Dragon Naturally Speaking 7 Preferred Review

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(More customer reviews)First, unless you are extremely serious about using voice to enter text, this program is not for you. It doesn't allow you to surf the net easily, as advertised. Many of its features, while sounding great, are more of a pain to use than doing it manually. (Similar to spending an hour on the web trying to answer a question or picking up the telephone and have a reference librarian answer the question in less than five minutes.) One more disadvantage: the headset that comes with the Professional version is not adequate for voice recognition at the level you need if you are serious about using this program. You need to buy a USB headset. After looking at several, I chose the Plantronics DSP-500, which retails for about $. You can spend less and get lower quality, but then, why bother? I had two problems with installation on my XP Pro system. The installation program was able to create the folder for the program, but I had to create the Users folder manually. Not much of a problem, but it could confuse someone who isn't familiar with computers.
But enough with the problems. I'm an author, so I spend lots of time inputting data. My arms, wrists, and fingers end up aching by the end of the day. While this program isn't perfect, it suprised me with its level of accuracy, and its ability to read words in the context of a sentence (such as too, two, and to). The training time took less than 15 minutes. I still find that I have to make mouse movements. Some things are easier to do manually. One of the advantages of the Professional version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking is that it works in programs other than Microsoft Word. In fact, I used the program to write this review. So, if you are in a quiet environment and your throat isn't sore, this can be a great timesaver. It is rated at recognizing speech at approximately 160 words per minute. My major problem is that I don't think that fast.
Overall, this is a terrific program for voice recognition. Voice recognition is still not at the technical level we might wish for, but this newest version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking takes another step forward toward the realization of that goal.

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Dragon NaturallySpeaking Preferred 7 offers home and small office users powerful speech-recognition features to maximize their productivity. After completing about 5 minutes of training, you can talk to your computer and watch your words instantly appear in virtually any Windows-based application, including Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Outlook Express, Internet Explorer and Corel WordPerfect. Dragon NaturallySpeaking 7 is the most accurate Dragon NaturallySpeaking ever, and the easiest to use.

With this versatile program, you can launch programs, create documents and reports, and manage your desktop--all by voice. Simply dictate into a ScanSoft certified Pocket PC or handheld digital recorder, and then automatically transcribe your dictated speech when you synch with your PC. Use RealSpeak Proofing to have your documents read back to you in the most natural sounding synthesized voice available, or simply have your own recorded dictation played back for you. END

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Corel Photo Album 6 Deluxe Review

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(More customer reviews)Corel's Photo Album 6 (formerly known as Jasc's Paint Shop Photo Album) bundles together the most variety of features of any consumer-grade digital image manager -- a file-level manager, slideshow and screensaver module, creative projects (calendars, magazine covers, etc.), backup and archive module; and a basic image editor. Version 6 of Photo Album sports a new interface, some new project templates and backup options, and most importantly, easy-to-use IPTC and EXIF metadata support. The latter feature makes the program well worth the upgrade for prior users, and the best general choice for mainstream users, such as self-appointed family photo archivists, looking to organize and manage their growing collection of digital photographs for posterity.
What makes metadata support so important? A photograph may be worth a thousand words, but not always. Without aid, the casual viewer may not understand or remember a picture's content or context. (E.g., When and where was this picture taken? What is this a picture of? Who are these people? Why did I take this picture?) Even the photographer himself may not remember these things one or five years later. In an analog photograph, one could write a description on back of the print itself. With digital photos, this sort of information is kept as metadata. Without metadata, that interesting digital photograph (Holiday Party 2005: Roy and Ciara with Mayor Mike. Unbeknownst to Mayor Mike, Roy and Ciara rose to power by wasting hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars.) is just another anonymous picture. It is metadata that imbues digital photographs with their context and meaning, and that enables digital photograph collections to be quickly organized or synthesized in a wide variety of ways - by timeline, event, location, person, etc.
Prior versions of Photo Album kept metadata locked away inside a proprietary database, usable only inside the program. Corel Photo Album 6's support of IPTC and EXIF metadata relegates product lock-in to the past, and potentially makes your photograph descriptions (complete memory = photograph + metadata) accessible seamlessly across:
- online-photo sharing sites that support IPTC and EXIF metadata, such as Fotki and Flickr;
- friends, family, or other users who don't use Corel Photo Album 6;
- yourself, on other computers, if or when you outgrow Photo Album 6, or the product line is discontinued.
That's potentially, because Corel doesn't quite implement IPTC support the way everyone else does. Corel Photo Album 6 is able to view metadata of digital photographs created in Adobe Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, but the opposite is not necessarily true. Also, Photo Album 6 does not support Unicode, so foreign language support (for recording foreign toponyms and friends in your photographs without the need for Romanize them) is limited. However, PA6 is still better than its competitors, who either do not support IPTC or EXIF metadata (leaving you locked into their products), or make it cumbersome to use.
Corel Photo Album 6 is worthy of consideration even if you've already purchased a digital photo-editor / image library manager bundle, such as Microsoft's Digital Image Suite 2006 or Adobe's Photoshop Elements 4. Microsoft's Digital Image Library 11 (part of Microsoft's Digital Image Suite 2006) locks metadata inside its own proprietary database and the Windows XP NTFS file system, usable only on the single computer where the program is installed. DIS2006 users who want to share picture metadata with other users must manually copy and paste it for each picture they want to share. Further, the proprietary nature of DIS2006's database renders it susceptible to breakage - if you change the filename of an image outside the program, the image and its DIS2006 database entry are disassociated. Although Photoshop Elements 4 supports IPTC and EXIF metadata, the program continues to be disjointed - you fill in different pieces of metadata in the photo editor and photo organizer sections of the program.
Unfortunately, Corel's Photo Album 6 is just as disjointed. PA6 tracks picture title, description, and keyword information. Corel's photo editor, Paint Shop Pro 10 (equivalent to Microsoft's Digital Image Suite 2006's or Adobe's Photoshop Elements 4's photo editor; and a separate purchase) is needed to track picture location (city, state, country, etc.) information, among other things. However, Corel Photo Album 6's advantage over Photoshop Elements 4 is that PE4's photo organizer is very unwieldy when managing more than a few hundred photographs. It would be nice to see future versions of Corel Photo Album and Paint Shop Pro share the same metadata management features. Experienced users may look to PixVue, a free Windows Explorer extension, for a full IPTC/XMP metadata editor in the interim.
Consumers should understand that given PA6's low price, competitor programs may exceed the depth of any particular module(s) in PA6. For example, ACD System's ACDSee 8 is a better file-level manager. Simple Star's PhotoShow Deluxe 4 has the better slideshow module. With these other choices however, users may find themselves purchasing additional programs to match the breadth of Corel Photo Album 6's functionality. For example, ACDSee 8 Standard lacks a creative projects module, which ACD Systems offers for separate purchase, as FotoSlate 4.
Corel has done a very good job with Photo Album 6. It is the best general-purpose choice for both beginning and intermediate mainstream users.

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Corel Photo Album 6 offers aneasy way to organize, enhance, protect, and share your photos. Photo Album automatically downloads photos from your camera as soon as you plug it in, then rotates and organizes them for you. Then you can fix photos in a snap with one-click quick fixes. When you're done you can share photos in minutes with 1000s of creative projects including greeting cards, calendars, scrapbooks and more. Plus, you can back-up your photos on CD, protecting them in just two-clicks. Packed with everything you need, Photo Album is the complete, easy-to-use software for your digital camera.
See the product tour

Capture, View, and Organize
Quick Fix and Adjust With just one click users can auto-correct the color, contrast, and brightness of their photos. The Adjust command provides simple sliders to give you complete control over a variety of settings for correcting photos. With the Add Flash tool, users can even brighten just the shadowy areas of an image.
More quick fixes and effects You can remove red-eye with one click or use the Advanced Red-Eye tool for more precision and control. The Thinify command lets you give the subjects in your photos a thinner appearance with just a few clicks. The Panorama command lets you stitch together several photos. This is particularly useful for capturing large landscapes.
Black & White and Sepia tools Corel Photo Album 6 lets you transform your color photos into black and white, and sepia tones with just one click. These quick commands are useful for giving new photos a vintage look.
E-mail and Quick E-mail The Quick E-mail and E-mail commands make it easy to send photos to friends and family. Quick E-mail automatically attaches the selected image to a new message in your e-mail program. All you have to do is add the recipient address and fill in the subject line. With E-mail, you can adjust settings to optimize the photos for quick recipient downloading.
Photo projects Corel Photo Album 6 provides creative templates to inspire you to do more with your photos. With drag-and-drop simplicity, you can create award certificates, album pages, greeting cards, calendars, CD labels, e-cards, magazine covers, and more. You can even move, rotate, and zoom in and out of photos within a template to get the exact look that you want.
New! CollagesThe new Collage project templates let you display a collection of photos in stylish and sophisticated collages. You just select a collage layout template and drag and drop photos from your folders into the collage.
Slide Shows With Corel Photo Album 6, you can easily create musical slide shows to distribute to friends and family using e-mail, or simply to display on your computer. You can also burn slide shows to Video CDs, which can be viewed on a TV using a DVD player. Now, it's quick and easy to share photos from a recent vacation, family event, or party.
Web Sharing Web Galleries let you create your own customized Web page using Corel Photo Album, or quickly upload to your favorite photo-sharing Web site.
New! Photo Finder Corel Photo Album 6 automatically finds all the photos on your computer and organizes them by the date that they were taken. This feature saves time by continuously keeping photo collection up-to-date.
New! All Photos View To provide you with the utmost flexibility in photo management, the new All Photos View lets you browse your entire photo collection at once. When the All Photos View is selected, Corel Photo Album 6 gathers every photo from every folder on your computer.
Print LayoutWith more than 40 print layout templates, Corel Photo Album 6 helps you make the most of that expensive photo paper. You can choose to print standard photo sizes, such as 8x10, 5x7, wallet-sized, and more. Print layouts also let you combine multiple photos on one page.
Five viewing options The convenient Find panel lets you choose from five viewing options, including Favorite Folders, All Folders, Calendar, Keywords, and Collections. And you can easily adjust the size of thumbnail previews. With the handy zoom slider, users can quickly zoom out to see the entire contents of a folder, or zoom in for a closer look at just one photo.
New! Favorite Photos Corel Photo Album 6 lets you designate your favorite photos with a gold star so that personal favorites can be quickly and easily identified for use in special projects, for e-mailing, or for printing.
New! Titles and Descriptions You can add titles and descriptions so that photos stand out. Corel Photo Album now saves your captions to the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) metadata so that the captions can be viewed and searched from within any program that supports IPTC.
Batch Rename With Corel Photo Album 6, you can quickly change those cryptic, numeric filenames that digital cameras assign to photos. Using the Batch Rename feature, you can easily change the name of an individual image, several selected images, or an entire folder of images.
PhotoSafe Backup SystemThe PhotoSafe Backup System helps you backup all of their photos onto CD or DVD. Archiving prevents the loss of valuable photos from hardware memory failure, or other computer mishaps, such as viruses. And PhotoSafe makes it simple by remembering which photos have already been backed-up on CD, and which photos are new.
PhotoRecovery PhotoRecovery is a straightforward application that recovers images, movies, and sound files from all types of digital media. Whether it's Memory Sticks, SmartMedia, CompactFlash, MicroDrives, Secure Digital Cards, Multimedia Chips, or floppy disks and most other forms of digital film, you simply insert your digital film into the reader, and run PhotoRecovery. Pictures are instantly saved to your computer.
What's in the box: Software on CD, Getting Started Guide, User Guide.

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Nova Scrapbook Factory Deluxe 3.0 Review

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(More customer reviews)I was given an inexpensive digital scrapbooking software program last year and found it was a nice quick way to get caught up on my scrapbooking. However the software was inexpensive and had many limitations so I decided to invest in a better program. I found this software had received the highest rating from a group reviewing multiple scrapbooking programs. I was sorely disappointed in the result. It is no better than my very inexpensive version. I was happy to see that there is a 90 day money back guarentee but so far I have not heard back from the manufacturers as to where I am to send the product for refunding.
Within minutes of using the program, I was making a list of things that needed to be corrected or improved for any reasonable use. Things like:
1) It will not let you see the image/object you are resizing while resizing it. You just get a box outlining the object. This isn't very helpful if the object you are moving or resizing is anything other than square or rectangle. Can't line up a round rivit to a curved area when all I see is an outline of a square.
2) When you select multiple objects to space evenly over an area, it will rearrange the order they are in. This is annoying when trying to equally space graphics of letters across the top of your page to spell say "Hello" for instance and it will equally space the letters but now it reads "eollH". It also rearranged photos that I had placed in a sequence.
3) It does not allow for the new standard of 8" x 8" paper.
4) I also can't seem to find a way to lay out a double page layout so that I see both pages at once.
5)Once you pick a text "effect" to see what it looks like, you can not remove it. You must start over.
6) No search capabilities to find objects/graphics by keywords.
7) Can't load multiple images onto a page at a time. Must select and load images one at a time.
8) I found it ran quite slowly.
9) If you add a border to an image and then want to delete the border, it also deletes your image as well.
10) Borders don't fit tight to the image so background shows inbetween image and border.
11) Once you start the application, you can't exit it until you select a project and walk thru some basic selections first.
I found these and actually a couple more minor complants after literally a couple of hours of playing with the software. I edited one premade template and attempted to lay out a page from scratch. I got so frustrated I gave up before completing it.
I will say this program has phenominal art/graphic clipart items although they are often difficult to find the one you want since you can
t use keywords to search for them.
If you only want to use premade templates and just drop in your own pictures, this program would be pretty good. If you like to have creative control, I would look elsewhere.

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Nova Scrapbook Factory Deluxe 3.0 will turn your memories into unforgettable scrapbooks and keepsake projects that will bring a smile to your face for years to come. With over 5000 designs, 40,000 images, 1000 fonts, 2500 unique projects, and amazingly easy-to-use features, Factory Deluxe 3.0 sets the standard for scrapbooking software. Whether you want to embellish your digital photos for posterity, create your own slide show to view on your television, or make that special gift for your loved one, this software is for you. Three Easy Steps to Scrapbooking With Factory Deluxe 3.0, preserving your favorite memories is as easy as 1, 2, 3. Simply choose a category from the easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface. Then select an event, occasion or theme from more than 5000 designs that are provided. You can choose from literally thousands of elements from the "scraps gallery" to drag and drop right onto your scrapbook page, including ribbons, words, alphabets, buttons, corners, borders, and more. Add your photos, captions, and personalized greetings, and simply print your results to any color printer for instant results. You can also export your project to a PDF file and share it instantly with friends and family around the world. It's that easy.Thousands of Fonts, Images and Designs Are you looking to capture the beauty of your wedding? The excitement of your child's first lost tooth? Or maybe the first swing of tee-ball season? No matter what the occasion, you can be assured that with Factory Deluxe 3.0 you'll have what you need to create beautiful and professional looking projects. With over 1000 sensational fonts, 5000 unique designs, and 40,000 professionally created images to choose from, you can create the precise look and feel to reflect the mood of your subject. From the whimsical and fanciful, to the formal and serious, Factory Deluxe 3.0 can give you everything you need.Taking Your Photographic Memories Digital You can take your digital scrapbooking skills to new heights with Factory Deluxe 3.0. With just a few clicks, you can import your photos or images from your digital camera, CD or scanner. A built-in photo editor will then let you add special effects, remove red-eye, and even crop, flip, rotate and resize your photos. Once you have the effects you want, you can create slide shows from your photos and view them on TV. You can also burn CD photo scrapbooks with your own music, and replay them on most home DVD players. No matter what level of photographic skills you have, you'll be the envy of your friends and family when they sit back and watch the amazing projects that you've created. Perfect Gifts for Everyone Factory Deluxe 3.0 isn't just for preserving your memories. You can also create the perfect gift for your friends and family. Design a calendar for your parents with photos to remind them of their children's birthdays and special events. Make your grandfather a sweatshirt with an iron-on of your favorite baby picture on the front. With Factory Deluxe 3.0, you'll have dozens of ways to make the perfect gift for everyone in your life.

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PalmOne P10914U Games Essentials Card Review

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(More customer reviews)One of my favorite computer games is Shanghai: Second Dynasty. The version on this card is obviously derived form that version of Shanghai. It really looks beautiful with the green embossed tiger and dragon background. I miss the cool music and the fortune cookie, but you can't have everything. I would try putting together some nice Chinese music on mp3's to play in the background, if mp3's didn't use so much RAM. (As an aside, I appreciate that Activision and Landware don't call it Mah Jong. This is NOT Mah Jong! Stop calling this type of game Mah Jong!!! Mah Jong is completely different.) I tried SimCity and it seems to be fairly close to the full computer version, but I haven't really used it very much, yet. The Atum game is very addictive. It can also be very frustrating when it gives you a long string of the same atum. I have had a bit of difficulty using the backgammon game. It doesn't seem to work in a very intuitive way. The checkers is fine - if checkers is your thing - it works pretty much like I expected. I can't say how smart it is, since I'm not an expert. The chess is pretty basic. I bought a more specialized separate chess game that has a lot more features, but it cost half the price of this whole card. I'm not much for slot machines, poker or blackjack, so I won't comment on those. Ricochet is a very cool looking brick breaking game. It is very nicely done. The only thing I don't like is that the background is almost as dark colored as the bricks, so sometimes the bricks are hard to see and I'm using a Tungsten T that has a pretty nice screen. 9-Ball is a fairly decent pinball game. Pinball is the one type of game that just doesn't work well on a Palm. I've tried all the versions I can find and 9-ball is one of the best. But, that's not saying much. I guess the computing power required for really good pinball is still too much for Palm machines. Strangely, though, the Billiards game does work well. Surprisingly well! And it actually has good sound effects! Not bad! Okay. So, all together that's 12 games. Several really good ones, a couple so-so. I guess it's not such a bad deal. What I realy like is that it doesn't use up my precious RAM. Figuring in the value of a small SD card, the Palm Game Essentials Card is actually a pretty good deal!

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Palm Computing P10914U Game Essentials Expansion Card

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