MapPoint 2009 is a great tool for any traveling businessman. It allowed me to plan routes, search local places, insert preset stopping times and all of this was discovered in the first five minutes. As I continued to use the application I learned I could attach a Pharos Gps (gps-360) which allowed me to gather driving data and use my notebook as a turn-by-turn driving assistant. While the application was written for Windows Vista/XP I was able to install and run it on Windows 7 (RC).

Is taking one heck of a long time to get here, a month is just too long in this day and age.

not very flexible may better programs outthere

I can see why it is free.

works

WordPerfect Office X7 Standard is a solid app suite and compares favorably to Microsoft Office Professional. I’ve been using WP for about a month and I’ve been able to do everything that I do with MS Office Pro. The fact that WP’s files are compatible with MS Office is a great feature. If I were someone who had to use MS Office at work, I’d buy MS Office for home, too.

I’ve been using this to edit clips together into short movies (mainly putting movie clips together for our church’s trivia nights) and it’s been working fine for that. When I’ve imported large files, a couple of times I’ve gotten frozen out. The interface takes a couple of sessions to get into (for the first couple of weeks, I was Googling instructions often). The DVD writing function has been fine. Since I don’t use this for highly intensive, pro-level film editing, I can’t speak to that level of functionality.

I’ve used this for video-editing now for a while. I don’t do a lot of video-editing, so I’d like to have an app that is fairly intuitive to use as I don’t want to keep having to relearn it. Pro X4 works OK once I get going, but I wish it were easier to jump in and go when you’re doing simple stuff. The program interface and the editing process seem like they could be more user-friendly.

PowerDVD 14 Ultra might not seem inexpensive, especially compared to some solid freeware out there. But it’s definitely less costly than a home-video component. which I don’t need since I have PowerDVD. It’s also much more robust than freeware options (it helps that my system is pretty robust, too). In general, I like this app. It has never been buggy and it’s a solid and versatile media player.

Disclaimer: I’m not a video-editing expert by any means, and I wasn’t looking for something to rival Final Cut. I just needed a piece of software that would allow me to edit video snippets into a professional package for pub quizzes I put together weekly. I also wanted a decent DVD maker that wouldn’t choke on mysterious codecs. To that end, I needed something simple and reliable. I didn’t need the bells and whistles some might.