Our focus this month is software whi~h is extremely useful, with gbod features and above average performance. No software is perfect though these get better with each new release, and we have pointed out potential areas for improvement. Internet security is a critical aspect today, what with zero hour viruses that change their signatures frequently.

So we tested Microworld's escan 10 and 5pamihilator. e5can is developed by an Indian company and it offers a lot more than email scanning. It has innovative technology like MicroWorld Winsock Layer and Non Intrusive Learning Patterns. We liked the free 5pamihilator tool that proved to be very effective at blocking spam.

Snagit has come a long way and has evolved to become much more than a screen capture utility. The 9th version has a built-in image editor with a lot of muscle. It also makes it a lot easier to organize and share images.

We found two other useful tools:
Feedreader and ConvertX to DVD. The former is a powerful RSS feed reader. A must for all those who read news online everyday. If you download a lot of movies and videos from the net and want to watch these on the home theatre system then you can either buy a DVD player that supports DivX or use ConvertX to DVD. This software lets you create your own home movie DVDs, complete with menus, titles and backgrounds with great ease.

Name: CHIP presents its take on software.jpg Views: 27 Size: 39.9 KB

We also test two system utilities. Fresh UI has hundreds of settings for configuring and optimizing the Windows user interface and application settings, optimize system and hardware settings, and control the user environment with policies. TreeSize is a hard disk space manager that depicts the usage of file storage on various drives, thereby helping you recover free space. Essential for those who generate a lot of content or install many applications.

Finally, our software of the month is Cyberlink PowerDirector 7, which has gone the high-definition way. With it you can create high-definition videos and encode disks with Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound and even output to Blu-ray disks. Do check out its wonderful disk menu designer and help yourself to all this software from the CHIP DVD.