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Links
Magazines
Books
Online Information
Other Products of Interest
All
of these products have trial versions available - so check them out and see what
you think. These are all programs that I use personally (otherwise I
wouldn't tell you about them).
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Power DVD - Years ago I received a free copy of
Power DVD with a DVD player I bought. Since then this is the
only DVD player I use for both my computers as well as my children's.
They offer a
Power DVD Standard Version as well as a
Power DVD Deluxe Version. If you play a lot of DVD's on your
computer, look into the
Deluxe Version...it's well worth the money compared to the other DVD
players. Otherwise the
Standard Version works just fine. They also offer an
MP3 Power Encoder that integrates directly into Microsoft's Media
Player. Whenever I copy a CD to my hard-drive, I use Cyberlink's
MP3 Power Encoder rather than Microsoft's default WMA encoding
(yuck). It's very easy to use since there are no extra steps
getting your CD music into MP3 format...and best of all it's very
inexpensive at only $9.95 (can't beat that).
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AnyDVD - Ever want to make a backup copy of your DVD movies but you
can't because they are CSS or Region Code protected?
Well now you can with
AnyDVD made by
SlySoft, Inc.
AnyDVD descrambles DVD movies automatically in the background making
Windows and DVD copying software see them as standard unprotected DVD
disks. This program is absolutely amazing and worth 10x it's price
if you have kids who just can't seem to take care of your DVD movies (I
have 3 kids and it has saved me a bundle). At $39.00 it will
quickly pay for itself when it saves just 2 of your movies from the
trash can. If you don't already have DVD copying software, look
into their full program
CloneDVD, it is $7.00 more but doesn't require existing DVD copying
software to run.
SlySoft, Inc. also makes
CloneCD for people needing to make backup copies of music or data
CD's that are copy protected.
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Diskeeper - Some of you may have already heard about
Diskeeper from
Executive Software. This is by far the best
disk defragmenting program I've ever used (and will continue to
use). From what I'm told Win2K and WinXP use an old version of
their engine (but don't quote me on that). Their GUI's are very,
very similar. Anyway the latest
Diskeeper not only runs faster and better than Windows defragmenter,
it also can be set up to run automatically in the background so your
disks stay defragmented. Most people don't realize that the
hard-drive is the bottleneck in today's computers. Keeping your
disk defragmented helps increase the performance you get out of your
computer. When was the last time you defragmented your disk?
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