Personal Computer World software Latest updates

Myfax fax software

Paul Lester — 2009-07-06T09:00:00.000Z

Paul Lester, Personal Computer World, Monday 6 July 2009 at 09:00:00

Send and receive faxes from a regular email account

Now that email is the preferred way to transmit documents, fax machines are a bulky relic of a less efficient and less environmentally friendly age. However, they’re still in common use in many offices. Thankfully, if you need to send or receive faxes, you no longer need to buy a physical fax machine if you have software such as Myfax.

After quick registration, you’re sent a confirmation email, fax number and account setup details. This involves following a simple step-by-step procedure to send a test fax, set up a password and view an (optional) demonstration video. An online account is created that shows current usage and allows you to send and receive faxes, but the service also integrates with pre-installed email applications.

To send a fax, the fax number and country code must be entered into the To field, appended with ‘@myfax.com’, with the subject line carrying the name of the recipient and any body text forming the cover sheet. Up to eight attached documents will then form the fax message itself.

Received faxes take the form of attached PDF documents and are delivered directly to an Inbox, where files can be saved, printed or sent on. If you have trouble at any stage of the process there’s full documentation, a quick-start guide and freephone support number, alongside the demonstration video.

We were impressed by the straightforward setup and operation of the service and, although it can take a little while for faxes to arrive (between 30 seconds and one minute per attached page), this is still going to be more convenient than dealing with reams of paper.

A free trial is available to test out Myfax, but at just £5 per month for up to 100 sent and 200 received pages, this is a cheap and convenient method of remaining fax-capable without investing in dedicated hardware.

PC Tools iAntivirus For Macintosh

Cliff Joseph — 2009-06-25T15:45:00.000Z

Cliff Joseph, Personal Computer World, Thursday 25 June 2009 at 15:45:00

A simple and affordable anti-virus program for Mac users

We recently heard reports about the first ever Trojan to attack the Mac. The offending malware, known as iServices.A, was present in pirated versions of Apple’s iWork software suite that had been downloaded using Bittorrent. There’s also a variant called iServices.B that was linked to pirated copies of Photoshop.

The moral of this story, of course, is not to download pirated software. But if you’d rather be safe than sorry, you could take a look at iAntivirus from PC Tools. Unlike its two main rivals Norton Antivirus for Macintosh and Intego’s Virus Barrier iAntivirus is available in both free and paid-for versions.

The two versions are identical, but if you pay the full $29.95 price for the program, you get online technical support with guaranteed 24-hour response times as well.

The program is extremely easy to use. Its main window provides just two options Scan and Protect. You will want to run a scan the first time you install the program, and the ‘Quick Scan’ option took less than 30 seconds to work through our Macbook’s 120GB hard disk, while a more thorough scan took about 24 minutes.

You can then leave the program running in the background in order to provide constant protection, or just run it occasionally in order to perform a quick virus check as required. You can schedule additional scans whenever you like, as well as downloading regular updates for no additional charge.

Admittedly, most Mac users happily get by without any anti-virus software at all, but the ability to download iAntivirus for free and then upgrade at a later date if you want the full technical support package makes it a good choice for Mac users who want to keep their options open.

Panoweaver 6

Ken McMahon — 2009-06-25T10:15:00.000Z

Ken McMahon, Personal Computer World, Thursday 25 June 2009 at 10:15:00

Create 2D and 360º panoramic images easily

Stitching together a panoramic image to give web users a virtual tour of a location is usually time-consuming and fiddly. Panoweaver 6 makes the process a lot easier, and can be used to create both 2D and 360º immersive panoramas, which can be exported to Flash, Quicktime or Java player formats.

We’ve reviewed the standard version, which is the cheapest at £87, but there are also Professional and Batch editions that cost £439 and £791 respectively.

Version 6 adds plenty of tweaks, such as automatic recognition of the lens used, cylindrical panorama production, dual-core CPU support and improved Flash player export options.

The major new feature is support for ‘normal’ and wide-angle lenses. Previous versions of Panoweaver concentrated on producing panoramas from images shot with fisheye lenses. That makes sense because you can cover a 360-degree field of view in only four shots with a fisheye lens (including the overlap).

According to Easypano the Standard edition is restricted to non-fisheye images, but using the trial version, we managed to stitch a 360º spherical image from four images shot with a Sigma 8mm fisheye lens. Another limitation is that it doesn’t include the Smartblend algorithm, which does a superb job of seamlessly blending stitched images together.

The really impressive thing about Panoweaver is ease of use. The interface isn’t pretty, but it’s very effective. Within a few minutes of importing our photos we had a fully stitched panorama ready for export to a Flash, Quicktime or Java player format.

Panoweaver’s autostitching engine did a good job, though it was necessary to add control points between two of the images to indicate matching overlapping detail. After we added these, the result was perfect.

For applications such as estate agency tours and for amateur panographers, Panoweaver 6 could save you a lot of time.

Zonealarm Extreme Security

Paul Lester — 2009-06-23T12:00:00.000Z

Paul Lester, Personal Computer World, Tuesday 23 June 2009 at 12:00:00

PC tune-up tools have been added to the security suite

Zonealarm Extreme is Checkpoint’s answer to Norton 360, adding backup and tune-up tools along with its impressive Forcefield online protection to the Internet Security core engine.

After a rather lengthy installation that requires a combination of scans and updates, it becomes apparent that the ‘headline’ additions, namely backup and tune-up, must be installed separately and behave as standalone tools.

These are both fairly rudimentary, as backup includes encryption and useful options such as multiple file-version support and live monitoring, but it can only be used to save files to the 2GB of online space provided.

The tune-up tool is focused around scanning, backing up and repairing the Registry and is hardly comprehensive, so we were a little disappointed not to see a level of integration comparable to Norton 360.

The Forcefield component works well though, protecting Internet Explorer and Firefox against a range of threats using a virtual browser, which also allows you to prevent any traces of a current session from being recorded.

The security-related aspect of the suite is typically effective and Zonealarm maintains its excellent and well-deserved reputation with a powerful firewall and comprehensive threat detection. Scan times are reasonable, at around six minutes for a quick scan and just under an hour for a normal scan and, as with Norton 360, these decrease as the software gets to know your system.

There’s little to criticise when it comes to core components but we were disappointed by the limited additional tools and poor integration. There’s still a commendable collection of security and protection on offer but we’d question the value in paying extra for the new additions to this particular version.

Serif Photoplus X3

Ken McMahon — 2009-06-20T11:00:00.000Z

Ken McMahon, Personal Computer World, Saturday 20 June 2009 at 11:00:00

Plenty of tools for both novice and advanced photographers

Serif has christened version 11 of its image-editing software Photoplus X3.

This could be an effort to go one better than Corel’s Paint Shop Pro Photo X2, or perhaps Serif simply felt it sounded less prosaic.

The name is not the only change, of course. This release adds support for Camera Raw images, High Dynamic Range (HDR) merging, support for 16-bit-per-channel images and some new effects.

These additions expand on an already comprehensive suite of existing tools and features that places Photoplus X3 squarely in the realm of the serious photographer.

The Layers palette often provides a good indication of a photo editor’s capabilities and this one allows you to add new layers and organise them into groups, independently lock their transparency, pixels and position, adjust their opacity and blend modes plus add adjustment layers, layer masks, layer effects and depth maps (otherwise known as displacement maps).

In a tabbed group within the Layers palette you’ll also find a Channels palette, vector paths and a macros palette X3 supports recording and playback of macros as well as batch processing.

X3 does a good job of making these advanced features and other editing tools accessible to beginners or anyone unfamiliar with the program. There’s a Quickfix Studio window that provides a range of image adjustments and effects including white balance, brightness and contrast, cropping, red-eye and blemish removal, noise reduction and sharpen tools, in a single location. The only complaint here was that it didn’t seem to work with 16-bit images.

There’s also a How To panel, which provides guided help for a range of editing activities broadly categorised into Getting Started, Image Adjustments, Retouching, Makeover Studio, Black and White Studio, Creative Effects and Photo Finishing. This has been well thought out and implemented.

Any editing application that aims to attract serious hobbyists has to offer support for Camera Raw formats. The Photoplus X3 documentation doesn’t say which Raw formats are supported, though the open dialogue box now specifies CRW, CR2, ORF and NEF, that includes Canon, Olympus and Nikon and we were also able to open Adobe DNG files.

The Raw Studio importer provides a good set of conversion controls including white balance, exposure, highlight recovery, noise reduction and chromatic aberration. You can export files with either eight or 16 bits per channel, tagged with a colour space profile. It doesn’t offer the sophistication of more expensive Raw converters but nonetheless does a great job.

High Dynamic Range (HDR) tools, which produce a composite image from a set of bracketed exposures, are becoming common in photo applications, but both ease of use and quality of results have been lacking; X3 manages to score well in both these areas.

Using HDR Merge we imported six 16-bit TIFFs and produced an excellent tone-mapped composite image in a matter of seconds. The HDR merge controls include a local contrast radius slider, which helps to overcome the flatness problem typical in HDR images, and colour temperature and saturation controls to save you having to make these adjustments subsequently. You can then save images as eight- or 16-bit tone-mapped files or in EXR or HDP formats.

Photoplus X3 is up there with Photoshop Elements and Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 in its ability to cater for digital photographers of all levels.

Plants vs. Zombies

Daniel Griffin — 2009-06-18T16:15:00.000Z

Daniel Griffin, Personal Computer World, Thursday 18 June 2009 at 16:15:00

Defending your home from the undead horde

Zombies: the cannon fodder of choice for gamers and publishers alike. If a zombie isn’t already cast as the main enemy in a game these days they can usually be found festering in a bonus level such as WW2 shooter Call of Duty.

With Plants vs. Zombies, the scenario is a little different. Essentially a tower-defence game, your goal is to halt the encroaching zombies and prevent them from reaching your base by using strategically placed towers or in this case, plants. Although Plants vs. Zombies may sound utterly silly (and it is), we think you will be completely hooked after playing it for five minutes.

You decide from a varied selection what offensive and defensive plants you will use to stop the undead in their tracks (such as pea-shooting pods or exploding cherry bombs). But you also need to regenerate your resources in the form of sunlight to keep your plant defences growing and save your brains from the hungry horde.

Different seeds have different growing times so you have to continually estimate what to plant and when, while contending with the Zombies themselves, which also come in a wide variety of guises and abilities. It is a case of forward planning as well as experimenting with your arsenal to find the best way of coping with the onslaught.

Despite the simple concept of Plants vs. Zombies, the strategic demands and learning curve are pitched just right and the effect is a very polished and crucially, fun experience. With an excellent sense of humour, well-balanced controls and catchy tunes, we felt smitten with what PopCap (producers of Peggle and Bejeweled) have created.

Mini games add to the longevity, as does the opportunity to buy a stack of new equipment once you have built up enough in-game credit. So while the waves of zombies never seem to end, there is also enough variety in the game play between levels to keep you interested as well as challenged.

Plants vs. Zombies gave us a welcome reminder that first and foremost a great game must be fun and this one does it in spades.

Acebit Password Depot 4

Alan Stevens — 2009-06-18T10:00:00.000Z

Alan Stevens, Personal Computer World, Thursday 18 June 2009 at 10:00:00

Store user names and passwords securely on your PC

There are lots of ways to keep track of passwords, such as jotting them down on paper or in a spreadsheet or another computer file.

However, none of these can be considered properly secure, and finding and using the information when needed can be an issue.

If that is the case you might want to consider a custom password organiser, such as Password Depot from Acebit.

Password Depot is designed solely to manage passwords. Now in its fourth release, it lets you store and organise all your account names, passwords and other login information in a set of lists.

The software automatically applies 256-bit AES encryption to protect the data both on disk and in computer memory. It also provides active protection against keyloggers and ensures sensitive user and password information is cleared from both the Windows clipboard and system memory when not needed.

Other benefits of the Acebit software include its ability to rate the strength of your passwords as you type them or it will create them for you using a random password generator.

The latest version also lets you attach files, such as product keys, to passwords and synchronise the contents of multiple password lists. Plus it lets you track password histories, encrypt/decrypt other files on the host PC and store the application and password lists on USB memory keys, enabling you to carry your credentials around and use them on any PC.

Written for use with any version of Windows from 98 onwards, we tested Password Depot in conjunction with the optional Password Deport Server. Available free for up to three users (for six users licences start at £129 ex Vat), this add-on package enables passwords to be centrally stored and shared rather than kept on user PCs.

The Password Depot Server installs as a Windows service on either a server or desktop PC, with a separate control panel for management which can be run on the same host or remotely.

The server does little beyond sharing centrally stored password lists and users interact with the application via the same interface, whether using it standalone or in conjunction with the server program. We found this reasonably easy to follow and there is an option to minimise the GUI to a small toolbar to reduce the amount of on-screen space it needs. However, you are presented with lots of tools beyond simple password management, many of which you may never need and it takes a while to get to grips with what’s on offer.

There are wizards to help with some of the more common tasks, such as capturing login information and passwords when you sign on so you don’t have to type everything into the program from scratch. Likewise, you can get Password Depot to auto-fill login screens on the fly rather than you having to look up the information and enter it manually.

It all works and a few tutorials are included but we did have a few concerns over the level of training likely to be needed simply to secure user passwords. We would also like to see more supporting documentation beyond the rather basic user guide supplied. Otherwise Password Depot does what it’s supposed to and is a huge improvement over jotting down passwords on bits of paper.

EncryptX Device Defender 3.1

Alan Stevens — 2009-06-17T14:14:00.000Z

Alan Stevens, Personal Computer World, Wednesday 17 June 2009 at 14:14:00

Prevent others from accessing your portable storage devices

Removable storage devices, such as USB sticks and SD cards, are a cheap and easy way of transporting data, but they’re also easily mislaid or stolen.

EncryptX has addressed this issue with its Device Defender solution, which can be used to automatically encrypt information copied to almost any kind of removable storage medium.

For this type of tool to work it has to be all-encompassing and very easy for users to understand. To this end Device Defender installs into the File System on Windows PC to automatically encrypt/decrypt files saved to a range of storage devices, requiring little more than a simple password the first time a device is used. Virtually any kind of removable storage can be protected, including most NTFS format disks.

We trialled the software using Windows XP and Vista, although it can be used with any version from Windows 2000 onwards. There’s also a server implementation which, similarly, can be used with Windows Server 2000 or later, however there’s no 64-bit support for either desktop or server platforms.

Another prerequisite is Java 6 which has to be in place before the Device Defender setup program will run. This is not a problem for individual users, but a real bind if rolling out to lots of PCs, an issue further compounded by a lack of any tools to help with large-scale deployment.

Once installed Device Defender is fairly unobtrusive, only making itself known when a removable storage device is plugged into the PC. If that device has not been used before, you’re prompted for a password for use by the 256-bit AES encryption technology, plus a hint question and accompanying answer in case you forget the password later on. You’re then asked to choose one of three options to always encrypt any unprotected files found on the device, only encrypt once or encrypt new files as and when written.

The device can then be used normally, with Device Defender automatically encrypting files when they’re saved and, assuming you have provided the correct password, unscrambling them again when they’re opened. A small utility (OpenSecureFiles.exe) is also copied to the device to open encrypted files on PCs without Device Defender. This can be run without being installed and lets you save and encrypt files under manual control.

For larger companies another option is centralised management via the Device Defender Administrator Server (£800 ex Vat plus installation). A Java application running on Apache Tomcat with a MySQL database, the server can be used to track protected storage devices and enforce company password policies, with the option to recover lost user passwords remotely if needed. The Administrator Server can also revoke user rights if no longer trusted and prevent devices being used if lost or stolen with McAfee anti-virus/anti-malware scanning soon to be added as an option.

We found it all very easy to set up and manage with the end result a near foolproof way of protecting data held on removable devices. We say ‘near foolproof’ as CDs/DVDs burnt using third-party applications, such as Nero, can’t be encrypted. Nor is there support for the Windows Live File System available in Vista. Otherwise it’s pretty comprehensive and worth investigating if you’re worried about storage security.