In days gone by, Easy CD Creator was the choice for folks wanting to make their own CDs.

In the past year, however, Ahead's Nero Burning Rom has become something of a standard, thanks mainly to the number of CD-RW drives that come with it. Roxio's counter-strike comes in the form of Easy CD & DVD Creator 6.

The main selling point for the new product is the fully integrated support for recordable DVD in its many forms, something that feels decidedly tacked on in the Ahead package.

Allied to the fact that Easy CD Creator has swollen into a complete suite of audio, video and photo management products, Roxio must think it is on to a winner.

The front screen for Easy CD & DVD Creator is a very chunky menu, which lists the five main tasks that most users are going to want to undertake: Disc Copier, AudioCentral, DVD Builder, PhotoSuite and Creator Classic.

It's easy enough to work out the function of the Disc Copier application. Put simply, it is a quick way to copy audio CDs, back up your own CD-Rs and unprotected DVDs, and generally make exact copies of existing discs.

We are not here to discuss the legality of copying but Roxio has done its best to ensure that making a copy of a CD is as painless as possible.

It won't produce replicas of paid-for DVD movies thanks to the anti-piracy measures built into those discs.

Disc Copier feels very similar to previous versions of Easy CD Creator and veteran users will feel similarly at home using the Creator Classic part of the package.

This is the part that made up the majority of the previous versions. The interface remains uncluttered and all the important options are within easy reach.

An option for making bootable CD-Rs is useful for building a boot disk to rescue a stricken PC but, aside from full recordable DVD support, there's more evolution than revolution about Creator Classic.

After installation, a large icon of a CD appears on the Desktop. This lets you drag and drop files straight onto a CD.

It's a little obtrusive and owners of Windows XP can do this anyway without the large icon cluttering up the corner of the screen. Owners of older operating systems will find it useful, though.

The other three features that can be selected from that start screen are the things that separate Easy CD Creator from its rivals. DVD Builder and PhotoSuite both offer editing options that nothing else on the market includes.

The standalone PhotoSuite 5 package costs £30 and was well received. This version lacks some features of the full version but retains the tremendous ease of use we liked so much.

DVD Builder adds video editing to the package. Video projects can be recorded on recordable DVD discs if you are lucky enough to have a drive.

If not, VideoCD and SVCD format discs can be made in a CD-RW drive for playback on the majority of DVD players.

The final part of the package is AudioCentral. This does essentially the same job as Windows Media Player but offers more sophisticated tools for recording audio to disc.

Like DVD Builder and PhotoSuite, it does a fine job of interrogating your hard disk to find all the relevant media files but demands a lot from your PC - it made our test PCs grunt and groan far more than rival products.

This is the most comprehensive suite of media products and, if you want a complete software makeover, it has plenty to commend it.

Contact: Roxio 00 49 2 4054 5080
www.roxio.com

Also consider: Microsoft Windows XP
Windows XP can do many of the same things but hides some features away. £90.