What you are about to read is the result of testing ACDSee Photo Manager 2009 under Microsoft's latest operating system, Windows 7. In order to introduce ACDSee, I may tell you that it is a powerful image viewer with a classic appearance, inherited from its illustrious predecessors. ACDSee Photo Manager 2009 is undoubtedly a solid option to view, edit and organize not only photographs but also video and audio files. As a graphics viewer, ACDSee is unsurpassed in its ability to decode and display images as quickly as possible, even several times faster than many other viewers.

ACDSee is compatible with an impressive number of formats and it comes equipped with many useful tools, it also runs surprisingly smooth and quickly in most PCs. Some improvements were applied to this version such as copying or recording original versions on CD / DVD, which, I think, are really interesting developments.

ACDSee's excellent support for metadata joins fairly advanced editing capabilities, with a lot of filters and a series of wizards that create from thumbnails of all photos contained in a folder to Powerpoint presentations. A series of filters can help you to organize your content in different ways: category to which the image belongs, personal value, information stored in metadata (author, camera, date …), size, file format, etc. If you work with compressed files, you will appreciate how easily ACDSee Photo Manager allows you to browse them as folders. So, let’s see how it behaves when installed and run under Windows 7 environment.

Installation & First Run
The setup procedure was not complicated but somewhat long and implied too many decisions to take and some additional options to choose from. Anyway, regarding what we want to test today, which is incompatibilities and hitches, ACDSee installation, presented not a single one. Read the rest of this entry »

While the time of the VHS is almost over, the DVD has become the universal media format for watching movies. If you are afraid of loosing or damaging your DVD collection, there is a program like CloneDVD which is one of the easiest ways to make copies of original DVDs, provided that they are not CSS protected. CloneDVD is able to carry out all the steps required to copy a DVD, especially when it is necessary to reduce the size to fit a single layer DVD and it performs such actions definitely well, without unnecessary complications. If we take a look at the interface, we can see that it is extremely easy to learn without technical options to worry about, all this thanks to its very well designed wizard. CloneDVD is full of options that help us to reduce the file size without compromising the image quality. For example, you can choose to omit some DVD bonus like foreign subtitles, trailers etc… Copy speed is more than respectable, allowing the copy in the form of ISO file to your hard drive or a recordable DVD in a few moments. Today I'm going to tell you how this handy application behaves under the Windows 7 environment.

Note: CloneDVD does not allow us to clone DVDs which are protected by CSS or other copy protection mechanisms, nevertheless, CloneDVD can be used with tools such as AnyDVD in order to overcome these protections. Anyway it is advisable to burn backup DVDs only from legally owned DVDS and only for its personal use. Read the rest of this entry »

Security, stability, reliability… Windows 7?
The most important part of each and every operating system is security, that is vital for two reasons: user safety and data safety. Microsoft has put huge effort into securing OS environment but until Vista we haven't seen anything special about security measures in Windows platform.

In 2007 Microsoft proved that too much is for them not enough what resulted in spawning strange creature called User Account Control. If you would ask any Vista user what UAC is they will tell you: "something I have disabled long time ago". Why? Because Microsoft thought that there is never enough security for everyday user and blasted the screen with confirmation windows: "Are you sure you want to open this link?", "Do you want to run this program?", "Still want to scratch your back?" - these are all the questions we want to forget after one day with Vista, especially when they are coming on-screen every two minutes. Now you can lay back, because Microsoft introduced upgraded version of UAC.

The primary target of previous version of UAC was to annoy the user then take care of security measures. Now we can choose how we want User Account Control to react, to question every user move or stay down and ask only for permission when the important things are coming up. We have foru levels of security in UAC. The highest one is recommended by Microsoft but avoided usually by all because it causes stress and anger. It notifies user about almost everything, opening unknown weblink from IM, running unsigned programs or openning unknown downloaded files. The level of annoyance is high. Next tier of security excludes user decisions from notification system and notifies only when programs are trying to make some changes to the system settings. Level of annoyance is moderate. Third tier is basically the same as tier two but does not dim the desktop when UAC notification comes on-screen. Level of annoyance is low. The final tier lets us turn the UAC off which leaves us with no interception system and we have to rely on ourselves. There is no annoyance at all. If it comes to other changes to User Account Control, now system detects less usual safe actions and is more precise about what we are doing. Of course if you choose highest level of security UAC is going to make your life a nightmare. Read the rest of this entry »

New Toys, More Entertainment?
Previously we took a quick glance at the new Windows 7 environment, its speed and handful upgrades. This time I will take you for a ride through new Windows 7 entertainment toys and powerful upgrades to the systems main tools.

When Microsoft introduced Windows XP our way of operating the computer was supposed to change. All the necessary tools and task have been grouped into one panel with quick access, powerful core for maximum performance and cool new look. But that was about it. It was a revolutionary system at its time, but we expected more. In 2007 giant from Redmond released Windows Vista with plenty of upgrades, lots of new tools, and tons of fun. But the system was slow, had its own mind and finally was rejected by the business sector. Apart from new look this was just an updated and patched XP. Even new toys were left on the shelves because they were not as useful as we could expect (for example SideBar). How is the new Windows 7 doing then?

Apart from completely new taskbar and its functionality and an upgraded Start Menu, probably the first part you will check after that is the Personalization panel. It has been revamped form the top to the bottom, now it has new possibilities like for example Desktop Slide Show hidden in Background properties. When we choose the wallpaper we can pick not only one but many and set the background to change after specified period of time. The system will automatically change wallpaper on the desktop, it can even shuffle it. It's a major breakthrough because before we had to use special software, frequently on shareware basis which only added to our budget. Now Windows does it all in a simple and efficient way, we have more control over its look and feel. Also the Sidebar was discontinued and now we can put all our gadgets directly on the desktop. It doesn't change much, but at least now we have more space on the desktop. Read the rest of this entry »

New look, new feel, new possibilities?
With the beginning of January Microsoft has given us a great post-holiday gift: a beta version of new OS - Windows 7. After over two weeks of testing we bring you the results of the long awaiting product since the release of Windows XP with Service Pack 2. Give it up for Windows 7.

First thing you will notice after putting the DVD into the drive is the new installer system. Whole installation process takes place in completely new environment, we can forget about the keyboard-only input. After booting the system from the DVD the only thing we have to do is set up our location and default locale for our system (including keyboard) and the rest is up to the installer. The new installer is even willing to let us through the setup process without putting Windows License Key; we can do that later, after signing in to our account. The installation is stress-free, no questions asked, and is even faster than on Vista. Whole process takes about 40-60 minutes depending on the speed of your hard drive and CPU's performance.

In my case the test platform was Intel Centrino 2 Duo T7300 ~ 2.00 GHz, 2 GB DDR-667 RAM, GeForce-M 8600GT 256MB and 160 GB Seagate HDD. Microsoft says that the new system should consume fewer resources, be faster and more efficient than Vista. You can feel that just after the installation process when Windows 7 is starting for the first time. Preparation for the first start takes less time than normal boot on Vista; this is partially because my laptop has integrated Flash Cache Logic Chip from Intel (1GB) that serves as a Ready Boost component. The performance gain in the new system from Microsoft is really visible, not only because of the booting times, but also just after signing in to our account. Vista is well-known for its lack of performance during the whole shell-loading process. If we have several applications being open on autostart basis, to start working we have to wait about 2-5 minutes until every single service and program will be fully loaded.

In Windows 7, developers from Microsoft analyzed the problem and implemented very good algorithms to prevent the system from loading absolutely everything into the memory at once during system start. Now before you type your password the most important core components will be already loaded so it gives plenty of time to load the first tier of software (services and system files like Taskbar or Explorer), just after that system stabilizes and loads second tier of software (programs, components, etc). It is surprising because total system boot takes about 25 seconds and loading the Desktop takes another 30 seconds. It’s much faster than in Vista, but optimizations went even further. Read the rest of this entry »