Making sense of Microsoft’s downgrade rights

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

Trying to work out Microsoft’s licensing policies is enough to make a grown man (or woman) cry. You always seem to be in a maze of twisty passages, all alike, and it’s hard to know whether what you are doing is actually legally correct.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Microsoft will not understand the pain and cost it imposes on its customers until it actually has to run software licensing internally. I accept that the development groups can be let off, because they are constantly installing and uninstalling beta versions of their software. Or running up the Serbo Croation version to check a typo. But the marketing arms of Microsoft have absolutely no excuses - they should run licensing and pay internally in exactly the same way that we do. If that happened, then I predict there would be massive simplication within months.

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Can Microsoft Security Essentials beat Norton?

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

What do Microsoft and Symantec have in common? The obvious answer is that both are offering a new security package. In Symantec’s case it’s Norton Internet Security 2010, which I looked at a few weeks back. Microsoft, meanwhile, is today due to release Security Essentials, its free replacement for OneCare, formerly codenamed Morro.

They’re also both companies dogged by the sins of products past. (more…)

Adobe Photoshop Elements 8: First Look

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

Earlier today Adobe announced the latest version of its best-selling consumer-oriented photo-editing and organization package Photoshop Elements 8. This has become something of a yearly event and the previous version 7 release clearly suffered from the tight turnaround in a Creative Suite year. By comparison, version 8 is packed with new power and has a strong focus: building on Adobe’s state-of-the-art image analysis to bring the best out of images and to make life easier for the end user.

Editing highlights include the new Photo Merge mode that automatically picks out and combines the best exposed areas of bracketed shots to produce a best-lit composite image and the Image Recompose feature that automatically preserves foreground objects while removing unwanting backgrounds as you resize your image – in real time.

Elements’ editing power remains unchallenged in the consumer arena but, for most users, serious editing images is a relatively rare requirement compared to the regular chore of getting on top of your images through tagging. Here Adobe’s image analysis expertise promises even more, holding out the prospect of automatically tagging images based on quality and – through automatic face recognition – even subject.

It sounds great on paper and works brilliantly with the sample images included in the pre-release press pack, but how does it work in practice with real images?

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Microsoft Office Web Apps review: first look

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

We’ve been looking forward to getting to grips with the Office Web Apps ever since the first, highly impressive demos at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC) almost a year ago.

But do the limited apps on offer in the technical preview live up to the promise of those well-polished demos? We find out.

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Spotify for iPhone: the verdict

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

I’ve had my week reviewing Spotify’s Premium account and the iPhone app, I’ve listened to an uneclectic mix of playlists that mostly consisted of the song Africa by Toto, and I’ve used it in central London and out in Kent, with all the public transport in between.

And the verdict? I almost, nearly, don’t quite want to pay for it.

It’s not that it’s not brilliant. It is. (more…)

Spotify for iPhone: first look

Monday, September 7th, 2009

The eagerly awaited music-streaming service Spotify has today arrived on both the iPhone App Store and on Android’s Marketplace, and I’ve been granted a seven-day guest pass to see if it’s really worth that £10-a-month premium account.

Over the course of a year that does seem like a lot of money – particularly as most users will already have huge music collections of their own – but the promise of millions of tracks available on the move is certainly tempting.

Starting up

Once logged in, you’ll be delighted to see all of your desktop playlists seamlessly synced with Spotify on your phone, and if that’s what you’re after you can just dive straight in. (more…)

First look: Corel Digital Studio 2010

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009

I’ve just hot-footed it back from the London launch of Corel Digital Studio 2010. The product is a combination of photo and video editing software, along with apps for burning and watching DVDs, all for the very reasonable (suggested) price of £60. But is it any good?

It’s certainly very slick. Both the PaintShop Photo Express and Video Studio Express applications share a common interface, which is clearly focused on making the software as easy to use as possible. In fact, if I had a pound for every time the words “easy” or “simple” were used in the hour-long demonstration, I wouldn’t have bothered coming back here to write this blog post, and would by now be sipping champagne with a lovely lady on my knee in one of Soho’s finest establishments.

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Mac OS X 10.6: a quick look at Snow Leopard

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009

It wasn’t mentioned on the 10 o’clock news. It barely got a mention in the newspapers. Many non-Apple interest web sites didn’t mention it. When I went to the flagship Apple Store in Regents Street on Friday lunch time, there weren’t queues round the block (though there were a few inside). It seems that Apple have managed to launch a new product without all the usual fuss.

However, I am sure that everyone who reads this article will know that Snow Leopard is the update to Mac OS X that was released last week. Obviously as a keen Mac user, I did go and buy it on the day it launched and I did install it on my MacBook over the weekend but was it worth the £25 I paid for it?

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Stop stealing my credit, Skype!

Friday, August 28th, 2009

There are some poor, misguided fools out there who still criticise Skype for its call quality. They put their fingers to their lips and wobble them about as they’re talking, feigning the in-and-out nature of early voice over IP calls. Hilarious as such antics always are, it’s far from the truth.

If you make a call using Skype (or any other VoIP service for that matter) you’re far more likely to be impressed with the sound quality. Even using the built-in microphone of an average laptop and a set of crummy headphones, the quality is higher than a landline. (more…)

How to clean up CCleaner

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

No, ‘Piriform’ isn’t the name of a rare virus. Piriform is the team behind CCleaner (renamed from ‘CrapCleaner’ so that american schools could use it…) – just about the nicest, tightest, cleanest and most frequently recommended system tidyer-upper.

It’s so well regarded that some of the less well-written printer drivers suggest that you run it to clear up their mess when in the midst of a version upgrade. It’s also the proud holder of PC Pro’s Software of the Year 2008 award.

I am blogging this because Piriform commits a couple of very minor sins in the setup of the utility. One is that it tries to sneak the Yahoo toolbar in on you, unless you know to always untick the check-box; the other is that it’s king of the ultra-tiny version update. Only Winamp is worse, in my experience – hardly a week goes by without a new release, during which a moment’s inattention will land you back with the toolbar.

This may seem obsessive but I can’t be the only person who has seen people browsing on netbooks with upwards of six toolbars in Internet Explorer, and left with a browser window able to show about ten lines of text.

Anyway, Piriform has released a major update to CCleaner. It’s now on 2.22 and there’s support for cleaning out the Google Chrome cache and the Sun Java cache; just these two tricks alone are worth the clicks to get it.