Disclaimer: I’m being paid to write this review.

AVS Video Converter describes itself as:

Rip and burn personal DVDs, convert video, split, join, edit, rotate, apply effects, transfer, copy!

Considering I’ve been spending a lot of time with video this year, I was interested in checking out what the AVS Video Converter could offer me.

Installation
The download is a tidy 39.6 MB. I paused at the following screen wondering why there isn’t a better explanation to the user why Windows Media Format 9 Series Runtime Files are checked by default as a ‘task’?

I’m using Windows Media 11 but left it checked. No problems there however when the install was done and I launched for the first time I was met with a flurry of disk error messages. A lot of software chokes on my setup which doesn’t use the C:/ drive as the primary drive, so I wasn’t too surprised. Here’s a peek at the ugliness:

After getting through that I was treated to a nag screen announcing I was using the unregistered version. As part of compensation for writing this review I was offered a key to unlock the registered version but I chose not to take that and instead look at what prospective customer would see as an unregistered user.

When you click more you are sent to a web page which explains the upgrade options. AVS Video Converter is part of a software subscription by AVS4YOU.com which allows registered access to all programs for a yearly or unlimited fee per machine. Until May 31, the unlimited per PC price is $59 per year and goes up to $69 after that. The yearly price until May 31 is $29 and goes up to $39 after that.

The unregistered experience
The deal offered isn’t just for AVS Video Converter, it is for all the programs by AVS4YOU. I counted well over 25 different programs which puts the lifetime price at under $2 a program even if you wait to buy until after this month.

Seemed like a good deal if the software is worthwhile and something you can’t find somewhere else for free. There are a ton of different video conversion tools out there these days. I’ll get back to this point in a little bit, but let’s see how easy it is to convert a video.

As the screenshot above shows there are a bunch of different conversion options from left to right on the radio dial: To AVI, DVD, MP4, 3GP, MPEG, MOV, WMV, RM, and SWF. With the input window you browse to the file you want to convert. In my case I chose our digital camera video. It’s the Kodak EasyShare Z760 and encodes in an MOV format. When working with the video for Hmmcasts on my Windows machine I convert that first to AVI using Quicktime Pro (which I paid $29.95).

As a test case I decided to encode yesterday’s music video Hmmcast from MP4 to SWF. Since that was over 25MB I figured it would be a good test of a larger video file to convert.

In the lower window there are two tabs to open up more information about the file including Aspect Correction and File Information. There is a brief, useful explanation of what Aspect Ratio is:

Aspect ratio of an image is its displayed width divided by the height. The aspect ratio of a standard TV screen is 4:3. High definition televisions have an aspect of 16:9.

The File Info displays the input and output file (the converted file) details. Once you have the settings in order and click the “convert now!” button unregistered users will see the following nag screen message.

The process of converting from MP4 to SWF went fast on my Windows XP powered PC with 2GB RAM.

You can watch the progress of the video being converted to the new format.

The program is pretty much useless with the watermark in the center which is the point to let you try it and see if it properly converts the file. If you like it then you have two choices: register the program or hit Google and look for a competing program.

Darkmoon at LUX informed me of an audio and video program called SUPER that is free and does a lot more than AVS Video Converter. As you migth expect, the problem with SUPER is that it’s not nearly as user-friendly as AVS Video Converter. It is possible the other AVS4YOU programs emulate some or all of SUPER’s extensive feature set, but I had to spend a few more minutes working with SUPER to get it to convert a file. SUPER has the right price though if you are looking for something free to do the same thing.

Refund policy
AVS4You has a reasonable Refund Policy which basically says they will only refund those who report technical problems on their computer:

If you send us a message informing about an error, any question or just a suggestion, you will receive a fast and competent answer from our technical support team within 48 hours. As a rule all the majority of problems is solved “on the spot”. Numerous positive reports concerning our specialists and products prove that perfectly well.

I didn’t test these service claims for this review, but I did do a couple different Google searches to see if there were any major dissatisfied customer reports. In the day of blogs companies with shoddy customer service can’t hide. I didn’t see any significant customer complaints to share.

To register or not AVS Video Converter
Until Darkmoon showed me the competing program SUPER I was sold on AVS Video Converter. I figured if the unregistered program installed and ran without problems I’d buy into their unlimited for one PC plan. I mean really, $59 for a lifetime and 30 25+ software programs is a compelling deal. However, looking through the list of other AVS4YOU programs the one I’d use the most is AVS Video Converter. I’m not going to grade down AVS Video Converter too much because there is a free alternative, especially because it works as advertised and was easy to do what I wanted to do, however I want to pass along Darkmoon’s tip on a free alternative. It also loses some points for being Windows only. What about Mac and Linux?

If you are going to sell dozens of Windows software at a fair price I really like the route AVS4You is going with the one year or lifetime subscription option. Although I didn’t do any business with AVS4You I’ve bookmarked the site and could be back to buy into the unlimited option. I welcome any readers who have done business with AVS4You to offer their customer experiences below. Grade: B-

Disclaimer: I’m being paid to write this review.

As a small business owner with a small number of employees for both our businesses I very much recognize the need for powerful software to help us organize things like employee performance, training, review periods and more. The current solution we use for this purpose, sad to say, is very non-automated.

Therefore I was delighted to have a review come in for software called ManagerAssistant 3.0 that might be able to help our business out in this area someday.

From the ManagerAssistant about page in a little too small font size for my weathered eyeballs:

Recognizing that line managers of corporations, schools and governments need to track and manage important information on their direct employees and themselves, ManagerAssistant.com was founded to provide the first useful and intuitive recording and tracking products to bolster the overall effectiveness of managers on Windows based computers.

So from there we find out that it’s a Windows-only affair, no Mac, no Linux. Since most businesses probably run on Windows, this proabably isn’t a big deal, but when you consider usage of this software for online businesses, it would be worthwhile at least considering a Mac and Linux version.

Site design
Using images for text, beyond logos is a bad idea. Search engines can’t figure out what the text says, so you are left with (hoping, praying) that the search engine will pick up on the ALT attributes used. In the case of this site there is stuff that looks like this:

alt=”"

For a minute consider you are a blind employer wanting to buy software to manage your employees. How would you have any idea what this site was about without text descriptions of everything. Alt attributes need to be defined for site accessibility as well as machines (search engines) to be able to understand what the page is about. Design the text of your site so that a sight-impaired person could navigate and enjoy the content. There are cases like obscuring email addresses from spam bots where using images instead of text make sense.

And while on the subject of using something other than text let me vent a bit about when not to use Flash. Some designers are just insanely in love with Flash — to your business detriment. Don’t let some Flash fanatic sell you into a design for your business that has any unnecessary Flash. You don’t need to be a techie to understand this one: what’s the point of using Flash if you don’t have Flash-type interactivity (sounds, games, video, etc)? If it’s really necessary to have Flash to be trendy or cool (a mistake in and of itself), then have a small Flash logo only and by all means do not have it play some annoying music onload. Just to clarify, the ManagerAssisant website doesn’t play any sounds, but I’ve seen too many other business sites that chase away potential customers by having music blast them the minute they hit the site. Don’t fall into that trip during a redesign and don’t fall for that with a current design.

Downloading the Free trial
On my list of 10 deadly sins for software companies near the top would be: do not force prospective customers to register to download your trial software. I know the argument, heck I’m in the software business. The argument goes like this. You want to get their information so you can follow-up personally with the sale. Ask yourself as somebody on the web how you feel about getting email from somebody you just installed software to check out? Many do not like it. Most consider it barely a step above spam. 10 years ago, maybe even 5 you could have a strategy like this, but these days you can’t. You need to provide people an OPT-IN strategy on everything, including downloads.

Now if you’re worried about the download bandwidth, say if you have a large program (Manager Assistant v3.0 that I demoed was 111.2 MB), then consider using a accessibility friendly CAPTCHA. Something with an option for sight and sound. That will prevent an excess of automated downloads. There also is the possibility of using bittorrent, although that might be risky for software. The bottom line is using bandwidth as an excuse for collecting information and offering a secret download URL doesn’t wash.

There are a percentage of people who will never fill out forms to download anything and some of them could be your best customers. Don’t lose them by stopping them before they even look at your software.

If your software is that good, they will be more than happy to register after installing and trying it out for a couple runs. I think if you absolutely must gather information before downloading than make sure it makes sense. What does knowing my name and address have to do with whether or not ManagerAssistant 3.0 will work for my business?

Unfortunately, ManagerAssistant requires the following information before allowing a download: first name, last name, title, company, e-mail, business phone, state, country and then a dropdown menu: which feature of ManagerAssistant are you most interested in (more on that shortly) and then the only box which isn’t required: what management software are you using now?

The ManagerAssistant v3.0 that I checked out was 111.2 MB, not exactly a small footprint. With our fast cable modem, it still took a good 10 minutes to download from the MA server. Not bad considering I intentionally downloaded during a peak internet usage window. This would indicate to me faster download speeds during off-peak.

First run impressions
After installing and running for the first time I ended up at an interface that looked like this:

The MA trial comes preinstalled with some dummy employee records where you get an idea of the depth of the program. When you click on the employee name a detailed screen comes up with that employees data including tabs for: status, experience, education, compensation and benefits. A handy time-off accruals screen displays vacation and sick time. In red, emergency contact information is listed. There is a photo available that doesn’t accept drag and drop, but you can add the employees photo by right clicking and finding the image on the computer.

I didn’t spot anything missing that I could think of that an employer would want to track about an employee and even if there are MA allows adding custom fields. Very nicely laid out.

The second menu choice along the left is attendance and is equally comprehensive, allowing marking for different types of attendance out reasons like: bereavement, maternity, medical, sick, late/tardy, vacation, comp time, military duty, floating, jury duty and more. There are tabs with multiple views allowed including table, employee year view and the default calendar view. This appears to be an useful tool for tracking employee dependability.

The third menu choice performance reviews offers the ability to track and grade the employee on a wide variety of performance-related items including: attitude, communication, job knowledge, productivity, problem solving and more. Each item includes a grading scale with the following choices: no rating/not applicable, exceptional performance, consistently exceeds expectations, meets expectations, occasionally below expectations and consistently below expectations.

Additionally, you can add comments and support materials and then preview the document. Make spelling errors or need to use some different wording? A spellchecker and thesaurus are included. Nice.

Other menu choices include goals, incidents, accomplishments, training, recruitment and expenses. This software is very well designed, intuitive and covers every aspect of employee evaluation and development. I was very impressed.

Summary and grade
In the ReviewMe area, the company can add comments about the site and what they are looking for in feedback, which is helpful to understand. One of their concerns was whether they should make a more “web 2.0 design” for the website. That might make this software more web-friendly, but it doesn’t seem like this is the kind of software one would use online, so there isn’t a lot that could be done/added for employees or employers to interact online through the website.

ManasgerAssistant has an impressive list of customers including: Bank of America, Comcast, Panasonic and several other big name corporations.

Could the website be updated to include rounded corners, softer colors, bigger fonts, use AJAX, and all the other web 2.0 signatures? Sure. Would it make any difference for most prospective customers? Perhaps a little. Sneeze and web 3.0 will be here so having a trendy design is primarily useful for those who want to attract customers who like using web-based apps. I’m not sure those who want to do most things using web apps will want to use something like ManagerAssistant the web version, but then Adobe announced that they are putting Photoshop online soon, so this could be a good direction for the MA folks to head. It would also make a version that a growing number of Mac and Linux users could enjoy where right now they are left out.

ManagerAssistant pricing is based on named users, not companies, so the pricing can get steep but not unreasonable for larger companies with multiple locations and managers. In the case of our business I believe we’d be fine with the $395 license which considering everything this software does seems like a good deal. It easily made our strong maybe list for future business purchases. Maybe there should be a small business targeted “under 10 employees” version for like $100-200? Perhaps a future web version could be based on a monthly price like $10-20/month instead of an upfront single license fee.

As an employer (and employee if I was still one) I’d be very concerned about security if this amount of information was available through an online interface. If MA does create a future web version, they should take every step to provide the highest level of security. Look at what web apps like wesabo are doing to make sure infomation is protected.

I can’t offer many suggestions for the software other than aesthetically it’s a bit bland like most Windows software. Maybe now that Vista is here with the Aero glass effects more apps will be visually stimulating, but then again I don’t care about pretty software and I doubt most business owners will either. We want to make sure it does what we need it to do and MA seems quite competent in that area. Still, the younger generation which are becoming more employers do care about aesthetics, so this might be something to think about in a future version.

The website definitely needs some work. The MA folks say it is two years old and in this case a more progressive design would be advised, although I would advise against making it too web 2.0-like until/unless they actually offer a web-based version of MA. There’s enough comments about the site in this review that they could do to make it a better website with a more compelling sales pitch. ManagerAssistant is a well designed, comprehensive solution for human resources. Grade: B+

Disclaimer: I’m being paid to write this review.

One of the downsides of the ReviewMe process is that it doesn’t work very well for products that need to be shipped to you. When you receive a new review request you typically have 48 hours to make a decision whether or not to review the site and then anywhere from 2-5 additional days to review, write and actually publish the review. The system seems to give more time if the review is over the weekend perhaps understanding that some reviewers might take days off. For reviewing websites this timeframe is fine, but it isn’t optimal for actual products you don’t already own and/or can’t obtain in a local store.

Case in point, Lapdawg, which is a product which I didn’t buy and receive in advance to be able to review. Therefore I can only write about the prospective customer point of view on the product and whether or not I might actually order this product based on the website and pricing. I debated whether or not to pass on this review altogether for these reasons and ultimately decided there would be enough value for business owners and readers — and it was for a product I was geniunely interested in (the #1 criteria used to determine if I write any review) — to go ahead with it after all. If this type of review annoys you friendly reader, skip away.

We learn at the Lapdawg about page that:

By designing something to help improve posture, ergonomics and comfort, we hope that the LapDawg can help laptop owners avoid potentially damaging physical discomfort and make a small difference in improving our customer’s lives just a little bit more.

Who doesn’t want to improve the posture when using a laptop or Tablet PC? I also learned that the Lapdawg can double as a TV try, bed tray, student desk and lap writing desk. It’s made of light wood and looks kind of like a futuristic TV tray.

The way that pictures are used on the website is a bit annoying. Click on it and the picture blows up and the background dims:

Just give me large detailed product pictures — lots and lots of them — I don’t need web smoke and mirrors. I like that the pictures show me a person actually using the Lapdawg, but what about a video showing the unpacking and construction phase? There is a picture that shows how to put together the Lapdawg and it doesn’t look like some of the cheap desks you can buy with a million screws and instructions that would strain a rocket scientist’s brainpower:

Only one page of instructions and six big screws? Looks from the picture like something that could quickly be assembled. On the support page they link to a PDF of the assembly instructions. Suggestion: get some videos put together (hint: YouTube) showing how easy it is to put the Lapdawg together. Run a big timer showing the steps. Print text instructions in the world of the internet are way, way, way outdated.

I do not enjoy the product assembly phase and if something looks even remotely challenging, I usually pass. Call me assembly-challenged or whatever but Macguyver, I’m not. Take people like me as a real sales opportunity and show me that assembly is. Not. An. Issue.

Ground shipping the only option
The company is based in Toronto, Canada and that’s where shipping originates from unfortunately or fortunately depending on your proximity to them. The only shipping option ($20 USD) in the US available is ground via UPS and excludes Hawaii and Alaska. It’s too bad a FedX option isn’t available for more money. With an overnight shipping option I might actually have been able to get the Lapdawg in time for this review.

This dawg’s still hunting for a phone number
I laughed out loud when I saw under the company contact page the following:

A business with “will be available soon” for a phone number? WTF? At the very least it takes 30 seconds to sign up for a Skype account and buy a SkypeOUT phone number. You spend time designing and engineering a product, create a website and pricing and are out advertising and promoting but cannot get a phone number for potential and existing customers? The lack of a business phone number to me usually indicates a business isn’t, well, a business. They could have had multiple SkypeOUT business numbers for a year for what they paid for this review which makes this even more bizarre.

Get a phone number. Yesterday.

The pricing
I’m lukewarm on the pricing for this ergonomic laptop stand: $79.99. That doesn’t seem like a bad deal but what if your expensive laptop or tablet goes flying? Sorry, no help from Lapdawg via the warning on the Lapdawg details page:

The LapDawg cannot properly secure your laptop if it has been accidently hit or moved. Although it is a stable and secure platform at normal angles, when adjusted at sharp degrees it is sensitive to movement. Please becareful when using the LapDawg and test the stability before putting your laptop on. We hope to improve this feature in future versions of the LapDawg.

What about a money back or satisfaction guarantee? Doesn’t appear to be any. So you’re throwing 100 bones toward the dog and hoping it won’t be, well, a dog.

Summary
I like the idea of the Lapdawg but the sales pitch was underwhelming. Telling me how revolutionary it was but not showing me or providing any non-influenced customer testimonials hurts the likelihood of a sale. Sure, there are bulletpoints telling me how ergonomically sound the Lapdawg is but where are unbiased customer reviews?

Lapdawg could send out a questionaire to people who bought their product and ask them if they can use their reviews: good, bad and indifferent and publish them. How about a blog with comments enabled?

I suppose the Lapdawg folks might have hoped I’d buy their product to write this review and I thought about it (really I did) but as mentioned in the beginning this isn’t a very good strategy using ReviewMe because of the review to publish time constraints and a company based in another country only shipping by UPS ground. Even if I had decided to buy the Lapdawg and there is still a remote chance I might, it is doubtful I would ever have received the product in time to review it in the time alloted.

However, if I do elect to buy the Lapdawg I’ll update this post or add a follow-up with my customer experience with the actual product.

I would like my reasons for passing on Lapdawg to be taken constructively as most of these things can be easily corrected (business phone number, videos of assembly and usage, better pictures, unbiased customer reviews, etc). Hopefully my commentary will be helpful to both Lapdawg and other companies wanting to promote new products. When I look at buying something over the web I look at all these things. The lack of having some or all of them doesn’t mean I will never do business with but it makes it far more unlikely that I will.

A customer support area with only a web form is a black hole in customer’s minds. Get some sort of interactive customer support like IM, video chat, IRC, whatever and what about your office hours? No posted office hours either is a red flag. Businesses have posted office hours. I realize the web store is technically 24/7 but what hours will human being(s) around to handle customer and new sale inquiries and questions?

And asking people to just email isn’t really a good response. Email sucks, sorry. Maybe I should have tested sending them an email and asking if could I buy the Lapdawg and have it shipped using FedX? Probably would have done that if I could get past the other things I mentioned.

I’d be willing to drop 100 bones for a product like this if I felt there was some recourse if the Dawg doesn’t hunt. In this Dawg’s case, I think I’ll keep searching. Remember, the grade I’m giving Lapdawg in this review is not for the product itself, but the sales presentation for the product at the official website. It’s possible if I change my mind and buy the Lapdawg I could love the product. The problem here is that you have to convince people like me to buy the product first. And it’s rare as a business that you ever hear the prospective customer list specific reasons why they chose not to buy your product/service. The Lapdawg website from a sales and business perspective isn’t a failure, but it’s dangerously close. Grade: D-

Update 2/22/07 7:51am PST: Thanks Xeni from Boing Boing for linking (see trackback below) to this review. Boing Boing readers that are interested in other Hmm reviews please see our Hmm Reviews central listing page. You can also subscribe to Hmm Reviews by RSS.

Better hurry if interested in this one — shipping only available in the US — Amazon is selling 20,000 copies of the Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate UPGRADE Signature Edition [DVD] (affiliate) for $259. This includes Bill Gates signature (digitized, of course) on the front numbered box.

Since Gates will be stepping down from his full time position at Microsoft in 2008 and there won’t be another Windows version before then this likely will become a collector’s item. Then again, Gates isn’t completely leaving the company, so he could always do the same thing on the next version of Windows. Any guesses when that will be? 2010? 2015?

As of writing this item was ranked #117 in Software. If the 20,000 copies are all gone, you can order the Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate UPGRADE [DVD] (affiliate).

Disclaimer: I’m being paid to write this review.

Lux Delux a Game of Universal Domination (20 play demo, $24.95 unlocked game) which the company SillySoft — great name for a game company, by the way — describe as a:

game of strategy and domination inspired by the board game Risk.

How long has it been since you played Risk? For me, it hasn’t been since middle school. Our family plays board games once in awhile and our middle son and I enjoy playing chess. He has this cool Star Wars chess board, but that’s a story for another day. Monopoly is probably the most played board game in our family, we don’t own Risk.

When it comes to strategy games on the computer I really haven’t played that many or often before. Earlier this year I was invited up to Microsoft to beta test Ages of Empire III and that was a thoroughly enjoyable experience (although I never bought the game when it came out) so I was stoked to try out Lux Delux and learn what it was all about.

Lux was originally created November 25, 2002 by Dustin Quasar Sacks in Montreal, Canada and a history page details the game’s origins until present, including the name change to Lux Delux in June 2006 when new features and plugins were made available. An annual tradition each October involves a contest called Luxtoberfest.

Time not on my strategic side
I think one of my main concerns about strategy games in general is time. My time, like many others I’m sure, is in very short supply and any game that requires a significant amount of time, brainpower and concentration is less likely to get into my wallet. I was curious if Lux Delux would be too involving time-wise for someone busy to go beyond the demo and pay $24.95.

Let’s find out.

Windows, Mac OS X or Linux, choose your poison
Upon visiting the Lux Delux website the very first thing I noticed is the game has cross platform support. Windows, Mac or Linux, Sillysoft has you covered. A definite plus for any software, especially games which tend to be a little lacking on our Mac (we’ve been somewhat lazy about finding good games to download and play). Lux Delux is written in Java so if your system isn’t up to date with Java it will get you there.

Single player licensing on multiple computers
I was curious if I paid the twenty-five bones whether or not I could run the game on both Windows and Mac or if I was required to pay for two licenses? It would be nice to see Sillysoft post their licensing terms — or at least a link — somewhere near the download area to make this clear.

As it turns out after a little more digging around the Sillysoft website, this is the very first question answered in the Lux Wiki Q&A:

A license is only good for one player. It is allowed for that player to use their registration on different computers (desktop and laptop for example). If 2 different players want to play each other then they will need 2 different accounts.

Note: I only reviewed the Windows and Mac OS X versions of Lux Delux so if you are a Linux user trying out the game and have a different experiences than what follows please feel free to leave a comment below with details.

Downloading the v5.5 demo on Windows and Mac OS X
The Windows download is a 20.6MB exe file and on Mac a 9.3 MB dmg. On Windows you know the drill, just click the exe to start the install. On Mac, double click the dmg and then drag the lux.app to your applications folder or where you prefer to store games.

During the Windows install an information windows appears explaining more about the various gameplay options:

You can play the Game Of Universal Domination any way you want. Versus friends on the same computer, against the 10 different computer AI players (from easy to hard), or versus the world in networked games. There’s an active Lux community to be found in network games and the the Sillysoft forums. There are also World Wide Rankings to determine who’s the best.

I definitely wasn’t ready as a first timer to get my butt handed to me in a networked game, so the most appealing option for the first time was playing against a computer AI player on the easiest setting.

Windows demo first startup screen:

Mac OS X demo first startup screen:

Java was up to date on both systems so no extra updating was required on either system. The installation and first run process was flawless.

Instructions and strategy for how to play
Before pressing the “Let me Play” button, I wanted to read up on how to play the game and consulted the Lux Wiki strategy page which linked out to a very detailed beginner’s guide from risk_man. Included in risk_man’s guide are instructions about what continent to choose.

The object of Lux Delux is to conquer the entire world.

Risk_man indicated that it “usually takes 3 or 4 hours to play” based on the number of (human) players. I would soon learn that playing against the computer was much, much faster.

With a plan to take on bots, I also consulted the Lux Wiki Agent Profiles page to learn about the different bots with names like: BotOfDoom, BotOMatic, Reaper, Brainiac, Killbot, Quo, EvilPixie, Boscoe, Shaft, Cluster, Pixie, Cluster, Yakool, Communist, Angry, Stinky, Ravitar and Bort.

Besides playing the game, you can also build your own bots and share with other players.

Plugin manager
The map section has a dropdown that allows you to search through the list of plugins — map, generator, AI — installed or choose from a sortable list of a couple dozen additional free plugins.

Similar to bots, you can also create your own Lux maps.

Enough reading, let’s play
The game starts by players alternating picking which region of the world to populate. ‘Timmy the tutorial box’ provides instructions so new gamers can become familiar with the basic gameplay.

I stayed with the default of six players but you can play with as few as two players by changing the dropdown to ‘no player.’ Once every region in the world is taken you can start adding your army and fortifying your regions. Lux is a turn-based game where some of the time playing is spent waiting for what the other players to react.

A clearly rookie mistake made was trying to spread myself out and dominate too much land too quickly and this caused my rather fast demise. The game was over in under 10 minutes, so it is possible to play against the computer — and lose — fairly quickly. Certainly not anywhere in the realm of 3-4 hours. I noticed when clicking on the “show network games” button that turns are time based with 20 seconds or more to make your moves. This would keep things moving along but it’s easy to see how if all six players took the full 20 seconds that the time could drag on.

After losing the first game, I decided to summon our middle teenager — the gamer in the family — who said he had played Risk before. I watched his strategy which was decidedly different than mine. He started by trying to cover Australia and grow his armies and fortifying only Australia while the other AI bots fought each other. When he had built up the army to over 60 armies he went on the offensive, attacking. Within 15 minutes he beat the computer opponents.

We ratcheted up the difficulty to ‘hard’ and he tried again using a similar strategy. In the beginning alternate region one of the AI bots chose parts of Australia. He was more impatient with the gameplay the second time around and attacked too soon.

I made a screencap video of him playing in action so you could get a sense of the gameplay, graphics and sound. The video quality is subpar, but you can get the basic idea of how things work.

I probably didn’t need to spend time reading the instructions and looking around as it’s fairly self-explanatory once you get into the game. I tried a game on the Mac vs. six computer opponents on ‘medium’ and there were no significant differences noticed on the Mac version vs. Windows.

Fun factor
I found the ‘classic’ game merely average in the fun factor department on the first few plays but it starts to grow on you a little bit with additional games, save for when you capture an entire continent (or area). The pace playing against the computer moves fast enough to sustain interest. The graphics and sound for some maps like the default ‘classic’ map are kind of dull. The alternate Vietnam War map looked good and the Spacestation Lux is nicely done and somewhat fun to play.

Overall, graphically and sound-wise nothing spectacular or stunning when compared to next generation games on the Xbox 360 (I know, gamers are spoiled these days) but since players can make and play their own maps, more extensive eye-candy maps could be created. I’d like to see a game like this in the Xbox Live Arcade someday but since it’s written in Java that probably won’t happen any time soon unless somebody wants to port it into C# via the XLA Game Express. This game would work well as a multi-player Xbox Live game. It’s a nice change of pace from first person shooters like Halo, Gears of War, etc.

Network play
After cutting my teeth on a half dozen games against the computer I decided to check out network play in voyeur ‘guest mode.’ For a little bit the rooms I tried connecting to were full because they “only allowed 1 unregistered nick” or because they didn’t like my alias “TD” which I changed to a different name. Once inside I watched the human players. A chat window is directly below the map.

The chat channel was very IRC-like in nature and a couple players started in on me, asking where I was from? Typical chat experience, the folks were friendly. I explained I was just checking things out. When you enter in the middle of a game you are queued to play the next game. I noticed some things in the menu up above that I hadn’t seen while playing against the computer, although they are there. There is a radio function which allows listening to some preselected channels while playing: BarStar Radio, Groove Salad, Indie Pop Rocks, Mostly Classical, Secret Agent, SmoothJazz, the 80s channel and Vocal trance. What, no podcasts or talk radio?

An autoplay mode exists for bathroom breaks or if you have to eject early from a game in progress, but reading through the wiki on Luxiquette, it’s not cool to leave before a game ends (or before you get beaten, anyway):

You should not start a network game you can not finish. Hex, Assault, and even some Classic Risk games (with six humans, with card pay-outs that never advance past 5,5,5…) can go on a very long time. Know what you are doing and commit (like to a marriage, or a pony-keg).

Support forum
As far as support for Lux goes, there’s an active community forum with some 40,000+ Lux-related posts, so if you get stuck somewhere along the installation or in playing, you won’t be relegated to dropping a support email or trying to find an answer in Google. The Lux-related forums are broken into several different areas:

Lux Talk (39,000+ posts) - a general chat area about the game
Map LAB (2,300+) - help and feedback on creating your own maps
Robot House (900+) - AI ideas and feedback on the SDK
Feature Request (3,600+) - something missing in Lux? Suggest it here
Bug Reports (2,800+) - get out the fly swatter

Summary and grade
Lux Delux is a solid, satisfying computer version of the game Risk with an impressive number of player options, plugins and tweaks. Whether you want to just play against others, the computer and/or develop using the SDK there’s plenty to dig into and be entertained. The Lux Delux website is established, freshly updated and full of information about the game, strategy and some human players you might encounter in the game. There are enough plugins to keep one busy playing around for awhile.

Lux Delux is reasonably priced at $24.95 considering the features and functionality plus unlimited network gameplay. If you enjoy the game Risk, can set aside the time and energy to play and have never heard or seen Lux Delux, there’s no risk diving into this game. I took a few points off for graphics and sound which could be improved, but otherwise this is an outstanding effort by Sillysoft. Grade: A-

Disclaimer: I’m being paid to write this review.

A couple months back I was experimenting with setting up a dual boot and idiotically overwrote a bunch of files in a Windows partition on my external drive that I didn’t have backed up — uh oh spaghetti-o. A few times I’ve had other bonehead moments and sent files to the recycle bin and then deleted and went, wait, I need that file (that wasn’t backed up), what now?

Fortunately Windows disk recovery tools and utilities exist which can rescue some, most or all deleted files, recover deleted and reformatted disk partitions like Handy Recovery ($39 USD single user license v3.0, v1.0 freeware available). There is a 30 day free trial available, which I’ll be examining in depth shortly.

When I looked around a couple months ago for tools, I found that the quality of these utilities varied considerably, so I was curious how Handy Recovery would measure up against the tool I purchased back then (Restorer2000 Pro $49.99). There are a bunch of freeware disk recovery tools out there too, but none that I tried were able to successfully identify and recover the amount of files from a reformatted and partitioned drive as the commercial tools. I don’t mind buying software, so I reached for the plastic and threw down.

Fast forward a couple months to today.

I didn’t check or even know about out Handy Recovery (HR) at the time, there were way too many out there to wade through, but from looking over the HR feature list I wish I had tried them out. Among the search keywords I never thought of “handy” which would have brought me right to their website and product. Even if you forget about this review (perish the thought), just remember the word ‘handy’ along with disk recovery and you’ll be able to find the official Handy Recovery site. I hope nobody reading this ever loses or deletes important data that isn’t backed up, but if you do someday (and I’m sure everybody reading this has done or will do it at some time or another), the price for a quality grade recovery tool is well worth it.

Is Handy Recovery a quality recovery tool? That’s what I wanted to find out. During this review I got the chance to do something I’ve never done before: intentionally delete data to try and see how handy HR really performed. Check it out, I’m going all mad scientist on our hard disk. Hehehehe.

System requirements and download
I downloaded the same 30 day trial Handy Recovery you can get here. Windows: 95/98/NT/2000/ME/XP. Note: Handy Recovery successfully passed the Designed for Windows XP certification by Microsoft®. File systems supported: FAT12/16/32 or NTFS/NTFS 5. Per the official website:

During this time you will be able to try all its features and decide if you really like our product and want to buy it. The evaluation version can recover 1 file per day.

The download is available in a compact 876k exe or optional RAR file. I chose the exe.

Beneath the trial download is a message from the CEO, Sergey Petrov that Handy Recovery v1.0 is available as freeware: “…the lite unrestricted version stays available online for download. We hope that you will find Handy Recovery really handy for your day-to-day activities.” Although I don’t pull bonehead oops delete moments once per day, I downloaded this version too. It’s somewhat rare seeing legacy versions being offered as freeware. Suggestion: would be nice to see some sort of feature comparison chart so prospective customers could get a taste with the freeware legacy version and then see all the advantages they’d receive by upgrading to v3.0.

v3.0 Installation
During the installation you’re shown what’s new in version 3.0:

- In-depth disk scanning for certain file types;
- Analysis of lost MFT records (NTFS);
- Recovery of EFS-protected files (NTFS);
- Sector view of disk content;
- Support for compressed disk images;
- Option to save recovery session;
- File filtering by name, mask, date and size.

And also what the main features of Handy Recovery include:

- FAT12/16/32, NTFS and NTFS 5 + EFS file systems support.
- In-depth disk scanning for certain file types.
- Option to create disk images for deferred recovery.
- Shows probability of successful recovery for each file.
- Recovers files from deleted and formatted partitions.
- File filtering by name, mask, date and size.

By default HR installs into:
PRIMARY DRIVE:\Program Files\Soft Logica\Handy Recovery

You can browse and change the default install location if you wish. It doesn’t put anything in the systray by default or liberate itself into your startup files. It does offer a desktop icon, default checked. This is what I’d call a very non-invasive installation. At the end of the installation, also default checked, are read the readme file and launch Handy Recovery v3.0. I left both checked and proceeded. You can safely skip the readme file because it’s basically identical to what I blockquoted above and is already included and shown in the text box during installation.

Licensing and transfer, not
I scanned through the End User Licensing Agreement (EULA) and learned that: “This license is not transferable to any other system, or to another organization or individual” which sucks. I wonder how many people are going to read so they can honor this type of agreement. If I paid roughly 40 bones for something I should be able to transfer the license and software to somebody else and recoup some of my investment. Every commericial program I’ve ever created and sold has allowed one time license transfer, even though I fully realize some people will sell/transfer it and still keep it on their systems. All we’ve required is that existing customers tell us who they transferred their license to so we can update our records and provide the support to the new customer. I wish all software licenses worked this way.

As software developers we have to trust customers to do the right thing instead of handcuffing them like the RIAA has tried to do with music and the MPAA with film. Most people assume they buy something that they can conduct a one time sale to somebody else. I’m not talking about opening up and encouraging piracy here, I’m talking a one time only transfer from buyer to seller. Would be nice to see SoftLogica LLC which makes Handy Recovery and other companies who put similar information in their EULA change this provision. What do you think?

It’s not a dealbreaker for me when I see this in the EULA, but it’s definitely a disappointment.

Running for the first time
A tip window loads centered at startup. I like these tip windows and often will scroll through reading several tips before closing and using a program for the first time. You can uncheck a box and never see these tips at startup again. I noticed an interesting feature of HR right away:

The ability to recover files while the analysis is taking place is something I don’t recall seeing in other recovery software I tried before. I’m sure this feature is in some of the products out there, but I do clearly remember the recovery process taking a long time — hours instead of minutes — especially for large hard drives, so this is a very handy feature, no pun intended.

Most recovery programs recommend recovering to a different drive because you might overwrite the files you are trying to recover. This is another good reason to use external drives for saving important data and backing up important files regularly. I noticed a pitch in the tips window for Soft Logica’s backup solution. Smart marketing.

Recycle bin test #1
My first act of self(file)-destruction was to recover a deleted screenshot pictured below (click to enlarge) which is named handy-recover-1.png. It is the full-size souce file of the screenshot pictured at the top of this post to the right. It’s been deleted since I started writing this review and I’ve been saving other files on the same primary drive.

In the dropdown menu I chose my primary drive (J:) from the dropdown menu. Note how all your NFST and FAT drives are displayed:

Next, I clicked the analyze button and waited. Where would the file appear? I stopped the process after a minute and saw a hyperlink for an extended analysis that lets you choose what deleted file types to scan:

Clicking the read more link, I learned:

If you have analyzed the disk where your deleted files were located (either an existing logical drive or a lost partition) and still cannot find your files in the folder where they were stored, this may be because the corresponding file records have been overwritten. In this case it is impossible to recover file path and name, however there is still a chance that the content of the file is still saved on the disk and has not been overwritten at least partially.

In other words, this will label lost files by extension like image_1.jpg, image_2.jpg, but unfortunately this wouldn’t help for specifically locating .PNG files since this wasn’t an option (pictured to the right). The only image options were: JPG, GIF, PSD, DXF, DXG, BMP, Corel draw image and TIFF. Why is PNG so often treated as a second class citizen to GIF? Argh. The good news is you can filter by anything so one can still filter by .PNG after the analysis is complete.

The file I removed from the recycle bin should have been recoverable fairly easily because it was a recently deleted file. I wish there was an easy button in HR to click to see files removed from the recycle bin. A Recycle Bin oops button should be in every one of these disk recovery tools for Windows users. That’s something I might use more regularly to pull something back that I deleted too soon. Suggestion: add this feature in a future version.

Started the analysis process at 10:36am PST. Finished: 10:38. Very impressive. I clicked on the Filter button at the top and did a search for .PNG. The file was nowhere in sight. I tried using the “Find” file and put in the full filename. Result? Not found. Bummer.

Time to try the extended analysis process mentioned above. Maybe just the name of the file was lost but the file could still be recovered? This process took much, much longer. After 15 minutes and counting and I gave up. I might have been willing to wait an hour or more for a full analysis to find a very important file I just deleted, but not a test file.

Recycle bin test #2
Next I tried deleting every screenshot file in this review so far, a total of 12 files, if you count the larger size you need to click to see. First they went to the recycle bin and then the bin was emptied. I waited 10 minutes before running the analysis again. I deleted, created and moved some files around during this time. Surely I’d be able to find at least one of these files, right?

This time, same result. WTF? I just deleted the files 10 minutes ago. I tried the advanced filter feature, asking it to filter and show me all the JPG files created in the last day:

No results. I tried the last two days. Nothing. No way. What was I doing wrong here?

Deleted file from July 2006 restored
Conversely, HR was successfully able to locate some music files I deleted clear back in July 2006. I would have thought those files to be long gone by now. It listed the probability of restoring those files as “average.” Since I could only restore one of those files with the trial, I chose one listed as “good” and it successfully restored into J:\Recovered Files.

I listened to the MP3 and it played flawlessly.

Putting Handy Recovery to a more brutal test
I decided to switch gears and put HR to the ultimate test with that same external drive which I needed to recover a couple months back. But wait, another wrinkle: I have since repartitioned the drive for use with our Mac (FAT32) and a new NTFS partition. I use the FAT32 partition as the primary iTunes music folder drive on the Mac. I was curious how many of the original files from a couple months ago I might be able to recover, if any. I’ve been using this drive regularly for over two months. I seriously doubted there would be much left of the original data, but this seemed like a good hardcore test of HR ability to recover believed to be lost files. Also it would give me an idea of how long a scan on a 250GB hard drive (USB connection) would take.

I used the searching lost partitions function which took a little more than an hour to complete. It was able to find numerous partitions and files. To my surprise some of those files were still in tact. I would have thought all of those files were gone by now.

Customer Sales and Support
After reviewing Handy Recovery, I wondered what about Windows Vista that comes out in a couple months? Will HR be compatible with Vista? I can’t see many people planning to upgrade wanting to buy this program if it isn’t compatible with Vista.

At the bottom of the homepage there is a toll free number for US residents only: 1-888-364-6797, the main number is +7 (383) 330-6149. Being a Saturday morning that I wrote this review, I decided to dial them up and ask. Result? Answering machine. I didn’t see any posted office hours which would be something they could add to improve. Businesses should have posted business hours, preferably clearly on the home page for the world at large to see. Skype or live help via the web are nice bonuses, neither of which Soft Logica appears to offer.

Decided to email and ask from an email address that wouldn’t immediately identify this domain, which means I asked my wife to email them. Figured we might get a more realistic prospective customer time response that way. I’ll update this post to answer how long this took, but I suspect my cover will be blown shortly after I publish this post. Maybe somebody in the know at Soft Logica will hit the comments area below to answer this question proving that blogs increasingly generate faster responses than email. Once it’s out in public the clock is ticking for all to see. People can sit on a support email forever. Not saying that Soft Logica does that, but we’ll see.

Summary
I like the layout and design of Handy Recovery v3.0 much better than Restorer2000 Pro. The Handy Recovery UI is clean, perhaps unspectacular, but functional, faster (important) and has a few nice features particularly the feature which tells you how likely you will be to restore the file (poor, average, very good, etc).

I would likely have moved on after it failed my two rudimentary Recycle Bin recent file tests and searched for something that would be better suited for this type of task. However, I was pleasantly surprised that HR found and successfully recovered a deleted music file from July of this year on my primary drive that gets used frequently.

Handy Recovery seems more suited to finding older deleted files and directories than newer ones. I didn’t buy a license to HR because I have no need to recover old files at the moment but I agreed to write this review because I’m very familiar with the process — and panic — of recovering important files. I’m not sure when/where the whole “really handy for your day-to-day activities” part that the CEO mentions plays out unless there are folks out there with a daily need to recover older files.

I should note that when I ran Restorer2000 Pro with similar tests, it took a lot longer to analyze and couldn’t find the files I deleted today either. Think about Windows users deleting files and going “oops!” A recovery tool without an undelete for the Recycle Bin seems like a huge oversight to me. For both products. I’d give the product I already paid for and used a worse grade than Handy Recovery v3.0. If I could go back in time I’d have bought HR instead because I like the menus and layout better. Functionality wise, I don’t think there’s a whole lot of difference between the two.

Would I buy HR to replace the program I already have? Maybe next time, assuming there is a next time, but hopefully I don’t have the need for this type of software any time soon. I think my backup strategy is more improved than it was a couple months ago.

Also, if your hard drive has been damaged, you might consider a tool like HR to possibly be able to recover some of the partitions before contacting one of those disaster recovery sites which will take apart the drive if necessary to reconstruct. Most likely you’ll need to pay a lot more to those services than you would by buying something like HR and trying that first.

Since I didn’t have a trashed hard drive around to test this out, I bumped the grade up a little bit for HR because I believe it would do well in that department. That’s just a guess, though, and I welcome anybody with a trashed drive to download the software and use the comments to share your real world experience below. Add to the review and conversation.

It certainly doesn’t hurt anything to download the trial and run the analysis. At the very least, HR is worth adding to the list of try this first before dropping hundreds or [gasp] thousands of dollars on forensic hard drive recovery professionals — some of which are probably using software like this first (and not disclosing this to customers) and thus bilking unsuspecting users. Would you believe that before buying the HR competitor software a couple months ago, I called one of these services you see advertised online and they quoted me $3,000 USD to recover my data? Um, no thanks.

All this detailed information to determine whether or not Handy Recover v3.0 is all that handy? For older files and stupid reformat/repartition mistakes where you don’t have a backup, yes, but for something you just deleted? Pass. Grade: C-

I’ll admit thinking about these portable GPS systems a couple times when visiting the nearest Costco. The Magellan RoadMate 800 Portable GPS ($699.95, affiliate) looks like it could be a good product.

Like any good specialized device, the Magellan focuses on doing just one thing better than the rest: telling us where to drive.

System specs
- 20 GB hard drive containing street level maps of all 50 states including Puerto Rico and Canada. Unlock maps of 27 European countries for an additional fee ().
- includes 4.5 GB user storage space for music, images
- SD or MMC card
- high resolution touch screen
- fits in any vehicle and provides verbal direction commands via windshield suction cup. Something I wondered: the voices be changed? I remember writing about Ozzy voice skins. Seems like the answer as of this writing is no, these voiceskins won’t work, but they are working on it:

We are currently in discussion with a number of manufacturers regarding the development and support of fun voices for their software.

Why not just use another, more flexible portable device?
This seem kind of pricey considering I can use my Tablet PC with Microsoft Streets & Trips 2005 and GPS to emulate a lot of the same functionality. Just read that I can upgrade to Microsoft Streets & Trips 2006 version for $39.95 and get voice navigation). And on a bigger screen too. The problem with this setup, however, is:

1) you need a tablet pc and those are much more expensive than $700
2) still need to buy the GPS and software separately.
3) it is not touch screen enabled (although you can buy some Tablet PCs that are touch-screen enabled)
4) Tablet needs some sort of stand to make it safe to view/use while driving (separately). I used a drum machine stand for our Relay which works ok with my M1400 tablet, but it’s a bit hokey.

UMPC or Pocket PC with GPS
When Ultra Mobile Portable Computers (UMPC) come down in price, these might rival specialized portable GPS like the Magellan. There is also the possibility of using a Pocket PC / PDA / Smartphone, but I wonder if the screen would be too small? The Magellan screen isn’t much bigger than my Pocket PC, however. Anybody reading that uses their PDA this way? Then again, add up the price of buying the PDA plus the GPS and you are at or near $700.

Parting ponders
These GPS seem useful for vacations, trips and those who spend a lot of time in the car visiting new places (like Real Estate Agents). Do any readers own one of these portable Magellan GPS? Are they worth the 700 bones plus tax? I think it might have been a little cheaper at Costco. Don’t own one? Would you consider buying one? If so, why/why not?

Some might remember me posting about enjoying listening to music in the shower.
Received some helpful feedback from that post so now am looking for something portable and splashproof outside the shower and house that can play MP3. Has to have decent speakers because my hearing isn’t very good.

Returning to the Sharper Image catalog and looked for something that might fit the bill. Turns out, there is another iSplash ($149.95, affiliate), this one a boombox. This might work this summer for our family heading to the beach or for using poolside, the iSplash boombox seems like a good fit. The sales page indicates it comes with something called ZipConnect which sounds like universal connection option for various MP3 players:

Every ZipConnect sound system comes with a FREE ZipConnect module (with convenient retractable cable and 3.5mm mini stereo plug) for playing any iPod model, MP3 player, portable CD or satellite radio — any audio source with a mini headphone jack!. The beauty of ZipConnect speaker systems and CD stereos is that they will always play your music — no matter what device you own now or hope to buy in the future! If purchasing a ZipConnect system as a gift, there’s no need to guess the recipient’s player — because ZipConnect plays them all.

Since Sharper Image didn’t have any reviews (is this a bad sign?) I decided to do some checking around and see what others who might have bought the iSplash already had to say.

idiotToys: “a sort of waterproof iPod case with speakers, so you can play your stupid fucking bootleg mashups in everyone’s face.” I like the cynical nature of these geek toy reviews, subscribed, although I’ll admit the ‘review’ didn’t really help me.

If someone reading this has purchased this iSplash boombox, please use the comments/trackback to tell us about it. It’s on our wish list. But can be scratched quickly if it isn’t any good. Particularly I’m curious about:

- battery life
- sound quality
- durability (looks sturdy, albeit a bit like a Robosapien with a spot for iPod to plugin)

We currently don’t own an iPod, but do have other portable MP3 players. Now that prices are coming down, will probably be buying another portable MP3 player. Definitely will be an iPod if we buy the iSplash boombox. Should we?

Unlike my wife, who enjoys reading a good book in the bath, I like listening to music in the bath or shower.
The only way to do that currently is to drag the Tablet PC or laptop near the bathroom and snake the speakers inside. I don’t like doing this though because it seems to me that the steamy bathroom environment isn’t too healthy for these computers.

I decided to do a little recon to see what I could find in the way of wirelessly streaming the music from the PC (or iPod, MP3 player, etc) to speakers that were actually intended to be played in a bathroom.

The iSplash Wireless SplashProof Speaker System ($99.95, affiliate) reminds me a bit stylistically of the RadioShark and would be a good replacement for soap on the rope.

Time to come clean, who else is into shower music power?

This one could be for all the James Bond stealth types.

The Security Camcorder Hidden in a Clock ($199.95, affiliate) is definitely on the spendy side but with a built-in motion detection activated camcorder maybe is worth it. I wonder what the camera quality is like, though? Any readers ever see this one or something similar that is more affordably priced?