eFrontier MotionArtist 3.0 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)This is a good program for those who want to make some pretty cool websites. I wasn't expecting much because I just wasn't. I use Director 8.5 for animating 2D fun stuff.The Good:
1. It's very easy and comes with a lot of built in features such as fade in and fade out.
2. The timeline is like a score if you use Director.
3. It's very simple and easy to master.
4. Thank God you don't need to script in any computer language.
5. You can easily do tons of stuff at once.
Now for the bad:
1. I'm used to dragging the item not seeng a see through version of the characters (cast). I can't stand that when you click straight that it shows the transparent version right on top of the original.
2. You can't drag your pictures to the background area or use them as backgrounds.
3. There is no proberties option to make something Matte or Transparent etc. option like in Director when you're animating. So when ever you draw something in a program like paint it comes out when you try dragging it on the screen to be bordered in white.
So the goods out do the bads so I took away one star. It's still a fine program, but with some annoying options that are clearly not in there. I reccomend this to people who want to make a website quickly in a short time.
Director is a very good animating program and you can do a lot more stuff in it with animating. It says on the Motionartist box "Flash animation in minutes" which is true when you think about it, but it is not a serious animating program like making flash movies for the internet. Oh yeah this is also pretty good for making presentations too.

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Powerful flash animation program to create web banners, presentations and digital photo albums in minutes, instead of hours Archive your entire personal image collection and burn it to CD or DVD

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Apple iWork '08 Family Pack Review

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(More customer reviews)For the price, this office suite is a good choice for any Mac user. The family pack - for households like ours, where we have three macs - this is an obvious choice.
I'll not review Keynote - I abhor presentations and just avoid them like the plague. Nothing against the powerpoint (or in this case, Keynote) jockey - I just am not one and don't care for it. No, not even to open a presentation. I just don't.
Pages has advanced a lot as a word processor, and it is the most intuitive page layout system I've ever seem. In minutes you learn how to use text boxes, move them around, and add graphics to produce documents that look amazing. Pages is a ton better than neooffice's (free software) word processor and it holds its own to MS Word (that costs much more and has the usability and performance of a hog swimming in molasses). Apple provides a ton of useful templates, but I wish there was a community effort to produce more (there are some third parties selling templates).
Numbers is an interesting thing. It changes the idea of a spreadsheet by making the sheets independent of the printed page. You can have many independent or related sheets in the same page and arrange that in the most amazing layouts. My only complaint is the keyboard support - If you are entering a formula you will be required to use the mouse. For anyone that has used a spreadsheet application it is just natural to press the = sign and start moving around with the arrows to select cells. That simple, mindless act, is prevented in Numbers by the choice of having a formula editor that floats over the sheets. I suppose that makes sense since you can have disconnected sheets and the keyboard would not help navigating them, but I would prefer to have some keyboard navigation (maybe in the sheet where I'm placing the formula) than none. I've put in a request for a software update, but I'm not holding my breath. The conversion from and to Excel formats seems to work just fine (saving excel files has a small issue that is solved by running a command in terminal). If you need (or want) spreadsheets that look beautiful, you can't beat Numbers. If you are just looking for a quick way to munch on tabular data and make some calculations, neooffice (free software) is a better choice. Heck, if your needs are simple even Google spreadsheet will do the job. Nobody needs excel, since even Neooffice (and Google, and everyone else) does a good job opening that format too.

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With iWork '08, you get three easy-to-use applications in one package. Pages offers powerful word processing and page layout with 140 Apple-designed templates--and all the writing and graphics tools you need to create beautiful documents. Keynote lets you effortlessly create stunning presentations, complete with Apple-designed themes, cinema-quality animations, and voiceover narration. The innovative new Numbers makes it easier than ever to create compelling spreadsheets for everything from family budgets and event planning to invoices and complex financial reports. And all three applications give you import and export compatibility with Microsoft Office. So whatever you need to communicate, do it beautifully with iWork �08. Family Pack Software License Agreement allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple Software on up to a maximum of five (5) Apple-labeled computers at a time as long as those computers are located in the same household and used by persons who occupy that same household. A "household" is a person or persons sharing the same housing unit such as a home, apartment, mobile home or condominium. This license does not extend to students who reside at a separate on-campus location or to business or commercial users.

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Apple iWork '08 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Earlier this year I bought my first Mac. I was using Office 2004 with it and eagerly awaited it's predecessor, only to discover the release date had been pushed back. I'm not a rigid office suite user, just a casual one but I do work with word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations and wanted something that will also allow me to get creative. I got my hands on a copy of iWork 05 which only had Pages and Keynote 2. I played around with it but I felt it wasn't up to speed with Office. Then I got the trial version of iWork 06 and felt it was somewhat of an improvement but still too basic. I decided to take a chance with iWork 08 and I'm so glad I did. Pages now has a word processor mode similar to Word but more simple. Something it should have had from the beginning. Keynote, now in its 4th incarnation has some awesome new animation and graphic tools that blow Powerpoint right out of the water. And I can now make spreadsheets...with graphics! For email, I just use the Mail client that comes with Tiger and voila! An entire office suite at about $200 less than the standard version of Office. So for the casual desktop publisher, or publisher on the go, this is the best deal. The price is right, and it won't eat up all your system resources.

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With iWork '08, you get three easy-to-use applications in one package. Pages offers powerful word processing and page layout with 140 Apple-designed templates--and all the writing and graphics tools you need to create beautiful documents. Keynote lets you effortlessly create stunning presentations, complete with Apple-designed themes, cinema-quality animations, and voiceover narration. The innovative new Numbers makes it easier than ever to create compelling spreadsheets for everything from family budgets and event planning to invoices and complex financial reports. And all three applications give you import and export compatibility with Microsoft Office. So whatever you need to communicate, do it beautifully with iWork �08.

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