Pinnacle Studio Ultimate Collection V14 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)This is my third iteration of Pinnacle Studio, having owned versions 11 and 12 as well. I also own and have used several other video editing packages running from high to low end. At the top of the low end range, Pinnacle Studio Ultimate Collection 14 comes in as a solid five-star performer - if you are willing to tolerate some minor stability issues. For reasons I don't pretend to understand, all video editing programs seem to have stability issues to one degree or another. Sometimes I think I may be part of the problem as I rush ahead performing other operations while the CPU is still rendering what I've already done. Other times, I just plain don't know: like Adobe Premiere Elements 7 simply not running on a Vista 32-bit system while it ran on a 64-bit version without problems. Given time, I could probably narrow down the issues, but I'm not that concerned. With Pinnacle, I am politely informed that the program has malfunctioned and given an option to close the program. Do that, restart Pinnacle and I'm back in business within a few seconds. Do frequent saves and the occasional crashes don't hurt.
Pinnacle runs about a 12 month cycle between new major releases. Frankly, every other release could probably be skipped because the improvements are not generally that earthshaking.
I am glad, however, that I upgraded to Version 14. There are three variants, each having a few more features than the others. Pinnacle Studio Ultimate Collection is the top of V14 line. The only drawback is that some of the bonus content, such as the SoundSoap program, are no longer included and earlier versions will not run in V14.
The good news is that the user interface has been simplified again. Pinnacle uses context-sensitive functions. In other words, double-clicking on a video clip brings up a different menu than you'd get by double-clicking on a still image. I've found the current interface to be somewhat more sensible and easier to use. There are three primary tabs: import media, edit and render output. Import gives you the choices you would expect, covering the waterfront from analog video to AVCHD. It's pretty simple to use with some good on the fly scene selection options. There are also options for directly importing from a digital camera, and interesting, a stop motion option that lets you build something resembling a flip book. Automatic scene detection is available for those who want it. Personally I find it more of a nuisance than a help.
The editing section has everything you could want in a solid low-end program. The user interface offers a storyboard or timeline or text listing formats. I am generally in the timeline view. There are scrubbers both in the movie preview window and at the bottom of the timeline, so reviewing video is an efficient procedure. Lots of keyboard shortcuts permit a speedy workflow. There are dozens of ordinary transitions and a couple of dozen other effects that will probably see little use. Plug-ins offer special features such as pan and zoom on still images, RGB color correction and so on. There is Picture-In-Picture and Chromakeying. Pinnacle provides its own custom music program called ScoreFitter, which as the name implies will generate music of a sort to fit the time of your clips. There are also some sound effects.
There are tracks for primary video, overlay video (which can also be used for dual camera shoots), titles, music, sound effects and voice overs. All in all, it's a nice, functional layout.
Pinnacle provides two competent, if not brilliant, titling programs. One creates static text which may be kerned and otherwise adjusted. It may be used to create DVD menus and the like. The other, called Motion Titler, allows more dynamic titles. Third-party titling programs run rings around it, but it is still quite usable for those who don't want exceptionally elaborate titles.
Pinnacle includes something they call "Montage Themes" which the user can customize with clips, photo and captions. They are pretty hokey, in my opinion, and not something I would use.
You can output to just about anything. DVD menu layouts are included and you can create your own. Almost all common codecs are included for video output, which is nice.
Overall, Pinnacle Studio Ultimate Collection V14 is a very nice video editing application that I would rank at the top end of the low-end programs. It has everything the average hobbyist videographer and, in a way, functions are more accessible than in Adobe Premiere Elements. But there's a caveat: buy the printed manual if it isn't included with your Pinnacle package. The manual itself is somewhat difficult to deal with, but comes in extremely handy as a ready reference when you need it. I have several low-end video editing packages and Pinnacle is the one I find myself using most often. It offers, I think, good value for the money and an unusually good user interface.
Jerry


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Utlimate Employer Review

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(More customer reviews)These tools are great. I had used the KnowledgePoint policy writing software years ago. Wrote an entire personnel policy handbook in an afternoon. And I knew nothing about HR or employment law!
So when I started a new company I looked for the latest version, I saw that they had bundled it into the Ultimate Employer suite. Now I have started writing job descriptions for my (4) employees and I plan to evaluate them using Performance Now. It's a great value and time saver.
These tools have helped me create a better work environment and, as we grow, it'll be easy to add new employees and make sure we're all moving in the right direction.
Five stars on quality of output, value and ease of use. Minus one star because the individual programs aren't fully integrated.

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Ultimate Employer enables your personnel management tasks to become more organized, efficient, and performance-driven. Whether you are an HR professional or a small business without any HR systems in place, the Ultimate Employer is everything you need to quickly and easily manage your workforce.
Ultimate Employer streamlines all your HR-related tasks and responsibilities. It gives you the solid advice you need to be knowledgeable and confident when handling all types of employee-related situations. It helps you comply with the many employment laws that could potentially put your business at risk. And it is highly flexible to meet your company's specific needs.
This suite features four software titles in one complete package. Use Descriptions Now to quickly and easily define jobs and hire right. Write, publish, and maintain customized employment policies with Policies Now. Performance Now lets you create fast, easy, and effective employee reviews. And, you can manage all your crucial personnel tasks with People Manager.

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Acronis Disk Director V11 Home Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)This product caused me a lot of problems yesterday. While I have never made a review like this before, I felt like I should offer this cautionary tale:
I bought this product after receiving several emails the upgrade from my previous version of DD 1o, which would no longer run on my laptop. Tried the trial version first and it looked like it would do what I wanted. My laptop was partitioned by DD 10 in 2 and I wanted to give the OS a little more space as I had used up the 37GB I had initially allocated that partition. And, it worked! Next I installed it on my 2 Desktops. On both of them it caused my computer to not boot up correctly until I selected "Start from last known good configuration." Next I tried to merge a small unallocated bit of HD space into the Partition of my older PC, which required a reboot.
Thant is when things started to go terribly wrong.
I got an error message during the reboot that process 2 failed.
And, the system failed to boot after that. Just a message about "Verifying DMI Pool Data."
So, I took the drive out and tried to use the included "Recovery Expert" module from DD 11 loaded on my other PC to restore the old partition.
But, the Recovery Expert module would not load. If I tried run it directly, and not from within DD I got a snapapi.dll not found error.
I went to the website, found how to chat with tech support, and was on with Ankur very quickly.
And, put immediately on hold. While I was clear about the situation, his advice to me was far less than helpful. ""Recovery Expert is for recovering deleted partitions." He said after several minutes. Yes, that is why I want to use it I explained. Kinda thought that was obvious. Several minutes later he came back with this; "You do not need to verify the product, it should work." YES, I KNOW IT SHOULD WORK, BUT IT DOESN'T. (No alt caps when I explained this to him.
So, I tried uninstalling, with the intent to reinstall. Got an error there too.
Next, I ran the installer again and choose repair.
That did it! I was able to use the Recovery Expert!
And, it looked like it worked.
But my joy was short lived, since when I put the drive back in my older PC, I still could not boot. After several hours of trying this, updating my Bios settings, etc I got nowhere.
Eventually I had to give up and wipe the drive. Now that rig is out of commission. :-(
Sad especially since I had a lot of expensive software on there. Fortunately I didn't have any critical files.
In conclusion:
The older Disk Director Suite was not very stable, at least by my own use, and a number of reviewers here on Amazon that gave it one star and called it dangerous.
This product may be better, hard to tell from my limited experience.
I found the free chat support fast but useless, I had multiple issues with instillation on my PCs, and the product itself performed a resizing of the partition on my laptop successfully, but and when I tried a simple merge of a small file it ended up ruining the OS and destroying all the data on the disk. Was it worth $30.00 to upgrade? After spending 9 hours trying to fix the OS on my PC that this program destroyed.... in a word. NO!
If you are going to use Disk Director 11 Home:
MAKE A BACKUP OF ANYTHING YOU VALUE & USE WITH EXTREME CATION.

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Quicken Home & Business 2011 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I was not a beta tester and was not "encouraged" to write a glowing review by Intuit. This review only speaks to the question of whether this is a worthwhile upgrade from the 2010 version. The 2011 version contains very few new features when compared to the 2010 version. Whether you find these new features worth the upgrade price is debatable. The quicken site is a bit misleading in their "new features" list since many of the items they mention were already in the 2010 version. As with past Quicken upgrades, they largely give you MORE of a existing feature, and not much in the way of new features. So, for example, MORE banks are supported for direct connect. MORE transactions can be automatically categorized since auto-categorization already existed. So in these cases, if your banks are already supported and you don't use auto-categorization, then these enhancements are irrelevant. So for those thinking of upgrading from 2010, here's the list of only NEW features in the 2011 version:
- All Transactions register: This could be handy if you use many accounts and want to enter, maintain and view your transactions in one place. However, if you download transactions from your banking and investment institutions, the download window does not show up when you are in this mode, so you will be forced to continue using the individual account registers anyway.
- Register customization: You can decide which columns appear in each individual register. Transaction Notes can now be shown/edited as a column instead of treating them like an attachment.
- Attachment Encryption: I'm fairly certain this wasn't in the prior version. I guess you can now password protect attachments.
- The usual "Where's Waldo" changes to the program: They've moved menu items and eliminated speed button lists in registers. I imagine they did this to make the interface "look" simpler/cleaner, but now you have to rummage through the menus to find them. So, for example, the "Live Community" speed button was eliminated; It is now found as a "Help" menu item. Also, each account's "Overview" speed button has been eliminated; You now find that in the "Account Actions" menu. Since it is likely that the eliminated speed buttons were rarely needed by most users, the changes will be well received.That's it! Is it worth the upgrade? You decide.


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Quicken Home & Business 2011 gives you the personal finance features found in Quicken Premier plus tools that make it easy to see how your home business is doing.
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PaperPort 12 Review

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(More customer reviews)I'm a long-time PaperPort user, and I made the mistake of upgrading the the newest professional version last weekend. Like so many others, I'm now unable to scan to PDF format without the DocuCom Trial watermark appearing on all scans, which is flatly unacceptable. Nuance has a couple of lame "work-arounds" on the Web site, but they DON'T WORK -- at least, they've not worked for me. Even worse: their Technical Support doesn't seem to exist -- I reported the problem and requested a real fix a week ago, and I've still not heard from them. As an experienced user, I have a pretty high tolerance for technical problems and working through solutions; but I have ZERO tolerance for a company that's known for over a month the program has a fatal flaw yet continues to sell that product.

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PaperPort 12 the world's favorite document management software for the PC, is the fastest and easiest way for home users to scan, organize, find and share documents and photos. It combines the power of document scanning services, the efficiency of digital desktop organization and search, and the convenience of high-quality PDF document creation, assembly and sharing in one easy-to-use application. Eliminate paper clutter, go green and organize your home office once and for all with PaperPort 12. You'll wonder how you ever managed without.

Scan, organize, search and share documents and photos quickly and easily from your home PC With your PC, a scanner and PaperPort 12, you're on way to achieving new levels of personal efficiency:
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Turn paper, photos, and digital files into high-quality searchable PDFs
Store documents as PDFs so they'll never be lost, damaged or accidentally thrown away
Use Windows or Google Desktop Search to find any document on your computer instantly
Assemble multiple PDFs into a single document by dragging and dropping
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Break the costly, wasteful cycle of printing, copying and mailing paper documents

Time is your most valuable asset. For about the cost of one lost document you can get the fastest, most powerful and easy-to-use PaperPort ever.
The Personal Organizer in a Box Getting and staying organized doesn't have to be a chore. PaperPort 12 is a combination file cabinet and digital document desktop that organizes scanned paper and PDF documents better, faster, and more easily than Microsoft Windows alone. Even more incredible, PaperPort 12 brings all these files together in one convenient place on your PC desktop. It provides large, clear thumbnails for everything already on your computer--with support for over 150 file formats--so you don't need to open files to figure out what's inside. Choose from 29 folder colors for organizing files and see only those file folders where important documents or pictures are stored. No more wading through every folder on your computer to find what you're looking for. PaperPort 12 combines power with ease of use, making it the perfect document management solution for home-based businesses, personal finances, school work, photo collections, hobbies, and more.
Scan Your Way Out of the Clutter Use your scanner or all-in-one printer with PaperPort 12 to quickly produce high-quality digital files of all your paper documents and photos. With the simple push of a button you get perfect scans on your desktop or directly into the included PDF Viewer or another specific application--email, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and more. PaperPort 12 is so smart it will straighten, crop, rotate, and enhance your documents automatically to improve document quality. And you can take advantage of PaperPort's ImageViewer for further enhancements to scanned documents or photos.
Create and Fill Out Forms Often times the documents you need to share must be accompanied by some sort of form, or in many cases, lots of forms. With PaperPort 12, you never have to fill out another form by hand. The FormTyper feature accurately converts scanned paper forms into neat, searchable electronic forms you can fill out on your computer. It even recognizes check boxes automatically. You can quickly tab to a fillable form field and type the information. Add your scanned signature using the transparent stamp feature. Then save your completed PDF form and email it along with your other documents. It's faster and cheaper than faxing or mailing. And you don't have to worry if your handwriting is legible!
Gather and Share Documents Quickly Need to gather up a bunch of different documents for a school assignment, a tax consultation, an insurance claim, or another pressing matter? Maybe finding your files isn't a big problem because you're already organized. But collecting and sharing them with the right people can be a real chore. You could print what's on your computer and make copies, but faxing, mailing or lugging around folders stuffed with information is inefficient, costly, and insecure. Why take chances? Avoid the hassle by using your computer and the power of PDF documents to gather, assemble and quickly share information by email. PaperPort 12 lets you create PDF files from your digital documents and combine multiple scanned documents into a single file. Add, delete or rearrange the pages within any PDF file. Extract editable text from scanned documents and put it into a word processor or an email message. No more tedious retyping or overloading clipboards. Just drag, drop ... and voila!
Find What You Need Fast Stop wasting your time looking for documents. With PaperPort 12, you can create searchable PDF files from any scanned paper documents so you can find them quickly whenever you need them. Digital documents stored in PaperPort 12 are there to stay. No more lost receipts, misplaced records, or recycled assignments. Need something fast? Just enter keywords or phrases into Windows or Google Desktop Search to quickly locate a specific file.

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Quicken Starter Edition 2011 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I purchased this product because I upgraded to Windows 7 and my old Quicken Deluxe is not W7 compatible. Nowhere in the product description did it mention that I would not be able to open my old files with this product since they were created on the "Deluxe" version. I no longer need any of the "Deluxe" features, that's why I chose this most basic version. So, if you have used any product other than "Basic" in the past, this product will not work for you. They should be clearer in their product description.

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Quicken Starter Edition 2011 gives you money management and budgeting tools to help you watch your spending and increase your savings, with step-by-step guidance along the way.
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Quicken Deluxe 2011 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)It was bad enough when Quicken simply littered your desktop with icons linking to Quicken Loans, Free Credit Reports (which are never free) and a sundry of other financial pay-to-play products. Now they've taken things to a whole new level with ads literally BUILT INTO the GUI (Graphic User Interface: the 'skin' with which you engage with the program). An example: in the new 'refinance calculator' there is a large banner ad for CHASE BANK. The refinance calculator itself is poor and majorly inferior to free ones available online, but more on that later. I don't expect to pay upwards of $50.00 for a piece of software that contains banner ads! That is simply unacceptable. In freeware, I understand it, but not in something I paid full retail for!
Adding insult to injury, INTUIT has actually removed one of the best features of previous Quicken releases, the CASH FLOW monthly chart. They've replaced it with a projected balances chart which is ugly, harder to read, and doesn't convey nearly as much information as the previous version. A line chart is inferior for the purpose, and INTUIT hasn't even managed to make the data points (low and high balance points along the chart) display the actual balance when you mouse over them. This is a miserably bad design--they've managed to take a very useful tool and turn it into garbage.
The supposed new features are junk. The refinance calculator is extremely simplistic compared to far better online versions (check out Equitrend Financial Calculators if you're looking for sophisticated, free calculators). It doesn't allow the user to enter current mortgage interest rate or PMI, and instead makes you enter the total payment and then the "impound / escrow amount." If you have your mortgage set-up to be tracked in Quicken, the tool cannot incorporate that data into your analysis. You must manually enter everything. The tool also does not take into account the tax implications of your refinance. Overall it is a tacked on, basic calculator that is nearly useless.
The obligatory re-skin of the program (which INTUIT trots out each year rather than making substantial or meaningful changes) is adequate, but unnecessary. Every year they tweak fonts, colors, and layout, and design elements. This year is no exception. None of the changes make the program more efficient for the end user. I don't have a problem with utilitarian designs, as long as the underlying software is substantial. INTUIT seems to leverage much of their development budget into GUI tweaks, while doing little to improve the software itself.
Another major issue is that INTUIT cannot manage to keep their data file consistent from year to year. 2011 is no exception and required me to convert my 2010 data file. Admittedly this was much more painless than the massive difficulty many experienced with upgrading from 2008 or 2009 to 2010. I wish that the developers at INTUIT would make a forwards compatible data file type and just stick with it.
SUMMARY:
PROS:
1) Potentially better GUI (depending on your preferences)
CONS:
1) Ads built into the GUI itself
2) Removal of a significant feature (cash flow and balance chart)
3) No substantial improvements to the underlying programs
4) Added 'features' are poor quality, even when compared with free alternatives
5) Requires yet another data-file conversion
6) Expensive! Especially considering the ads built into the program
FINAL THOUGHTS:
What am I getting for my money here? If you love this version of Quicken, can you kindly explain to me why it is worth upgrading? I have yet to find a single compelling reason. Am I missing something or did I just flush my money down the toilet?

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Quicken Deluxe 2011 gives you money management and budgeting tools to help you watch your spending and increase your savings.

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Quicken Premier 2011 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I have a love hate relationship with Quicken. It is a great concept; it is very helpful in managing personal finances and is a program I use daily. I don't buy the upgrades every year, if they can be called upgrades, but the last version I had was Quicken 2006. I held off buying 2010 for a few months knowing 2011's release was around the corner. I learned I don't like not having access to my finances daily. During that time I tried all sorts of other types of financial programs, but none were close to Quicken, which is scary because as much as I like it, the actual program is TERRIBLE - for length of time it has been available. Mint.com(Owned by Intuit/Quicken) was the only program I thought was very good, but it is terrible for investments. Overall, I see very little difference in this version than my 2006 one; clearly there are a few new features but certainly nothing that made me jump up and down. This is pretty amazing considering the price and the 5 version "upgrades" between, but very little has actually improved. Clearly this is the benefit of having a monopoly; you can do virtually nothing for years and still have the best in breed. In 4 days of using Quicken 2011 it has crashed about 4-5 times a day, same old Quicken.
Quicken 2011 is the best personal finance program available, but the lack of innovation and true upgrades is shocking. The graphical displays are very outdated, and I find the lack of being able to increase text size mind boggling. I hope this version holds me over till the long awaited, fabled, complete overhaul. Or maybe a new company will evade being bought out by Intuit and deliver a superior product. I assume the acquisition of Mint by Intuit will start to actually improve Quicken in the next couple of years.
In conclusion, I give Quicken Premier 2011 3 stars, I can't see it being anymore and am baffled by people upgrading from an older version giving it a higher rating.
EDIT 3/12/11 - Upgrades to Quicken 2011 improved stability a couple months after I purchased. I can say this is a Stable program now on my platform. Does not change the rating.

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Quicken Premier 2011 has all of the features of Quicken Deluxe--plus investment management tools to help track your portfolio performance and help maximize your investments, with step-by-step guidance along the way.
Comprehensive investing and planning tools help you easily track, analyze, and optimize your investment portfolio.

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