There are plenty of reasons why there is a need to compress files and documents these days – ranging from disk space efficiency and storage propriety advantages to back-ups of original and important documents on small storage devices like portable hard drives, memory sticks and web space. Sometimes not only the compression/archiving is needed, but also the encryption that can protect the archived files from unauthorized access. Power Archiver is one of the best tools for this job, and it has a lot of functions and a large archive compatibility list.

  

I have been using this program for a long time, ever since the 5.0 version and I was impressed with the capabilities at first sight back then, and I still admire it for how it works today. You know, it’s like one of those programs meant to set a standard and rule over any other from its class. I have never seen a better file archiver to support the conversion between archive formats - so it takes the archives and it decompresses them and then recompresses them in a different format.

  

You might wonder how is this useful – well, sending files over the network archived using 7Zip compression for example might not come in handy for people who do not have any archive handler installed under Windows XP. But windows XP can handle zip files easily because it treats them as folders and so you could use the conversion utility to convert all the other archives into zip files in order to make them more accessible.

   

Multiple folders need to be archived? No problem, Power Archiver can handle and create multiple archives at the same time (although you might need a good CPU and enough RAM memory for working with really big files, larger than let’s say 500 MB). The interface is very friendly and it is quite intuitive and easy to work with. If you wish to encrypt archived files you have more options: you could use the encryption wizard, you can choose from the various formats and also you can create password-protected archives. I would recommend actually the “cab” (with the LSX maximum compression setting) as the safest and best compression method.

  

The SFX Archive creator utility is a wizard designed to help you create even more user-friendly archive files – these ones can self-extract – so obviously will not even need to have any archive handler installed on the computer where you are going to unwrap it. You can customize it by choosing the format and some options for the output file.

Applicability: Obviously, this program will be able to help you manage your archive files in a very professional and efficient way. Any company that deals with archiving files and important documents on a daily basis by creating back-ups should be interested in its capabilities.

Pro(s): This is one of those many-in-one tools, and it is compatible with almost all known archive file formats. Not only you can open any archive file, but also you can create SFX-Archives (password-protected if needed). You can even build software deployment and setup files with the SFX wizard!

Con(s): If it had the capability to create KGB archive, RAR and UHA compressed files it would be the perfect archiving tool! However, I think that the absence of these functions has nothing to do with the creativity of the developers, but rather with legal license for introducing support for these file formats.

Official site (one of the best looking software sites also!)

Buy:   $19.95

Download Trial

I always liked people able to organize their workflow using an elaborated set of rules that are well defined and flexible at the same time. I also think that brainstorming with a clear purpose without proper management of the ideas is pointless, and since mind mapping and brainstorming computer software is not a tool that can be seen only in Star Trek, that's what I target today - a program from a company known as Computer Systems Odessa, called ConceptDraw MINDMAP Professional.


Setup

The current version of MINDMAP Professional is 5.1.0.0, and the full version of this application is priced as high as $199, but it seems its price is backed up by some serious features and built in content. Anyway, we'll talk about those just a bit later...

The setup package comes inside a ZIP archive that has 32MB in size, while the executable file is only 2MB larger. The application installed itself pretty fast, without asking me too many questions. As you can see in the screenshots above, there's nothing out of ordinary about the setup process, so let's move on to the interface, as usual.


Interface

While MINDMAP's interface may seem cluttered and not so easy to understand at first sight, you get a lot of guidance all along the way, so in the end you'll conclude that using this program is pretty easy to use. The interface is highly customizable, as you can edit every toolbar present in the main window, and the various panels can be hidden or closed as you wish. When you start the program for the first time, the Welcome Screen that can be noticed in the screenshot to the left gives you all the information you need to find yourself inside a brainstorming session or editing a mindmap in no time.


Features

ConceptDraw MINDMAP Professional is a software based on the Mind Mapping theory, and allows you to easily organize and exchange information by combining images and words. For example, let's take the brainstorming tool...

Go to the File menu, choose New, and then Brainstorming. In this screen, simply enter the theme of the session and add as many ideas as you can, or try to beat the clock in a timed brainstorming session, and keep only the ideas that emerged during the limited amount of time you have set. When you finish, simply click the button labeled Finish Brainstorming, and you're going to find yourself inside the main window. Here, you can easily define relations between the ideas, arrange the map with a single click and pick a visual theme for your mind map (this is done using the Format menu's Map Theme option).

Leaving aside the themes integrated into the program and the excellent brainstorming mode, there are still plenty of things to enjoy, like the integrated image libraries or the mind map templates.

The image library is organized into individual categories, without tagged and searcheable items. While some people may find this handy, I think it would be nice to have tags for each image and a search feature in the next versions. After all, it's always easier to type the name of an object inside a search box, rather than looking for it inside a group of untagged items.

Once you have organized your ideas and notes into a mind map, the result of your work can be saved into a lot of formats, such as PDF, PPT, RTF or PNG. Even better, you can send the files straight to a FTP server from within the program, and this is only the beginning...


The Good

ConceptDraw MINDMAP Professional is a useful program for those individuals with lots of ideas and problems organizing them and, of course, for teams of people that work to achieve a common goal. This program works like a charm, looks great is pretty easy to use, and the trial version doesn't have any other limitation than the 30 days period.

The Bad

I know that considering all that you get included in the program, and the additional resources available on the official website, $199 isn't really a lot, couldn't there be a special pricing option for home users?

Conclusion

Every program that can help me get my ideas ordered makes me go "Wow", especially when it really does its job, and this time I found quite a little treasure. There's nothing else to say, because the best thing to do is grab the trial version and give MINDMAP a try, then get back here and share your opinion with the rest of us, of course!

Developer: Computer Systems Odessa
Price: $199
Trial Link: Download

In the near future, I'll have to reinstall my operating system, because I'll upgrade my computer. So far, so good, but it would be really nice to know that I can rely on a single tool for all those maintenance tasks I have to perform and I forget about them too often. Anyway, when my computer starts moving like a turtle on the highway, I suddenly remember to clean up all junk and fix my registry errors and today, I just got my hands on PC Health Optimizer, a maintenance and tweaking suite that I hardly wait to see what's capable of...

Setup

PC Health Optimizer is more than just a program, having more individual applications inside, so a size of 15MB for the kit of such a software suite shouldn't be considered too much. A problem that is worth being mentioned here is the download speed limitation of the official server to about 4-5KB/s (at least that's what I concluded to be the problem), which can be easily surpassed by using a download manager, such as IDM.
<-125x125 Button - left->
The last version of the suite is 1.6.31, but the applications inside it have various own version numbers (for example, the About screen of the File Backup program shows "PC Health Optimizer ver 1.0"). The same thing happens with the trial period, which should be 15 days, but it was really unpleasant to notice that some tools that should have been here are not included at all in the trial version. Well, you can pay up $39.97 and find out how they behave, since the product is also covered by a 30 day money-back guarantee...












Installing the suite is a piece of cake, as you can see in the screenshots above, and since there should be enough to discuss regarding the interface and features of this software suite, let's move on and check'em out!

Interface

PC Health Optimizer has a very nice interface, with great graphics and easy to use, but... some of its tools don't match the looks of the parent application - as an example, look at the Doctor Spyware Cleaner, and you'll get the idea... Other than that, most programs from the suite that I was able to use in the trial version that I have are very easy to work with, since they use a wizard-style interaction with the user. Apart from some minor display issues in the main window of the parent application, everything looks good, so let's see what do we have next...

Features

The first thing to do once the program has started for the first time is to check your computer for problems, by pressing the text link Scan Now in the main window. When this process is complete, you're going to see some results, as you can see in the screenshot to the left (I hope your registry is cleaner than mine, anyway). By pressing on the issues (the text in red), the right application for fixing them is started, so it can't get easier than that!

While most optimization suites come with a lot of tools, but only a few have an antispyware tool, it was a really nice surprise to notice that PC Health Optimizer has an antispyware tool and an antivirus included. Unfortunately, the antivirus was not included in the trial package, but I can tell you that the antispyware tool offers real time protection against threats, so everything start to look like a really good deal...












The main window has 6 areas, each with links to various tools. These areas are the following - System Cleaner, System Optimizer, Privacy & Security, Administer & Control, File Utilities and, at last, Backup & Restore (backup and restore programs aren't file utilities, after all?). Since you can see what these are about in the screenshots above, I'll talk only about the most interesting things, leaving the rest for you to discover (and maybe come back here and share the info with us, especially about the tools not available in the trial).The most useful tools in the trial version of PC Health Optimizer, in my opinion, are the antispyware tool, the backup application and the registry cleaner. It would have been great for me to try the application called Doctor Kids Control from the suite, but all I got was a MoleBox launcher fatal error "DLL CORRUPTED", so... maybe next time!











While jumping between nag screens and "This application is not included in the trial version" windows, I also noticed that the SMARTDisk Checkup button, located in the Administer & Control area, doesn't have any visible effect. Well, you can't have all the features in the world for 38 bucks and everything to be perfect, and I really hope that the full version doesn't have these problems...

The Good

PC Health Optimizer has a lot of useful tools, including antivirus and antispyware protection, as well as a parental control tool. Considering what you get, the good price and money back guarantee look just great, especially since everyone shouldn't have any problems using the tools included in the package.

The Bad

The trial version is very limited, the interface has some minor problems and, although it may look a minor issue, the official site shows the wrong size of the setup package, 25MB instead of 14.

Conclusion

PC Health Optimizer is one of those many application suites that would do anything to get your money, but at least it has some features that help it stand out of the crowd. At first sight, I was really crazy about it, but after trying it out, I think that Retina-X Studios should release a much better trial version, because the one available at this time shows a lot but only does a little...

Developer: Retina-X Studios, LLC.
Price: $39.97
Trial Link: Download