When Apple released Final Cut Pro X back in June, it caused a furore. This wasn't the Final Cut Pro that people had grown to love, that had revolutionised the video editing industry and that had taken both the independents and the major studios by storm.

This was something else, and given how many features had vanished, many thought it certainly didn't deserve its 'pro' monicker.

But Apple is keen to show its customers that just because some features were dropped from the current version, doesn't mean that they'll never make a comeback. So it got busy and released two fairly substantial updates last year.

Now comes the third one, which is the biggest since the program's launch. Apple's engineers have tried to meet professional editors' most pressing needs, which include support for multi-camera editing, improved chroma keying, the ability to connect to broadcast monitors, and better import and export options, among others. So how does it all look now?

Multicam is easy to use and incredibly powerful. Just like in FCP7, it can handle up to 64 different angles, but unlike its predecessor, you can work with clips of multiple formats and frame rates without having to render or convert them - they all play at the same time in the Angle Viewer.

The chroma keying tools that came with version 10.0.0 were already better than version 7's, but the added refinements are incredibly impressive.

To test it out, we loaded up one of our first attempts at a green screen, where everything that could have gone wrong, had. The improved Chroma Key filter did remarkably well. It wasn't perfect – we would have been amazed if it was, considering the material it had to work with, but compared with what you could achieve with FCP7's built-in filters, it was impressive.

Compatibility with broadcast monitors is absolutely crucial and is achieved via third-party cards as well as Thunderbolt-enabled devices. The process is labelled a Beta, so check with the manufacturers to make sure their solution is compatible - you'll also need to be running Lion.

The beauty of this update is that it covers many parts of the editing process. For instance, you can once more work with multi-layered Photoshop files and manipulate each layer individually.

Keyframe behaviour has reverted back to the way it used to work: in the previous version, if you set a keyframe then altered that parameter elsewhere along the clip, another keyframe would be instantly created for you. For some reason, that immense timesaver had disappeared in FCPX but it's now reinstated.

But perhaps most important of all is the program's compatibility with XML 1.1, a format that allows you to import and export data from your project and its clips to and from other programs. This means it's now finally possible to bring your projects from FCP7 into Apple's new flagship editing application - although this can only be done via a third-party program called 7toX.

It's not all good news though. For instance, it's still impossible to create sequences of any size - you're limited to a select few standard options. And if you work in green screen a lot, you'll puzzle at the absence of garbage mattes.

However, the list of missing features is dwindling and it may be time to explore FCPX more seriously, especially if you can migrate your projects. This is the first version that we feel may be worth considering from a professional perspective.

Apple iBooks Author

Amazon's Kindle, Barnes and Noble's Nook, and even Apple's iBooks have been working on moving us away from reading physical books and embracing the digital revolution.

But until now, there was very little to convince us how good an idea this could be, since the digital versions looked very much like their real-world counterparts, right down to the page turning effect.

You'd save a lot of weight if you tended to carry a few books with you, but no title appeared to offer the limitless potential of a true digital book, something more akin to what you can achieve with apps, for instance.

All this and more is what Apple is trying to accomplish with its new content creation app, iBooks Author. Its aim is to revolutionise modern textbooks by bringing interactivity to the learning experience.

Not only can you add images to your pages, the reader can zoom in or out of them. You can insert Keynote slides or movies that can either be viewed embedded inside a page or full-screen. There's even the possibility of creating short quizzes to test your reader's knowledge retention.

You'd think that all this would require a lot of programming knowledge, but that's the beauty of iBooks Author: it's incredibly simple to use, and if you're familiar with Apple's iWork suite, you'll feel right at home within its interface.

It's a bit like a cross between the iWork apps Pages and Keynote, but you can't change the page format in any way: it's designed solely to be used on an iPad – even iPhones and iPod touches are left out.

On template

Just like other iWork programs, you start with a choice of template, six of which are offered by default, although you can create your own if you so choose.

You can write straight into iBooks Author, but it's also easy to import content from a Pages or Word document. Text is brought in seamlessly, but more complex formatting and embedded images can cause problems with the layout. The best option is to bring in the text then add the multimedia in iBooks Author.

Inserting media is child's play: you have a Media window from which you can locate photos, movies and music already stored on your Mac. Applying interactivity is done with the use of one of seven widgets, including being able to insert HTML dashcode applets, like those used to create Dashboard widgets on your Mac.

You can also preview your work as you design it: connect an iPad to your Mac, click the Toolbar's Preview icon and your book will be transferred across the USB cable for you to check. A purple 'Proof' banner will appear on the cover of your ebook and you'll be able to browse through it and interact with your widgets to make sure they all work as expected.

Once you're happy with the results, you can export your work in the iBooks format (or as a PDF or text file, but you'll obviously lose all the interactivity). That iBook can then be transferred to any iPad. It's a fantastic means of creating your own interactive documents and could do wonders in the classroom.

If you'd rather profit from your endeavour, you'll need to respect the program's licence agreement which states that you have to make your iBook available exclusively on the iBook Store (the content remains yours of course, so you're free to redesign your book using a different program and sell it elsewhere).

You'll need to acquire an ISBN number (an industry-standard code designed to catalogue all publications), and if you're not a US resident, you'll also need a unique reference number from the IRS. However, free books can be made available anywhere without such restrictions.

First iterations

Despite all the things this app allows you to do, and how it will empower teachers and even home-schoolers to design their own textbooks, it's a 1.0 product, which means it's a little rough around the edges at times.

Aside from the occasional glitches that prevent you from altering the content in any way (a quick restart of the app solves that problem – thank goodness for Lion's Autosave feature!) there are some odd inconsistencies.

For instance, the whole interface is designed around text boxes. You can link them so that your words flow seamlessly from one box to the other. However, in order for that to work, new linkable text boxes must be created with the help of a text box already present on your page. Text Boxes created from scratch by clicking on the relevant toolbar icon can't be linked to others.

Worse still is iBooks Author's draconian restrictions when it comes to video formats. Only H.264 files are tolerated, but not all H.264 files are created equal. Try dragging a video clip you shot on your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad and it'll be rejected, even though we all know Apple's iOS products save their footage in H.264. If you export an iMovie project on your Mac, it's the same problem (you have to use the Share command to create a kosher version).

What's worse is that files made with HandBrake, a video format conversion tool, or created with the excellent screen capture program ScreenFlow, won't work either – even though you can play back these files directly on your iPad, iBook Author refuses to. To make them work, you must open them up in QuickTime X and export them for the iPad. It seems like an unnecessary and unintuitive step to have to take.

This run-around is far from what we're used to from Apple. But despite these problems, iBooks Author is an amazing program which enables anyone to create a polished interactive ebook in little time.

If you can live with the licence agreement, you can have a lot of fun engaging with your students or customers. As long as they all own iPads, of course.

Overview

PaintShop Pro X4 is overflowing with both new and enhanced features. Replacing PaintShop Photo Pro X3, and now omitting the word "Photo" in its title, Corel PaintShop Pro X4 seeks to address the issues raised by its predecessor's users, who delivered a mixed response thanks to issues with both stability and performance.

It seems that - in light of the extensive user feedback that Corel started collecting at the beginning of the development process for PaintShop Pro X4 - the creator has taken the red flags that X3's critics raised seriously, working hard to produce a more streamlined, comprehensive package than anything it's released before. Corel also offers a free 30-day free trial on its website, so you can try before you buy.

We're pleased to see that Corel's commitment to keeping its software affordable -as well as powerful - continues, with several different versions of the software being available, starting at just £44.99 for an upgrade or £79.99 for a full Ultimate edition package, which includes some added extras that we'll discuss later.

New features

Corel PaintShop Pro X4 incorporates a significant number of new and upgraded features over its predecessor - 75 to be exact - so there's plenty to explore.

The first of the new developments is a set of HDR (high dynamic range) tools that have undergone a complete overhaul. There's an Exposure Merge option that offers a decent range of presets, as well as the opportunity to manually control the merging process and save your own presets.

The Batch Merge facility will appeal to prolific HDR enthusiasts who are happy to leave the processing up to the software, having it merge numerous bracketed sets of shots while you get on with something else.

Also new is a Fill Light & Clarity tool, which helps to lift the shadows in underexposed areas of your image and enhance detail, to improve backlit shots and those with uneven lighting, for example.

Photo Blend is ideal for merging multiple group shots where, for example, someone is looking the wrong way in one, while someone else is blinking in the other. Just combine the two to create the perfect image. It's also useful for removing distractions from backgrounds or creating surreal photos with multiple cloned subjects.

Selective Focus creates Tilt/Shift-style effects, making your subjects seem miniature in comparison to their surroundings. Or you can use it to blur distracting backgrounds if you find the depth of field in your shots is too wide.

The new Vignette Effect similarly helps to soften the impact of distractions, enabling you to darken or lighten the area surrounding your subject.

Performance and ease of use

Fire up the software for the first time and you're ready to get going in just a few seconds. The unobtrusive charcoal background is lined with customisable palettes, which can be moved, collapsed or expanded in order to suit your preferred method of working.

Corel PaintShop Pro X4 features a user-friendly interface that's split into three separate tabs, making it really easy to access the tools you need for the job in hand. Click the Manage tab to upload and organise your photo collection, the Adjust tab for making tweaking your images or the Edit tab for applying more advanced manipulations and/or adding text and effects.

The Manage section is all pretty self-explanatory, whether you've used Corel software before or not. Down the left-hand side you have a folder tree from which to browse through files on your computer, as well as quick links to any collections you create using the software - a handy feature that makes it easier to keep track of your photos.

By default, the central preview window is well proportioned, providing a large view of the image you have selected at the time, while a filmstrip-style gallery runs along the bottom of the screen.

However, you can make any of the panes bigger/smaller or switch to a full-screen thumbnail view if you prefer.

Images are quick to load and scroll through, making the task of organising shots faster and more streamlined.

We particularly like the Info pane - set in the top right-hand corner of the screen, you get a quick overview of the camera data recorded for each image you click on, displayed in a format that's easy to read. If you want more detailed information, then the window nestled below provides a comprehensive look at your settings, including EXIF and IPTC data.

From the General tab in this window, you can also quickly add ratings, captions and tags to your shots, with the option of then sharing your images directly via Facebook, Flickr or email, using the Share button just above the thumbnail film-strip.

Click the Adjust tab and the interface changes to provide a set of simple-to-interpret options for perfecting your photos. Basically a revamped version of the Express Lab seen in earlier versions, in the top left-hand corner there's a useful split-channel histogram so you can keep track of your exposure at-a-glance. Just below there's a set of five icons: clicking each in turn accesses the Crop, Straighten, Red Eye, Makeover and Clone Brush tools respectively, enabling quick edits to be made.

Smart Photo Fix

Next in the workflow is faithful old Smart Photo Fix, which offers a bank of sliders for controlling Brightness, Highlights, Shadows and Saturation in your shot, along with an eyedropper tool that enables you to quickly remove a colour cast. If you're unsure, simply click 'Suggest Settings' and Corel PaintShop Pro X4 will take care of things for you.

You could leave it there and save at this point, but if you want to work on more aspects of your photo, a further six tabs deliver Color Balance, Brightness/Contrast, Fill Light/Clarity, Local Tone Mapping, High Pass Sharpen and Digital Noise Removal options, each with their own set of sliders and drop-down menu options for fine-tuning the final result.

The tabs are all laid out in a logical order, and the slider interface works well for fuss-free editing, with the enhanced Full Screen Preview providing a handy way of reviewing your edited images without distractions as well as performing basic tasks such as rotating shots.

The speed at which Corel PaintShop Pro X4 renders images has certainly been improved, being noticeably faster than its comparatively sluggish predecessor - even when loading large files from medium format digital cameras and combined exposures for instance.

The Edit tab is where you can really get down to business. The simplified controls and drop-down menus present in the other tabs are replaced with an array of icons, buttons and menus. These may look a little daunting by comparison the first time you encounter the interface, but closer inspection reveals everything to be just as logically laid-out and easy to interpret. Previous Photoshop users will find most of the familiar tools present here, just in a slightly different location.

By default, the helpful Learning Center palette appears on the right-hand side of the screen, to show new users the ropes when it comes to doing anything from importing your images and making quick adjustments to more complex tasks such as working with layers and selections and applying effects to your images.

Clicking any of the headings opens up a list of tasks you might wish to perform - just select the one you want and you'll be guided through the process. Once you no longer need this feature, it can be hidden from view.

It's here that the Photoshop purists will appreciate just how much functionality Corel PaintShop Pro X4 has to offer, with a great selection of powerful tools that supersede Adobe Photoshop Elements and perhaps even, to a certain extent, rival Photoshop Lightroom.

Cloning, cropping, red-eye removal, selective lightening and darkening, adding gradients and making colour adjustments: you can do it all and much more besides.

The one slight point of criticism here is the sheer volume of options stashed away in the drop-down menus at the top of the screen. While it's great to have so many features and functions at your fingertips - with more than enough to keep both beginners and advanced users busy - it might take a while to orientate yourself sufficiently to be able to find what you need with any great level of speed.

That said, practise makes perfect: with time, you should learn where your favourite functions lie and be able to find them more easily.

Thankfully, there are shortcut buttons available for Corel PaintShop Pro X4's all-encompassing set of choices in the Layers tab - previous Photoshop/ Photoshop Elements users will be right at home with the control layout in this respect.

With regard to the new features, the HDR tools are excellent: Corel PaintShop Pro X4 does a great job of auto-aligning multiple shots, and can produce a merged file in a matter of moments. A few of the presets on offer might look a little 'overcooked' for some people's tastes, but you can fine-tune each or create your own, which is welcome.

Once the initial merged file is processed, you can then apply final tweaks to the exposure, remove noise, sharpen and adjust the colour balance - among other things - to perfect your HDR image.

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There's no doubt that this is a powerful new addition to the software and the results are admirable. But Corel PaintShop Pro X4 does lack a few added extras in comparison to Photoshop, such as ghost removal.

The new Fill Light & Clarity tool is another impressive feature that's simple to use, but produces great results. It boosts the shadows without affecting the rest of the image and subtly enhancing fine detail and texture.

Photo Blend is also very good: we tried it with a couple of group shots taken at a wedding. It's easy to use and there's plenty of options for tweaking to fine-tune the final result.

If you need to overcome issues like busy backgrounds, the Selective Focus and Vignette Effects are also excellent.

Once again, there's a simple slider-based interface for each, along with preset and freehand selection tools that enable you to control precisely how your final image looks. Results from this feature are good, but personally we would be inclined to stick with the more realistic look generated from our pre-existing favourite plug-ins.

Verdict

With a comprehensive set of advanced features for such a reasonable price, Corel PaintShop Pro X4 looks like a serious contender at the top end of the photo editing software market.

In addition to the brand new features mentioned in this review, Corel PaintShop Pro X4's other enhancements all add up to a much more streamlined, professional-feeling package than X3 was able to deliver.

Improvements such as a speedier Full-Screen Review feature, GPU optimisations that really accelerate performance and enable real-time application of a greater number of effects to your images and 16-bit support for over 20 tools - along with scores of others that there isn't space to mention here - all make a superb impression when putting the software to work.

Opt for the Ultimate package for just a little extra cash and you also get a superb set of additional content, including WinZip Pro, a collection of Fotolia royalty-free images, a custom Blurb photo book, more Picture Tubes (in addition to the ones already included in Corel PaintShop Pro X4), plus the excellent Nik Color Efex Pro 3.0 filters.

We liked

The low price, comprehensive set of tools, fast performance and good balance between beginner-friendly and advanced functions all create a great impression.

We disliked

As yet, there's no support for Mac users and raw file processing - although faster than it was in X3 - can be a little sluggish on slower systems.

Final verdict

In spite of its budget-friendly price tag, Corel PaintShop Pro X4 offers sophisticated enough tools to perform many of the same functions as much more expensive packages - including Apple Aperture and Adobe Photoshop. If you don't need all of the bells and whistles that the pricey top-end software provides and you're looking to save some cash without scrimping on functionality, then Corel PaintShop Pro X4 is certainly worth a look.

Overview and features

In the two years since its 2009 launch, free malware protection tool Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) has become the world's second most popular security package – a big change for a company regularly criticised for how it managed Windows' security.

While much of that may be down to the cost, compared with much of its competition, it's also a well-designed anti-malware tool with both anti-virus and anti-malware capabilities.

Available for Windows XP (Service Pack 2 and higher), Windows Vista and Windows 7, and in both 32- and 64-bit form, Microsoft Security Essentials is part of the Genuine Windows programme, and can only be used on consumer PCs.

Small businesses do have an exemption, and can run it on up to 10 machines; any more than that and you need to use Microsoft's Forefront Endpoint Protection tools. It's a small download, the latest beta version is 9MB for 32-bit machines, and 11MB for 64-bit.

Microsoft has done its best to keep MSE unobtrusive. There's no obvious slowdown when it runs, and all you see is a tiny task bar icon that shows whether your PC is protected or not. Right-click to launch a settings tool and to run scans – with a choice of quick, full or custom.

Installation is quick and easy, with MSE replacing Windows' built-in anti-spyware Microsoft Windows Defender. Once installed it downloads an updated set of malware definitions from Microsoft's update servers and scans your PC, before starting up real-time protection.

That first scan is relatively quick, and took less than five minutes on our test laptop. A small icon in the task bar is the only sign that MSE is installed and running, and it changes colour depending on the risk to your PC.

Green is, of course, good and yellow means that it's time to run a scan.

MSE will automatically run a quick scan once a week, although we'd recommend changing the default 2am on Sunday to a time when your PC is likely to be turned on. You can limit the amount of CPU that MSE will use for a scan (the default is 50%), and you can also make sure it won't scan if you're using your PC. We'd recommend leaving real-time protection on - it won't use too much power or add significant latency to downloads, and will reduce the risk of downloading malware inadvertently.

Other tools built into MSE let you tune it to exclude specific files and locations from scanning, as well as specific file types and even specific processes. You're better off not changing these settings, since it's impossible to predict how malware may disguise itself or what zero-day attacks they might use. A custom scan will check specific files, folders, or drives, while a full scan will check everything on your PC. We'd suggest sticking with quick scans for everyday operation, which look for common malware and check system files.

The advanced options in MSE's Settings tab enable you to include removable drives in scans, to protect flash drives as well as your system disks. You can turn off archive scanning (although we'd recommend leaving it on, since it's able to detect malware wrapped in several layers of zip compression). Other options enable you to set system restore points automatically before making system changes, including deleting, running or quarantining detected malware.

You're also able to set how long MSE will keep quarantined files before automatically deleting them. Use the History tab to see and remove quarantined malware, with links to online information about the malware so you can decide whether to delete a file or not.

So how can Microsoft give a tool like this away for free? While it doesn't advertise it, MSE is part of Microsoft's Forefront suite of security tools, based on the Forefront Endpoint Protection client used on enterprise desktops. When MSE detects malware it reports back to Microsoft, giving the company a wider view of the security landscape than it would get from just its enterprise security software. With millions of free copies of MSE, Microsoft's paying customers get a more responsive and more secure set of tools, and we all get better security.

The reporting system Microsoft uses is its Active Protection Service (previously known as SpyNet). You can choose whether to be part of it, but if you don't, you won't get full protection from MSE, since it won't detect and alert you if unknown software has been download or is being run.

Basic membership gives you additional protection in return for sending Microsoft details of downloaded and detected software, while Advanced membership sends more details, including how the software runs, what filenames it uses and where it installs.

The process should be anonymous, but there is a slim possibility that personal information could accidentally be sent back as part of reporting malware behaviour – something to consider when signing up for the Active Protection Service.

Verdict

If you want good, free antivirus software, then Microsoft Security Essentials is the tool for you. It's small, doesn't sap system performance and gets regular automatic updates to keep you secure. There's no obvious downside to using MSE – and because it's the basis of a revamped Windows Defender that will ship as part of Windows 8, it could well be a good idea to get used to it now. With Microsoft regularly updating MSE there's really no excuse to not run anti-malware tools, when they're as good as this – and especially when they're free.

We liked

MSE is one of the simplest and easiest to use anti-malware tools around. It's quick, unobtrusive and works without slowing your PC down.

Malware is caught quickly, and the default actions work well for most users. It's a small download, and keeps itself up-to-date. And above all, it's free – with no need to register or re-register.

We disliked

There really isn't much to dislike here, since MSE provides the service you want, carrying on raising the bar for all the other anti-malware vendors out there.

Our one big caveat is the default time for scheduled complete system scans. Once a week, at a time that a PC is likely to be off is not good enough, by a long way.

Final verdict

If you're not running anti-virus software, you really have no excuse. MSE is free, simple to use and has been tested by independent anti-malware certification bodies.

It may not have all the features of other security suites out there, but that's really not that important – especially when widespread use of MSE should help make it a safer internet for everyone.

Adobe claims Carousel is the only tool that enables you to access your whole photo library from your Mac, iPhone or iPad, without storage issues or manual synchronisation.

The first thought on any Mac owner's mind, though, is going to be what Carousel does that iPhoto/iTunes/iCloud doesn't. And the second is why they should pay for photo synchronisation when they already get it for nothing.

Carousel is pretty similar to Apple's Photo Stream, which is part of the free iCloud service, but with a bit more control. Like Photo Stream, instead of copying photos across to your devices it stores them online. It then delivers files to your devices on demand, via your network connection.

There are no storage limits, and any changes you make, from creating Carousels to importing and editing photos, are automatically uploaded to the Carousel server.

You'll need an Adobe ID, which is free, but you pay a monthly subscription for Carousel, though there is a free 30-day trial. You download and install the Carousel client on your Mac and iOS devices, and you're ready to go.

Strips of film

Carousels are horizontally scrolling filmstrips of photos, and you can create a Carousel for a single set of photos or for shots taken over a longer period of time; in which case they're automatically split by date, so a single Carousel may consist of a series of these filmstrips that are arranged vertically. It's quick, simple and intuitive, and the consistency in appearance across the Mac and iOS versions is one of Carousel's strong points.

It's quite something to see photos you add on your Mac appear in moments on your iPad, but this does rely on the quality of your network connection. Carousel communicates with Adobe servers constantly, so you can't work offline.

Storage solutions

Adobe solves the problem of limited storage space on iOS devices by downloading only thumbnails and low-resolution proxies. It's only when you tap on a thumbnail to view the picture properly that it downloads a higher-res version.

So yes, Carousel does indeed make your whole photo library 'available', or at least all the photos you've imported into Carousel, even on a device with limited memory.

It also reacts to changes made on any device straight away. The downside is that it's heavily dependent on the quality of your network connection. Wi-Fi speeds are okay, but Carousel can be painfully slow over 3G which can go a long way to eating up your monthly allowance.

There are other limitations that gradually become apparent. This version will only import JPEGs, not TIFF, PSD or RAW files. You can carry out basic cropping, straightening and enhancement tasks and apply a range of nice but basic image effects. And it's all non-destructive, too, so you can rewind your changes if you make a mistake.

But for cataloguing and editing tasks in general, Carousel is too lightweight even to compete with iPhoto. Things begin to get redundant when you consider that you may end up running two photo collections, with your 'proper' one still on your Mac in iPhoto or Aperture.

Carousel shows promise in its current form. But its reliance on good network speeds, its monthly subscription charge and its very basic cataloguing and editing tools blunt its appeal considerably. We recommend you try before you buy.

Malware isn't just a problem for a single platform. With this in mind, Kaspersky ONE is designed to help those with wide needs.

It includes the company's well-regarded anti-malware software for Mac, Windows, Windows Mobile up to 6.5, Symbian 9.1 to 9.4, Blackberry, and Android 1.5 to 2.3 (both phones and tablets).

The big exception is, of course, iOS: although Kaspersky would like to create antimalware software for Apple's mobile OS, the kind of deep system integration required simply couldn't be done under Apple's rules for the App Store. Arguably, there's less need for it given the control that Apple has over what gets into its Store.

The idea behind Kaspersky ONE is simple: you buy a subscription for either three machines (£45) or five (£80), and can install on whatever mix of Macs, Windows and the rest you need. That could be two Macs, two Windows PCs and an Android tablet. Or, it could be five Macs: it's entirely up to you.

In use on the Mac, Kaspersky ONE spotted all the malware we threw at it, both Mac and Windows. We also checked the system resources it was using with Activity Monitor, and found that it consistently used less than 1% CPU time, which effectively makes the impact of it on system performance unnoticeable.

Overall, if you need anti-malware protection for a range of different platforms, Kaspersky ONE offers a solid product with good performance at a decent price.

Overview and features

Plug-in software publisher Alien Skin made its name long ago with its striking Eye Candy effects for illustrators and designers, but the company also publishes a range of photo enhancement tools, and Bokeh 2 is just one of those programs.

It aims to recreate the shallow depth of field effects you get from shooting in larger formats at wider lens apertures, and it can at the same time produce a range of vignette effects to help concentrate attention on your main subject.

You can try for a subtle background defocus that improves the picture's impact without being obvious, or go for a 'lo-fi' effect reminiscent of Holga or Lomo cameras, with strong vignetting and edge blur.

It's a direct rival to OnOne software's FocalPoint 2 plug-in, but it costs around twice as much, so the key questions are not just whether it's any good, but whether it's worth the money.

Ease of use

First impressions of Alien Skin Bokeh 2 are mixed. The interface looks a little old-fashioned, especially the plain text presets and settings in the control panel on the left side. It looks more like a shareware plug-in than a premium product.

But then when you start to work with the controls, you realise it's both fast and efficient. You can enlarge the plug-in window to fill the screen and zoom in and out of the preview image at will. It updates quickly and in real time, too, so you don't have to render a finished version to see the effects of your blur settings.

You start off with a single focus region. This is the area of the image that will be kept sharp, while the rest will be blurred. This region can be circular, elliptical or 'planar'.

Circular focus regions are ideal for concentrating focus on a specific part of the picture, perhaps with a vignette effect too, while planar regions are designed for creating realistic depth of field effects into the distance. For example, you'd use a planar region to create the miniature effect that makes real-world scenes look like models.

Compared to the 'Focus Bugs' in FocalPoint 2, these focus regions aren't much to look at. They're just an inner shape that defines the sharp area, and an outer dotted line showing how far outwards the blur effect is feathered, or blended in.

Actually, though, it's really simple to change the shape, size and position of the focus regions and the feathering. It's easy, too, to add new focus regions and, if you need a more precise selection, you can make it first in Photoshop, and Bokeh 2 will add it to the focus mask it creates.

Performance

There is a rather technical, almost unfinished look about the Alien Skin Bokeh 2 interface, and the hierarchical list of settings or presets you see in the first control tab is pretty daunting.

However, the in-depth bokeh and vignette controls in the other tabs are more straightforward, and provided you don't mind spending a little time with the online tutorials, you'll soon see what this plug-in can do.

It can simulate the highlight shapes produced by simple three-blade lens diaphragms, right up to expensive eleven-blade types, or choose discs or even heart-shaped highlights. You can change the blade curvature, the 'creaminess' of the highlights and boost them for more impact.

Interestingly, there's a Zoom option for creating defocussed detail that seems to streak outwards from the focus region, and an option to apply a Twist motion blur effect. Alien Skin uses a great example of this being applied to an image of a surfer.

The vignette controls work nicely, and you can link the effect to the focus region or apply it to the whole image, with plenty of control over the vignette size, darkening the amount and feathering.

Provided you've spent a little time learning the controls and choosing suitable images to work on, Alien Skin Bokeh 2 can produce some wonderful effects. If anything, its results look slightly more realistic than OnOne's FocalPoint 2, but that could be down to the differences in the controls and which interface you find the most natural.

Sample images

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BLUR: A planar focus region was ideal here for blurring more distant detail, but with awkward objects, such as the tree trunk on the left, you may need to make a selection in Photoshop before you edit it in Alien Skin Bokeh 2.

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LO-FI: A combination of blur and vignetting creates an effective lo-fi 'look' that's reminiscent of cheap lenses and old-fashioned cameras.

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See full-res image

GRAIN: What happens to film grain if you apply a bokeh effect? Normally, it's blurred along with the detail, but this plug-in's grain-matching tools mean you can preserve the grain structure.

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See full-res image

MINI: A planar focus region gives a realistic miniature effect to this Las Vegas night scene, and Bokeh 2's extensive highlight controls have been used to create a 'star' effect in the neon lights.

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See full-res image

TOO MUCH BLUR: It doesn't always work. This aircraft's wheels are too blurred and the hills behind the cockpit are too sharp - sometimes it takes Photoshop's selection tools and a lot more work to get a good result.

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See full-res image

CLOSE-UP: Close-ups often respond very well to the 'bokeh', treatment. A planar focus region near the base and a smaller, circular region over the watch face give this still-life arrangement more 'depth'.

Verdict

Real-world scenes consist of different objects and planes at different distances, and it's rare to be able to recreate depth of field effects accurately. But you can create the impression of depth of field very easily with Alien Skin Bokeh 2, and that's all you really need.

We liked

Once you've found your way around, Alien Skin Bokeh 2 is easy and fast to work with, and it produces excellent defocus and vignette effects with little effort on your part.

We disliked

Alien Skin Bokeh 2 looks both technical and distinctly old-fashioned. It's also pretty expensive, costing twice as much as OnOne's FocalPoint 2.

Final verdict

The quality of the results is terrific, but Alien Skin Bokeh 2 is not cheap, and the software interface itself isn't much to look at, either.

In Color Efex Pro 4, there are 55 different filters. Some of these are, admittedly, similar to each other or of limited use outside specialist fields, but there are plenty of others that can warp, stretch or re-invigorate your photographic imagination in ways that you might not realise using Photoshop alone.

Photoshop is fine if you never run out of inspiration, or you already have an encyclopedic knowledge of every photo effect there is and can pre-visualise each one before you start using it.

But Color Efex Pro goes further. With just a few clicks, you can see how your image would look using a whole array of different effects and treatments you might not have thought of, pushed further than you might have dared.

The full list of filters is displayed in a scrolling panel at the left side of the screen. They are also organised into categories, such as Landscape and Wedding, and are accessed using buttons at the top of the panel.

Filters and controls

When you select an effect, you see the result applied to your photo in the main window, while on the right is a vertical tools panel that offers a whole range of manual adjustments that vary according to the filter you've selected. Some are quick and simple, with few options. Others, such as the Black and White filter and new Levels and Curves, are almost like mini image editors in their own right.

The Black and White filter, for example, creates very good black and white conversions at its default settings, but it can also apply red, orange, yellow and other black and white filter effects, just like the Channel Mixer in Photoshop.

It also offers a Tonal Enhancer that produces low-key, regular or high-key images, and a Dynamic Contrast mode, which produces really strong, graphic monochromatic images. With all three, you can adjust the brightness and contrast, and protect shadow and highlight detail using sliders below the main controls and a histogram at the bottom of the panel.

The controls vary, and these filters don't all have the scope or depth of the Black and White filter, but what they do have in common is Nik's unique U point technology. It's used to apply the effect or remove it from specific areas of the image.

You do this using control points, which create a resizable, circular adjustment zone. Within this zone, the software automatically selects similar areas to the one at the centre of the control point. You can think of it as an automatic selection tool, where the size of the circle is simply the maximum radius of the effect.

This works really well. The selections blend well with surrounding areas, with no hard edges and rarely any edge/halo effects, although you do sometimes need to make a couple of attempts at finding the right area to create the control point.

Fans of Color Efex Pro 3, the previous version, will be thinking that this all sounds very familiar, but there are some major differences in this new version that make it well worth upgrading to.

There are some new and very interesting filters, for a start. Dark Contrasts creates a pseudo-HDR effect from a single image, with intensified contrasts, edge glow effects and heightened saturation. Detail Extractor works on localised contrast and rebalances highlight and shadow tones.

The Film Effects in the previous version have been split up and expanded into different sections, including Faded, Modern, Nostalgic and Vintage, and the new Levels and Curves filter is extremely useful, particularly with the U Point adjustments.

Presets and combinations

One of Color Efex Pro's strong points has always been its ability to preview effects directly and simply, and version 4 takes this further by adding presets for each filter, which are accessed by clicking a button to the right of the filter's name. You choose a preset you like, it's applied in the main window and you can then tweak the settings if you need to, or accept the effect as it is.

The other big change to Color Efex Pro 4 is the ability to combine filter effects. Previously, you could only apply one at a time - it would be applied in Photoshop as a new layer, complete with layer mask, but then you'd have to reopen Color Efex Pro to add another.

Now, though, you can combine any number of effects without leaving the application. Not only that, you can save these combinations of effects as Recipes - Color Efex Pro comes with a selection of great-looking recipes to give you an idea of what this new feature can achieve.

The ability to combine effects in this way greatly expands Color Efex's potential. It's true that there have been only modest additions to the range of filters in this release, but the changes to the way the plug-in works, although less glamorous, are hugely significant. Color Efex Pro always offered a large array of excellent photographic filter effects, but now it enables you to combine them quickly and in much more exciting ways than ever before.

Verdict

If you already use Color Efex Pro, version 4 is definitely worth the upgrade. And if you don't, you're missing out on one of the image-editing world's truly great filter collections. It's not cheap, but if you try out the fully-functional trial version, you'll soon find out why. It beats rivals such as Tiffen Dfx 3.0, OnOne Perfect Effects 3 and Alien Skin Exposure 3 in our books.

Color Efex Pro 4 is expensive, but you get a huge range of effects, many with in-depth controls. It's both powerful and inspirational, and the new filters, combinations and presets are a big step forward.

Interface

We've finally got our hands on the new Samsung Galaxy Nexus, so we've taken an in-depth look at Google's latest OS: Android 4.0, or Ice Cream Sandwich to its friends.

Google has told us that this is one of the biggest overhauls of the operating systems since it unleashed the Android project three years ago - and there's certainly a lot to plough through.

From enhanced contact menus to improved keyboards and NFC capabilities, even the most ardent Android users will have to spend some time getting used to the new OS - so let's dive in.

Interface

The most noticeable change with Ice Cream Sandwich is the interface - it might follow the same principles as the Android of old, but the way it's used is radically different in a number of ways.

Firstly, Android 4.0 is designed to work without buttons. That's not to say your Galaxy S2's keys won't work when the update happens, but going forward, it's going to be pristine bezels all the way.

Now to navigate around, you're offered three softkeys: Back, Home and Multi-tasking (or Recent Apps). The latter is particularly new for phones, and comes from the Honeycomb UI - basically a set of thumbnails that show recently opened apps.

Here's the new part: swipe sideways to shut down an application, which will greatly help reduce the battery consumption of your phone if there's something silently updating in the background.

The Home and Back buttons are the same as they've always been, but no longer have a 'long press' function attached... so you can't automatically call up the keyboard, for instance.

If you move into something media-ish, such as watching a movie or browsing the web like a pro, these three buttons shrink down to tiny dots, so you've got more of the screen to look at. However, remember what each dot does, as pressing it will take you home/open the recent apps etc and you might not want to.

For Android fans, this presents something of an issue: with the menu button gone, you'll have to hunt around the screen for three vertical dots which have taken its place. However, these can be anywhere, so sometimes you'll get distracted trying to work out how on earth to alter settings.

The multi-tasking pane also seems an odd choice for one of three buttons - it used to be you could access this functionality by long-pressing the home key, and it makes more sense to keep this and then have the multi-tasking slot taken up by a menu key.

However, despite the odd placement, the multi-tasking pane is cool - simply swipe horizontally on any open app to shut it down, in a similar way to the Cards system on webOS - it certainly helps keep open applications under control.

The home screens are once again limited to five, but this time there's no option to get rid of those you don't want. It's not a huge issue to some people, but with the expandable widgets and loads of apps you'll be looking to download, we'd have expected more.

However, we wouldn't worry too much about that - the Nexus S only had a limited number of homescreens, but as soon as the rest of the industry got its hands on the OS there were millions of the things flying around.

There's a plethora of tiny tweaks and changes to the Android OS that we were impressed with, ranging from the Tron-like blue theme that pervades throughout the OS to the ability to unlock the phone simply by using your face.

The latter security option is more novelty than anything else, with Google outlining at the start that it's not meant to be 100% secure.

We also found a few issues with getting it to recognise our face in varying light levels, or even working out which bit of the picture was a face - not the most effective for unlocking your handset, but when it works it's a great party trick.

The notifications bar has been given a functionality overhaul to now include larger information slots - if it's a contact that's sending you a message or a missed call, their contact photo will now appear too, which is a nice touch.

And sometimes you want to get rid of some notifications, but not others - this has been taken care of by allowing you to swipe away the updates about apps and messages you don't care about, making it easy to maintain your info bar.

Settings has also been given a spot in the notifications pane, meaning no matter where you are in the OS you can always duck out and tinker with the phone - this is excellent news for some applications that need GPS or Wi-Fi enabled swiftly.

However, we would have though Google would have copied the likes of Samsung or HTC here and offered one-tap switching to these elements - it works really well on most phones, so we're surprised by its omission.

The other new addition is the dock at the bottom of the screen - this stays on every home screen, and like iOS can be altered to contain the applications you like to tap away at the most.

Folders are more iOS-like too, with users given the ability to drag and drop icons on top of one another from the home screen to create bundles of apps which you can simply rename. Given Apple's ire about Google 'stealing' certain elements of its UI, we can't help but think this will create a little more angst down on Infinite Loop.

Google is clearly also thinking about giving users more ability to enjoy apps than ever before by putting a link to the Market in the top right hand corner of the menu screen, which we really liked as it meant we always knew we could quickly update our app catalogue when needed.

The other big change is widgets have been brought to the fore: you can now look at each one on the menu screen without having to actually select it - this really helps when a new application you've downloaded has an associated widget and you're wondering whether to waste time popping it on the home screen.

Overall, we love what Google has done with the Ice Cream Sandwich UI. It's nothing mind-blowing, but the little touches here and there will add to user delight, and that's what's needed to chip away at those that are dyed-in-the-wool iPhone users.

People

The contacts system has been much improved with Ice Cream Sandwich, with a completely different font (called Roboto, and used throughout Android 4.0) and pleasantly clean blue and white interface to roll through.

The contacts list is the same as it's ever been - insofar as it's a list of people with contact pictures next to their name. But the differences are quite large: for instance, social networking updates from the likes of Google+ and Twitter are available by tapping to open a contact profile then swiping to the left.

There's no Facebook integration as yet, but that's likely to be on the way soon as the social network updates its API. We've reached out to both parties to find out, so we'll let you know when we do.

The layout is lovely though, especially on the larger screen of the Galaxy Nexus making it easy to scroll through all your buddies in one go. The large tab to let you jump the correct letter of your contact's name has gone, but now just sliding your finger along the right hand side of the screen is enough.

The downside to the OS, and one that the likes of HTC will leap upon to improve, is the linking of the contacts together. You have to open the person's profile, tap the menu to edit, then tap the menu again to Join contacts together from other social networks.

It's a really long-winded way of doing things, and one that should be almost automatic - even the suggested contacts once we'd asked to join them together weren't very accurate.

We do like the Google+ integration, as while it's not the most widespread social network around there are some nice tweaks.

For instance, the Groups tab now has automatic links to your Google+ Circles making it easier to connect with the people you care with. However, you've also got a favourites tab to play with, and as there's no way to mass communicate with a Circle from the Contacts tab, it's a little redundant.

Messaging

Google promised to keep updating the keyboard on its new versions of Android, and once again it's come up with a new version of the software - and it's pretty good.

There's not a whole heap of visual changes, bar the predictive suggestions: these have been dropped to just three per word, making it easier to select the word you're after.

Smaller, more subtle vibrations have also been added to each keypress to make it easier to register inputs... we tested this out and it doesn't seem that different to normal haptic feedback, to be honest - but a lot of users are loving it, so we'll give it a crowd-sourced thumbs up.

The accuracy is excellent too on the new keyboard, with even fudge-fingered attempts at writing yielding almost perfect texting. Speech to text is also enhanced, with real time feedback - no longer do you have to wait until you've finished speaking to see what the phone thinks you said, with the cloud-based prediction delivering results as you speak.

It worked well over Wi-Fi, but we'll be interested to note how well it works when it comes to 3G network speeds, as Google hinted it had integrated this functionality thanks to the proliferation of 4G signal in the US.

If, like many, you're looking to compare Google's voice recognition to Siri, we'd say that the former is definitely inferior to Apple's effort - but not by a huge amount.

It seems to struggle more with English accents over US, as our buddy Hank (NB - not his real name but included to make it more authentically YooEssAy) was much more accurate with his voicing than we were.

There's no Universal Inbox to speak of here, but we do love the updated Gmail app - sure, HTML emails still don't render as well as they could, but the overall look and feel is improved substantially. The options are all well laid out at the bottom, and the ease of swiping left and right is highly impressive.

Messaging has always been a decent option on Android, and with Ice Cream Sandwich it's a real step forward.

Internet browser

As with most inbuilt features on Ice Cream Sandwich, there's a change to the internet browser too.

One of the big differences is the change to the tabbed browsing - now you get to see your entire set of open internet pages simply by scrolling vertically through live thumbnails. It's a nice touch - while it doesn't add much when it comes to functionality, it's much easier to jump between windows than before.

Another great notion is the ability to 'Request desktop sites'. This means that while the Android browser might default to the mobile version of some internet websites, some users will need the full content.

Simply tap the relevant option in the menu and you'll get the full flavour instantly, which is very useful for the kind of sites that won't let you jump to the main page easily (BBC iPlayer springs to mind).

A sad fact of UK life is that we a) either never have any 3G coverage when we need it or b) are on such a restrictive data plan that we hate having to spend our KBs unnecessarily.

Google has thought of this with the option to save pages for offline reading. This basically takes a snapshot of the web page without including the hyperlinks, making it easy to read but not navigate through. But then again, if you're offline you can't link out anyway... so it's not a big deal.

We can't fully comment on the speed, as it's partly dependant on hardware how fast things will load; but in tests with the Galaxy S2, which has roughly comparable specs to the Nexus, we noticed some websites popped up much faster.

But on the Galaxy Nexus we love the internet browser. While other devices might not be as responsive, the browser is quick, slick and responds well to the touch. We're annoyed there's no Flash video on board, but let's face it: the death knell has sounded for that platform, and it will still be coming next month.

Camera

The camera on the Android 4.0 system is much upgraded again, after some real leaps forward from the likes of Éclair and Gingerbread.

The settings are the same as before, with the likes of white balance, exposure and Scenes all inbuilt into the OS. The Scene modes are probably the least important of the lot, as only Night Mode really offers up anything in the way of discernible difference.

However, we liked tinkering about with the exposure settings to capture our shots - this yielded some real differences.

The big talking point of the new camera app on the Galaxy Nexus is the zero shutter lag, which is simply ace. It's up there with the iPhone 4S in terms of speed (and probably just beats it, to be honest) and means you can take some cracking shots in the blink of an eye.

However, you do sacrifice auto focus to achieve this - but if it's a well-lit scene, you shouldn't have any issues.

The other new feature is the panorama mode, which does as you'd imagine: helps you capture widescreen shots. The phone will help you by telling you to go faster and slower to capture the picture, but the results can be erratic.

Android 4.0 now has a built in editing tool as well, meaning you can alter the quality of your shots very easily - it might not be a full editing suite, but does come up with some nifty ways to tweak your snaps to improve them before never showing them to anyone ever again.

It should be noted we're trying all this on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, which is a very powerful phone. Should the same options be offered on single-core devices with a lot less RAM, we doubt the same shutter speed could be achieved.

Video recorder

The video recording has also been improved thanks to the Ice Cream Sandwich update, with the ability to record in time lapse mode, set the white balance and also add in silly video effects too.

We're impressed with the way the latter works, with the phone able to track your face and keep things like a big nose on the screen at all times. Is it useful? No - but it's very 'Google' in the frippery it brings to the phone.

It's likely some of these features won't make it to the less powerful phones, as they'll require a little more raw power - but we were impressed with the 1080p footage captured on the Nexus camera.

Media

The media capabilities of Ice Cream Sandwich have been much improved in our eyes, with all aspects of the media experience updated to make it that much easier to manoeuvre through your phone.

While some areas could still do with tweaking, we're a world away from the super-basic music app and complete lack of video player on the first Android release.

Music

The music player on Ice Cream Sandwich has been completely overhauled to make it more in keeping with the super-blue theme that pervades throughout the OS.

Once opened, you're presented with a playlist of recent songs and albums you've listened to, which instantly makes you feel like the music player is more personalised.

Swiping left and right will get you to Albums, Artists and Songs - although we'd prefer the option to choose the order of these, as many people prefer to jump straight to the songs if they're hankering for a spot of Girls Al... erm, Michael Bub.... erm.... oh sod it. We have awful taste in music.

Google has chucked in a little search icon at the bottom of the app too, along with the 'Now Playing' bar. This makes it simple to jump to a song or artist you've got on your mind.

The actual music player itself isn't much to write home about, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. We're talking big album art, and play/skip buttons. Press the little up arrow and you can like/dislike the song or shuffle and repeat songs.

We're not sure what liking a song really does, but we hope it improves the Shuffle aspect.

Video

The video portal has taken on a much larger significance from Google since it unveiled its movie download service, and as such your personal collection will be boosted too.

The new red-themed offering sees you taken to a dual-tabbed arena: one the left side, all the videos you've rented from Android Market, and the right all your personal videos.

The big boost here is the clear and easy to use thumbnails with description of each vid; if you've ever used an HTC phone or read our reviews of one, you'll know of our ire at the lack of any kind of signpost as to which video is which.

Whether this system on offer here will continue when manufacturers get all skin-happy on the OS, we don't know - but it at least bodes well.

The video player is still disappointingly basic though, with only a slider bad and pause button to mess around with. We're still gobsmacked Google hasn't bought one of the clever apps already on the market (for instance, MVideoPlayer) and offered that as a free premium app to download.

We get that simplicity is key for a lot of people, but we really would love a bookmarking system, or the ability to change the screen brightness in the app. If Google now does this - you heard it here first, people.

Books

The Books app is pre-installed in the Galaxy Nexus, and is set to be a staple feature of the Android 4.0 OS too.

It's one of the better e-reading experiences on a mobile phone no matter what the size of the screen - the page turning animations lend a very book-esque experience that many will enjoy.

It's a lot like the Kindle app to be honest, although the scroller along the bottom of the application will alert you to the different chapters you're bouncing through, making it easier to find the page you're looking for.

There's also a neat 'view original pages' feature for older books, where the original edition is scanned in to be viewed as the first eyes would have done. It's a cool feature, but one we turned off pretty quickly - we want to be able to read a book properly.

The interesting thing is these books are actually stored in the cloud, so each will load the first time you start reading... although the option to make them available offline makes a lot more sense.

Given books don't take up much space, we're more than happy to make sure everything is cached... we don't want to be left hanging on the Underground.

Verdict

We'll jump right out and say it: Ice Cream Sandwich is the step forward Android has been crying out for. It's slicker, faster and more intuitive than ever before, and Google should be applauded for improving an already decent system.

Google has offered up data management too - you'll be able to set a limit to how much data the phone uses, with warnings and updates on which apps are the most byte-hungry. This is the sort of thinking smartphone users will love.

We liked

The overall look and feel of Android has been streamlined, and that's a real plus in our eyes. Google's OS might be a world-conqueror right now, but that doesn't mean people always know how to use it in the same way they might an iPhone.

Things like contact pictures in the notifications bar, the lack of hardware buttons and moving settings to always be accessible are the sort of things many will love, plopping things where you intuitively expect them to be.

The internet browser's improvements to include desktop sites and offline reading are welcome too - anything that gives the user extra control is a good thing in our opinion.

We disliked

One of our larger gripes with Ice Cream Sandwich is, at times, the over-simplicity. Things like the video player being nothing more than a slider and play button are fine, but we expect to be able to do more with the app as we see fit.

There's also the issue of how the OS will work on less-powerful devices - will the fancy animations and services be as palatable on something that costs less than £100?

The other gripes are truly minor: support for file types, no place for Google Wallet as yet, too few home screens and no way to see them all at once.

These are things that will be fixed with updates or manufacturers simply improving on the OS in the months to come.

Verdict

Google needed to make sure it kept its OS refreshed and current, and Ice Cream Sandwich ticks that box in so many ways.

It's worth remembering that this is the foundation for manufacturers to go and build on - there's a lot more to come in the next 12 months.

However, if this is the platform Google will be using on all Motorola devices when the acquisition is complete then it's a good enough OS in its own right.

In terms of how good you'll think Android 4.0: Ice Cream Sandwich is, it all boils down to personal choice. We're excited to see how manufacturers will customise it and extol the virtues to improve media or the home networking options, but others will simply be huge fans of the simplicity - our score is a mixture of the tools Google has offered up and the base level of performance on show.

But make no mistake - Ice Cream Sandwich is the most accessible and easy-to-learn OS from Google, and that's going to be key in the wars against Apple and Microsoft.

Overview

Update: read our Nokia Lumia 800 review.

With Android's Ice Cream Sandwich and the iPhone 5 on the way, Windows Phone 7 needs an update to fill in the missing pieces. The Windows Phone 7.5 'Mango' refresh brings with it a comprehensive list of fixes and features, but how sweet is it in action?

The big advantage of Windows' mobile operating system is the clean, clear, but far from antiseptic Metro interface, which is so good that Microsoft has taken it to both Windows 8 and Xbox 360. Microsoft hasn't messed with success here – Windows Phone 7.5 Mango has the same signature look as its predecessor, only better.

The live tiles are livelier, and you can pin not just apps but specific features within apps to the Start screen (such as the Wi-Fi control, although developers have to allow this).

You can also pin groups of people, who you can then text or track on Twitter and Facebook all at once; folders from email; artists; albums; or the new SmartDJ playlists. Without changing the way the Start screen works, Microsoft has made it more useful and more pliant for personalisation.

You no longer have to cram all your favourite apps on to it to find them either. Once you have more than 45 apps, letters of the alphabet show up to separate the list. Tap any letter to open an alphabetised grid that makes it fast to find an app without you having to spend time arranging them logically.

It's the same principle as the original interface, just made to work better – and in general that's what you get throughout Windows Phone 7.5 Mango.

Multitasking

Windows Phone 7.5 Mango has multitasking capabilities, but what you get from these depends on the apps you run. Some apps – music players, for instance – get to run in the background, but mostly what you get is the same fast-task switching as before, with the addition of an app picker view so you can choose what you want to go back to.

If an app hasn't been updated to suit multitasking, it resumes from its frozen state just about as quickly as before. But apps that have been rewritten to suit the functionality resume more quickly, and they can also get Windows Phone 7.5 to run background agents for them to perform updates and the like.

It's similar to the way that Live Tiles work and a good compromise between making it easier to work with multiple apps and not undermining battery life. A handful of apps, including Evernote, have already been updated to run in the background, and you can go back to working with them as fast as if you never switched away.

Once you have a lot of apps that can run in the background, the new battery saver option comes in handy. When your battery gets low, this turns off Wi-Fi, push email and background apps. We found we could set it to turn on automatically and squeeze extra life out of the phone without ever really noticing that any service was getting turned off.

Social networking

The Twitter integration that was sorely missing in Windows Phone 7 arrives in 7.5 Mango along with LinkedIn, and the Facebook implementation is far better.

There's still one feature missing, though: there's no built-in way to do direct messages, even though there's an obvious place to put them.

Add a Twitter account and replies and mentions show up in the notification pane for the Me tile, which is also where you post updates to as many of your linked social networks as you want. So you tap on your own photo to say things or see what people are saying to you, which makes sense. Then you go to the People hub to see what your friends are saying and to reply.

This works very well. Updates that are on both Twitter and Facebook only show up once and you can swipe between replies on both services. You can also retrieve a day or so of updates, depending on how chatty your friends are, and quickly filter this to show just one social network or just updates from friends in your address book.

Alternatively, you can switch over to a group you've made to track just your family or specific friends, rather than every school chum you're Facebook friends with.

It's worth taking a few minutes to set up groups, because they turn social networks from a font of random information into an easy way to stay in touch with whatever service your friends use (unless, of course it's Google Plus).

You can also chat with Facebook friends just like you were sending text messages. In fact, you can reply to a text message with a Facebook message and vice versa, and the whole conversation shows up in the same place.

This also applies Facebook, Windows Live Messenger or any of the linked services such as AOL and Yahoo.

This would be the ideal place to put Twitter direct messages and we think Microsoft has missed a trick here.

Other exchanges, such as emails, phone calls and meetings, show up in the history pane for each contact you have, so you can follow conversations as they jump across different services.

And you can still filter out your address book, so that it's not swamped by your Facebook friends.

Snap and share

Tweets aren't the only thing you can share more easily with Windows Phone 7.5 Mango. Take a snap with the camera and you can share your photos via Facebook, Twitter (by dropping them onto a SkyDrive page), email or certain apps.

You can also share videos on SkyDrive and Facebook, but not YouTube, and if you record a long clip it will get transcoded to upload more quickly.

What's more, the camera now saves its settings instead of throwing them away every time you leave the interface, and it has a nifty on-screen shutter button that you touch to focus and take a shot.

There's also an Autofix option that makes some basic adjustments, which improved about half of our photographs.

From this...

To this...

This isn't the cleverest camera interface we've seen, but it's far more functional than before, and third-party apps can now plug in and make it shine.

Internet Explorer 9 browser and real Office

IE9 on Windows Phone 7.5 Mango is a real browser that uses the same code as IE9 on Windows 7, although it still lacks the ability to run plug-ins such as Flash. It does, however, have the same super-fast Chakra JavaScript engine.

This means you can run web apps such as Google Docs, the full TechRadar site, your mobile banking site and almost any other page online.

You can choose whether the browser identifies itself as operating from a mobile to retrieve smaller, phone-optimised pages or a desktop browser for the full version of sites, but you rarely have to worry about a page not working unless it's specifically written for Safari or Chrome.

The browser interface has changed slightly to show you more of the page on screen, which means the tabs are now hidden on the swipe-up menu (oddly, the default is for links from apps to reuse the current tab rather than opening in their own new tab).

However, there's now an address bar in landscape mode, which grants a popular Windows Phone 7 request. These are small improvements, though – the big news here is the full HTML5 browser.

If you buy a Windows Phone 7 device, Bing may well be your browser of choice. If your operator has a deal with Yahoo instead, you can thankfully now change the default browser search back to Bing. Unsurprisingly, you can't opt for Google, though.

Email, calendar and SkyDrive

The email client adds both key business features for document security and a threaded view of email that neatly shows you the whole of a conversation without making the interface cluttered or confusing. The conversation view also includes your replies, even if you've filed some messages away in other folders.

You can also choose whether to have separate inboxes for each email service you use pinned as separate tiles on the Start screen, or have a unified inbox for some or all of your accounts.

You can pin key folders instead of whole accounts too, so you can file comments to your blog away neatly, but still know exactly when you have new messages in that folder.

And although it's not new, the way you can swipe across the screen to see unread or flagged messages is still far more convenient than just about any other smartphone email view.

Calendar

The calendar now shows multiple calendars from Windows Live or Exchange, plus your Facebook calendar, complete with events you've been invited to, but haven't yet accepted.

And if you use a service such as Tripit, which puts travel plans into its own online calendar, or you need to see calendars for the rest of your family, you can also get the appointments on your phone.

There's still no week view, although Agenda works well, but it's become much faster to add an appointment in Windows Phone 7.5, because you can just tap on the right time in Day view and type in the details.

Office and Skydrive

The Office and SkyDrive tools are much easier to use now, and the fantastically handy OneNote notes are the first thing you see in the Office hub, followed by recent documents and templates.

There's a new OneNote checkbox list you can use to make a to-do list that you can tick off as you work through it – assuming you're not using the To Do pane in the calendar to work with tasks and to-do items from Exchange and Windows Live instead.

Word and PowerPoint get a few new features, including templates, and Excel now adds up multiple cells when you select them the way it does on a PC, which is a very handy shortcut.

Office 365 integration is very neat too – just typing in your email address and password sets up email, calendar, contacts and a link to SharePoint in the Office hub. But you can also explore SkyDrive and documents on your phone, all in the same consistent interface. Again, this is tidying up something that was useful in Windows Phone 7, but just wasn't done well enough to be appealing.

Incidentally, although Microsoft suggested the autocorrect you get across Windows Phone 7.5 Mango is only for US phones, it worked just fine in every app that we tried that uses the full keyboard after the UK upgrade.

It doesn't seem to learn your specific corrections as fast as the original version, but if you accidentally hit 'b' or 'n' between two words instead of the space bar, it now corrects that, and it's still fantastic at turning gibberish offset keystrokes into the word you were trying to type. This is the touch keyboard for people who can't use touch keyboards.

Speak, listen, search

Voice search in Windows Phone 7 was restricted to US phones. Now the UK and a couple of other countries also let you search Bing and Bing Maps by talking to your phone.

What's more, you can dictate text and Facebook messages as if they were texts, and have replies read to you.

The readback works very well unless you're somewhere noisy – like walking down the street – but it's great in the car, where it's a quiet environment. That's the case even if you're playing music on the phone, since it gets paused automatically when messages arrive.

Bing search and maps

Voice search isn't the only new option in Bing. The rather pointless News results have been replaced by Images.

You can use the Local Scout to look for places nearby to shop and eat.

As usual, the database is a little better in the US, but it does find local venues in London. Annoyingly, the UK doesn't get the best new feature in Bing Maps, though: reading directions aloud as you walk or drive.

We're not so keen on the way the view is permanently split between the map and directions instead of being able to zoom in on one or the other either.

There's an intriguing new option called Bing Vision, which is similar to Google Goggles. With it, you can photograph text, have it OCRed in the cloud word by word, pick the words you want by tapping on screen and either search on the text or translate it into another language.

This works well on clearly printed text or even text on screen, but not so well on a blurry printed receipt. It also recognises QR codes and Microsoft Tags, plus bar codes for US books, DVDs and CDs.

There's also a Shazam-style search for recognising music that's playing and buying it from Zune Marketplace.

The Marketplace is finally easier to search, with results divided between music, games and apps, so that you can actually find what you're looking for.

You can find apps on the new Web Marketplace and send them directly to your phone as well.

On our test handset, what we got was a Hotmail message with a link that downloaded and installed apps (very like BlackBerry AppWorld). On some other phones we've seen, hidden text messages trigger the install directly. Either way, it's convenient.

Installing apps and games is also much clearer too. Click Install and you see a list of your existing apps with the icon for the app you're downloading and a progress bar, so you're not left wondering where the app will end up.

Music with Zune HD

Windows Phone 7 missed out on some of the best features of the Zune HD. With Windows Phone 7.5 Mango, you can finally make your own playlists.

You can also get a Smart DJ mix of music on your device that should go well together, or even music from the whole of Marketplace if you have a Zune Pass.

Unlike Google Music, this actually provides tracks you want to listen to together rather than strange and jarring transitions, especially if you're streaming tracks from the huge choice on Zune.

The player controls are also a little larger and easier to see (although possibly not as elegant), and they show up on the lock screen as well.

For video, assuming the file is either local or a format that can be cached, you're provided with a progress bar to scrub through the media as well.

The other big missing feature of Windows Phone 7 was custom ringtones. The Mango update means you can now add these through the Zune software, with unprotected tracks of less than 40 seconds that have the ringtone genre assigned to them. It's a clunky mechanism, but we expect plenty of apps to appear making this painless.

Verdict

Windows Phone 7.5 Mango is definitely an upgrade for the mobile operating system. The 500 new features don't make the system cluttered or confusing, despite adding improvements, fixes and new features in almost every area. Instead they fit in with the existing user experience and enhance it.

This means the operating system has the same elegant and engaging user interface as ever, with colourful tiles and plenty of white space – but it now also has key features that were previously missing to help it match the current versions of iOS and Android. Some aspects even leapfrog other platforms.

It runs on all existing Windows Phone 7 handsets too. While newer phones have updated Snapdragon 8x55 or 7x30 processors, original handsets such as the HTC HD7 didn't feel slow or sluggish at all under the updated operating system, even with many large web pages loaded.

In fact, older models felt faster and more responsive than when running the original Windows Phone 7, although fast task switching and background apps certainly help with that.

Even newer phones still have single- rather than dual-core processors to keep battery lives reasonable, but we didn't ever feel that the devices were slowed down for lack of an extra core.

In short, just having a better hardware spec doesn't make something a better phone. What Windows Phone 7.5 does is take really good advantage of the hardware you have.

We liked

Full HTML5 browsing with IE9 is an excellent new addition, as is the great Twitter integration, including sharing and groups to organise updates from friends.

Multitasking means you can switch between a few current apps quickly.

Voice recognition and handy new ways to search are finally available for UK users as well as US Windows Phone users.

We disliked

Internet connection sharing is at the whim of the mobile phone operator, and only for new phones.

The otherwise excellent Twitter integration doesn't include direct messages.

Apps need to be written specifically to take full advantage of multitasking.

There's no Flash support (although YouTube videos play without a separate player, they're still full screen).

Some features – text to speech directions, indoor maps, traffic – are still US only. Others – hyperlinked addresses and email – work better for US addresses and numbers than for UK ones.

Final verdict

Windows Phone 7.5 is supremely usable, surprisingly powerful and delivers the experience Microsoft has been promising, with only a few rough edges left.