Portable media players, shortly known as PMP, are more and more popular each day, and they are not the only portable devices able to play videos. The problem appears when you have to convert data into the format supported by a certain gadget, because, unfortunately, there isn't any good video compression format compatible with the PSP, iPhone, XBox and so on. This is where an entire army of converters comes into play, and today's pick is called Aplus Video to iPod PSP 3GP PPC PMP (try remembering that, now!).

Setup

Aplus Video to iPod (and all the rest that follows, but I'll only call it this way from now on) reached version 8.68, and comes in a setup package as large as 4.4MB. Since downloading it shouldn't be much of a problem, let me tell you about the setup process...

Once you run the setup package, you shouldn't have any problems, as long as you're not using Windows Vista and have UAC enabled... Anyway, I installed Aplus Video to iPod on my good-old Windows XP, and it all worked perfectly.

If you're wondering about the limitations of the trial version I used, the answer is that you can only convert 20MB output files or smaller using it. Other than that, you get 2 buttons allowing yopu to purchase this program placed in the main window of the program, right next to the Play button, and I think one would've been enough. At last, the price required to register this program is $29.95, so let's push forward and see if you get enough for your money or not...

Interface

Aplus Video to iPod looks good, and that's all I need to say. While it's very easy to use, its interface, which is covered by a nice skin, doesn't allow you to customize it or at least install additional visual themes, but let's not forget the purpose of this program - it's here to help you convert movies, so the lack of 200 custom skins for it is no big deal!

Features

According to its producer, this program automatically detects your hardware and adjusts the conversion speed. Sounds good, but I don't understand why they didn't optimize it right for dual and quad core systems, because conversion speed was slower than my X2 4000+ is capable. Also, I couldn't find any Settings area, but I know a lot of people who enjoy programs that don't ask many questions, and they will surely love this one!

Aplus Video to iPod supports drag and drop, but be careful to choose your output directory first. Why? When I converted my first file, it was set automatically to D:\, but I don't have any D drive(my DVD Writer is currently RMA'd due to some problems)! The most funny part came when I ran a search for that file on my entire 320GB drive and couldn't find it. Anyway, no big deal...

To convert a file, simply drag it over the window of the application, choose one of the existing conversion presets, and press the Play button. What's not so obvious about the Play buttons in this program is that the one located in the toolbar below the small preview window allows you to view converted content, while the big Play button converts the original. Not quite straightforward, I must say.

Well, I know something must be added, and I am sure you'll help with comments. No, I didn't forget to tell you about the supported video files, because virtually all popular ones are supported, including AVI, Divx, ASF, WMV, WMA, MPEG or MOV.

The Good

Aplus Video to iPod is very easy to use, supports a wide range of file formats and it even has a very useful batch processing feature.

The Bad

I already said what I don't like, so I will repeat - it seems there's no multithreading optimization, so multi-core processors won't work much faster than single ones, and there are no options available for those that want to really get "in control". Also, price could be lowered with 5-10 bucks...

Conclusion

Aplus Video to iPod is a program worth trying, at least. It does not match my tastes perfectly, but I am sure a lot of people would consider it worth buying, and since it's free to try, you can hit the download link below and give it a go for yourselves!

Developer: Aplus Software
Price: $29.95
Trial Link: Download

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In the last few weeks, I had the unfortunate opportunity to talk with some new people that are using Windows Explorer for their file management needs, and it all ended up as usual... I can give hints, but I can't force anyone to use a certain program, so if they think wasting their time with Windows Explorer is a good thing to do, so be it. For the rest of us, today I'll talk about a program I promised to review a few days ago, called FlexTk Professional...

Setup

FlexTk Professional is not quite what I expect from a file manager, and maybe the main reason is that this program isn't quite a file manager, but we'll see that a bit later. For now, it should be enough to say that the version I review today is labeled 1.6.44 and, according to the About screen, this build is dated on the 14th of December, so it's about 3 days old. Oh, my, I love the smell of fresh software in the morning!

Priced at $25, FlexTk Professional is available as a 30 days trial version, and its setup package has almost 4MB in size, being pretty easy to download even for people with a slower connection to the Internet.









As you can see above, I installed it without any problems in Vista, so OS support shouldn't be a problem, as long as you're not using Windows 95 or 98 (I can't run those on my computer, because the chipset doesn't support Windows 98/Me or earlier, so...). Also, it was very easy to install FlexTk Professional, so let's move on and see how it looks & feels, shall we?

Interface

FlexTk's interface looks great, all the graphics are well done, and using it is pretty easy, but I found the File menu to be useless(only the Exit option?), and sometimes the popup windows that appear as you run a command may be more than needed (most of the time, you'll get two windows popping up, but I consider one to be enough). Anyway, the big thing missing, for me, is the ability to customize the interface of this program, because even though this is not a file manager as I am used to, I repeat it, a two-panes view would help a lot.

Features

If we want to take things a bit higher than they really are, we could consider FlexTk Professional a file management software suite, with powerful verification capabilities. I won't tell you how easy it is to manage your files with FlexTk, because it's not. After all, this program isn't capable of handling at least ZIP archives, but that's not the point. There are 5 major tools packed inside it, and this is what I will talk about here...

FlexCls, the tool that starts once you press the Classify button on the toolbar, is a file system classification and categorization program, capable of scanning instantly millions of files, and having an impressive speed (as an example, it took less than 32 seconds to scan the 82,000 files on my system drive, with a total size of over 51GB!).









FlexSize, the storage utilization tool from the package, scanned my system drive in less than 7 seconds, giving me quick access to disk space statistics. Even more, these statistics can be easily exported to a HTML, TXT or CSV file.

At last, we have FlexDup, FlexHas and FlexSig, three tools able to help you find duplicate files, and generate MD5, SHA1 or SHA256 signatures for files or entire files systems. While most home users won't use the last two tools mentioned here, I am sure professionals would find them extremely useful.

These being said, I should also mention that the View options are pretty poor, with only detailed/icons/list views available, and no customization features, but the good part is that FlexTk Professional can be extended with additional plugins, and a multithreading option is available in the Advanced Options area. The rest if it... I am sure you'll be thrilled to check FlexTk in detail for yourselves, so I'm going down to the conclusions now.

The Good

FlexTk Professional can handle huge amounts of data with an impressive speed, and if we consider the prices of the individual tools included in the package, this program is really a bargain! The interface is very good, although it can also get better, and I had no stability problems while using this program.

The Bad

To be hones, I expected to have a Help file on my drive, and the Online Help doesn't have as many details as I'd like to see. I also think that adding some file manipulation features (batch renaming, two-pane view, packing/unpacking support) would attract more users to this product.

Conclusion

I don't want to lie, so I won't say that FlexTk Professional is an ultimate file management tool, because it doesn't cover the "file management" topic as I expected. Nevertheless, this is an excellent tool for a limited number of tasks, so if you need to track disk utilization, find duplicates, and check for authenticity of the files from your huge 5TB disk array without growing a beard while this happens, FlexTk is one of the best tools to use!

Developer: Flexense Systems Ltd.
Price: $25
Trial Link: Download

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Many of us have already used various software to transcode the music from audio CDs into MP3 files so that we can listen to them on our computers. Today I’m going to present to you the MP3 Producer, one of the most recommended Audio CD-Rippers that can offer advanced options of MP3 tagging and bitrate setting.

A friend of mine prefers some other piece of software because that one has a special method of ripping the songs by extracting WAV files and then converting them into the desired format. What he didn’t know is that MP3 producer not only that it does this in a professional way, but also offers a lot of tweaking options for the encoding process and the tags of the files that are being obtained.

The file formats that are supported by the application are the following: MP3, WAV, OGG and WMA. Not only does the program rip CDs, but it also encodes files, from WAV to MP3, OGG, WMA, and decodes MP3, OGG and WMA into the WAV format. The format range with the values for the bitrates are: MP3 - MPEG1 and MPEG2, constant (CBR) and variable bitrates (8-320 kbps), WAV - 22050/44100 Mono/Stereo, OGG - constant, variable bitrates and average (ABR) bitrates (8-320 kbps), WMA - constant and variable bitrates (5-320 kbps) using the Windows Media Audio 9.1 Voice, Professional, Lossless codecs.

 

Applicability: Put all your old CDs to rest – you can take all the songs from them into your computer. I would suggest though that the ripping must be done at a higher bitrate as possible in order to keep the quality levels.

Pro(s): The interface is very user-friendly and quite intuitive. It has been translated in very many languages as well, so you can understand and work with it much better.

Con(s): Apparently a friend who tested the program just like I did used an Audio CD with some sort of protection and thus the program could not extract the files! I think the developers should look into this as there is software out there capable of creating digital back-ups even for copy-protected Audio CDs.

Website

Buy: $25

Download Trial

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Finding a multi-purpose program is not something you stumble upon every day. Especially if you work with a lot of images and you may wish to publish them on web. With StudioLine Photo Classic 3 you can manage you photos, enhance them, correct the errors or just simply create a photo/image gallery and you can even upload it on your server as soon as you finish editing it.

   

The interface tends to look a bit complicated at first, but after having a closer look at the buttons and the menus, you will get used to it within minutes. First you would have to use the “browse and load” wizard menu in order to load images in the program window. After that, feel free to explore and play with each image editing option or tool in order to fix and restore or just adjust the contrast/brightness.

  

Once you’re done with the editing and tweaking, you can explore the possibilities of the Slide Show. You can have a look at the pictures in slideshow mode and then you can try also the printing options. On the left side, in the lower area of the program you have access to the image toolbox, the timeline options, image archive filter and the Web Gallery button. If you’re interested to publish your photos on a web page that you own and know the ftp access details, you can upload the gallery after you have finished personalizing it.

  

Applicability: Beginner web-designers and photographers could use the StudioLine Photo Classic software to manage and improve the hundreds or thousands of photos from their collections within minutes after installation of the program.

Pro(s): I liked the smooth integration of the interface with the Vista’s shell. Although it takes a bit of time to get used to the way in which this program works, it does offer a lot of functions meant to stimulate the creativity of the user.

Con(s): I wish there were more templates to choose from in the web gallery wizard. Although the software does have some of the features of other image file managers, it does not really give too many options of exporting the projects created with it.

Website

Buy: $29

Download Trial

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A lot of computer users consider that once their PC's display looks good and the colors are all right, they don't need more, but I have seen too many people using their monitor and video card the wrong way, so I have to give you some hints about this. Anyway, since I got a really good software for helping people get the best out of their display hardware, I will get straight to it, instead of giving you tips on how to improve your Windows visual experience without using additional tools...


Setup

EnTech Taiwan, a company with a decade of experience in software development, has recently released version 3.75 of its advanced tweaking program for a wide range of graphics cards and monitors, an application called PowerStrip. The full program is priced at $29.95, but I got a shareware version free to download and try, as usual.

Offering support for virtually any operating system from Microsoft, apart from the ancient MS-DOS, PowerStrip comes in two small setup packages, one English version with almost 1MB in size, and an International one, having 1.42MB in size. Obviously, if you don't need support for any other language than English, the small package would do just fine.










<-125x125 Button - left->As you can see in the screenshots above, there isn't anything really different when it comes to installing this program, but I must confess that I would like to see an installer that uses windows with the same size, next time. It's not really a bad thing, but I always get a bit confused when I see an installer that displays 3 or 4 windows with different sizes and shapes as I setup a new program...

Interface

With PowerStrip, the interface problem is really simple, because you don't get to see it often. Anyway, as you can see in the screenshot to the left, the place where all the features of the program are gathered is the corner of your monitor where PowerStrip's system tray icon is located. All you have to do is right click that icon, and move on to explore the program's features, as I will...

Features

The first thing to notice is the warning you get when you graphics hardware is detected, because this is really important. While you don't need a Computer Science degree to use this program, having the documentation of your video card and monitor at hand would be a great idea! After you press the OK button, you're taken straight to the Quick setup screen...

In this window, you can notice the default clocks of your graphics adapter, as well as the maximum resolution and refresh rates of your monitor. Be aware that these won't combine - in my case, for example, I won't be able to run 1600X1200 at 120Hz! As I was saying earlier, be sure to check your hardware's manufacturer site for information about what you got, or simply grab the manual, if you have it close at hand.

The profiles that you can save and use are 4 in number, namely the application, display, color and performance profiles. Without getting too technical, things look really simple - first, you set your own display, color and performance profiles, save them, then create application profiles to use the presets that you saved. For example, you can create a default power saving mode with low GPU and memory frequencies and a low-contrast color scheme, together with a high resolution to use when performing office tasks that require a lot of space on the screen, as I do.












Of course that games always need the best out of your computer, so you can also use PowerStrip to overclock your card, but don't forget to test the new frequencies carefully, increase them step by step and check the temperatures of your card often, because it would be a shame to fry your $400 video card...

Sometimes, you don't need a profile to slightly change the visual settings, so using the keyboard shortcuts available for changing gamma or to quickly restore the video card's clocks when smells like a 90 Celsius degrees card is as easy as 1-2-3, and that's all you'll find out from me today, before drawing the conclusions...

The Good

PowerStrip has support for an impressive amount of video cards and monitors, is very easy to use, and the price required to register your copy isn't really high either.

The Bad

As I was using it, the program suddenly stopped responding, but that happened only once. I would really love to see some updated graphics pumped into PowerStrip's interface, because the ones we can see now have been there for ages...

Conclusion

While I can't advise you to grab this proggie and start overclocking your GPU and video memory like crazy, this one of the main goals of this program, and it does its job the right way. Other than that... check it out and see for yourselves, I strongly recommend you to give it a spin, but be careful with those dangerous low level settings, because sometimes, there's no second chance, if you get things wrong...

Developer: EnTech Taiwan
Price: $29.95
Trial Link: Download

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