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BeLight Software Disc Cover 2

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Steve Jobs might dream of a digital utopia where Mac users do everything over the internet, but for many of us burning DVDs and CDs is still the most practical solution.

Making a DVD of your home movies to share with friends is an enormous pleasure, and burning a playlist from iTunes onto CD is essential party cargo.

Disc Cover is perfect for giving your discs that finishing touch by designing great looking disc labels, which you can then print out and stick on.

Useful templates

We confess that the program was already our favourite disc-labelling design tool, but version 2 boosts usability and features.

Disc Cover 2 now looks much more like one of Apple's own iLife apps. The Template Assistant offers gorgeous 3D previews of the 130 templates on offer, and the Inspector panel for customising page elements is just like the one in Pages.

Once you've chosen a template, you can customise it with your own pictures and text. Drag text boxes around and the text reflows nicely. It integrates well with the iLife apps, too. You can import track data from iTunes and photos from either iPhoto or Aperture.

Still a market leader

Our favourite feature is still its ability to analyse your contents list and search for related pictures of artists on the internet for you to drag and drop into your projects.

Most of the templates come with elements that include DVD and CD case covers, on-body printing and tray insert. Support is included for most printer manufacturers you'll ever come across, from HP and Epson to Avery and Imation.

Disc Cover can feel a little slow sometimes, especially when zooming into image-rich designs, but it's a real improvement on the previous version, confirming its position as the leader in its field.

Apple Safari 3.1

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We've always found Safari frustrating, in that it's full of potential, but always manages to fall short of being great.

And so it goes with Safari 3.1, although this release at least continues the browser's agonisingly slow crawl towards its superior contemporaries.

Intuitive interface

As with previous versions of the browser, Safari's user interface is its biggest draw.

Improvements to tabs now make Safari's implementation industry-leading in terms of intuition, making it simple to rearrange tabs or drag them out of the Tab Bar to create a new window.

Usefully, double-clicking the Tab Bar now opens a new tab. Small tweaks elsewhere show that Apple leads when it comes to user-interface niceties, for example, form 'textarea' fields are completely resizable.

Although generally considered a browser best suited to newcomers, Safari finally makes a concession to web designers. The new Develop menu provides access to handy tools for inspecting and disabling web page elements.

While lacking the scope of the likes of the Web Developer toolbar for Firefox, Apple's implementation is just as useful, providing fast access to style sheets, images and code, plus the ability to toggle images, styles and JavaScript.

Still needs streamlining

Sadly, Safari still falls short of the likes of Opera and Firefox in a few important areas.

While Apple's in-page search is great, we wish it used industry-standard shortcuts.

Also, the continued lack of built-in ad-blocking and keyword shortcuts is beginning to grate, and while upgrading the browser from 3.0 to 3.1 proved painless, Apple should stop adding unwanted junk to the Bookmarks Bar.

BHV Recover My Files

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If you have ever deleted a file or folder by accident, you'll be thankful for the Recycle Bin acting as a safety net.

However, what happens if you delete this folder, then discover you need the file after all?

Conventional wisdom says there is little you can do, but with the use of tools like Recover My Files, it's possible to restore partial, if not whole, files.

Bring your files back from the dead

Windows being a rather lazy OS doesn't actually delete a file when you ask it to; it simply gets rid of the identifier that marks its position on your laptop's hard drive. So the next time you save to disk that portion of the disk is allowed to be used.

Recover My Files works by looking for these deleted headers and retrieving them. If a portion of the file you're after has been overwritten, you won't be able to retrieve it all, but the program will detect whatever is left.

User friendly

The interface is simple to use with four main tasks that can be performed. Being a wizard-driven program it's easy to get to grips with.

There are two different ways to carry out a search, either Complete or Fast.

Our test machine is an ageing Pentium M laptop with a 40GB hard drive that could carry out a Fast search in a little over five minutes, but it's a rather intensive tool to use so is best done when you're not running other programs in the background.

Search external drives too

Results were impressive, with some 30,000 files retrieved. Not all of these are needed, so it's possible to search the findings to find the ones you need. You can choose to set a search for a specific file if you know the name.

Also, when it comes to searching for specific files, you can narrow down your choice to individual drives and even look for defined groups, such as email attachments or images.

With files increasingly stored on external devices, the software will also look for lost files on your USB memory key or memory card, which we think is a versatile addition to the software.

FRITZ!Box Fon WLAN

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Wireless networking is more popular than ever and with such a wide range of Wi-Fi routers on the market, it takes something special for a product to stand out.

The FRITZ!Box Fon WLAN (£140 inc. VAT) succeeds by packing an array of features into a small and easy to set up unit.

VoIP made easy

By combining a Wi-Fi and Ethernet router with a DSL modem and firewall, you can connect directly to your phone line for easy internet access. Your home phone can also be connected for making and receiving calls via your standard phone line or online VoIP services.

All necessary Ethernet cables and DSL line splitters are included, along with a CD-based set-up wizard to help you get connected.

The basic set-up process is simple, but you need to tweak some advanced settings for the best performance, which beginners may find confusing.

Built-in defences

Once connected, it's easy to set up a wireless network to share the internet connection with other Wi-Fi-equipped systems. To prevent unauthorised access, you can easily encrypt the Wi-Fi signal or disable it entirely and use the four built-in Ethernet ports for fixed access.

A unique feature of the FRITZ!Box is the inclusion of a USB port for connecting and sharing printers and storage devices over your network.

The built-in hardware firewall also provides an impressive online defence, blocking more than 95 per cent of intrusion attacks during testing.

Cheap global calls

By connecting your home phone, you can switch to VoIP for global free or cheap rate calls.

All calls are instantly logged by the router, so it's easy to monitor your call history, as well as see missed calls. A final feature ideal for home broadband users is the usage monitor, for keeping track of how much data you've accessed, so you don't exceed your monthly limit.

Only the high price of the FRITZ!Box may deter some buyers, but this is an impressive home router.

Avanquest Fix-it Utilities 8

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Fix-it Utilities 8 brings together over 30 of the best third-party utilities in one easy-to-use interface.

The suite is based around a single interface that breaks the utilities up into sub-menus relating to Diagnostics, Fixes, Optimisation, Recovery and Clean-up tools.

Quick and speedy software

This version also introduces anti-virus and anti-spyware tools. However, you should use this alongside a full internet security suite.

Click on any menu sub-heading and you'll find a range of tools to help improve performance, or you can use the built-in OneClick wizard that will run through all the tools in one go.

On the main page you'll also find a QuickStatus indicator, which tells you how well your laptop is currently performing.

Our test machine had a 40GB hard drive, which hadn't been defragged for over a year, so naturally the starting condition was poor. Running this suite cleaned out a lot of dead links and unwanted files and optimised the system to a Medium status in less than one hour.

Security tools

Of the new features in this edition, the emphasis is on data recovery as well as data erasion. New anti-virus tools worked exceedingly well, recognising we already had McAfee anti-virus software installed and working in unison with it to offer the best possible protection.

You can choose to run the tools in manual mode, but to really make the most of them it pays to set up a scheduler. This can be daily, weekly or monthly and should reflect the way you use your laptop.

With a reboot, we found our system showed signs of better performance, with start-up and shutdown times being quicker and even saving to disk seemed less laborious.

Great value package

Avanquest Fix-it Utilities 8 offers a wide range of tools and while none of them are essential, packaged together they offer a great deal in terms of value and usabiliity.

This latest version can also be installed on three machines in the same house, making it even better value.

Yoggie Pico Personal

Martin James — 1206099949

It may have a quirky name, but the diminutive Yoggie Pico certainly is a serious approach to security.

In short, it's a self-contained security suite on a USB stick. It intercepts all incoming data from your internet or network connection before it reaches your PC, with a full suite of 13 Linux-based security applications ready to keep you protected at all times.

The benefit of moving your security to a separate device is twofold. First, because the Pico is essentially a separate PC that performs only one task, it can devote 100% of its resources to that task in a way that your PC simply can't do.

Second, it frees up all the resources on your PC that you were using on that bulky all-purpose security suite in the first place.

In other words, both your level of security and your speed are improved.

It's a plug and play device, and once it has been recognised gets on with the job of scanning and protecting your PC, as you would expect from any security solution. In terms of hardware, the Pico is surprisingly powerful for its size - a Intel Pentium-level 520MHz platform with 128MB of its own memory.

The software interface allows you to take as much or as little interest in the Pico's activity as you wish. It certainly allows you to connect and forget if you wish, but is also able to generate detailed and comprehensive reports on exactly what it's getting up to at any one time.

In use the impressively detailed monitoring tools left us in little doubt it was doing a thorough job of protecting our PC. And there was a real speed boost too - showing just how resource-hungry those security packages are.

We expect many people might be put off by the initial cost. The Personal version we looked at retails for £95, while a Pro version costs £106 and adds tools for centrally managing a network of Picos.

After the first 12 months, subscription costs £16 per year, which sees the Pico start to represent far better value for money compared with the competition.

Despite this high initial outlay, we can't help but give the Yoggie Pico a wholehearted thumbs-up. All-in-one security packages are just getting bulkier and bulkier with each new version, meaning anyone with a budget PC or a slightly older system needs to put up with snail-like performance or come up with another plan.

The Pico provides an innovative and effective alternative. And it does it very well too.

RecoverMyFiles

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A number of bare-bones software solutions are available to carry out the veritable magic trick of scanning for and recovering lost data.

RecoverMyFiles goes the extra mile and promises to reunite you with your files even after corruption or formatting.

As well as scouring your hard drive, it'll also search through compact flash cards, floppy drives and other removable media to ensure that you find your missing document or MP3, regardless of its known whereabouts.

Recover your lost files

In a promising start, RecoverMyFiles provides a simple wizard on loading. From this point you can select from a fast or complete "File Search" or "Format Recover", before choosing which parts of your PC to scan.

For users who are likely to be feeling somewhat shell-shocked, having deleted an important work document, it's an easy and non-intimidating process.

Furthermore, it's possible to limit your search results to specific file types, which is useful should you be looking for a certain file. This is because non-specific searches will yield large numbers of files - most of which you won't have created yourself.

Sluggish searches

Having completed the search, you can browse through the results in either a folder view or, as we preferred, by file type. Clicking "PDF" will, for instance, display all files found of that type.

From our experiences, we found file recovery a bit of a hit-and-miss affair. While RecoverMyFiles willingly displayed plenty of purposefully deleted files after its scans, our attempts to "accidentally" delete particular files before telling the software where to look immediately afterwards didn't necessarily reveal them.

Although file recovery isn't a speedy process at the best of times, we also found the scanning process a bit tardier here than with some rival programs, with five-minute scan times for single folder scans making multiple searches strenuous.

Preview files

RecoverMyFiles has some nice touches, demonstrating that it's at pains to live up to its name. For example, launching the publisher's Web site through the software brings up a warning informing you that using applications - a browser in this case - might overwrite data.

A particularly useful feature built into the software is the ability to preview files in a small pane at the bottom of the interface.

Although this is reliant to some degree on the file you're recovering being intact enough to be understood, it helps speed up the process of retrieving a file that you can't completely recall the name of.

Perhaps concluding that navigating Windows without on-the-fly file previews would be unacceptable having experienced it in RecoverMyFiles, GetData has also included ExplorerView, which adds this functionality to Windows Explorer.

Powerful recovery tool

Although perhaps not quite as effortless and free of frustration as its wizard might suggest, at its heart GetData's file recovery offering is a well-thought out and powerful tool, if a little lethargic.

As well as enabling us to find the majority of the files we deleted, results are easily sorted through. Despite the program's quirks, it's still infinitely preferable to hasty Word document re-writes following accidental deletion.

Pantone Huey

tech.co.uk staff — 1204823167

The reason inkjet printers often turn out photos that look nothing like they appear on a computer screen when being edited with Photoshop is mostly down to your computer monitor.

You see, the human eye is a deceptive little tool that can make you see a blue or yellow cast on your PC monitor as being entirely neutral. It's a handy trick but not very useful when you're trying to print photos with accurate colours.

Now Pantone (with the help of partners Gretag Macbeth) has launched a tiny and affordable device that clips onto your computer's monitor and measures the brightness and colour temperature. It then automatically creates a colour profile that ensures what you see on screen matches what your printer produces.

In the past, these colour calibration devices were hugely expensive, but the little Huey retails for a mere £70 and is well within reach of most digital photographers. It's such a clever tool; it even has a measuring device to gauge ambient light and adjust the brightness level of your monitor to suit.

You can instruct the Pantone Huey to take readings at set intervals and it will then make the necessary adjustments. And because the calibration of monitors can drift, Huey will also helpfully remind you periodically to recalibrate your screen. It only takes 90 seconds and is dead easy to do.

If we have one criticism, it's the slightly daft name of Huey. Yes we know it's supposed to be a play on the word 'hue' but to us it sounds like someone being seasick. Mark Sparrow

PC Tools Registry Mechanic 7

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There's a veritable raft of tweaking, optimising and cleaning utilities on the market to ensure that you're able to keep your Operating System's Registry in peak condition.

Each will promise to yield speed gains and boost the general well-being of your system.

Well, they're hardly likely to boast at being the best at crippling your PC's performance, are they?

Simple interface

Now in its seventh version, and being one of the more popular pieces of software in the area, PC Tools' Registry Mechanic should be somewhat of a refined offering.

Indeed, your PC's Registry is not something that you'll want to leave in the hands of an untrustworthy and/or poorly made utility. Plenty of viruses would leap at the chance to change a few of the wrong settings and render your PC unbootable.

Fortunately, Registry Mechanic acts quickly to demonstrate that it's a well-made and trustworthy utility. The application sports a tidy and attractive interface, neatly presenting its main functions (Scan Your Registry, Compact Registry and Optimise Your System) on the main screen.

Clean out your PC

A large part of the reason that there's a good deal of choice out there when it comes to Registry tuning is that, over its life, your Registry will accumulate a fair amount of junk.

Each time you install and uninstall a piece of software, for example, there's a good chance that it will leave some "orphaned" Registry keys as a parting gift.

As such, an increasingly bloated Registry is a natural consequence of general PC usage and meant that we weren't surprised to find that on scanning our system with Registry Mechanic, we found that it had a grand total of 355 problems.

Efficient repairs

After the scan you're provided with a detailed breakdown of the irregularities that have been found within the core of your OS. These are categorised under headings such as File Extensions and Shared DLLs and displayed by priority (high, medium or low) with the relevant Registry directory also shown.

Once you've finished exploring these various Registry imperfections, curing them is as straightforward as clicking Repair. A couple of seconds after doing this we were free of all Registry problems, as a second scan confirmed.

We've occasionally used rival programs that have still found problems following an immediate rescan, so the lack of this in Registry Mechanic's case bodes well for its efficiency.

A comprehensive service

Any car mechanic worth their City and Guilds should be capable of more than just fixing the most crippling problem that you present them with. Happily, this is true of Registry Mechanic, too.

Having scanned and repaired your Registry, the program can provide it with a bit of a tune up, streamlining it by removing gaps and general bloat. Having chosen to do this, the software again scanned the Registry, dimming all but its own window in dramatic fashion.

As before, it then presented its findings, this time concluding that it could free up 1MB of our 66MB Registry.

Smoother operation

As a final party piece, Registry Mechanic is able to sit in your System tray and monitor your Registry for any changes made, enabling you to stay abreast of things.

Although you're unlikely to either learn anything of great worth from this feature or diagnose potential problems as they happen, it's a nice touch.

While we can't say for certain that we noticed any dramatic performance increases having run the software, things did seem fractionally smoother and our system was certainly no worse off after its brush with this comprehensive and easy-to-use suite of Registry tools.

Daniel Schwill’s Tables 1.4.1

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Despite the concept of spreadsheets on home computers being popularised by Dan Bricklin's VisiCalc on the Apple II, the modern Mac user is hardly inundated with software of this type.

Perhaps this is because spreadsheets are seen as unglamorous and dull, at odds with the Mac's creative image. The two most popular Mac-based spreadsheet programs are Microsoft Excel and Apple Numbers, but Tables is gunning for them both.

Getting started

It's fair to say that Tables does little handholding: upon first launching, you're presented with a blank spreadsheet and a toolbar sporting a search field and a handful of icons. Spreadsheet newcomers may find this daunting, since there are no templates or example files, although the built-in documentation is pretty good at running through the basics.

In use, Tables is friendly. It boasts a clean, modern, Mac-like interface, which matches the competition's - perhaps a little too closely at times, since the inspector palette (used to amend document, item and component settings and styles) is reminiscent of those in iWork. Like Apple's suite, Tables enables you to open multiple instances of this palette - useful for users who require specific options to be permanently visible.

Organising data in Tables is simple, and although it's a fraction of the cost of Excel, it still boasts over 100 functions for enabling you to apply formulae to chunks of data. Although you can type these in yourself, Tables includes a searchable Function window, which organises functions into categories and provides an overview of what each one is designed for.

As good as the competition?

Unfortunately, Tables falls short of Excel and Numbers regarding sorting: although creating an autofilter is easy, you're only provided options for ascending or descending sorts, or displaying all instances of a value (on a per-column basis, so sorts can at least be combined).

Although spreadsheets are primarily about number crunching, any program worth its salt provides formatting and styling capabilities, and Tables doesn't disappoint here. Fonts, styles, cell formatting and colours are straightforward to amend, and a Styles drawer provides a means of storing favourite styles, which can be applied to selected cells via the click of a mouse.

Images and PDFs can be added to a document, and a chart can be created simply by selecting a data range, choosing an option from the Chart menu, and using an inspector palette to format it to taste.

Charts highlight a couple of minor drawbacks of Tables - you're limited to a handful of built-in colour schemes, and dates aren't presented intelligently on an x-axis (a trait Numbers shares) - but creating them is simple, and the chart types are plentiful enough.

Further visual enhancements are available via the Graphic inspector, which enables drop-shadows, stroke-lines and opacity settings to be applied to graphical components.

Compatibility issues

For anyone considering switching from another app, compatibility is of greater concern than style, and Tables does as well as you'd expect. Excel spreadsheets open and retain their various formulae.

Export to XLS, PDF and CSV works well, although there's no option to save in the format used by Numbers, nor to import documents created in Apple's application.

Overall, despite some flaws, Tables impresses. To some extent, it appears to bridge a gap between Excel and Numbers, offering elegance, strong functionality and ease of use. Home users who need a spreadsheet app would be mad not to give Tables a shot.