VMware Workstation 8

A long-time favourite of application developers, system testers and other IT professionals, the eighth generation of VMware Workstation comes with over 50 improvements on top of the usual VM upgrades, including a revamped user interface, the ability to share virtual machines and drag-and-drop vSphere integration.

We checked it out on Windows 7, although Workstation 8 is available for both Windows and Linux platforms. Either way the package now requires a 64-bit processor (AMD or Intel) and is a lot more particular when it comes to processor specifics, which means that it may not work on older machines. Fortunately we had no such problems but, if in doubt, you can find the exact requirements, and a tool to check for compatibility, on the VMware web site.

As with previous releases, Workstation 8 is very resource hungry and we’d recommend a high-spec PC to get the best out of the product. Multi-core and/or multi-threaded processors are a must, and if you have more than one physical processor then all the better with enhanced SMP support just one of those 50-plus enhancements.

The official line on memory is that you can get away with just a couple of gigabytes, but here too it’s best to configure as much as you can afford. We had 4GB to play with on our test PCs, which seemed reasonable, but led to performance issues even with just two VMs running.

In terms of support for guest operating systems, not much changes. Unsurprising really, given that VMware Workstation can already host just about anything you care to throw at it, from old versions of Windows to the latest Linux distros and 64-bit Windows Server releases. There’s little change too when it comes to how VMs are created and deployed, with much the same wizards and tools to convert physical to virtual machines and vice versa; take snapshots; create clones and so on.

The resources each VM can be assigned, however, have been tweaked with support now for up to 64GB of memory per VM. This adds to the support for up to eight virtual processors/cores plus 2TB of virtual disk space.

The software is very easy to install and existing users don’t have to start over. Like us they can upgrade to the new release while retaining all their existing virtual machines and virtual network settings intact.

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TuneUp Utilities 2008

TuneUp Utilities is a utility software suite for Microsoft Windows designed to help manage, maintain, optimize, configure and troubleshoot a computer system. It is produced and developed by TuneUp Software GmbH, headquartered in Darmstadt, Germany and co-founded by Tibor Schiemann and Christoph Laumann in 1997.[3][4] The American version of the software is distributed by TuneUp Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of TuneUp Software GmbH located in Miami, Florida.


Comprehensive. Simple. Fast. Intelligent Windows Optimization.

TuneUp Utilities has been the leading program for Windows optimization for over ten years. You can easily solve PC problems and at the same prevent others while effectively increasing the system’s performance. Your PC intelligently adapts to your individual needs. The new TuneUp Start page, the new TuneUp Speed Optimizer, and the improved 1-Click Maintenance make the optimization of your Windows system even easier, faster, and more comprehensive.

Better performance thanks to intelligent optimization

The new TuneUp Speed Optimizer analyses your patterns of use as well as your system and hardware so that you can tap your full personal optimization potential. You can have the professional optimization functions work fully automatically. In addition, unused programs and performance-demanding functions are indicated. Due to the optimization recommendations you can also independently maintain and accelerate your PC. In doing so, you always retain control over your computer.


New and useful optimization tools

On the new Start page you have quick access to the most important overall optimization functions, as well as an overview of the performance, health, and maintenance of your PC. Problems are indicated, and comprehensible recommendations make it possible to improve the system.

With the improved TuneUp 1-Click Maintenance you can execute the most important maintenance work with a single click of the mouse. The Windows registry is cleaned and temporary files and folders are deleted so that your hard drive is not full of junk data. The new, integrated TuneUp Shortcut Cleaner removes erroneous and unused links, ensuring the improved organization of your desktop. TuneUp Drive Defrag relieves you of having to routinely defragment in order to access data on your hard drive quickly.

TuneUp Utilities Advantages:
-- Automatic cleaning and optimization of your PC
-- Powerful drive defragmentation
-- Efficient clean-up of unneeded data
-- Reliable help for organizing and cleaning up your drives
-- Thorough cleaning of your registry
-- Optimum start-up, Internet and Windows acceleration
-- Simple Windows customization
-- Secure data rescue and deletion
-- Powerful assistance with common Windows problems
-- Individual Windows styling

The new and improved features of “TuneUp Utilities 2008”:
>> New! Increases system performance by defragmenting hard drives
>> New! Finds unused programs and allows you to remove them
>> New! Recognizes rarely used files that take up large amounts of drive space
>> Improved! Finds and eliminates unnecessary files in only seconds
>> Improved! Corrects registry errors and deletes temporary files
>> Improved! Offers you more than 400 ways to customize Windows and programs
>> If activated, TuneUp Utilities 2008 runs in the background and keeps your system in perfect condition
>> Completely revised navigation makes it even easier to optimize Windows PCs

TuneUp 2008 Interface

TuneUp Utilities 2008 interface
10 fundamental reasons for using TuneUp Utilities 2008

Powerful hard drive defragmentation
Optimum start-up, Internet, and Windows acceleration
Quick and extensive clean-up for hard drives
Effective elimination of junk data
Fully-automatic clean-up and improvement of your PC
Extensive clean-up of the registry
Effective help in solving standard Windows problems
Secure data recovery and data elimination
Simple custom Windows configuration
Individual Windows styling


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Team Viewer 7

Features:

All in one solution for fast, easy and secure desktop sharing
Provides easy web based remote access
Take full control of the remote system
Access all the files and applications on the target system
Optimizes display quality and speed depending on network connection
Easy file transfer and folder copy with integrated compression for extra speed
Set the speed or quality of display
Customizeable quick support tool runs with no installation
Clean and simple user interface
Buddy list style tool to manage your connections
No need to worry about configuring firewalls or routers
Teamview Manager tool helps to manage your partners and invoice clients
Secure encryption used on all communications
Collaborate on projects by inviting guest users to your desktop
Use to control servers remotely
Easy and simple to set up and run
Extensive online technical support and multi-national phone support
A free version is available for non commercial, personal use
7 day money back guarantee
Windows or Mac OS compatible
Editor's Verdict:

Teamviewer is a professional remote access and assistance application mainly aimed at business and corporate users. However, a free version is available for private use which contains many of the same features as in the professional versions. If you are a business looking for a remote assistance solution, Teamviewer is a very reasonably priced and high quality choice, but home users may find the free version provides everything they need.

While Teamviewer leans more toward being a remote assistance tool for professional organisations and businesses, it still provides most of the things a home user would need in a remote access tool. The main purpose of the software is to allow you to take control of a remote PC and operate it as if you were sitting in front of it. This means you can access all the files, programs and connected devices on the computer just as you would normally.

To use the software you must first install the client application on the computer to be accessed remotely. This is a simple installation procedure, but if you purchase the premium version or above, no installation is even required - the application just runs instantly. You can then use the Teamviewer control software on another computer to access any of the computers that the client application is running on. Again, if you choose the premium version or above, this becomes easier as you have access to the web based control application which runs through any browser. The fact that not all versions can be controlled through a web browser may put some people off, but having dedicated desktop software allows Temaviewer to provide more functionality and run faster.

As well as being able to remotely access computers, Teamviewer provides tools to help manage connections to clients with the premium and above versions. Integrated in the control software is a buddy list feature which shows all the computers you can connect to at that time. The Teamviewer manager application provides the facility to store all your sessions and client details in a database and analyze them using sophisticated tools. This helps in generating invoices for clients and maintaining information about the problems they have had.

Setting the software up is very simple and, as we mentioned, with the premium and above versions the client application can be run without any installation (and can also be customized with your organisation's colours and logo). This makes it ideal for businesses that have to provide remote support for clients who may not like to install new programs on their computer. There are no firewall or router issues to worry about because the client application maintains an outgoing connection to a Teamviewer server which can be used to connect the computer at any time without altering your network configuration.

Security is taken very seriously by Teamviewer and, as such, they provide a detailed whitepaper outlining their security policies on their web site. All communications between remote computers are encrypted using tried and tested methods and the ID and password of a remote PC is required before it can be accessed. The infrastructure Teamviewer uses for establishing connections is also highly secure and uses redundancy methods to ensure integrity.

Teamviewer is an excellent piece of software for any businesses that want to be able to provide remote assistance to their clients. It is easy to configure and works without any problems through all manner of network set ups, providing secure access to the remote system. Home users may find the free version does all they need, but might miss the lack of a web based control interface. The price will inhibit many private users from upgrading, but it is actually very reasonable for business use when compared with other similar products. We suggest trying out the free version of this excellent software to see for yourself how well it works.

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FIFTY SHADES Trilogy

Fifty Shades of Grey

“Anastasia, you should steer clear of me.  I’m not the man for you.”-Christian Grey

“I have rules and I want you to comply with them.  They are for your benefit and for my pleasure.  If you follow these rules to my satisfaction, I shall reward you.  if you don’t, I shall punish you and you will learn.”- Christian Grey

When literature student Anastasia Steele goes to interview young entrepreneur Christian Grey, she encounters a man who is beautiful, brilliant, and intimidating. The unworldly, innocent Ana is startled to realize she wants this man and, despite his enigmatic reserve, finds she is desperate to get close to him. Unable to resist Ana’s quiet beauty, wit, and independent spirit, Grey admits he wants her, too—but on his own terms.

Shocked yet thrilled by Grey’s singular erotic tastes, Ana hesitates. For all the trappings of success—his multinational businesses, his vast wealth, his loving family—Grey is a man tormented by demons and consumed by the need to control. When the couple embarks on a daring, passionately physical affair, Ana discovers Christian Grey’s secrets and explores her own dark desires.

Fifty Shades Darker

 “This is me Ana. All of me and I’m all yours.  what do I have to do to make you realize that? To make you see that I want you any way I can get you.  that I love you.”- Christian Grey

“You are so precious to me Ana. I was serious about marrying you. we can get to know each other then. I can look after you. you can look after me. We can have kids if you want. I will lay my world at your feet, Anastasia. I want you, body and soul, forever.”- Christian Grey

Daunted by the singular tastes and dark secrets of the beautiful, tormented young entrepreneur Christian Grey, Anastasia Steele has broken off their relationship to start a new career with a Seattle publishing house. 

But desire for Christian still dominates her every waking thought, and when he proposes a new arrangement, Anastasia cannot resist. They rekindle their searing sensual affair, and Anastasia learns more about the harrowing past of her damaged, driven and demanding Fifty Shades.

While Christian wrestles with his inner demons, Anastasia must confront the anger and envy of the women who came before her, and make the most important decision of her life.

Fifty Shades Freed

“I want everyone to know that you’re mine.”- Christian
“I am yours. look.”- Anastasia
“It’s not enough.”-Christian
“What do you mean?”- Anastasia
“I want your world to begin and end with me.”- Christian


When unworldly student Anastasia Steele first encountered the driven and dazzling young entrepreneur Christian Grey it sparked a sensual affair that changed both of their lives irrevocably. Shocked, intrigued, and, ultimately, repelled by Christian’s singular erotic tastes, Ana demands a deeper commitment. Determined to keep her, Christian agrees.

Now, Ana and Christian have it all—love, passion, intimacy, wealth, and a world of possibilities for their future. But Ana knows that loving her Fifty Shades will not be easy, and that being together will pose challenges that neither of them would anticipate. Ana must somehow learn to share Christian’s opulent lifestyle without sacrificing her own identity. And Christian must overcome his compulsion to control as he wrestles with the demons of a tormented past.

Just when it seems that their strength together will eclipse any obstacle, misfortune, malice, and fate conspire to make Ana’s deepest fears turn to reality.

This is a Feel-good trilogy because every single thing just works out in the end.  Including the other characters’ lives like Kate (Ana’s Best friend) with Elliot (Christian’s brother), also Mia (Christian’s sister) and Ethan (Kate’s brother).  Plus the ending of Fifty Shades Freed has complete closure so no questions need be asked. Everyone is happy and healed.  Again, this touches on women’s need for a happy ending, or at least my wish for it.

The Fifty Shades trilogy is an assault on your senses so think hard and deep before reading.
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Adobe Photoshop CS5

Adobe Photoshop CS5 is the latest version of arguably the world's most popular pro image editor. Does the new Photoshop justify the very pricey upgrade from CS4? We break it down in this review.

If Adobe is the United Federation of Planets, then it's probably reasonable to say that Photoshop is the U.S.S. Enterprise. It's their flagship product, the one that they will consistently be best known for, and the one with the weakest competition. You can say Flash is going to be outmoded by HTML 5 (if people could agree on a standard) or that you can use Final Cut Pro instead of Premiere Pro, or you can even opt for Motion instead of After Effects...but what are you going to use instead of Photoshop? The GIMP? And major advances in Adobe's Creative Suite tend to appear in Photoshop first, as was the case with the 64-bit version of Photoshop in CS4.

Of course there's still one competitor handling a design space Photoshop hasn't traditionally owned: Corel, with Painter. For digital painting, Corel has remained nigh unbeatable, while Photoshop has continued to dominate the field right in its title: photography work.

That may very well change with Photoshop CS5, which raises the bar yet again. For the purposes of this review I conscripted an illustrator friend of mine to play with some of the new features of Photoshop CS5, and after spending a week with it he concluded it was definitely a worthy upgrade to CS4.

It's difficult to really get into everything that's changed with CS5, but I'll try to be concise and focus on the big changes.

A few months ago, a video debuted on YouTube by Adobe which highlighted a feature they called Content-Aware Fill. The video circulated the internet fairly rapidly, and my experience in showing it to multiple people ranged from "holy crap, that's amazing" to "SORCERERS!" It was an impressive demonstration, but a healthy amount of skepticism was necessary. When presenting a new feature, most companies try to present it in the best possible light -- whether it works or not.

Now with Photoshop CS5 in front of me, I can tell you it works a heck of a lot better than I thought it would. So what is it? It may be better to show you than to try and explain.

Before Content-Aware Fill applied in Adobe Photoshop CS5After Content-Aware Fill applied in Adobe Photoshop CS5

Above-left is an image of my cat, Zoe, sitting next to the window in my apartment. But let's say she dies, and I'm horribly heartbroken, and I can't bear to have her in any of my photos anymore. Above-right is a Content-Aware Fill of the picture that removes Zoe.

The Content-Aware Fill process took me about two minutes. There are some artifacts in the image, to be sure, but it does a remarkably good job of removing a fairly complex object from a moderately complex image.

Content-Aware Fill allows you to fill in white spaces in an image with imagery derived from the image itself. To remove Zoe from the image took a few delete-and-fills before it looked presentable (the first couple used part of the Rock Band controller to fill in the carpet), but a precise outlining with the lasso helps a great deal.

This was a complex change, though, and the feature isn't perfect. I tried a couple of different images with marginal success before settling on this one. It seems the Content-Aware Fill algorithm has some trouble replicating any kind of geometry in the image -- a baseboard, the grid of linoleum -- but I was pleased that the high contrast of this image made it work well. For smaller touch-ups it can be absolutely outstanding and save an extensive amount of time. It does leave some artifacts if it has trouble, and you can see my "ghost cat" in the second image. But if you need to remove a bush, shrub, tree, or some random jerk from your family photos, a couple of hits of Content-Aware Fill are liable to get the job done.

Digital painting in Adobe Photoshop CS5PHOTOPAINTSHOP?

One of the other major changes to CS5 has to do with digital painting. Borrowing an idea from Premiere Pro, Adobe implemented a sort of "workspace toggle" in the top right corner that allows you to select a mode for Photoshop to run in. One of the three main modes is Painting.

Photoshop CS5 brings some big advances to the table in regards to digital painting, advances that in my friend's words "should have Corel worried." CS5 includes texture brushes, on-canvas color blending, brushes with sensors that let you control the number of bristles, and pressure sensitivity for people who use Wacom and other drawing tablets.

THE LITTLE EXTRAS

Photoshop CS5 also includes expanded interoperability with other members of Adobe's Creative Suite, including Premiere, After Effects. Adobe's own site lists "improved workflow," but honestly the UI has remained unchanged from CS4. And of course, this version brings with it the advances CS4 made in GPU acceleration (Photoshop can use OpenGL to store images in video memory to dynamically scale them and apply other effects) and the 64-bit executable that allows it to address as much memory as your system can spare (though you can manually specify how little or how much memory you want Photoshop to use).

Powerful software like the programs found in Adobe's Creative Suite do require some hands-on time to learn and explore, but a 30-day demo version of the CS5 Master Collection can be downloaded from Adobe's site to allow you to feel out the programs you might use.

CONCLUSION

The question for some users is going to be whether or not Photoshop CS5 is worth the upgrade over its predecessors. While I had some small reservations in recommending Premiere Pro CS5 over CS4, Photoshop CS5 is a slam dunk. I think that's due in no small part to Content-Aware Fill, which for many users may very well wind up being Photoshop CS5's killer app. It's something new we've never seen before and it works better than it has any right to. Adobe's promotional video for it may be a series of best case scenarios, but the reality isn't far off at all, and I'm still not sure exactly how they were able to make it work as well as it does. Substantial improvements to digital painting functionality make Photoshop CS5 an easy sell for illustrators as well.

Bottom line, if you make heavy use of Photoshop, especially professionally, you need Photoshop CS5.

PROS

Content-Aware Fill is real

Powerful digital painting options

Granular memory controls

CONS

Very pricey

No UI upgrades from CS4

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