you run Memory Washer (or if it automatically runs; more on the automatic features later), there are high chances that your computer will lock up or freeze. The lock up or freeze may not necessarily require you to do a hard reboot, but your computer will be unusable while the optimization occurs. So it is best to run Memory Washer optimization while you are not actively doing anything else; the only problem is if you are not actively doing anything else, what is the point of cleaning your memory?

Now while Memory Washer does use an undesirable method of cleaning memory, the amount of memory it cleans is truly impressive. Memory Washer was able to reduce my RAM usage from 75% to 61% - a whopping 14% reduction (I left the amount to try to free at its default value of 1023 MB)! Since I have 3 GB of RAM total, 14% is about 420 MB. CleanMem, under similar conditions, was only able to free up 5%. (Keep in mind that as with all memory optimizers, the decrease in RAM usage is only a temporary decrease. It will go right back up when you start using open-but-idle programs. This temporariness, however, is not any specific program's fault. It is just how it is; no program can permanently decrease the RAM usage of other programs without modifying the actual code of the other program.) A 14% reduction, especially when a rival software which is credited as being one of the best of its kind can only do 5%, is truly impressive. I dare say Memory Washer earned a small place in my heart for that.

As I referred to above, Memory Washer has the ability to automatically run the memory optimization process if you desire it to do so. You can configure it via "Program Options":

As you can see in the screenshot, you can set Memory Washer to automatically run the memory cleaning process every X minutes and/or when only X MB of RAM is free. Other options you can configure via "Program Options" include the ability to set Memory Washer to automatically run at Windows boot, and to configure a hotkey which you can use to trigger the memory optimization process.

Other features of Memory Washer are:

• Process Manager

• Startup Manager

Note that the "Startup Manager" is very simple in the sense that it can only enable/disable and delete startup entries.

• System Info

• System Restore - "System Restore" is just a shortcut to Windows System Restore.

The last thing I want to mention about Memory Washer is that it is buggy. Memory Washer tells me I only have 2 GB of RAM in my computer while I actually have 3 GB; in fact it doesn't even recognize any RAM usage unless I am using more than 1 GB of RAM. It is also reading the page file size incorrectly. I tested Memory Washer in Windows XP also (I ran it in as a VM not on a different computer) and Memory Washer detected the 1 GB of RAM for Windows XP just fine. So, this bug may be a Windows 7 only bug, or it may be that Memory Washer can't detect more than 2 GB of RAM, or it may be a entirely different reason - I don't know.

This review was conducted on a laptop running Windows 7 Professional 32-bit. The specs of the laptop are as follows: 3GB of RAM, a Radeon HD 2600 512MB graphics card, and an Intel T8300 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor.

Odin Frame Photo Creator is a software that allows users to edit images by adding frames, "funny faces", and effects to the. Collages can then be created with multiple images, or individual images can be exported separately.

This is what OFPC (Odin Frame Photo Creator) looks like:

In terms of looks, the interface does not look that bad at all. On the other hand, when using OFPC, the interface just feels "weak", so to speak. The feeling is hard to describe; you have to actually use the software to understand what I mean. However, do take note it is really just a "feeling" - the interface does not hinder usage of the program at all. In fact, OFPC is very easy to use.

To get started with OFPC, you need to load the images you want to edit. OFPC supports all of these image formats:

Take note that when you browse your computer for images, OFPC is set to look for bitmap images only by default. You need to click on the "Files type" drop down menu at the bottom of the browse window and select other image formats if you desire images other than BMP.

Once you have an image loaded, it appears in the "preview" box in the top left. By default a frame is shown on the image, but you have the ability to change the frame to any frame you like:

Simply clicking on a frame will change it. As per my count, there are 260 frames for you to select from. If you don't like any of the frames that come supplied with OFPC, you can use your own frame ("Operation" -> "Select Frame"). You also have the option of changing the transparency of the frame; however I have noticed that the change in transparency is not reflected in the "preview" box - it only shows when you add the image to the collage. Once you like the frame that is on your image, you need to click on the round green button to add it to the collage:

If indeed you do plan on creating a collage, you need to load every image you want in the collage and repeat the same procedure to add frames to them all and add them to the collage. If you don't plan on creating a collage, you don't need to add any more images; you can go straight to the editing and saving of the image.

After you have added images to the collage - regardless of if you plan on creating a collage or not - you can right click on them to edit the images and/or to save/print the images individually as opposed to as a collage:

• Editing the image involves the ability to add a bunch of effects, and "funny faces":

You can add as many effects as you want, and you can add as many "funny faces" as you want. (There are a total of 20 funny faces to chose from as per my count, and you can click + drag the faces around after you add them.)

• Saving/printing the images is fairly straightforward; you select if you want with or without frame, and save/print it:

You can save your image as these image formats:

If you were creating a collage the ability to add a background image would be relevant, but since this is for individual images, there is no "background" for you to add an image in.

Take note that by default all images are resized to 361x278. If your original input image was larger than this size, it is made smaller. If your original input image was smaller than this size, it is made larger. If your original input image does not has the same aspect ratio as 361x278, you may notice some stretching. You are, of course, given the option to set the width and height but if you plan on making the width and height bigger than 361x278, expect a huge loss in output image quality because that is exactly what will happen.

After you have edited your images, assuming you are looking to create a collage instead of just exporting individual images, you can save or print your whole collage via "Operation" -> "Save or print":

(If saving the collage, you can save the collage in the same formats as you can save individual images.)

Now, since you are saving/printing a collage, you can make use of the feature which allows you to add a background image to the collage (see bottom of the window). As per my count, there are 72 background images for you to select from.

Similar to saving individual images, the collage is set to 361x278 by default. You can, of course, change this size but remember if you plan on making it bigger, the image quality will decrease the larger you make it.

Other things to note about Odin Frame Photo Creator:

• OFPC has a feature that allows you to take pictures from your webcam (if you have one) and import them into OFPC directly. Simply click on "Camera mode" to use this feature; hit the "Shot delay" button to take an image. If you have the "shot delayer" feature on, the photo will be taken X seconds after you hit the "Shot delay" button (by default it is set to 0 seconds so the photo will be taken instantly). You can change the delay time from under "Setting".
• OFPC gives you the ability to select from multiple different collage styles, if desired. You can change the collage style via "Assemble photo":

• When you have multiple photos added to the collage, you can click + drag them to move them around to a different box/position.

Now, aside from the cons I already mentioned, I would like to shed light on the fact that OFPC is not bug free; it has quite a few bugs:

• The print feature does not work. Whether trying to print a collage or an individual image, I get an error every time I try to print:

• There are features in OFPC under "Setting" which, I presume, are intended to allow you to permanently import frames, photos, "funny faces", and backgrounds...

...so that the next time you open OFPC you will be able to select whatever you imported from its respective menu (i.e. you import a frame, and the next time you run OFPC you can select that frame from the frame tab). The problem this these features don't work. Try as I must I was unable to perma-import anything.

• When using "Camera mode", the frames appear on the "preview" box like normal, but when you actually take a photo and add it to the collage, the photo is without frame. Try as I must but I could not add a frame to the images saved directly from my webcam.

This review was conducted on a laptop running Windows 7 Professional 32-bit. The specs of the laptop are as follows: 3GB of RAM, a Radeon HD 2600 512MB graphics card, and an Intel T8300 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor.

Have you ever wondered why most (all?) your digital cameras use JPG/JPEG format exclusively for images? For one reason alone: EXIF data. EXIF stands for "exchangeable image file format"; EXIF are basically a bunch of metadata tags attached to your image which stores information such as date and time image was created/taken, the camera that was used, image resolution, contrast, camera shutter speed, and much, much more. JPG/JPEG is the only one of the four common image formats that supports EXIF. Usually most of this metadata is automatically added when an image is taken from a digital camera, but users can also manually add this data (right click on a JPG/JPEG image, go to properties and add whatever data you see fit). Also, keep in mind all JPG/JPEG images can have EXIF metadata - not just ones created by digital cameras.

That being said, ExifCleaner is a program that does exactly what its name suggests: it cleans EXIF metadata of JPG/JPEG images. This is what the main program window looks like:

Using ExifCleaner is very easy. You load the images you want to clean the EXIF of (you can use the "Add Image(s)..." button or drag + drop; ExifCleaner supports batch processing so you can add as many images as you want at a time), specific what EXIF data you want to clear (via "Clean Setup...") and clean the EXIF data. If you have already specified the EXIF data you want to clean, you can use "Quick Clean" which uses the most recent EXIF cleaning settings you set. When the EXIF data is cleaned, the "Exif State" for the images will change from "Present" to "Cleaned Successfully". ExifCleaner works very quickly so you shouldn't be waiting long for the EXIF data of your images to be cleaned.

Under "Clean Setup..." you have the ability to do two things:

• Set what EXIF tags will be cleaned:

As you can see in the screenshot, you can set ExifCleaner to clean all EXIF data, clean only specific tags, or clean all EXIF data except specific tags.

• Set how the output files will be named and where they will be outputted to:

If you opt to rename the output files, the original file names will be used for the output files, but a "_cleaned" will be added to the end.

Once you have set the settings how you want them, clicking "Clean" will clean the EXIF data of the all the files you have loaded. Keep in mind that every time you use "Quick Clean" the same settings will be applied.

When you load images in ExifCleaner, you are given the ability to preview them and to see their current EXIF metadata:

The one annoying thing about ExifCleaner I found is that the metadata preview for images is crunched together; there is not enough space given to properly view the metadata. One has to manually make the area larger if you want to view the metadata preview. This isn't be so annoying if you had to just manually enlarge the area once. However, every time you close/reopen ExifCleaner, the area goes back to its default size so you have to enlarge it manually every time. This is very annoying!

Another thing that I found to be annoying, but bearable, is that there is no option to automatically open output folder after cleaning has taken place. I say this is bearable because it really isn't that big of a deal if you have to manually open the folder where your output images are (in my opinion of course).

Other aspects where ExifCleaner can improve are:

• Fix the right-click context menu entry. Try as I must (yes I even ran it as Administrator) but I could not get the right-click context menu entry to appear. This may be a Windows 7 only problem, I don't know.
• While it is not necessary, considering ExifCleaner is a EXIF cleaner, it would be a very nice "plus" if the developer added in the ability to edit/batch edit EXIF data in addition to being able to clean it.

This review was conducted on a laptop running Windows 7 Professional 32-bit. The specs of the laptop are as follows: 3GB of RAM, a Radeon HD 2600 512MB graphics card, and an Intel T8300 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor.

I have noticed there is a bit of confusion out there when it comes to DVDs. People want to burn movie DVDs which they can play on their DVD player but often mix up the action of burning a movie DVD and authoring a movie DVD. This confusion cannot solely be blamed on consumers because often many programs have the ability to burn DVDs but not the ability to author them. Both burning and authoring a DVD accomplish the same goal of creating a movie DVD which is watchable on an average household DVD player. The difference lies in the actual process of creating that movie DVD.

When you burn a movie DVD you are simply putting DVD compliant videos (i.e. .VOB) onto a DVD; if you burn non-DVD compliant videos onto the DVD, like AVI or MP4, the DVD just acts like a VCD instead of a proper DVD. When you author a movie DVD you take non-DVD compliant videos (i.e. AVI, WMV, MP4, etc.), convert them to DVD compliant format (i.e. .VOB), and burn them onto a DVD. In the process of authoring a DVD you may also be able to create custom DVD menus depending on which software you use.

Aimersoft Video to DVD Converter is a (very simple) DVD authoring program.

This is what Aimersoft Video to DVD Converter looks like:

Using AVtDC (Aimersoft Video to DVD Converter) is very easy. To get started, you simply add the videos you want to create DVD out of by either hitting the "Add Video" or "Add Folder" buttons (you cannot drag + drop videos into AVtDC). The difference between "Add Video" and "Add Folder" is with "Add Video" only the videos you specifically select will be added (you may select more than one video at a time) and with "Add Folder" all the videos in the folder you select will be added.

These are all the input video formats supported:

After you have added your videos, you have the ability to moving them up or down in terms of the order they will be on the DVD and/or trimming each video. The "Move up" and "Move down" buttons will accomplish the order shuffling; clicking on the scissors button located at the right of the program window...

...will bring up the video trim window:

Trimming videos is simple; just move the markers to the area that you want to include in the DVD:

Once done with the trimming, hit "OK" to go back to the main menu. If you add multiple videos to burn to DVD, you can trim each video individually.

After you have added all the videos you want to add, properly ordered them, and (optionally) trimmed them, simply hit the "Start" button to start creating your DVD. However before the actual creation of the DVD starts, you will need to select some final options:

The final options you have to deal with are selecting what type of DVD menu you want (thumbnail, list, or none) to be created, what audio you want playing at the menu (you can clear it so no audio at all; there is audio set to play by default), and if you want to burn your DVD directly onto a DVD disc or would rather create an ISO of it (which you can burn at a latter date with some DVD burning software).

When all is set and done, click "OK" to start the DVD creation process:

Take note you have the ability to automatically shut down your computer after the DVD creation process has finished. This is handy because creating DVDs can, by nature, be a very long process.

How long it takes to create/burn your DVD will vary highly depending on how many videos you are burning, what format and size they are, and the speed of your DVD burner. However, generally speaking, Aimersoft Video to DVD Converter works at a good pace (it beat DVD Flick by about 30 seconds in creating a test 5 minute long DVD out of 2 short videos; took a total of 2 minutes 23 seconds to create that short DVD).

Resource usage while creating DVD is not all too bad either (resource usage will vary as always but on average): AVtDC was using ~65% CPU and ~128 MB RAM while creating a DVD.

The quality of the DVD that was created was not all too bad; it was definitely watchable and could be considered "DVD quality". However, it may just be my DVD Flick fanboy bias creeping in, but I noticed DVD Flick did have slightly better quality than AVtDC. However, the quality difference (if there is one and I am not just seeing things) is not something all that big; if someone is not specifically looking for it, they probably won't even notice.

Last but not least, here is the "Options" menu of AVtDC:

For the most part, you really shouldn't have to change anything here, but just take note of what you can change. (During installation you should have been prompted to set your TV Standard.)

Overall, Aimersoft Video to DVD Converter creates DVDs successfully, and it is very easy to use. Indeed it is not a bad software at all; yet I give it a thumbs down. The reason I give it a thumbs down is because it is way too simple. Outside of customizing order of input videos, ability to trim, selection aspect ratio, DVD standard, and the type of DVD menu to create, Aimersoft Video to DVD Converter does not offer any settings control to the user. Now if AVtDC was a freeware/free software, I would say "OK, it is free, it does create DVDs just fine; you pay for what you get." However AVtDC is a commercial software. I deplore the lack of

• Ability to control how and when chapters/titles are created;
• Add subtitles;
• Add custom audio to videos;
• Manually configure the DVD menu;
• Control how the DVD loops.

Other niceties like doing basic video edits, creating DVD folder, and ability to customize audio/video bitrate (most people won't need this but still it would be nice) would be appreciated if added, but do not contribute to my thumbs down rating.

This review was conducted on a laptop running Windows 7 Professional 32-bit. The specs of the laptop are as follows: 3GB of RAM, a Radeon HD 2600 512MB graphics card, and an Intel T8300 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor.

Although the name "SoftChronizer" may lead you to believe it is some sort of exotic program, SoftChronizer in fact is just a simple duplicate file finder. Well, to call it "simple" would be a lie because SoftChronizer does have one or two interesting and pesudo-unique features, but my point is that SoftChronizer is nothing but a duplicate file finder.

Before I start reviewing SoftChronizer, let me state that, by definition, duplicate file finders are flawed. You see the purpose of a duplicate file finder, obviously, is to find duplicate files on a computer so you, the user, can delete unnecessary files. Finding duplicate files isn't really that hard or complex so most duplicate file finders find all or most duplicate files; "performance" in the sense of how many duplicate files are found, is not the issue. The issue is that computers, by design, will have duplicate files. There are files that are duplicated in different locations on your computer by Windows itself (for some reason or another); different programs can often use the same libraries, codecs, files etc. in the program and thus each program installation folder would have a copy of said library, codec, or file (this especially occurs with open source programs where code is often shared). Better yet, often times files are duplicated for backup purposes. Yes duplicate file finders will find duplicate files; however, many of the files found will be "false positives" in the sense that they are not "junk" but rather they have been duplicated for a specific reason (in that regard duplicate file finders can also be dangerous if you don't know what you are doing). So, you can spend your time sifting throw the search results in a duplicate file finder to eliminate the "false positives" and hope to recover 5 MB of hard drive space by deleting all that 1 real duplicate junk file found, or you can spend your time cleaning your hard drive the proper way such as uninstalling programs or following Locutus' advice.

That being said, this is what the main program window of SoftChronizer looks like:

First off, the interface of SoftChronizer can do a makeover. While the interface does not deter in the usability of the program (SoftChronizer is fairly straightforward and easy to use), the interface is just ugly; it makes SoftChronizer look like it was created in the 90s although SoftChronizer was created last year (I think).

So, as I just mentioned, using SoftChronizer is very easy. You simply select what type of files you want to search duplicates for from the "Duplicates" menu, set the comparison criteria ("Binary", "By File Size", "By Filename"), set the location you want to search ("Root Directory") and hit "Search". (The searching is actually fairly quick, but more on that later.) After the search has finished, the results are displayed to you...

...and you have to manually select move, delete, or send to recycle bin for any files that you want via the drop down menu available under "Status" (each file can be set to be dealt with differently and if you don't want to move/delete/send to recycle for a file, just leave the "status" to -). Once you have selected the files you want to move/delete/send to recycle bin, you hit the "Delete" button, confirm that you really want to do it (hit "All")...

...and the tasks are done for you. Take note that if you selected "move", all files will be moved to the folder that is selected (you may change it via the green arrow).

One cool, and useful, aspect of SoftChronizer is that it displayed "extra" information on MP3 and image files giving the user more information to work with when determining if found-files are actually junk or not:

By default, SoftChronizer is set to allow users to search their computers for duplicate PDFs, MP3s, Pictures, or for all files (see categories under the "Duplicates" menu in the first screenshot above). Users are allowed to, however, create their own "Duplicates" file-type search category via "Options" -> "File Types":

Any category you add from this options window (click on the drop down menu to find other categories or to create your own) will be displayed under "Duplicates" in the main program window and you can easily use it to search for those specific duplicate file types. You can add as many categories you want and you can select as many of the 330 supported file types to include in each category as you want.

In regards to the comparison criteria:

• Binary (Byte-by-Byte) - this feature is optional to use. What it does is it compares files, literally, byte by byte and only displays files that are 100% identical file byte by file bye. Of course a byte by byte comparison can take a very long time, so you enable this feature, be willing to spend some time waiting for the scan to finish when compared to running a scan without binary. Take note that binary comparison is "secondary" in the sense that the other criteria (file size and file name) must be filled before files are compared byte by byte.
• By File Size - the difference between "same size" and "Fuzzy Logic" is that "same size" looks for the exact same size between files while "Fuzzy Logic" allows some elbow room by allowing the user to define certain parameters of how similar the file sizes must be (i.e. the file sizes need not be exactly the same) in order for the files to be declared duplicate. You can control the Fuzzy Logic parameters via "Options" -> "File Name" -> "Fuzzy Logic":

• By Filename - the differences between "same name" and "Fuzzy Logic" is the same for filename as it is for file size. "Same name" looks for the exact same name between files while "Fuzzy Logic" allows for some elbow room based on specific parameters. You can control the Fuzzy Logic parameters via "Options" -> "File Size" -> "Fuzzy Logic":

Here are the other "Options" you can change for SoftChronizer:

The two most notable settings I want to highlight here are "View full subfolders names in list" setting and the "Additional directories to be searched" setting. The "View full subfolders names in list" setting, should, in my opinion, actually be turned on by default because this feature makes it so the full path of the files found is displayed in the search results as opposed to just showing the lowest folder. The "Additional directories to be searched" makes it so you can search more than one location at a time; if you have any directories (you can select partitions, folders, etc.) set here, these directories and the directory set under "Root Directory" from the main program window will be searched.

In terms of performance, SoftChronizer, like most other duplicate file finder, finds many duplicate files (however keep in mind what I stated at the start of the review about duplicate file finders have inherent "false positives) and the scans are done fairly quickly (took 34 seconds to do a non-binary file size and file name search with "same name" and "same size" while it took just under 7 minutes to do a binary search with same settings; both were done on a ~5.2 GB partition). The only real problem is that SoftChronizer has a bug that I encountered. Every time I try to do a full scan looking for all file types on my C:/ partition, I get an error...

...and am forced to close/reopen SoftChronizer (it doesn't "freeze" so I can just X out the program); the scan never finishes. Other scans, just as look for PDFs, work just fine on my C:/ partition; just the scan for all file types and pictures bring up that error leading me to believe SoftChronizer is having a problem scanning some picture files.

Other points of improvements for SoftChronizer are:

• Currently, SoftChronizer only has three criteria for comparing files (name, size, or "byte-by-byte"). I would like to see other criteria added such as date file created, date file modified, and date file accessed.
• After a scan has finished and the scan results are displayed, if a user clicks on another selection under "Duplicates", the scan results (unless one or more files' statuses have been changed) are lost and the user must re-perform the scan - there is no "back" or such feature that allows the user to regain access to the scan that was just conducted if this happens.
• When sifting through the files listed in the scan results, users can change the status of files depending on what they want to do with them. My problem is that users can only change the status of one file at a time. It is very probably that sometimes users may want to delete many files and changes to change the status of each one to "delete" is very annoying. I would like to see a feature where users can change the status of multiple files at once.

This review was conducted on a laptop running Windows 7 Professional 32-bit. The specs of the laptop are as follows: 3GB of RAM, a Radeon HD 2600 512MB graphics card, and an Intel T8300 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor.

I last reviewed MultiStage Recovery on dotTech back in October of last year (as v4). Today's GOTD is v4.1. The changes as per the developer are "multi-threading support for additional scan types, real-time preview, some additional improvements and bug fixes." Please read my full review on MultiStage Recovery (v4) to get more detailed information about the software. For convenience's sake, I will post free alternatives and final verdict here also.

This review was conducted on a laptop running Windows 7 Professional 32-bit. The specs of the laptop are as follows: 3GB of RAM, a Radeon HD 2600 512MB graphics card, and an Intel T8300 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor.

KeyExtender is a program that allows users to remap their keyboard keys. It works off a standard keyboard (104 keys I believe if the Windows keys are counted), but also adds in the ability to remap multimedia keys. Aside from remapping single keys to other single keys, KeyExtender also allows users to remap keys to do other things also, such as insert text, clean text, simulate a keypress sequence, and to make one key do the work of a full shortcut.

This is what the main program window looks like:

Using KeyExtender is very straightforward and easy. To remap a single key to another single key, simply select the key you want to remap from the "Set" drop down menu, select the key you want to remap to from the "To" drop down menu, and hit the "Change" button. Do this for as many keys as you want to remap; when ready just hit the "Activate" button which will minimize KeyExtender to your system tray and tell it to start working. When you want to remove/reset a key remape, "Reset Key" will delete the remap of a specific key, while "Reset All" will do all the keys.

These are all the keys you can select from the "Set" drop down menu:

These are all the keys you can select from the "To" drop down menu":

(NOTE: The "..." button simply provides a different way to select keys for the "To" menu.)

As you can see from the above screenshot, in addition to being able to select standard and multimedia keys, KeyExtender also allows users to remap keys to perform specific actions:

• DisableKey - this, obviously, disables the key you selected in "Set".
• TypeText - this feature allows users to predefine specific text...

...and that text is inserted whenever the user presses the key selected in "Set".

• CleanText - this feature makes it so when the key selected in "Set" is pressed, all the text is deleted that you have typed.
• KeyCombination - this feature allows users to set the key selected in "Set" to perform the function of a keyboard shortcut:

• KeySequence - this feature makes it so when the key selected in "Set" is pressed, a sequence of user defined keypresses are simulated:

The main difference between "KeyCombination" and "KeySequence" is that KeyCombination makes it so a combination of keys is simulated at the same time. On the other hand, KeySequence makes it so keys are simulated one after another - not at the same time. All the keys that can be selected for the "Set" drop menu can be selected for KeySequence.

Other things to note about KeyExtender:

• When you click on the "Set" or "To" menus, you may type a key on your keyboard to quickly find it as opposed to having to scroll through the whole menu.
• KeyExtender remaps keys are the program level. In other words, you must have KeyExtender running at all times in order for the remappings to work properly.
  • The program manual states that KeyExtender can remap keys to the registry as well as at the program level. The advantage of remapping to the registry, of course, is that KeyExtender does not need to be running for the remaps to work. The only problem is I can't seem to find how to get the registry level remaps to work - there is no feature in KeyExtender that does this. Update: I e-mailed the developer about it and it seems that KeyExtender does not have this feature. I am not particularly sure why the manual says it does.
• Since KeyExtender needs to be running at all times, users are given the ability to suspend/activate KeyExtender at will. This can be done via the system tray icon (right click and select suspend or activate as necessary), or using hotkeys:

• Users have the ability to lock their keyboards with KeyExtender. This can be done via the system tray icon (right click -> "Lock Keyboard"). When you want to unlock, simply repeat the procedure.
• Users have the ability to save and load KeyExtender settings/configurations at will. This can be done via the system tray icon (right click -> "Settings File" -> "Load Settings File" or "Save Settings As").

Last but not least, let me mention the fact that Windows 7 (and possibly Windows Vista) users either need to run KeyExtender in compatibility mode, or restart their computer after installation to make KeyExtender work. Why the developer has not officially started to supported Windows 7/Windows Vista yet - considering Vista has been out for years and Windows 7 has been out for almost half a year - I am not particularly sure.

This review was conducted on a laptop running Windows 7 Professional and Windows XP Professional 32-bit. The specs of the laptop are as follows: 3GB of RAM, a Radeon HD 2600 512MB graphics card, and an Intel T8300 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor.

As the name may suggest, Zilla PDF to TXT Converter is a software that does PDF to text conversions. For those that have heard or used PDFZilla before, Zilla PDF to TXT Converter is basically the PDF to text converting part of PDFZilla.

This is what Zilla PDF to TXT Converter's main program window looks like:

Using Zilla PDF to TXT Converter is very easy. You simply add the PDFs you want to convert (you may drag + drop, use the "+" button to select single PDFs, or use the folder "+" button to add all the PDFs in one folder; you can add as many PDFs are you want because batch processing is supported), change any output settings that you wish...

NOTE: You can convert the whole PDFs, or select a specific portion of the PDFs to convert.

NOTE2: If you are converting encrypted PDFs (owner or user), you need to enter the password.

...set the output folder, and hit "Start Converting Now". Conversions are done pretty must instantly so you shouldn't be waiting long. A sound is supposed to play - if you have "sound reminder" ("Setting" -> "Settings") set to "on" which it is by default - when the conversions have finished but this feature doesn't seem to work.

In terms of conversion, the conversion accuracy is good for the most part. (However, keep in mind they are PDF to text conversions, so don't except your output text file to look like the input PDF file). There are only two problems I have noticed with the conversion accuracy:

• The spacing between paragraphs/lines does not carry over into the output text file. For example, if two sentences have 4 lines of empty space between them in the PDF file, the output text file will only have 1 line.
• For some weird reason, any PDFs that were created from text files are not properly converted to text files. I don't know why.

That being said, I really dislike how the developer of Zilla PDF to TXT Converter did not follow many program conventions:

• During installation, Zilla PDF to TXT Converter tries to install directly into the C:/ partition instead of C:/Program Files. You can, of course, change this.
• By default, the output folder is set to C:/Output/. There is no reason why Zilla PDF to TXT Converter should be outputting there. Like most other programs, it should be outputting either into a subfolder its own Program Files folder or into a subfolder in My Documents. The good thing is that once you change the output folder, it stays changed until you change it again.
• Usually when a user clicks on a drop down menu from the menu bar at the top of a program, you can float your mouse cursor to other drop menu menus in the menu bar and the menus will appear. With Zilla PDF to TXT Converter, however, you need to click on each drop down menu to make it appear - you can't just float your mouse cursor over.

Lastly, I would like to see one feature added into Zilla PDF to TXT Converter. As it stands, if you add an encrypted PDF to convert into Zilla PDF to TXT Converter, you are not given any sort of heads up that you need to enter a password. I would really like to see a feature that alerts the user that a password needs to be entered because otherwise the user may not know/remember and this will mess up the conversions (any encrypted PDF that is converted without password will create no output file).

This review was conducted on a laptop running Windows 7 Professional 32-bit. The specs of the laptop are as follows: 3GB of RAM, a Radeon HD 2600 512MB graphics card, and an Intel T8300 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor.

Paragon System Backup is a snapshot backup software. What exactly is a snapshot backup software? Think of a snapshot backup software as a mesh between Windows System Restore and your favorite image backup software, lets just say Acronis True Image for example purposes. Therefore, a snapshot backup software is, more or less, a software that takes regular "snapshots" (image backups) of your computer, and allows you to restore your computer to any snapshot, similar to how you restore your computer to a "restore point" with Windows System Restore.

That being said, that one paragraph pretty much sums up the core of what Paragon System Backup is; it is an easy-to-use snapshot software designed to do its work with need of minimal input from the user - aside from initial setup. This is what Paragon System Backup looks like:

As you can see, that actually is the window you will be prompted with the first time you run Paragon System Backup because you will not have created an initial snapshot. (Hint, the big red message means you should create a snapshot.) To create an initial snapshot, simply click on "Select a location to store your computer backups", and follow the on screen instructions. In their effort to make Paragon System Backup as easy to use as possible, Paragon added in a feature that automatically detects the best location to store your snapshots. You can, of course, decline Paragon System Backup's recommendation and select your own backup location. Since you can backup to your local hard drive, or to external hard drives, be sure to have your external hard drives plugged in before you start the snapshot process if that is where you want to store your snapshots. Take note that you will not be allowed to select specific partitions to take a snapshot of - your whole hard drive will be backed up. I don't have multiple hard drives so I am not sure what happens if you have multiple hard drives.

The initial snapshot can, and probably will, take a very long time. It took me a whopping 72 minutes and 45 seconds to create an initial snapshot of my 160 GB hard drive (~120 GB filled; the snapshot ended up being ~85 GB). Of course, I was backing up to an external hard drive via USB so it took me a little bit longer than if I were to backup to an internal hard drive, but still, 72 minutes is a really long time. My hope is subsequent snapshots don't take as long (I am unable to test that theory just yet because of the automatic snapshotting schedule restrictions). However, even if snapshots take just as long, I am not particularly worried because for real-life purposes, a snapshot backup program doesn't really need to be fast.

During the backup, Paragon System Backup was not really using very much computer resources at all (~15% CPU, ~10 MB RAM) but that does not mean my computer was running as smoothly as it normally does either. I was able to use my computer while the back up was occurring, but there was notable lag in opening windows, changing tabs, visiting websites, etc. As a general rule, I would say surfing the internet and instant messaging are just about the only activities one wants to do while the initial backup is occurring, otherwise you may face significant lag is doing something like watching a movie. This actually is probably one of the worst parts of Paragon System Backup because by nature snapshots will be automatically taken regularly. A lag-impact on a user's computer while a snapshot is being taken is never a good thing, regardless of if it is major or minor.

After the initial backup finishes, the main program window of Paragon changes, like so:

As you can see, you are given the option to manually create snapshots whenever you want, but the main purposes of Paragon System Backup is for automatic snapshots to occur with minimal interaction from the user. So in that regard, I highly recommend that you leave automatic snapshots on. You should have select how often and how many snapshots you want to keep during the initial snapshot-setup process, so there isn't much to worry about, but if you feel the need to ever change the settings (including turn off automatic snapshots), simply click on "Settings" and change the settings:

Clicking on "every week" will allow you to turn off automatic snapshots, or change the interval to every day or month. Additionally, clicking on "no more than four recent snapshots" allows you to set the number of snapshots kept to 1, 2, or 3 if you don't want 4. The odd thing is, the Help file states you can have up to 5 snapshots but apparently you can only have 4. I do wish Paragon made the scheduling a bit more versatile; in other words I would like to see the user having the ability to define when automatic snapshots will occur instead of just being given the option of per day, per week, or per month.

On the similar note, via "Settings" you can change the location of your automatic snapshot storage and create a bootable CD/DVD:

Now, as already mentioned, after the initial setup, you really don't need to touch Paragon System Backup until you need to do a restore of a snapshot because it does everything behind the seasons. When you do need to do a restore, though, you can do it from within the program...

...or via bootable media. You can restore the whole snapshot or do selective restore.

The mention of bootable media brings me to an aspect of Paragon System Backup that impressed me the most. Aside from the normal bootable recovery CD/DVD and bootable recovery USB/flash drive, Paragon System Backup comes with a feature that automatically puts a bootable recovery "environment" on your hard drive allowing you to restore snapshots from outside Windows (press the F6 key during reboot) and not requiring you to create bootable media. This bootable recovery environment is only created though if you set your local hard drive as the location for snapshots.

I find this bootable recovery environment to be pure genius on Paragon's part (assuming they came up with it; I really don't know if they copied from someone else). Forget the fact that it allows you to easily restore snapshots if you can't boot into Windows. I like it for its anti-human-stupidity aspect. You see no matter how many times you tell people to create bootable media because it will come in handy later on when restoring your backups, there will always be people that just won't do it. Then a day will come around when their Windows gets messed up and they can no longer login. At that point they scramble around trying to fix things, contacting support, yelling at people, etc. when all that could have been avoided if they simply created bootable media and used it to restore their snapshot. This bootable recovery environment takes away the human choice of bootable media, so to speak, so helps mitigate the human-stupidity effect on restoring backups. Of course, technology trumps us all so if your hard drive crashes and burns, even the bootable recovery environment can't help you =P (hope you made redundant, external/off site backups then).

Other things to note about Paragon System Backup:

• Although for automatic backups you can't select specific partitions to backup, if you do manual snapshots you can.
• Although for automatic backups you can't place snapshots in network shares, if you do manual snapshots you can.
• Paragon tried to make Paragon System Backup as easy to use as possible (as I have already mentioned many times). In this process, they deferred many, many options/settings that one would expect in a backup software. By "deferred" I mean users have to dig a little to access somewhat-secret parts of Paragon System Backup that can do a bit more "behind the scenes":

(Open Start Menu and find "Paragon System Backup 2010" - the "Advanced" folder will be in there.)

Special things to note

• The "Backup Wizard" does the same thing as a image backup software.
• You can use the "Recovery Media Builder" to create a bootable recovery USB/flash drive.

• The download size of Paragon System Backup is 88 MB which is huge. Most Paragon's software a huge so this is not a surprise but worth mentioning. However, in Paragon's defense, all/most of their software come with bootable media. Bootable media are the cause for about half the file size. So effectively, Paragon System Backup is really ~40 MB. 40 MB is not as big as 88 MB but it is still very large compared to other rival software.

Last but not least, let me say that I appreciate Paragon's eagerness to make Paragon System Backup as easy to use as possible, but I dislike the fact that to do this Paragon eliminated many fundamental settings related to image backing up that should be available in Paragon System Backup. One such setting is the ability to control compression. If you use the "Backup Wizard" to create a normal image backup then yes you can select how to compress the image backup. However if you use Paragon System Backup normally, doing either automatic or manual snapshots, you are not allowed to select compression. I believe it is set to what would be "Normal Compression" by default.

This review was conducted on a laptop running Windows 7 Professional 32-bit. The specs of the laptop are as follows: 3GB of RAM, a Radeon HD 2600 512MB graphics card, and an Intel T8300 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor.

EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard is a software which aims to please the "oops did I accidentally deleted that file", "I really need to find that file I deleted long ago or a file that I had before I formatted", and "can I recover that partition" people. In other words it allows you to recover/undelete files and partitions alike.

This is what EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard looks like:

As you can see you are given the choice of choosing three "recovery modes":

• Delete File Recovery - this mode is allows you to recover files you recently deleted (basically it just looks at your MFT). It scans very quickly but don't expect it to find anything other than recently deleted files because that is not what this mode is designed for.

When you click on it you are asked to select the partition you want to scan:

Before you select a partition to scan, you may change some options if you desire:

After you select your partition and hit "Scan", the scan is conducted in a quick manner. After that the files that are found are displayed:

The names are all messed up but I was able to recover my three recently deleted "test files" just fine.

Before you recover files you can preview each file by selecting it and then clicking on "File Preview":

Unfortunately it seems that you cannot preview videos... everyone of my attempts to preview videos failed and there is no tab for videos either.

There are two search features built in for you to use to search the files in the results ("Find file by name" and "Search Files"). During my tests, "Find file by name" works just fine, but "Search Files" does not work at all.

To recover the files you want, all you have to do is select the files you want, hit "Next", select a location where you want to put the files, hit "Next", and you should recover the files. You know you will have recovered the files if you get a confirmation message.

Take note that when restoring files, EASEUS puts them in subfolders (each subfolder is for each subtree in the file list). I can't say this is a bad thing, because it helps organize files better in my opinion, but it can also be annoying.

• Complete Recovery - this feature is allows you to recover files (and folders) if your hard drive/partition was formatted, or crashed, or etc. It looks for recently deleted files (i.e. from the MFT) but also looks "under the file system" and tries to recover files that were deleted in a format, crash, or such. It also detects past partitions to an extent.

In terms of how it works, it works the same way (interface wise) as "Delete File Recovery". With two differences:

• You can also scan disk images in addition to real partitions.
• After the scan has finished, you may be shown a list of partitions to select to recover your files from...

...where as with "Delete File Recovery" you were not.

One odd thing I encountered was that when using "Delete File Recovery", it found about 40 partitions for me. I am not very sure why the heck it found that many but really only one was the one that was worth looking into.

The scans with "Data File Recovery" are not particularly fast (it took me just under 5 minutes to scan a 10.4 GB partition) - I have used faster file recovery software - but file recovery is a process that tends to be slow by nature. The computer resource usage are also average: ~70% CPU, ~15 MB of RAM.

In terms of performance (i.e. finding and recovering deleted/lost files), "Complete Recovery" performs fairly well (does particularly well when looking "under the file system" - found thousands of files for me there), but I have seen better software.

There is, however, a caveat. Not all the "lost" files found can be recovered properly. (I learned this the hard way by trying to recover found lost files only to learn they were not recovered properly.) Although the inability to properly recover found files is not necessarily EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard's fault, because there are many factors at play that determine if you will be able to recover a file or not and many of the factors are out of the program's hands, what is EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard's fault is that it does not give an explicit indication of how "recoverable" a lost file is (I am looking for a column that states the "recoverability" of a file). However, a trick I learned is that if you are able to preview a file, you will be able to recover it just fine.

However, by far the biggest problem is the fact that all existing files are shown with deleted/lost files (I have not been able to find a feature that turned this off). So if a user is not careful, he or she may think existing files are deleted files and try to recover them. Fortunately, though, EASEUS provides a key so users can know which files are already existing and which are deleted/lost files:

• Partition Recovery - this feature allows you to recover lost/delete partitions. However you don't literally recover the partition. Rather it finds the partitions and allows you to recover the files from it (similar to how "Complete Recovery" works). In fact, I am not even sure what is the main difference - in terms of features - between "Partition Recover" and "Complete Recovery" (except for the fact that with "Partition Recovery" you can select external hard drives and are not allowed to select individual partitions) because they both work and perform similarly.

The last noteworthy thing work mentioning is the fact that users can now create WinPE/BartPE bootable disks of EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard (visit this page for more detail). This is a very noteworthy feature because file/partition recovery is best done outside of Windows to best avoid problems of files in use, conflicts, etc.

This review was conducted on a laptop running Windows 7 Professional 32-bit. The specs of the laptop are as follows: 3GB of RAM, a Radeon HD 2600 512MB graphics card, and an Intel T8300 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor.

As the name suggests, Animated Wallpaper Maker is a software that allows users to create and use animated wallpapers.

This is what the main program window of AWM (Animated Wallpaper Maker) looks like:

Using AWM is fairly straightforward:

• You select a background image.
  • This can be done via the "Change Background" button.
  • JPG, BMP, and PNG only.
• You add background effects and animation objects as you please.
  • You can select from four different background effects (or you can select "no effect"):

You may only use one background effect per slide/image. When you select an effect, keep in mind you can customize the settings of that effect, such as intensity, size, speed, etc.

• You can select from multiple different animation objects, and can add as many animation objects to one slide/image as you want:

• You can optionally add multiple "slides", which is just having a multi-image wallpaper that will rotate:
• You can optionally preview the wallpaper whenever you want to see how it looks on your desktop.
• You apply the wallpaper ("Set Wallpaper") either directly to your computer, or save the wallpaper as a standalone EXE that can be used by anyone (even people that don't have AWM installed).

Whenever you have an animated wallpaper running, either normally or via the standalone EXE, an icon is placed in your system tray which you can control basic configuration settings (such as to stretch the image... or not stretch the image, or to automatically apply the animated wallpaper upon Windows' boot). That system tray icon is also where you can turn off the animated wallpaper by exiting:

(The second "Settings" window is that of the standalone EXE.)

When I first started reviewing AWM I excepted the program to eat up a significant portion of my computer resources (CPU/RAM) while the animated wallpapers were turned on. Surprisingly enough, AWM uses very little computer resources: CPU stays at or near zero (only spikes to ~5 when the "slides" are changing, if applicable) and RAM usage stays around the 20 MB mark. This computer resource usage - or lack thereof - is actually what I found to be most impressive about AWM.

That being said, there is also plenty that I found very unimpressive about AWM:

• First and foremost, the number of background effects and animated objects is very limited. More so for background effects seeing as there are only four users can use (animated objects has more, but many of them are similar so doesn't really allow for much choice). Seeing as animations are the main attraction to AWM, it really hurts the program to have so little choice.
• Furthermore, keeping with the animations train-of-thought, I really dislike the fact that users have little to no control over which parts of the image the animations (effects/objects) should occur. The "water mirror" and "fire" effects are the only two that allow the user some sort of control over where they take place on the image; none of the other ones do. Even "water mirror" and "fire" are limited in this area in the sense that they can only occur from the bottom and cover the whole bottom of the image (depending on how high you decide to take them). I want to have the ability to be selective about which areas on the image the animations occur (like how it works in ArtStudio).
• Users cannot use GIF images (animated or non-animated). I find this to be very dumb because GIF is one of the four main image formats, and it should be supported. Plus, the fact that AWM makes animated wallpapers but animated GIFs are not supported sounds like hypocrisy to me.
• How AWM works is it "overlays" the animated wallpaper over your normal desktop wallpaper. This method causes two major problems:
  • The desktop icons unnecessarily block the view of the animated wallpaper:

As you can see, the icon "background area" shows the original desktop wallpaper instead of showing the animated one.

I am not sure if this is a Windows 7 only problem or not (I tried to run it on my Windows XP virtual machine to see if the problem would reoccur but was unable to get AWM to work on there because apparently my virtual machine doesn't have a graphics accelerator). Yes I realize the developer does not officially claim Windows 7 support, but if you look at the patch notes, the latest update was for a "Windows 7 hotfix" so... ya.

• You cannot move/have trouble moving the desktop icons.

Last but not least, when I went to test out if the standalone EXE works for people who don't have AWM installed, I ran into a bug that the animations were not showing properly. However, I tried to repeat this problem - to see if it was a problem with the program - and I was unable to replicate it. So, it was probably a one time error, and not a problem with the program, but just figure I should mention it.

This review was conducted on a laptop running Windows 7 Professional 32-bit. The specs of the laptop are as follows: 3GB of RAM, a Radeon HD 2600 512MB graphics card, and an Intel T8300 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor.