With the public release of its second beta, Microsoft said it intends for the Internet Explorer 8 browser to be more customer-oriented than previous versions of its browser. Our initial impression of Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 is positive: we think Microsoft has not only caught up with Opera, Safari, and Firefox, but in some cases even surpasses these other browsers with its innovative new features. IE8 offers people several enhancements like color-coded tabs, increased privacy options, and greater security features baked right in. Most of the new features require systems to be running Windows Vista SP1 or Windows XP SP3. The final version of Internet Explorer 8 is expected in November 2008.

The user interface hasn’t changed much since Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1, except to add a Security pull-down menu between Page and Tools on the main toolbar. In addition to blocking phishing sites, IE8 now highlights the main domain of any Web site you visit. Thus, if something other than eBay.com is highlighted, chances are you are on the wrong Web site. Perhaps the most anticipated addition is Internet Explorer’s new antimalware protection. Opera 9.5and Firefox 3 both recently added antimalware protection. Safari has so far not announced plans for similar protection. Using mostly its own antimalware technology, Microsoft will block emerging threats by masking the entire IE 8 browser screen with a warning to users. The addition of malware protection to the existing antiphishing protection will be rebranded as the Microsoft SmartScreen filter.

In another feature, known as InPrivate, Microsoft allows the browser to suspend caching functions while you surf. Some scenarios for using InPrivate might be when you’re using someone else’s computer, when you need to buy a gift for a loved one without ruining the surprise, or when you’re at an Internet kiosk and don’t want the next person to know which Web site you visited. While you can currently clear the browser cache with a mouse click, it’s an all-or-nothing action. InPrivate temporarily suspends the automatic caching functions, allowing you to keep the rest of your browsing history intact.

IE8 also contains a cross-site scripting filter, one of the first in a mainstream browser. Cross-site scripting allows an attacker to execute script on a user’s browser without them knowing. When the IE8 filter finds a Web page with a cross-site scripting request, it changes the content on the page with a notice. Users are not presented with an option; IE simply blocks the malicious script from executing and displays the rest of the page.

IE 8 Beta 1 has already introduced several changes when handling ActiveX components. Components will be installed per user, which eliminates the need for everyone to have administrator privileges. In addition, you must acknowledge or opt-in for the component to run, eliminating drive-by downloads. Components will be per site and will only be available from the site of origin. Finally, site developers can request killbits, code that identifies a particular ActiveX control, from Microsoft which can be sent via Windows Update to terminate risky or outdated components. Killbits look for a specific identifier; if the identifier is missing or marked bad, an application will not run within Internet Explorer until the developer issues an updated version of the application.

Getting back to the customer experience, there’s an underlying assumption by Microsoft that everyone wants new tabs. For instance, opening a bookmark means automatically opening a new tab. To re-open a closed tab, you need first to open a blank tab; same if you want to restore a previous session within IE8.

Fortunately, IE8 has included a new color-coded tab system that interrelates tabs. If you are on one page and click a link to open another tab, the two will appear side by side and share a color. This may work for casual users, but for a power user who needs 10 to 15 tabs open with tools and sites frequently visited, the proliferation of new tabs becomes unwieldy–whether or not they are grouped and associated by color.

IE8 provides what Microsoft calls an “accelerator.” Here’s how it works: highlight any word or phrase on a Web page and the browser will prompt you with a blue arrow icon. Now, use that icon to associate that word or phrase with a Web 2.0 service, such as Google maps to conveniently find an address. You can customize the options. Your accelerated item will appear in a new tab that is color-coded and adjacent to the original reference tab.

All this is good news for loyal Internet Explorer fans, but loyal Firefox fans still retain the customization edge–for every new feature in IE8, there will undoubtedly be another Firefox extension produced soon enough. If anything, IE8 will serve notice to the other browsers that the sleepy giant has awakened. The browser wars have reignited.

Sneaking in a few days before its promised September release, the tune-up for Mac OS X Leopard costs $29 for current Leopard users, and packs just enough punch to be worth your money. Apple is careful to point out that Snow Leopard isn’t a complete system overhaul, but rather a collection of hundreds of smaller refinements to make Leopard run more gracefully. Hidden among smaller tweaks are some technical improvements that result in a smoother, easier-to-use Leopard with plenty for Mac fans to be excited about. The user interface and everyday tasks feel faster in general, although we didn’t notice a substantive improvement in application performance.

Even if you’re not a current Leopard user, the $169 package that includes Snow Leopard, iLife, and iWork is a steal for the system upgrade and two of Apple’s major software suites, not to mention the long-pined-after inclusion of Microsoft Exchange compatibility. Finally you will be able to connect with Exchange Servers (without using Microsoft’s Entourage), but only if your company is using Microsoft Exchange 2007; many still aren’t. Snow Leopard is offered on a single install disk–there are no separate, tiered pricing structures to worry about–and you’re getting every feature and technical enhancement available in a single install. Unfortunately, for those on PowerPC systems, Snow Leopard only works with Intel Macs.

Installation
Installation of Snow Leopard is dead simple and (according to Apple) up to 45 percent faster than Leopard using a newly designed installer that asks only one question during the process. On our test machine, the process took about an hour, including two automatic restarts. The default setting installs Snow Leopard without tampering with any of your saved files, music, photos, or documents. Mostly we had no problems, but on one test machine we needed to reinstall the OS when it had trouble rebooting. Fortunately the new installer is designed for safely reinstalling the OS in the event you encounter any hiccups during your initial installation. On our second try, the OS installed perfectly on our test machine and no files were harmed. PowerPC Macs are no longer supported with Snow Leopard, however; you will need an Intel-based Mac to install the latest Mac OS.

Those who want to do a “Clean Install” (starting fresh by deleting everything for minimal conflicts) still can, but unlike installations in previous versions of previous Mac OS X that offered the clean install as a primary option, you’ll need to use Disk Utility to first erase the volume, then run the install. Apple explained to us that not everyone knows what a clean install is and often chose it, not knowing that they would lose their files. We’re happy with that answer, as long as people still get the option in some form.

Apple also claims that Snow Leopard uses 7GB less space than Leopard because of better file compression paired with selective driver inclusion. According to Apple, Snow Leopard will locate any missing drivers on the Web for you. We had no need of any special drivers during our tests.

New technologies
Apple says a few new technologies in Snow Leopard make it worthy of the upgrade alone, with several features that Apple says will boost performance. Because all new Macs come with 64-bit multicore processors, multiple GBs of RAM, and high-powered graphics processing units, all the major applications in Snow Leopard–including the Finder–have been rewritten in 64-bit to take full advantage of the hardware. (The 64-bit technology allows application developers to allocate more memory to complete tasks so that the software runs faster and more smoothly.)

Apple has also added what it calls the Grand Central Dispatch that manages data sent to multicore processors in an effort to maximize performance; Apple says the GCD will speed up any application task, from processing images in Photoshop to playing your favorite games. The addition of the GCD also takes away the need for software developers to spend as much time managing multicore processors.

Another new technology in Snow Leopard is OpenCL, which allows software developers to tap into the power of any onboard video cards (or GPUs, for graphics processing units) for general-purpose computing without the addition of enormous amounts of code. Like the GCD, these are improvements that will mainly affect software developers. But hopefully it will mean more and better-performing software for users in the future.

To put some of these claims to the test, we decided to pit Mac OS X 10.5.8 Leopard against Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard to see how these new technologies affected overall performance.

In our anecdotal tests of performance within the Snow Leopard user interface (UI), the operating system seems faster and more responsive than with Leopard. Finder, Stacks, Expose, launching apps, and other everyday processes feel snappy. We didn’t, however, notice any improvement in application performance.

Overall, we saw only a 2.5 percent slowdown in application performance from Leopard to Snow Leopard on our more processor-intensive performance tests, including our multimedia multitasking test, in which we measure the time for QuickTime to finish converting a short movie while iTunes is performing its own conversion of MP3 into AAC format in the background simultaneously. As this falls within our typical margin of error (5 percent), we saw no significant difference with application performance when moving from Leopard to Snow Leopard. (See the bottom of this review for performance charts.)

New features

Expose
Snow Leopard includes a number of user UI improvements intended to make working with Mac OS X easier and more efficient. Expose, Apple’s system for visually finding the window you want on a cluttered desktop, used to be relegated to the Function keys on your keyboard. Snow Leopard now makes Expose accessible from the Dock; just click and hold on a Dock icon to see thumbnails of all the open windows in that application. Hitting the Tab key lets you cycle through the preview thumbnails of each open application. Using Expose in the Dock is very natural and elegant, making us wonder why this wasn’t already a feature in Leopard.

The Dock
In addition to using Expose to find the right window, you now also have the ability to drag files from one application to another using the Dock. Let’s say you want to add an image to an e-mail, but your desktop is full of open windows. In Snow Leopard you can go to the image, drag it to the Mail icon in the Dock, and your e-mail window will spring-load, allowing you to drop the image into place. Though the ability to drag and drop files in this fashion is nice, we’re not sure it’s much easier than attaching an image by browsing through your folders. Still, if you know the image is already on your desktop, it’s probably the faster method.

Stacks
Stacks got a much-needed upgrade as well. In Leopard, Stacks only listed a certain number of files and applications requiring you to go to a Finder window if your app wasn’t listed. Similarly, if you tried to open a folder in Stacks, you were sent to the Finder. In Snow Leopard, Stacks comes with a scroll bar so icons are still easy to read and anything can be launched out of the Dock. Folders are now accessible within Stacks as well, so you’ll be able to navigate to files within folders all without leaving the Stacks Window. These changes make Stacks much more useful than before and probably should have been available when Stacks was introduced.

Now you can scroll through your applications and documents (and even open folders in Stacks) without being sent to the Finder.

The Finder
While the Finder itself saw little in the way of interface tweaks, the way files behave in the Finder makes it easier to use. A zoom slider has been added to the lower right of Finder windows so you can zoom in on icons. An enhanced icon view has been added, letting you preview multipage documents and even play QuickTime movies without ever leaving the Finder window.

Preview now lets you preview almost any file, even if it was created with software you don’t have on your hard drive. This means common file types from Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, and even PDF files can all be previewed without owning the programs they were created in. As an added bonus, Preview in Snow Leopard provides accurate text selection to multicolumn PDF files using artificial intelligence to infer the layout of each page. This means that Preview recognizes that there are multiple columns in your document so you can select the text you want from any column.

You can now flip through the pages of multipage PDF documents using the arrows that appear over PDF docs when you mouse over.

Safari 4
Safari 4 has been widely available for some time, but it offers a couple of new features when running in Snow Leopard. Safari 4 already includes Top Sites for viewing all your favorite sites as thumbnails for easy access and full history search, which lets you view your history in a Cover Flow-like interface. But in Snow Leopard, Safari is now crash resistant. This means that if a plug-in crashes, it won’t crash the whole browser. Simply refresh the page to try to load the plug-in again. Also, Safari checks to see if a site you are visiting is known to be fraudulent, is distributing malware, or is known to be a phishing site, and then warns you if it is.

Exchange support
One of the main roadblocks for Mac users in a primarily Windows workplace was the inability to connect with Microsoft Exchange servers. Most Mac users used Microsoft Entourage or available open-source options as a work-around, but it was never as smooth as connecting from a Windows machine with Microsoft Office. Snow Leopard now supports Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 out of the box so you can easily connect using Apple’s Mail app, grab global address lists in the Address Book, and create meetings with contacts using iCal.

Apple did more than simply give you the ability to connect, however. Common tasks like creating meetings, for example, are incredibly easy with intuitive controls. iCal lets you view work events and personal activities all in the same window (with easy controls to include or not include the information you want). The Apple Address Book works seamlessly across Mail and iCal so you can quickly bring up global address lists, add people to a meeting (including predesigned groups), and invitations will automatically be sent to each attendee. As an added bonus, if some attendees have scheduling conflicts with your proposed meeting time, iCal will automatically figure out the earliest available time that everyone is free. These are features already available in Microsoft’s Outlook for Windows, but in Snow Leopard the process feels much more intuitive.

File Quarantine
According to Apple, File Quarantine has also been refined in Snow Leopard. First introduced in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, File Quarantine checks for known malware signatures, and in Snow Leopard, will now display an alert dialog if it finds a known offender. The dialog will tell users to move the offending file to the Trash. For example, a bogus version of iWork circulated on the Web a few months ago that contained malware. That particular malware is now automatically detected by File Quarantine in Snow Leopard.

Apple says that File Quarantine will be automatically updated via Mac OS X’s software update as new malware signatures are found in the wild. We had no way to test these features, but we are happy to see that Apple is taking strides to defend against malware as more people switch to Macs and the danger of new malware becomes more prevalent.

Universal access
Beginning with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, Apple included VoiceOver to help people who are blind or with impaired vision to better understand and interact with what is happening onscreen. Apple continues to help visually impaired users in Snow Leopard by adding gesture support on multitouch trackpads with easy-to-learn gestures to perform specific functions. We had mixed results with these features depending on the Web page we visited, but mostly we found the features to be useful. The trackpad acts as the viewable area on the current window so you can tap to have Window elements explained to you or swipe to move on to the next item in the window, for example. New features in Snow Leopard are particularly helpful when Web browsing, with options like Web page summaries to explain the various elements on a Web page you haven’t visited before, making it easier to get the information you want.

More than 40 different Braille displays (including wireless Bluetooth displays) are supported in Snow Leopard right out of the box, allowing visually impaired users to plug in and start computing immediately.

Other refinements
Some of the smaller refinements in Snow Leopard are worthy of note, affecting many of Apple’s core apps. iChat is now compatible with more routers, making video chat accessible to a wider range of users, and iChat Theater now offers 640×480 resolution, using only one-third the bandwidth it used before. New Chinese character input via the trackpad predicts which characters you’re creating and offers likely subsequent characters to speed up the process. A new text substitution feature in applications like iChat, Mail, and TextEdit lets you create shortcuts for phrases you use frequently. The Services menu in Snow Leopard has been rewritten to include only the services relevant to the application or content you’re viewing. Core Location technology locates nearby Wi-Fi hot spots to find your location and automatically resets your time zone so wherever you are in the world, your Mac will be set to the correct time. While all of these are small refinements, each make your Mac easier to use with smart features not found in other operating systems.

Conclusions
Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is not a complete system overhaul and is instead a refinement of the current Leopard OS–some have gone so far as to call it a “service pack.” We think the interface tweaks to Expose, Stacks, the Finder, Mail, and iCal make Snow Leopard more than just a service pack and worthy of the $29 upgrade price. We don’t like that PowerPC users are unable to use Snow Leopard, but we understand that after three years with Intel, Apple is making a decision to continue moving forward with this technology.

The largest of the feature enhancements are probably reason enough for Intel Mac users to spend the money on Snow Leopard. Added enhancements such as video, audio, and screen recording in QuickTime X were once only available to those who purchased QuickTime Pro (which was about $30–the same as this system upgrade). But the killer feature addition for Snow Leopard might be Exchange support out of the box–not even Windows 7 comes with Microsoft Exchange support without buying Microsoft Office.

Overall, we think that Snow Leopard did almost everything Apple says it set out to do: it refined and enhanced Leopard to make it easier to use. Though the system performs well in everyday use, many of our tests indicate it is slightly slower than the older version of Leopard in more intensive application processes. Still, we highly recommend upgrading for all the new features and Microsoft Exchange support.

Magic DVD to 3GP Video Rip/Convert Studio will allow you to backup your favorite DVDs to VCD(MPEG1), SVCD(MPEG2), AVI, WMV, 3GP, MP4 format with ease!

With the latest MPEG video encode technology, you are able to convert your DVD movies to MPEG video format file today without losing the quality and only need the 1/10 of original size disk space to save them.

So easy to use and fast in speed that just a few clicks are enough to convert DVD to AVI/MPEG/3GP

Auto Photo Editor is an all-in-one photo editor for your batch photo editing converter. Allowing you to easily convert multiple photo/image files at the click of a button. You can batch resize, rotate, stamp text on your images and convert format to others. It’s easy to create batch files to automate routine photo processing/conversion tasks. You can set up your computer to run the batch file on a schedule and leave the routine image processing tasks to Auto Photo Editor.

Auto Photo Editor frees you from these repetitive tasks by processing hundreds, or even thousands, of photos with a single drag-and-drop. You can save images in all popular Internet formats, include tif, gif, jpg, pcx, bmp, psd, ico, cur, png, wmf, emf, tga, pxm, wbmp, jp2, j2k, dcx, crw and over 100 more graphic file formats

Work Pause v1.3.1 helps you prevent Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) or other computer-related illnesses by reminding you to take breaks at regular intervals. The long hours of work spent in front of the computer can often lead to back pain, eye strain, and, in the worst case, Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI). The best cure is prevention making regular breaks and using them to take your eyes off the screen, doing some stretches or a short walk around the office.

The WorkPause utility can help you reduce the risk of developing RSI or other computer-related illnesses by reminding you to take regular breaks.

Features List:
* Very simple and easy to use.
* Customizable. Both short and long breaks are supported:
- short break: stay at your desk, but look away from the monitor; flex your arms and neck.
- long break: stand up, stretch, go for a short walk.
* Unobtrusive and discrete, sits in the system tray when not active.
* Can be set to remind you with just a tooltip or by locking the entire screen
(canceling or postponement of the break is also possible).
* Keeps statistics of the time spent using the computer and the breaks made.
* Auto-run option, to start it automatically every time Windows boots.
* Low memory and CPU usage

System requirements are as follows: an Intel-based Mac, a Mac PowerPC G5, or a Mac PowerPC G4. Older Macs require at least a 2GHz processor. If you don’t want either iMovie ’09 or iMovie ’08, you can still get iMovie HD (or the ’06 version), and that one will be able to run a slower machine. Our iLife ’09 installation took around 15 minutes.

iPhoto ’09
iPhoto has traditionally been the headliner in the iLife suite, and it’s no different in the iLife ’09 package. While iPhoto ’08 introduced Events, which let you group photos based on the dates that they were taken, iPhoto ’09 introduced three new features that got the Mac community buzzing: facial recognition, geotagging, and social network support. For the facial recognition, you don’t have to tag every single photo you have with a name and a face; the idea is that iPhoto ’09 will be smart enough to do the facial recognition for you. But that happens only after you do the necessary legwork.

Faces
Assuming you don’t have photos in your iPhoto library already, you’ll have to import them. We had around 3,500 photos sitting in our Aperture library, so it took some time to transfer all the photos over. After you’re done importing your photos, you can immediately start identifying faces and names. Sometimes iPhoto will be smart enough to detect faces for you, and sometimes not. If it does detect a face for you, it’ll display a square over what it thinks is a face, with a placeholder name “Unknown Face” underneath it. If it doesn’t detect a face, you’ll have to hit the “Add Missing Face” button on the bottom left, select the face, and add a name. Once you identify a face with a name, you can go to the Faces corkboard, select a face, and iPhoto ’09 will scout out your entire library to find photos with a similar face. Then you select “Confirm Name” and it’s up to you to go through the results to confirm or not confirm if the photos really do show that person. This is how the facial recognition training works.

The facial recognition is impressive, but it’s by no means perfect. Detecting faces in the first place is the biggest hurdle. Not every photo is necessarily a perfect head-on style portrait, and iPhoto has trouble with such shots. What’s weirder is that iPhoto often sees faces that aren’t even there–any combination of shapes or shadows that sort of resemble a face gets picked up mistakenly. False positives are better than false negatives, but it can get a little tiresome in the beginning.

As for the actual face recognition itself, this will get better the more photos you have. For example, on our first attempt, almost every person who wore glasses was mistaken as the same person. Only when we started to really go through the photos, confirming and not confirming them, did the results get better. It’s not ideal, but the facial recognition goes a long way in making photo organization that much easier. It’s definitely better than going through each photo one-by-one, so the Faces feature gets thumbs-up.

If you click the “i” button on the lower right hand of the photos on the Faces corkboard, you will see more information about that person, like the number of photos you have of him or her. There are also two optional fields, where you can enter the person’s full name and e-mail address. Since you can match a face with an e-mail address, it would be nice if iPhoto could incorporate the Faces feature into Address Book for photo ID.

Places
The next big feature add-on in iPhoto ’09 is Places, which lets you geotag your photos with a location. The feature is especially useful if you have a GPS-enabled camera or camera phone and can get a GPS signal, since iPhoto ’09 will immediately detect the longitude and latitude of photos taken with those devices. Just note that if you’re using the camera on the new iPhone 3G, you’ll have to turn on location services in the phone’s settings so the iPhone can detect the GPS information.

To start with Places, select the “i” icon at the bottom right of a photo for a pop-up information box. Click the “Enter photo location” field and select “New place” if this photo was taken at a place you’ve never recorded before. A map window will then pop up. If your camera is GPS-enabled, there’ll already be a pin pointed at the photo’s location. If you don’t have a GPS device, you can enter in your location manually; just enter in something like “Disneyland, California” in the Google Search field, and Google will do the location work for you. Once you’re satisfied that the pin is pointed at the right spot on the map, just select “Drop Pin” and name the place. Once finished, you can see a map with all of your photo pins.

Facebook and Flickr integration
Another major update to iPhoto ’09 is the ability to upload your photos to Facebook, Flickr, or MobileMe. You also can e-mail them or add them to your iWeb folder for use on your iWeb’s photo page or blog. For Facebook, if the names you assign to the faces are the same as your friend’s Facebook ID, iPhoto will match them with that friend automatically once you upload them to your account. If a friend adds photo tags to the published photos on Facebook, the names will automatically sync to iPhoto as well.

As for the Flickr integration, you’ll have to authorize the iPhoto Uploader on your Flickr account. From there, you can select the photo size you wish to upload (Web, Optimized, or Actual Size) and whether you want the photo to be viewed by anyone, only family and friends, or just you. If you want, you can also upload an entire album at once. If you matched those photos with a particular location in Places, that photo will appear on your Flickr map.

Once you upload them, iPhoto automatically creates a Flickr photo set for you, and the title of the photo set is based on the photo’s Event name. Also, any changes you make to the titles or descriptions in iPhoto will sync with Flickr, and vice versa. Truth be told, we’re a little annoyed that iPhoto creates a photo set every time we upload something to Flickr because we don’t necessarily want that, especially if you’re only uploading a single photo. (A whole photo set for one photo seems a bit silly.) What’s more, there are no other Flickr settings in the iPhoto Uploader; you can’t add the photos to non-iPhoto sets, add them to Flickr pools, or add tags to your photos. This severely reduces the functionality of the Flickr integration in iPhoto ’09. We would recommend using Flickr’s own Flickr Uploader instead.

Image editing
In addition to these three new features, iPhoto ’09 has also made some improvements in its existing features. First, there are improved editing tools. There’s now a “Smart Saturation” check box below the Saturation slider so that you can enhance the vibrancy of your photos while keeping natural-looking skin tones. In our tests, we found this to work as advertised.

Another image editing improvement is a better Enhance tool, which promises to improve a photo with a single click. As the one-click wonder of iPhoto ’09, Enhance is designed to better adjust contrast, exposure, and color in the photos. Sliders in the Adjust window move automatically to detail the changes.

Other image editing enhancements include a new red-eye correction tool, a Definition slider to adjust clarity and sharpness, highlights and shadows, and an improved retouch brush. The red-eye correction tool now uses iPhoto’s face detection so it automatically knows where the red eyes are. The Definition slider is just as it sounds; sort of an amateur version of Photoshop’s Unsharp Mask for cleaning out blurry edges. Highlights and shadows is simply a way to adjust the light and dark areas in your photos–Aperture users might find this familiar, as it’s the same technology from Apple’s pro-level photo management software. Lastly, the improved retouch brush now detects edges, so it’s easier to clean out stains, blemishes, or anything unsightly in the photo.

The last major update to iPhoto ’09 is the revamped slide-show tool. It now has six themes: Ken Burns (pan-zoom effect), Classic, Scrapbook, Shatter, Sliding Panels, or Snapshots. Thanks to the new face detection in iPhoto ’09, image cropping in the slide shows now centers on the person’s face, which works really well in the pan and zoom effect in the Ken Burns. Of course, you can also add your own music to the slide show, and if you prefer, you can create your own custom slide-show theme. A nice bonus is the ability to export your slide show to iTunes for syncing to your iPod, iPhone, or Apple TV. Note that you can only do so after you exit the slide-show interface, and make sure you export it immediately after creating it; it’s easier that way.

One final note to the new iPhoto ’09 is that you can use it to create new printed albums or keepsake books complete with the maps you created using your location data in Places. You can even customize the map with notes, zoom in or out, and create route lines.

iMovie ’09
When iMovie ’08 first debuted, there was quite a substantial outcry in the Mac community. iMovie ’08 was drastically different compared with its predecessors, without a lot of the depth and advanced features to which most Mac users have become accustomed. The outcry got so loud that Apple allowed users free downloads of iMovie ’06 (also known as iMovie HD), which offered the lost functionality.

Fortunately, it appears that Apple has learned its lesson; iMovie ’09 brings back many of the features that were missing from iMovie ’08. These include dynamic themes, video effects like speed and reverse play, and plenty of new title animations. And of course, iMovie ’09 has a couple of new offerings that help replace the missing timeline that was in iMovie HD.

Precision editor and advanced drag and drop
The most interesting addition is a new precision editor window. Right-click on one of your selected clips and choose “Precision Editor” to access it. The precision editor essentially lets you “zoom in” on your video clips, magnifying the transition between the selected video clip and the one preceding it. A grayed-out area will show where the clips overlap in transition, which will give you better control over the spot you want to cut.

You also have better control over the audio track, the title animation, and the sound effects. But we still would prefer a more precise manipulation. For example, we wanted to match up an exact part of a song to a specific point in a video clip. We could only do this after a lot of dragging and dropping and trial and error. If we had a timeline, lining them up would be a lot easier. For better transitions and edits, the precision editor works great, but we still miss the timeline.

iMovie ’09 also features an advanced drag-and-drop tool. Now when you drag a clip on top of another clip on your project, you’re presented with a few options: insert the clip, replace the clip, or just insert the audio. There are also a few ways you can replace the clip: Cutaway, which lets you replace the video but not the audio; Picture-in-Picture, which fills in the new clip in a tiny little window in the corner of the existing clip; and Green Screen, which lets you place the new clip in front or behind the other clip (provided you shot one of the video clips in front of an actual green screen).

Video stabilization
If you’ve ever had a problem with shaky videos, you’ll like iMovie ’09′s video stabilization feature. Just select “Analyze for Stabilization” and iMovie will do its best to analyze every pixel to correct any jerky movements. Bear in mind, though, that if you’re using a low-quality camera, it can’t fix the blurriness inherent in the hardware. iMovie ’09 does promise to stabilize most photos, even the ones taken in a car or a boat. If you want, you can adjust the amount of stabilization in case you want the video to look shakier.

Themes and transitions
As we mentioned earlier, themes are back in iMovie ’09. Themes are basically video templates that let iMovie add titles and transitions automatically to your project. You can go back and manually add theme elements like titles and theme transitions. iMovie ’09 has six different themes: Photo Album, Bulletin Board, Comic Book, Scrapbook, Filmstrip, and plain.

Other video effects include Cartoon, Aged Film, Film Grain, Vignette, and more. These effects give your videos a nice professional finish, without a lot of work. There are also more than 32 title animations, like Lens Flare and Pixie Dust. You can combine the title animations with animated backgrounds or green screen effects. Lastly, you can speed up or slow down a clip with the speed change slider.

Maps are a big feature of iMovie ’09 as well. You can choose from a variety of animated maps to show your location, or if you’re shooting a travel video, you can create a map that animates your journey and make your own mini travel documentary.

Edit music
The last addition to the iMovie ’09 application is the ability to edit to music, especially when you’re making a music video or something that’s music-focused. You drop beat markers in a music track, and iMovie ’09 will attempt to match the video clip durations to match the markers. Of course if you want fine-tuning, you can use the precision editor.

GarageBand ’09
GarageBand ’09 may quite possibly be the sleeper hit in the iLife ’09 package, owed simply to its new music lessons feature. Yes, you get the same GarageBand controls as before; you can create layered songs with multiple edit points, create podcasts in a snap, make your iPhone ringtones, and jam in a virtual band. But the new “Learn to Play” feature is the main reason to get GarageBand ’09.

Indeed, instead of just targeting those who already have some musical know-how, GarageBand’s Basic Lessons are for those who have little to no musical ability at all. GarageBand ’09 comes with basic lessons for both guitar and piano, and, through a series of instructional videos, will teach you everything from how to hold the guitar to learning a whole song.

Basic lessons
The step-by-step instruction videos are divided into the Learn section and the Play section. Learning is where you just watch the instructor give the lesson. In this stage, you can customize the view of the video to include a close-up of the instrument or musical notations, and you can slow the playback speed down in case you’re having trouble keeping up. The instruction videos are really clear and easy to understand, too.

When it comes time to play, you’re actually requested to play along with an accompanying band or music track. You can record your lesson with a microphone or an audio input so you can listen back to it. There’s a mixer for adjusting the volume of your instructor’s instrument, the accompanying music, or just your instrument. GarageBand has a metronome to help you keep the correct tempo, plus a guitar tuner to help you tune your guitar. Finally, you can cycle sections repeatedly if you really want to practice a particular lesson over and over again.

Artist lessons
But perhaps the key attraction to GarageBand ’09 is Artist Lessons taught by, well, actual artists. And we’re not talking just any old glee club here; these artists are internationally renown. They include Sting, Norah Jones, Ben Folds, and more. These lessons aren’t free, though–you’ll have to cough up $4.99 for each one. Each lesson only teaches you one song, and the song’s difficulty isn’t variable; if you buy a medium difficulty piano lesson, you can’t really upgrade or downgrade unless you want to buy a whole different lesson.

So what do you get for $4.99? Not only do you get the artist teaching you how to play his or her hit single, you also get to learn the story behind the song. It’s a nice touch, especially if you’re a fan of the artist. You also get lyrics and musical notation, and, like the Basic Lessons, you can practice and mix the songs, and slow down any part you might find confusing. We really love that Apple is offering this since it’s great to have the musician talk you through a song, but $4.99 is still a bit on the steep side.

Other additions to GarageBand ’09 include a new guitar experience–you get new amps and stompbox effects–plus an improved Magic GarageBand jam. Magic GarageBand, like with GarageBand ’08, is a virtual band that lets you jam with other instruments. The latest version now has a full-screen view, and you can create custom mixes, skip through sections of a song, swap out instruments, and record your song right there in GarageBand.

iWeb ’09
iWeb is Apple’s easy Web site builder, and iWeb ’09 isn’t too different from iWeb ’08, save for a few important upgrades. First, you get drag-and-drop widgets that you can just place anywhere on your Web page. The widgets include a Countdown clock, iSight photo or iSight movie, a YouTube widget, and an RSS feed widget that lets you draw in feeds from other sources (like Flickr or Twitter, for example). You can resize the widgets as well.

Also, now it’s possible to transfer your iWeb files directly to any host that supports FTP, so you don’t need a MobileMe account to use iWeb. You could do this before, but FTP is now built right into the iWeb interface. There have been reports that iWeb doesn’t play so nice with non-MobileMe sites, though, so be aware of that. You can also manage multiple sites thanks to the Site Organizer panel. Last but not least, you can link iWeb to your Facebook account so your friends will know whenever you’ve updated your site.

iDVD
Last but not least is iDVD. There are no new significant changes to iDVD ’09–we didn’t run into any glitches while burning a DVD, anyway. Some of the ready-made visual themes include Cinema and Sunflower.

Help and support
Like with the previous iLife suite, iLife ’09 has very good tutorials bundled with the program. We especially like the video tutorials that teach you how to use an application very clearly with step-by-step instructions. iLife buyers receive 90 days of unlimited free telephone support for installation, launch, or reinstallation. Three years of telephone support is offered through AppleCare, a separate support plan available for a fee. Users can also seek help at the Genius Bars of Apple stores or attend free workshops offered by stores.

Conclusion
If you’re completely new to the iLife suite, you’ll take to iLife ’09 in no time. It’s a great way for everyday consumers to organize photos, edit video, and create songs and podcasts. The biggest updates in iLife ’09 are in iPhoto’s Faces and Places, GarageBand’s Learn to Play music lessons, and the addition of advanced features to iMovie ’09, though we still prefer the more precise tools in iMovie HD. Even if you don’t care about most of the updates, we think the face recognition and music lessons alone make iLife ’09 worth the money

Setup
Trend Micro Internet Security 2009 is available for Windows XP and Vista users and can be used on up to three computers within one household. It supports Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers, and MSN Messenger 7.5 and Windows Live Messenger 8.0 instant-messaging programs. A free, full-function trial isavailable. This is one of two Internet Security products; Trend Micro Internet Security Pro 2009 includes home networking and mobile features for about $20 more.

Our installation occurred without incident or a reboot. After activation, we were allowed to update the signature database as well as any program updates.

There is an uninstall option, should you decide to remove Trend Micro Internet Security 2009. And we found few traces of the product upon reboot.

Interface
The interface is a refinement of last year’s, removing some of the line boxes. Across the top are two tabs, one for the Internet Security suite and a second for home networking. Down the left side are Overview, Virus and Spyware Controls, Personal Firewall Controls, Internet and E-Mail Controls, and Other Settings. Clicking these will open a more detailed view in the right windowpane. In Trend Micro Internet Security Pro 2009, there are additional features that appear in the form of a pop-up dialogue, including protection for mobile phones, system utilities, and onscreen keyboard. Prominent across the bottom are buttons for Scan Now and Update Now. The whole page is color coded and uses the now-standard red for alert, yellow for warning, and green for good.

Features
Trend Micro Internet Security 2009 covers the basics, providing antivirus, antispyware, antiphishing, antispam, Web identity theft protection, two-way firewall, and, unlike other Internet Security suites, includes Parental Controls.

The Home Network feature scans the local network and lets you control the security settings on two additional computers.

The antiphishing feature blocks suspicious sites using a combination of heuristics and white lists. The Pro version includes the “First Visitor” feature that actively scans for malicious code on live Web pages, so that if you are the first one to visit the site after a compromise attack, you’ll be protected.

Performance
In CNET Labs’ performance tests, Trend Micro Internet Security 2009, in general, scored even with Norton Internet Security 2009 this year. In one third-party independent antivirus test, Trend Micro Internet Security 2008 scored well, in the upper-middle rank. On the CNET iTunes test, Trend Micro Internet Security 2009 came in at a respectable 271 seconds, 3 seconds longer than our test system. On the CNET Microsoft Office test, Trend Micro Internet Security 2009 finished last at 1,415 seconds, better than some standalone antivirus products. In a test scanning a single folder with compressed and media files, Trend Micro Internet Security 2009 had very respectable results, completing this test in 229 seconds, only a few seconds more than Norton. In terms of boot speed, Trend Micro Internet Security 2009, at 30.45 seconds, was much faster than Norton Internet Security 2009, at 33 seconds.

To find out how we test antivirus software, see CNET Labs’ How we test: Antivirus software page.

In terms of whether Trend Micro Internet Security 2009 will protect your PC, we cite results from two leading independent antivirus testing organizations. FromAVtest.org, Trend Micro Internet Security 2008 found 91 percent of the malicious software and 88 percent of the adware in the September 2008 test. Despite stumbling on the On Demand antispyware portion, Trend Micro Internet Security 2008 scored average or better in the other individual tests performed.AV-Comparatives.org has not included Trend Micro in recent tests and so no past test results are available.

Support
Like Symantec, Trend Micro offers free technical support. Users are first directed to an Answer Guide. If you can’t find a solution in the FAQ, then you can search the knowledge base, submit a question via e-mail, conduct an online chat (1 a.m. to 5 p.m. PT weekdays and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekends), or call a representative (5 a.m. to 8 p.m. weekdays only).

Online there is PDF-file documentation. There is also a video tutorial (which other vendors should supply but don’t), an interactive learning guide to the product’s features, and a Getting Started manual that covers the basics.

Conclusion
For a good, basic Internet Security suite, we recommend Trend Micro Internet Security 2009. You can’t beat the price. However, for better protection, it’s worth the additional $20 to get the Pro version.

Product summary The good: Strong design and Microsoft don’t always go together, but they do in Windows 7. Users might take a while to get used to the new taskbar and Aero Peek, but they’re a pleasure to use. The bad: Performance is still hit-or-miss in Windows 7. At the ripe age of seven, Windows XP still performs better in some categories. The bottom line: Windows 7 is more than what Vista should have been, it’s where Microsoft needed to go. How much damage Vista did and whether Windows 7 is enough for people to finally abandon Windows XP are questions that nobody has the answers to right now.