Civilization IV

Civilization is recognized as one of the greatest game franchises of all-time. Now the fun and incredibly addictive strategy game reaches new heights in Civilization IV. It has new ways to play and win, along with new tools to manage and expand your civilization. Civilization comes to life like never before in a beautifully detailed, living 3D world — with all-new easy to use mod capabilities and intense multiplayer modes and options. It’s a must-have for gamers around the world! Rule throughout time and create your own legacy as you guide your civilization from the dawn of man through the space age and beyond. Implement new technologies, conduct diplomacy or wage war to grow your society and become the most powerful leader the world has ever known. Flexible Tech Tree allows players more strategic choices for developing their civilizations Team play offers a new way of setting locked alliances that result in shared wonder effects, visibility, unit trading and shared territory Over 70 in-game movies and animated sequences advance the story

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars Great game for the strategists of the world
My title says it all, basically. This is not the type of game for those who just want to quickly build up an army and crush the opposition. This game requires a good amount of patience, but for anyone who likes to relive history, and build your own custom empire, or just to play a game that plays somewhat like chess, but also like a war game, this is for you. A very fun game for those who appreciate strategy.

1 Star Would be good if it didn’t crash
Even with the latest patch from Aspyr this game was unplayable for me. It crashed (requiring a reboot) every 10 minutes.

During those 10 minutes the game seemed like it would be fun, but it was simply too frustrating to try to play through the crashes.

5 Stars First CiV game and love it.
I bought this game over steam and have spent countless hours playing it as well as the mods it shipped with (not sure if that is offered with amazon). If you like turn-based RTS games this game is for you. If you enjoy enjoy games like starcraft, empire earth, and age of empires but prefer building rather than warfare then this game is even more for you!

Games are often very long, and it has a pretty steep learning curve. I for one have to play on an easier difficulty to have fun and still am not very skilled. But i love the game. It is a very details and in depth-game. I have bought it twice, once over direct2drive and then again over steam because i was not happy with my D2D purchase. Will probably end up buying this game a third time so i no longer have to run boot camp to run it. If you like the things i mentioned about this game I sincerely suggest you either buy it or play a demo; you will love this game.

4 Stars Same Old Civilization.
Civ4 is pretty much the same thing as Civ3. Nothing but hype. Buy Civ3 and save money. The game is very addictive so be careful, you still have to go to work and school, the kids still have to be fed. Once you drop a Nuclear bomb the tiny map in the corner goes haywire, that sucks. As the game progresses it slows down. Oh and Aspyr does a bad job converting the game for Macintosh computers. A lot of the hints that pop up are obviously meant for Windows computers. I am no computer wiz, but installing it was a hassle, only because i didn’t know that i had to copy the game files from the CD to my HD. The installation instructions said nothing about doing that.

1 Star couldn’t load it on a maacbook 2006 laptop
It might be ok for windows but it didn’t load on my macbook without significant problems.

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Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2

New Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 is the ideal choice for any aspiring photographer’s digital darkroom. It’s filled with everything from easy automatic photo fixes to precision editing tools. You’ll save hours of time with the new Express Lab, because now you can edit dozens of photos in the time it used to take to edit just a few. All sorts of new tools are available, including a set of professional easy-to-use retouching tools and special features for professional photographers, HDR Photo Merge and a feature to create and add presonal watermarks. It even includes a built-in Learning Center to help new users get started right away! New and improved Makeover Tools with new features including Thinify! Improved Black & White Film Conversion Requires Windows XP or Vista

User Ratings and Reviews

4 Stars Great program, but…
… it requires a computer with a lot of power to be effective. More power than my AMD Athlon 2800 can provide. So I’ll need to upgrade my computer if I want to use this program.

1 Star Regression Analysis
Paint Shop Pro has been my image editor of choice since version 8. The interface was always much more intuitive (for me) than Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, yet it packed in some mighty features. I could frankly achieve anything I wanted without Photoshop, even though I also have Photoshop (v.7). With the latest version of Paint Shop Pro however, I have lost all hope.

In addition to the bloated, computer stalling startup, the developers saw fit to “do away with” (as a tech support person told me) the crop function that allows cropping down to a pixel width on any side of an image. Maybe not a necessity for most, but I think many do appreciate precision in a cropping feature. That is only one complaint among many- the program has been dumbed down, and garbaged up, to a point that I can no longer tolerate. Thus the reference to regression in the review title.

After paying for this nightmare, I uninstalled it and reinstalled the previous version. Even though that, too, has annoyances that have led countless others to leave Paint Shop Pro forever, I am able to put up with Corel’s savaging of version XI due to its remaining function.

Not so with version X2.

(Note: Versions 8 and 9 had nice, big, fat manuals that I have kept and still refer to as image editing references, no matter the program I am using. But any version since then has been worthless as far as a useful manual is concerned.)

3 Stars Paint shop pro PhotoX2
This product is really fun to experiment with. I’m not that great at it, but I’m just a beginner. I like the learning demos that it provides otherwise I wouldn’t be able to figure it out.

So if you are a beginner and you have time… it’s worth getting.

5 Stars Awsome,
This is an awsome, easy to use photo editing software. There are video tutorials to explain most things plus a learning center that can pop up everytime you click on a tool to tell you how to use it.

1 Star It was a good product, but what a crappy company.
I bought this in early 2008 to support a budding photography business. I should have paid attention, because they did not support RAW formatted pics for my Canon 40D camera.

I got countless spam-like emails from them claiming they were “…adding new RAW formats all the time…” but they never added mine. One of the best selling cameras in it’s class all through 2008. Go figure.

Recently I checked their site again, hoping for something. I got “something.” Rather than offer a patch or update to support my camera, I have to buy a whole new version of the software, “Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 Ultimate”. The “Ultimate” tag buys virtually nothing that the package didn’t already have, except cheesy frame edges, additional cheesy filters for the kiddies, and (you guessed it) “support for dozens of additional RAW camera formats.”

My queries to Corel which were answered by tech people stating I needed to “be patient” and “sorry, we can’t tell you. It’s a secret.”

I have demanded a refund, but oddly, Corel refuses to answer my emails. So be it. Cheesy, bait-and-switch tactics, horrid support, and that’s it: I bought Photoshop Elements. I strongly recommend THAT product to anyone. This product is deleted from my hard drive.

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Microsoft Office Small Business 2007 FULL VERSION

Microsoft Office Small Business 2007 is the complete suite of productivity and contact management tools for accomplishing your business tasks. Manage customer and contact information in one place, while producing professional-quality communications and manage marketing campaigns in-house with a full suite of powerful tools. Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 integrates contact management directly with Outlook, for better control over your customer & prospect information, e-mail messages, phone calls, appointments and more. With Office Small Business 2007 you can save time, stay organized and spend more time with customers. Business Contact Manager in Outlook 2007 helps you manage and track your marketing activities Use Powerpoint 2007 to create more dynamic business presentations - It features an extensive library of slide layouts; new tools for charts, diagrams and tables; quick preview changes and more Distribute marketing materials in PDF format — convert easily from Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Publisher and Access files

User Ratings and Reviews

3 Stars Disappointing
Did lots of research and weighed the pros and cons. Decided to give this a try as I liked the programs packaged in the suite. Installation was easy but there is no mention of what’s on the 2nd disc. Well, it’s the Office Accounting software for Small Business. Wanted that as I thought it would help with budgeting and online banking. My bank isn’t in the confining list of predefined banks in the software. So, this software is useless (to me) and a waste of money. Also, Word, Excel, Outlook, etc., all have an issue when starting up. I get a pop up window saying “installation in progress” for about 2 minutes. Then another pop up that says “small business setup in progress” and that runs for about 2 minutes. It can take up to 5 minutes for one of the office products to open up. I’m running Vista 32bit with Core 2 Quad Q6600 processors, 2.5gig of memory and about a terabyte of storage (HP m9150f). I’ve had a case open with Microsoft for about 2 weeks now. I’ve done everything they’ve wanted, but so far no luck in eliminating these pop ups. Then once the product is up, I get these same pop ups when I try to do something. I do a send/receive in Outlook and the pop ups occur. And those occur for another minute or two. Ridiculous! The new “rib

5 Stars Mr. GB
Ordered product and received in New Condition as expected. Rec’d in approximately 1 week.

5 Stars Excellent
This is exactly what we were looking for. It has helped me get our small business off to a great start. Thank you much!

1 Star Not for a former expert…dumbed down and scrambled up
I’m an expert user of version 2003. Our work computers are now v2007. So far, there are at least 4 things that I used to use/do on a daily basis that are not available in 2007 (e.g., no drawing or tables tool bars) making my job infinitely more difficult and slower. I learn quickly, but this program is not intuitive when changing from 2003. For example, why would “page break” be on one ribbon and all the rest (e.g., the variety of section breaks) somewhere else. The whole list of choices is there somewhere (I found it once), but finding it takes way too much time. When I am in a time crunch (typically) I take my work home to use my 2003. Why isn’t there at least an option for the old style menu so those of us who used to be experts could get up to speed more easily. I’ve been using 2007 for about 6 weeks now and have been acutely wary of the change over phenomenon that creates resistence to using something new. I’ve really tried. I’ve used several kinds of external programs designed to help find things (including the 2007 help menu). This helps occassionally, but I often get the answer that this function is no longer available in the 2007 version. I’m thinking I need to bring my own computer to work to get something done. Avoid 2007 if you can.

4 Stars Ya gott luv it….ya really…snort, do.
Took me several calendar days and a couple of phone calls to India to get this puppy installed. Seems my MS Vista Ultimate 45 bit felt this package’s installer was of suspect origin. Got that? Security is so tight that despite multiple edits of the registry no go. But we were getting closer so..

One morning before my scheduled call to India, home of all secrets Microsoft, I attempted to install….the bar kept filling up…looking good…Oh noeees! Error code… Now when you get the error code you also get three buttons to push to select what to try. They are…

Abort

Retry

Ignore

I sat there for a minute and then the great techie in the sky spoke:

‘Retry, Retry, Ignore’ Thus I did and….

the install completed itself and shows no problems to date.

What’s it all mean? I really don’t know but if you Google this issue you will find that I am, as Napoleon said, Lucky!

Not smart.

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Microsoft Office Small Business 2007 UPGRADE

Upgrade only; previous version of Office required

Microsoft Office Small Business 2007 is the complete suite of productivity and contact management tools for accomplishing your business tasks. Manage customer and contact information in one place, while producing professional-quality communications and manage marketing campaigns in-house with a full suite of powerful tools. Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 integrates contact management directly with Outlook, for better control over your customer & prospect information, e-mail messages, phone calls, appointments and more. With Office Small Business 2007 you can save time, stay organized and spend more time with customers. Business Contact Manager in Outlook 2007 helps you manage and track your marketing activities Use Powerpoint 2007 to create more dynamic business presentations - It features an extensive library of slide layouts; new tools for charts, diagrams and tables; quick preview changes and more Distribute marketing materials in PDF format — convert easily from Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Publisher and Access files

User Ratings and Reviews

2 Stars Horrible User Interface Changes
I’m sure there are some new features that make this version worthwhile. It may even be faster at some things (though I haven’t found them yet.) But Microsoft wrapped it in an inscrutable user interface that often flies in the face of logic. The “ribbon” interface is supposed to make it easier for new users to begin working, and, for all I know, it may. But for the millions of current users, it’s a nightmare.

A user interface is meant to help you be more productive but Office 2007’s interface does the exact opposite of that. Things that took two clicks before now take four. Or, even worse, some previously available tools or functions seem to be completely unavailable. This is considered progress?

I would have expected Microsoft to conduct large-scale interface usability testing before making a change this radical, or to at least offer the previous interface as a selectable option. Unfortunately, it appears that they did neither.

My suggestion? Unless you’re forced, stick with Office 2003. It’s interface is at times clunky but it’s far, far better than this.

3 Stars Microsoft Office for Small Business
I bought this because I had to for work purposes - but it also had upgraded, new and improved, versions of some other programs I use for both personal and work so I was able to eliminate some things off my hard drive and utilize just this one program. Only complaint is that I wish the price was more affordable.

5 Stars Worth Doing The Upgrade
I am glad I did the upgrade. There has been a little bit of a learning curve, but worth the time for the new features in Office 2007.

5 Stars Great Product
Great program, just have to get use to the layout. At first very awkward. If I would have waited three weeks I could have saved 80 dollars and picked it up at staples or on this site.

3 Stars Typical overblown Microsoft product

This is a typical Microsoft product loaded with stuff that 98% of people don’t want, need, or use. I prefer Word 2000 but you can’t buy it any more. I had to buy this to put on a new computer which is the only reason I bought it. Also, the Amazon price was the cheapest I found.

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