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Virtual Bible

This program is a convenient way to carry the Bible with you on your personal computer, and provides many handy tools to facilitate Bible study. It's a great resource, particularly for students, ministers, and teachers.

The interface is clean, easy to use, and has options for turning parts of it off and on for uncluttered viewing. Bible Pro has many features, such as the ability to export chapters of the Bible as Word documents, PDFs, or HTML, as well as a built-in note-taking utility. It has the option to e-mail parts of the Bible, but when we tried this, … Read more

Cluttered image personalizer

WaterMark Master lets users put their stamp on photos and videos by placing a watermark across the image. This program can be a help for users aiming to keep others from borrowing their work, but it takes some effort to get there.

We were initially very excited that this program offered a start-up wizard because the main screen was overwhelming with options, icons, and boxes offering to do all sorts of tasks. While the wizard helped us get on our feet, we quickly grew annoyed as it gave mostly advanced customization options that would only appeal to experienced users. However, … Read more

Microsoft posts teaser for Office 2010

Much like studios do with movies that are still months from hitting the theaters, Microsoft is looking to generate some advance buzz for the next version of Office.

The company has posted a movie trailer that teases Office 2010 and last week added a "behind the scenes" video that pokes fun at recent leaks of the product onto the Internet (and the fact that some leaked versions also came with a virus).

The "actor" being interviewed on camera likens the leaked preview to him being seen without his make-up and with a virus all over his … Read more

Failed to perform assigned tasks

Despite this program's eyesore of a user interface, we would have forgiven WakeupOnStandBy's design flaws if it had functioned properly. However, while it successfully woke up our computer, it failed to perform the tasks that we had programmed it to do at wake-up.

WakeupOnStandBy's user interface is crowded and seems as packed together as the app's name. All of the program's commands are squeezed into one small window. Though they are numbered, the details of each step lack any kind of flow. They are also very vague, so it's difficult to tell where to … Read more

Impressive maintenance program

This system maintenance program gives you all the tools for ridding your computer of clutter and problematic files. Normally, we'd write off a program that only offers a measly 3-day trial period, but we were left impressed after experiencing its fully functional trial.

System Mechanic Professional has a very professional, intuitive user interface. We were able to jump right in and the process required us merely to click the Scan button to find any problems. The program very quickly recognized several registry, memory, and startup issues with our system. We liked that the program gave us the option of … Read more

New HDMI standard brings Internet to TV

Awhile ago I said all HDMI cables are basically created equal, regardless of price. That's about to change.

HDMI Licensing, the body responsible for licensing the High-Definition Multimedia Interface specification (widely known as HDMI) announced Wednesday the features that will be incorporated in the upcoming HDMI 1.4 specification.

Among other advancements, the latest HDMI specification will offer networking capabilities with Ethernet connectivity and will add an Audio Return Channel to enable upstream audio connections via the HDMI cable.

According to HDMI Licensing, the detailed HDMI specification 1.4 will be available for download on its Web site no … Read more

Dell sneaks in new Studio 14z laptop

Targeted largely at students, Dell's new Studio 14z laptop was quietly announced this morning. Part of the upscale but affordable Studio line, which brings in design elements from Dell's high-end XPS laptops, the Studio 14z is thin and light for a 14-inch system, starting at 4.5 pounds and from .76-1.2-inches thick (the body is slightly tapered). Helping it shave away the extra millimeters is an LED display and the lack of an internal optical drive. Dell calls it, "a homework-busting system by day and an entertainment powerhouse by night."

In a press release, Dell … Read more

Office 2010 test version leaks onto Web

Public testing of Microsoft's Office 2010 suite wasn't supposed to start until July, but a leak on Friday of the software onto torrent sites has sped up that process.

I first heard about the leak Friday evening from this site, which also links to the torrent files themselves. (A word of caution, though--in addition to facing possible legal entanglements, those who downloaded the Windows 7 release candidate from unofficial sites recently found themselves unwittingly making their PCs part of a botnet.)

The leak included both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the Windows software.

For those who just … Read more