This day and age many people have a lot of different devices for recording video. I, myself have a number, including two cell phones, and ipod touch and ipad, several android devices (including a few Amazon Fire tablets), a dash-cam in my car, and a couple of the small action cameras. Not to mention some regular style camcorders and a digital point-and-shoot camera that can take videos. I was given a drone for Christmas that had a video camera but it now lives in the top of a tree somewhere in a Louisiana bayou (story for another time).

I’m really impressed with the new Corel Painter Essentials 5 software, I’ve been trying it out for the past 30 days. This is the first time for me using it, but I’ve been using similar graphics programs for a number of years now. A lot of them have been Corel products, so there hasn’t been too steep a learning curve with my getting started with this software. In fact, it’s has some similarities with another program that I use - PD Particles.

Up until several years ago I was a high school teacher, and one of the classes that I taught was Digital Graphics & Animation. Back when I was teaching, I was a bit envious of the middle-school teachers that also taught this subject. One of the software programs that they used for their classes was the Honestech Claymation Animation package. I always wanted a chance to play with it - but never got it.

I really wish this had worked… I had great success with using previous versions of Roxio Creator in the past - but this version 10 is the exception. It’s not like I should be surprised, I read all the negative reviews here, but there were a couple of positive ones as well - so based on my previous experiences I took a chance. The software installed fine, but even from the start I could tell that it ran slow… and it also slowed down my machine with all the stuff it was running in the background.

I, like many people, used WordPerfect back in the day (late eighties). But over the years I moved on to using Microsoft Word as it became the de facto standard in most work places. I pretty much quit using MS Office at home when I left teaching and switched over to using a free license of Open Office. But I’ve been wanting to get back to using something a bit more polished.

I first started using Corel Draw back when I purchased a license of Corel Draw 2. The last full version that I bought and used was Corel Draw 8, not counting the home and student license of X5 I bought (but never really used) during one of Amazon’s Gold Box Deal sales. I got away from using it at that point when I got assigned to teach a digital graphics & animation class where they were using Adobe’s Photoshop 5 and Illustrator 10.

I purchased this kit (VHStoDVD 8.0 Deluxe) awhile back during a Gold Box Lightning Deal sale, but I’m just now getting around to using it. The software was easy to install and has been very easy to use (I’m just using the basic video recording function). Hookup was simple too, just connect the cables to the box and to the video player. You get some cables with this kit - but I’m using the S-Video input and had to supply my own cable for that.

I’m a simple business owner and single mom. I thought this would help me, but in all honesty, I didn’t find it user friendly and found it easier to hire a tax scheister (my personal pun for accountant) to do my financial management. He didn’t charge me much (I don’t have much) and the peace of mind is worth the difference. (This product cost about $70, and he charged me $150.

I make videos for my business. I promote my products on YouTube and my website, and have used the previous version of this program for over a year now. I LOVE it–it is so easy and has built-in models so even the most novice person can make a video. I know that I will NEVER use all of the available technology in this program. It’s totally over my head. I could study the books and online tutorials (they are awesome, btw), but I really don’t have the time.

I installed this on my daughter’s college computer…MISTAKE! Installation. Went seamlessly, however, when she tried to use her Dropbox program, it was dead. She spent a ton of time researching this, and it turned out that she was not the only one. She lost a lot of data (which was surprising since the Dropbox was installed on different computers and the data was off of all of them).nI felt horrible she is in Law School, and the last thing she needed was to have to go and try to figure this thing out.