AAUG Reviews

By Brian D. Schilling, AAUG Member
Reviewed 6/06

Ever wonder how you would look with a new hairstyle? Change My Image (CMI) by Infinisys allows Mac users to sample a large variety of hair styles in the privacy of their own home. You can use any of the head shots of seven models (6 female, 1 male) or import your own mug shot. Everything you need is on one window and is easy to navigate. The template on the preview screen superimposes over your image (the model or your mug shot) and you can simply adjust the image to fit facial features such as chin, ears, and eyes. This allows the new hairstyle to superimpose on your scalp in an anatomically correct fashion. Then choose whether you wish long, medium or short length hair from the convenient selection box next to the head shot and many hair styles for each length will appear. Double click on your favorite and wa-la, you have a new hairdo. The new hair can be easily moved to best fit the shape of your head. A color palette allows you to change the color to your liking or at least help you better visualize how the look will suite your current color. I could even find a color to match my increasingly graying mane. Share a print of your creation with your hair stylist who can complete your transformation.

Change My Image is a simple program with an intuitive interface. Users don’t have endless settings to master and can begin using the program in a few minutes. Though the instruction manual is only a few pages long and buried in the Applications folder, one can pretty well figure out the program in a few minutes. (more…)

By Chris Tofteberg, AAUG Member
Reviewed 6/06

Big things come in small packages, they say, and the TVMini HD from Miglia is certainly a fine example of that.

In today’s world where one needs all sorts of electronics and cables to enjoy electronic entertainment, it was refreshing to open the TVMini HD and find an iPod sized device that would bring HD programming to the Mac. I especially appreciate hardware and software designed specifically for Mac; the box proudly states “Watch, pause and record HDTV on your Mac.” Thanks guys!

Enough about the box, you’re wondering what is in it. Included in the box was the TVMini HD device, a remote control (with batteries), an antenna and adapter, a USB cable, EyeTV CD and guide. In other words, it was ready to go out of the box.

The included CD has the EyeTV program, which must be installed first. The TVMini HD uses the EyeTV software interface, which is extremely easy to use. During the EyeTV install, you are asked whether you would like to sign up (for free) with the TitanTV service. Think of TitanTV as TV Guide for your computer. This works hand in hand with EyeTV to help you schedule your viewing and recording.

Once EyeTV is installed and you have the hardware hooked up, you need to scan for channels. I used both my cable connection and the included antenna. I was most surprised that I pulled in 8 channels (more…)

By Gary Miller, AAUG Member
Reviewed 6/06

When i got my first optical mouse by Apple, i thought i could toss my old mouse pad away since the new optical mouse with it’s bright red laser light worked on anything, WRONG. I learned quick that if I wanted to get traction for the mouse, be it either the Apple Pro Mouse with click button or the wireless model, both needed some help to work well.

Power Support USA brings in high level products made in Japan of the highest quality, and these 2 - the Airpad Pro III and Airpad Sole, both seek to make your mouse work at it’s best.

Airpad Pro III comes in 3 sizes, from it’s ’small’ 5.83″ x 8.11″, to Medium ” 6.85″ x 8.58″ or the large 7.72″ x 9.92″ I am using the Medium, good size, for the mouse to move around on. It’s a dark grey fluorocarbon resin that on one side is smooth and the other side is textured. I noticed immediate improvement in less drag and friction on the mouse, better tracking on the screen with the cursor too. The feel of it, is rubbery, probably not a word, but it’s pliable, and feels like it wouldn’t tear or wear out. You can clean with a mild detergent and water. Since it has an adhesive finish, it won’t move from where you put it. I liked that. (more…)

By Gerrit H. Dalman, AAUG Member
Reviewed 6/06

Everyone knows the Mac has a lot more to contribute to productivity than word processing and spread sheets, but many organizations and businesses still don’t use computers to manage their resources. Marketcircle’s Daylite 3 is a Mac-only project management app that can do just that.

Aimed squarely at small businesses and organizations (Marketcircle recommends up to 50 users), Daylite prodives all the tools you could want to keep groups efficient and on-task. With it, team members can coordinate private and shared contacts, calendars, and projects.

It doesn’t help you create any products. It helps you manage resources. What it does - and does well - is track people, time, projects, and material assets.

With a healthy amount of setup and maintenance, individual users will be empowered to easily manage more robust calendars and contacts than either Apple or Microsoft’s products support. They can also manage notes, tasks, and much more. Perhaps most important, all of this information is shared with all users.

While you can use Daylite on a single computer, it’s networked nature means you can access multiple databases from a local network or across the internet and if you’re on the road, you can even take an offline copy of the database with you - very helpful for on-the-go managers!

The interface is intimidating yet everything you would expect from a Mac application. It offers quick access to all the data Daylite can store and index and basic functionality is simple enough. More advanced functions and customization can be less intuitive, though. Fortunately there is a complete sample database to give you some perspective and thorough online documentation (more…)

By David Enders, AAUG Member
Reviewed 6/06

Will the day ever-come that the Mac is burdened with as many viruses as they have in the Windows environment ? Probably not, but, is one virus more than enough to feel threatened ? The answer is “Yes”

Virus protection is like insurance, you hate having to pay for it but when something happens you are glad you have it. Enter VirusBarrier x4 by Intego Software.

Installing the software is simple and you can start using it in its default configuration. Once you have tweaked the preferences to your liking you can specify which files to scan and how often. The software is accompanied by a 100+ page manual in pdf format. The manual tells the user how to install the software,requirements and how to configure it. It also provides an overview on the different types of viruses and their effect on the computer. What I like about Virus Barrier x4 is that once it is installed and running you hardly know it is there except for an icon in the menu-bar. If you are a widget fan, VirusBarrier installs three widgets for your use. Handy little guys although widgets just haven’t caught on with me overall.

After the software is installed they recommend a manual scan to check to see if there are any viruses lurking in your system. (more…)

By David Enders, AAUG Member
Reviewed 6/06

Homeshow is a collection of cables for your iPod. The cables are of acceptable quality although are not high end audio/video cables they are more than sufficient for the iPod connection. All cables are four feet long making them long enough for my applications.

There are three cables and an iPod audio splitter included in the Homeshow package. There is a Home Theatre Cable that connects your video iPod to your television or audio/video receiver. It is color coded in the standard a/v format of red/white/yellow which corresponds to my Mitsubishi tv and Denon receiver making the connection very simple. The next cable is an audio cable which connects the iPod from the headphone jack (1/8″ mini plug) to two rca phono plugs. The rca jacks are again industry color coded red/white. This cable can be used to connect from an Airport Express to the audio device of your liking like my clock radio or audio receiver. The last cable cable is a 1/8″ mini plug to 1/8″ mini plug. I found this cable useful for connecting an iPod to a set of computer speakers or connecting an iBook to a set of external speakers. (more…)

By Dave Patterson, AAUG Member
Reviewed 6/06

Spring Cleaning allows you to enhance your privacy by cleaning out your Internet tracks. You can find stray or forgotten files for removal. You can create encrypted files to protect important information. Customizing a search for specific files is straightforward. Locating duplicate files and being able to easily compare them to determine which to eliminate, greatly simplifies the cleanup process. Misplaced image or music files can easily be found and moved to your chosen location such as iTunes or iPhoto, or burned to a storage media. All of this information and more can be found in the promotional material on the Allume website.

I tried each of the 25 search functions and produced lists of files that looked like they could be eliminated. With the initiation of each search and frequently with each list came a warning that before eliminating anything, one should understand the purpose of the file so as not to accidentally “break” a program. If a program was broken after the deletion of the file, the restore option would put the file back where it came from and hopefully return the program to its former functionality. For me this meant trying to learn the meaning of the files one at a time by using the Spring Cleaning Guide. For a user with my knowledge of files, this was a slow and mostly non-productive effort. Although the product of each type of search was defined in the Guide, I did not understand the information well enough to delete the files in question. In most cases I played it safe and (more…)

By Ronald Schoedel, AAUG Member
Reviewed 6/06

The last experience I had with owning OCR software was a major disappointment. In the old days of OCR, a scanned document with the word “wait” might spit out something like “\/\/@1t”. That was a few years ago with a competing program. Perhaps I should have tried ReadIris back then. At any rate, I tried it for the last three weeks and I can say that the era of OCR has now truly arrived. ReadIris Pro 11 Corporate Edition is a top-notch professional software package that has the potential to make your office run much smoother and save you significant amounts of time. And as we all know, time is money. It is produced by a Belgian company that claims to be the leader in modern image and character recognition technology. After experimenting and working with the program for the last few weeks, I am inclined to believe those claims.

A real world experience: at work, I was trying to find a particular section of the company’s personnel rules. In a 134 page scanned PDF document, my only hope was to skim each page and hope to find it. However, the installation of ReadIris Pro on my Powerbook was about to get its first job.

ReadIris scans documents of all sorts and produces new documents of all sorts. The manual told me that it can read PDF files with ease, so I loaded up the 134-page manual and waited a few minutes while it recognized the pages one by one. It did not take long at all. I instructed the program to output a PDF file with the scanned images over an invisible, searchable “true” text file. Another couple minutes and I had my file. I could now search this scanned PDF with total ease. Every search term I knew would be in the book was found. (more…)

By Anne Millbrooke, AAUG Member
Reviewed 6/06

Mind mapping is the process of drawing a picture of what is on your mind. The term “mind mapping” dates from 1970 and refers to graphic representative of ideas and information. NovaMind software allows you to map your thoughts and data on the computer rather than using color pencils, pictures, paste, and handwriting on paper. The software uses words, images, numbers, colors, shapes, even logic, rhythm, and spatial awareness. All the graphic and textual elements can be edited and rearranged till you have a “map” that clearly shows what you want it to, and the software can generate an outline to accompany the map. As a brainstorming tool, mind mapping can help clarify your thoughts. Mind mapping is also very useful for organizing and presenting ideas and information.

Initially developed for Mac OS X in 2002, NovaMind has been further developed, and in 2005 a Windows edition was released, but some features remain available only in the Macintosh versions. The Mac 2006 version 3.0 is the subject of this review; it requires OS 10.3.9 or later; NovaMind recommends 10.4, but the software worked fine on my 3.9 system. The software includes hyperlink capabilities, spell checking, a graphics library, uploading photos from iPhoto, exporting graphics in various formats, exporting to PowerPoint and Keynote, keyboard input for basic editing functions, and screenwriting functions. The screenwriting functions are available in the standard edition but with a watermark indicating the license has not been purchased; the additional license for screenwriting can be purchased at any time. A nice feature is the printing option that can scale the graphic to print on one page or on multiple pages. (more…)

By Carlene Brown, AAUG Member
Reviewed 6/06

If you have ever received an email attachment, taken home a file from work, or received a document that you could not open then MacLinkPlus Deluxe 15 may be the solution you are looking for.

MacLinkPlus lets you open, view, print and convert files from one format to another even if you don’t have the applications that created them. You can also open those pesky unreadable email attachments.

MacLinkPlus is easy to install, just insert the CD and double click the installer. Plus it is simple to use. Launch the program, click “Add” and select the file you want to view or translate; or drag and drop the file onto the MacLinkPlus icon. You may simply open and read the document or have it translated into a format that your computer can handle thus allowing you to edit and work with the file.

MacLinkPlus translates many Windows and Mac word processing, spreadsheet, and database formats. Also, it contains translators for Photoshop, SMP, JPEG, PICT, TIFF, and other graphic formats. MacLinkPlus Deluxe makes it easier to extract text from PDF files and supports the latest version of the Stuffit compression/decompression utility, making it easier to handle email attachments.

I asked family members to send me as many different Windows documents and files as they could. Wouldn’t you know! The first one I received, written in MS Word DOS, MacLinkPlus 15 could not open. The program does give additional information and tips to handle (more…)