Software

Light and easy

To put it gently, Adobe Reader is a real pain in the hindquarters. It's monstrously large, slow to load, and includes many features most users will hardly ever need. Foxit PDF Reader 2.3 kills the bloat and throws in some neat features, such as annotation tools, while still allowing you to read PDF documents.

The interface mimics Adobe's, so you won't have to change your reading habits. In our test, the text readability wasn't much inferior to Acrobat's. The 2.6 MB program starts surprisingly fast compared to Acrobat. You might need to fiddle … Read more

Light and easy

To put it gently, Adobe Reader is a real pain in the hindquarters. It's monstrously large, slow to load, and includes many features most users will hardly ever need. Foxit PDF Reader 2.3 kills the bloat and throws in some neat features, such as annotation tools, while still allowing you to read PDF documents.

The interface mimics Adobe's, so you won't have to change your reading habits. In our test, the text readability wasn't much inferior to Acrobat's. The 2.6 MB program starts surprisingly fast compared to Acrobat. You might need to fiddle … Read more

CompUSA.com has the Microsoft Office Small Business 2007 for $289.99, after $159.01 Instant savings.

Save $159.01 on the Microsoft Office Small Business 2007 from CompUSA.com >> Regular price is $449 >> Sale price is $289.99 >> Savings $159.01 (35.41%) >> Click here for deal

Google the planet

The latest version of Google Earth makes it, indubitably, the only free mapping app worth considering. Accessible enough for casual users, Google has been added features that make it a necessity for those whose topographic desires are more serious.

Most of the interface's real estate displays a rendering of the globe, which slowly zooms in on a satellite image of your destination once you've keyed it in. The control panel has changed and is now translucent and sits unobtrusively in a corner of the map. The new diagonal movement control and flexible north anchor, so you can re-orient … Read more

Screencast central

Camtasia Studio 6 builds on the enhancements of the last software version, like the SmartFocus feature that automatically zooms and pans to follow the action. This time it introduces HD-quality production settings that create screen recording with a dramatically smaller footprint, hot keys for the editing timeline, and video and audio tracks you can edit independently. The latter is especially useful for helping untangle a botched first-round of narration, for instance, from a perfect screen recording. In previous versions, you would just have to rerecord until you got them both right.

The new 'tilt' feature that lets you angle the … Read more

Light and easy

To put it gently, Adobe Reader is a real pain in the hindquarters. It's monstrously large, slow to load, and includes many features most users will hardly ever need. Foxit PDF Reader 2.3 kills the bloat and throws in some neat features, such as annotation tools, while still allowing you to read PDF documents.

The interface mimics Adobe's, so you won't have to change your reading habits. In our test, the text readability wasn't much inferior to Acrobat's. The 2.6 MB program starts surprisingly fast compared to Acrobat. You might need to fiddle … Read more

Light and easy

To put it gently, Adobe Reader is a real pain in the hindquarters. It's monstrously large, slow to load, and includes many features most users will hardly ever need. Foxit PDF Reader 2.3 kills the bloat and throws in some neat features, such as annotation tools, while still allowing you to read PDF documents.

The interface mimics Adobe's, so you won't have to change your reading habits. In our test, the text readability wasn't much inferior to Acrobat's. The 2.6 MB program starts surprisingly fast compared to Acrobat. You might need to fiddle … Read more

Light and easy

To put it gently, Adobe Reader is a real pain in the hindquarters. It's monstrously large, slow to load, and includes many features most users will hardly ever need. Foxit PDF Reader 2.3 kills the bloat and throws in some neat features, such as annotation tools, while still allowing you to read PDF documents.

The interface mimics Adobe's, so you won't have to change your reading habits. In our test, the text readability wasn't much inferior to Acrobat's. The 2.6 MB program starts surprisingly fast compared to Acrobat. You might need to fiddle … Read more

Take your best shot

SnagIt 9 makes sceen shots as glamorous as they'll get, letting you capture any part of your screen, from a partial image to the entire contents of a scrolling window. You can grab images of Web sites and software applications or pictures from scanners and digital cameras. You even can capture video and record screen action in AVI format.

Version 9 completely overhauls the interface to bring the wide range of editing tools and effects to the surface with a simplified, icon-oriented menu structure that makes SnagIt even more flexible and easy to use. Tools to draw, resize, recolor, … Read more