Photomatix pro is a terrific application for combining bracketed exposure photos into true HDR images, using tone mapping and detail enhancement. The program comes with a good vocabulary of basic presets, all of them customizable, and as you grow into it, you can start to develop your own effects and presets as well. Photomatix pro is easy to use out of the box, both as a standalone application, or as a plug-in for use with Adobe Photoshop.

This product gets high marks for its intuitive user interface, and its remarkably full feature set. Whether you are editing family videos, making video posts for your blog, or creating screen captured tutorials and educational content, VideoStudio Ultimate X8 has you covered. In additon to the more hand’s on features, VideoStudio also offers FastFlick, a dedicated wizard for very fast production of slideshows, and a 45 day all access pass to StudioBacklot’s tutorials for X8.

WinZip does what it’s supposed to, is easy to use, and reasonably priced. It compares well in features and function to StuffIt- These days I use them pretty much interchangeably. StuffIt has a prettier interface though…

A few questions keep coming up - here are my answers:nIs the new OS easy to install? Yes! I did the in place install, left the DVD in my Mac Mini for 1 hr 15 min.nand when I came back, Leopard was running my machine. Could not have been easier. All my applications where I left them, email accounts now safely installed in the new Mail software.nDid all my applications work after the upgrade?

The Quicken Legal Business Pro book and application is a terrific addition to my business software arsenal. Full of useful information, and a comprehensive collection of highly useable legal forms, its a great help in getting your paperwork in order and standardizing your forms. Highly recommended!

It only took a few minutes to get the Norton programs up and running on my Mac and on my Windows laptop. On both machines, it works flawlessly, all but invisible in the background except when it encounters and intrusion. It has a lot of flexibility in its options, so customizing it to suit your needs is easy and intuitive. The only con I can mention is that when accessing an external cloud drive, the Norton systems can cause a lags in transfer speed, so if you use such a drive to stream movies and music to your television, Apple TV, Roku, or Blueray player, you may find it necessary to disable the protection.

Not much you can say about this hub - it does what its supposed to! I have a lot of FireWire devices, most of which have two ports - but its nice central location to plug them into instead of daisychaining! I don’t have to keep the devices next to each other anymore!

This is a feature rich update of the Office:Mac program. The user interface is elegant, and very Mac-friendly.nInitially I had some difficulties with the program - first, it would take a very long time (upwards of 20 minutes!) to launch, and the program had real problems with Font menus. A few simple tweaks to Word, and to my font management software solved these issues. Now all my Office:Mac 2008 applications open swiftly and work smoothly.

McAfee continues to be extremely good at protecting my system. I have used it for several years after trying Norton and a couple of other security systems. Have found McAfee the easiest to use.

Quicken is perfect for my home accounting. Always some bugs in Quicken but it’s the best that I’ve found.