Archive for the 'Reviews' Category

The last year has been the year of the Firefox and there has been so much hype surrounding that browser, that a great browser has gone relatively unnoticed. Opera, long the third or fourth browser in the “browser wars” has recently released version 9 and it is a sight to behold.

Installation

Lightning quick and pleasant - it installed about as quickly as Firefox did. There’s not much to comment on here but there was a lack of options on what you could install. For instance, there is an integrated email client that I didn’t really want because I use another one.

First Impressions

This browser is clean and FAST. It uses little memory compared to Firefox and it feels very polished. It loads instantly from startup on my computer, even without being integrated into Windows. The menus are a little confusing when coming from the Firefox camp, mainly because there is so much here - but once you get used to it, everything makes sense.

Tabs are well done in Opera, and when you create a new tab you get a really cool drop down which lets you access your top accessed sites, Bookmarks, or Home page.

Features and Stuff

Bookmarks and the Management of

The browser automatically brought my Firefox bookmarks over, that was a nice touch. Management of bookmarks is very easy and when you delete a bookmark, Opera stores the bookmark in a file called Trash so you can easily get it back if you accidently deleted it.

Feeds

Opera includes the best management and reading of feeds I’ve seen. All you have to do is click the standard feed icon next to the web address and select the feed you want to subscribe to. It subscribes you and you will now have a bloglines-like service in your browser.

Widgets

Widgets are small, possibly useful, applets that you can load inside your browser. They can keep you up to date with your stocks, the news, let you play a game, and more. I don’t use this feature, but some people may like these Widgets - some look pretty cool.

Wand - Password Saver

Opera has a power password management system called The Wand and it works well for me. It also allows for quick entry of commonly entered data like Address and Name if you so choose.

Easy Settings

If you find a particular site that you don’t or do want to use say cookies for, you can disable and enable functions on very quickly. Just go to the Tools and then Quick Preferences. You will see a list of functions enabled and disabled. You can do this on the fly.

Security

Opera has a terrific security track record - you rarely if ever hear about exploits for this browser. If you’re privacy and system security is important to you, Opera is probably a great choice.

Conclusion

I’ve probably missed some of the features, but this browser has it all and has become my browser of choice. It renders all the pages I visit regularly properly (only had a few problems on some sites) and the Feeds interface is what seals the deal. If you are looking for a fast, powerful, and feature-rich web browser - I suggest you give this latest version of Opera a try.

I give it a 9.5/10

You can download Opera at Opera.com

Originally Published: June 23, 2006

Microsoft’s next generation MSN, er,Windows Live Messenger is feature rich, easy to use, and looks futuristic. Just released from BETA a day or two ago, I decided to load it on my machine and test it out.

Installation was swift, but it could certainly be painful on a slow connection as the download weighed in at just over 15 MBs. Keep an eye on what you’re doing when you install this thing, it wants to install Rhapsody (Real’s Subscription Music Service) by default - I don’t know what exactly Rhapsody has to do with Instant Messaging, but this will be a theme throughout my use of the program.

Once installed, it loaded very quickly and asked me for my Windows Live ID (a Passport will work just fine). I put in my email and password and it connected pretty quickly. The interface once fully loaded looked like the screen shot below:

I really don’t like these “Today” screens, so I went and disabled by clicking on the little check box in the lower right hand corner, before even looking at the content. That’s nice that they allow you to do that with great ease. AIM doesn’t make it that easy.

Now to the important part, the actual IM interface. It’s quite clean and not too cluttered save for the strip of icons on the side and the video advertisement at the bottom. There’s way too much content here - I just want to send and receive IMs! Also, the content may be considered inappropriate to some people - an example would be the screenshot above.

The actual dialogue for receiving and sending IMs is simple and to the point. I don’t like the advertisement on the bottom, but its not too annoying - at least it’s not graphical.

Microsoft looks like they are really trying to push their other services here. Across the top you see little icons that lead you to Open your email inbox”, “View your sharing folders”, “go to your space”, “go to Windows live today”, “Make a phone call”, and “change your color scheme”.

Customization is really easy and looks like it is a very important element of this release. There are a myraid of things like emoticons, display pictures, and winks that you can use. These are not really business level things, but are more for kids - which are probably the majority of IM users (I may be wrong).

Good Points

The interface is improved over previous versions and customization on a superficial level is very easy.
The program itself seems faster and more responsive than previous versions.

Potential Negatives

The interface is very customizable on the superficial level but not customizable at all (to my knowledge) where it is important that it be. I couldn’t remove any of the annoying icons on the sidebar (though you can hide all tabs), so while one or two might be useful, there is a Try Rhapsody for Free tab right in my face all the time.
Too much content. I just want to IM, I don’t want to know the news. I can find that just fine myself, thank you very much.

Conclusions

I won’t be giving up GAIM any time soon, but Windows Live Messenger is a step in the right direction (for people that love simplicity, but it could be perfect for those who like lot’s of features) and is leaps and bounds better than AIM and a bit faster than Yahoo! Messenger. Overall, I would give Windows Live Messenger a 8/10 and would give it higher if it allowed for more customization on lower levels.

Certainly though if you use VoIP with Instant messaging there are few better product I hear. I didn’t get to test that part out myself, I probably should have, but from what I hear - it works excellent.

You should try and download this version and if you’re using an older version of MSN Messenger, I would recommend downloading and using this one.

What I didn’t test out

The VoIP service. Supposedly Windows Live Messenger gives you the ability to talk over the net using your computer. Sounds neat, I should try it sometime.
Webcam features.

You can download it here.

Originally Published: November 13, 2005

While the original OpenOffice.org was a fine product, the interface and the functionality left something to be desired. With OpenOffice.org 2.0 the open source community may have a winner on its hands. OpenOffice.org feels refined and it has many new features: A revamped interface, a database program, a new file format, better PDF capabilities, and it is more compatible with other formats, including those of the standard Microsoft Office.

About OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice.org is a joint project between the open source community and Sun Microsystems. It is available on several platforms and available free of charge. The original version was quite popular and became the standard for open source, free, office suites.

First Impressions

The new interface looks great under Windows XP’s silver theme. The menus make sense and the it feels very stable. The only complaint I can come up with so far is that it is a fair bit slower than Office. The word processor takes about 6 seconds to load on my computer. This is probably because OpenOffice.org runs as one program with several modules. Subsequent creation of new documents in any of the modules (Presentation, Spread Sheet) was immediate.

Word Processing

OpenOffice.org Writer is the word processing module of OpenOffice.org 2, and it performs its job rather well. In my tests, Writer was able to open my most complex Word documents though it does not support Word macros at all.

Spreadsheet

OpenOffice.org Calc is the spreadsheet module. It is with this version that it has become a real competitor to Excel because now Calc has the ability to work with around 65,000 rows, the number that Excel can use. Pivot tables support has also been vastly improved as has the support of a variety of file formats. Support for the file formats of Lotus 1-2-3 and Microsoft Excel has shown the greatest improvement.

Presentations

OpenOffice.org Impress is the presentation module of OpenOffice.org 2. As with the rest of suite, the interface has been vastly improved and is very sleek. Importation of Power Point presentations works well and the wizards have become more useful.

Database

OpenOffice.org Base is a new addition to OpenOffice.org and provides a database program. It is simple enough to use but it really does not touch Access and it can not open Access files which greatly limits its usefulness. This program will get better over time and it is good to see that such a program will be included in the suite.

Conclusion

OpenOffice.org 2 may be the open source community’s answer for a free office suite. Easy to use, compatible with Office 2003 and very functional, it can accomplish most of what any user could want to do. And the best part is that it’s free, so you can test it out and see if it is right for your needs. I advise everyone to test it out and if it works for you, you just saved hundred of dollars.

Like many who use word processors day in and day out, I had become tired of the useless bloat and the constant travels through endless menus to find basic features. I was about to give up and switch to wordpad but that was before I discovered AbiWord.

AbiWord is a free open source word processor, it runs on a variety of platforms including Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. I have tested it on Linux and Windows and it works very well on both.

Download and Installation

AbiWord has a clean and easy to use website, and downloading AbiWord is a breeze. Downloading the 5MB file only takes a few seconds on my connection and is certainly a doable download on dialup.

Installation was quick and simple; there was nothing anyone should have any problems with. It took about a minute to install and then it was on my computer ready for action.

Features

Though AbiWord is small in size and does not have the bloat of other word processors, it still has everything most people need. It even has some features that some commercial word processors lack.

One of my favorite features is that the size of the text is dynamically based on the size of the window. This eliminates the painful horizontal scrolling that occurs with some poorly formatted documents and it always keeps the text at a size that is readable. In case you were worried, this does not affect the size of text during printing and you can preview how it will look before actually printing the document.

Tables are a very important part of a complete word processor and AbiWord supports them very well. While there may be some hidden table features in the other word processing programs that may be useful to some and not present in AbiWord, AbiWord had all of the table features I need.

AbiWord also has the standard word processing features like mail merge, spelling checker, word counter, and revisions. It also has a plug-in interface so you can add more functionality at your choosing. One such plug-in you might want is the Grammar checker. You can download this at AbiWord’s plug-in matrix site.

Support of external file types

I tried importing several word documents and they all displayed correctly with the formatting intact. While macros and other advanced Word features will likely not work properly, most documents will load as written. AbiWord also supports OpenOffice.org documents , Word Perfect documents, RTF, and a few other formats.

Interface

The interface is well organized, clean, and fast. There are no three-level deep menus and everything is at your finger-tips. I would say that you can get to most of the functions in AbiWord is three clicks.

There are some elements of the interface which may be confusing. I found the toolbar that has the Bold, Italic, and Underline functions to be a little difficult to understand at first. Here you can see what I am talking about:

Conclusion

AbiWord is a great word processor and my word processor of choice. It is fast, stable, and has all of the features that I need. I recommend that you try AbiWord out, it may be just what you are looking for.

You can download Abiword at AbiWord.com. It’s a free and quick download, you should try it yourself and see if it fits your needs.

Abiword Screenshot

Click the thumbnail for a larger view.