Apple iWork 08 Family Pack OLD VERSION

Pages ‘08 offers an intuitive way to create beautiful, media-rich documents using impressive features such as Writing and Layout modes, Change tracking, Contextual Format Bar, Automatic list formatting, Graphics tools and templates. Pages ‘08 supports industry-standard formats to easily open documents from other word processing applications that were created on a Mac or a PC.
Amaze your audience with cinema-quality presentations using Keynote ‘08 and its new features Text effects & transitions, Action Builds, Instant Alpha, Voice-over Recording, Smart Builds and Apple-designed Themes.
Numbers ‘08 does everything from setting up your family budget to completing a lab report using Intelligent Tables, Interactive Print View, Flexible Canvas, Import & Export Excel, Charts, Images, Text Labels and Customizable Templates. Automatic list formatting - List and format on the fly New Templates - Use more than 80 new templates Keynotes ‘08 - Text effects & transitions - Captivate viewers with elegant transitions Action Builds - Move objects along a path Instant Alpha - Change backgrounds with simple click & drag Smart Builds - Add photos with sophisticated animations Apple-designed Themes - 9 themes for creating a professional presentation Numbers ‘08 - Intelligent Tables - Create multiple resizable tables Interactive Print View - Scale and arrange documents Flexible Canvas - Move objects wherever you like with comments, photos and graphics Import & Export Excel - Share spreadsheets with Microsoft Office Charts, Images, Text Labels - Add 2D & 3D charts, photos or a map Customizable Templates - For Home, School and Business System Requirements - Macintosh computer with an Intel, PowerPC G5 or PowerPC G4 (500MHz or faster) processor, 512MB RAM, 32MB video memory, Mac OS X Version 10.4.10 or later, QuickTime 7.2 or later, iLife ‘08 recommended, 1GB free space and DVD drive re

User Ratings and Reviews

4 Stars Very functional for price
Covers much more than the basics for a low cost. There is a learning curve moving from other products. Let’s hope Apple can keep these productivity products updated and avoid dumping them in the future.

4 Stars iwork works
Great software for the price, but sure wish I had known the new version was coming out the following month! Upgrade is the same as buying the original. I write articles for magazines and I have to be careful about how I save my documents as they will not read on a PC unless they are exported as a word document so keep this in mind. However, this software is made for a Mac and works great as it integrates with existing software and makes your workflow a lot easier. Love the templates in Ink which are perfect for business and client letters and invoices.

4 Stars Excellent suite of applications.
Keynote and Pages are very good applications that will need some minor tweaks in the future.

Numbers definitely needs more functions built-in (those that are currently standard in Excel). No five star rating until this is fixed. For most users though, this program will perform fine.

5 Stars If you can go the extra mile it is well worth the trouble
This program is very intuitive and will not take that long to get use to. It has many features which are very handy especially in the area of document creation and inserting images and especially in the ease of formatting each document. It seems like it takes 3 less steps to achieve things with iWorks than it does with Office. However, Pages is the one program that I think is better than Word, Numbers and Keynote have great integration with pages, but still are not as good as Excel or Powerpoint.

5 Stars Huge improvement over iWork 06
I use iWork quite a bit and didn’t really take iWork 06 seriously due to severe limitations but when iWork 08 came out, I’ve become so accustomed to using it, I actually hate having to run anything Microsoft.

One thing I did notice is that Numbers is a fair spreadsheet tool if you’re only using it for personal reasons or if you’re not interacting with anyone else using Excel. Many of the formulas and formats I use in Excel don’t work with Numbers.

One other note, the formatting in Keynote doesn’t always play nice with Microsoft PowerPoint. When exporting to PowerPoint, I have to open PowerPoint in VMware’s Fusion and edit it before I can send it along to my coworkers who are running Windows.

Aside from that, iWork 08 is awesome and because I have several Mac’s at home and work, I buy the Family pack to keep everything under license.

Even though I’ve got some complaints with the interoperability between Apple and Microsoft, I still rate iWork with 5-stars for innovation, ease of use, function and presentation - Apple just gets it!

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Apple iWork 08 OLD VERSION

Pages ‘08 offers an intuitive way to create beautiful, media-rich documents using impressive features such as Writing and layout modes, Change tracking, Contextual Format Bar, Automatic list formatting, Graphics tools and templates. Pages ‘08 supports industry-standard formats to easily open documents from other word processing applications that were created on a Mac or a PC.
Amaze your audience with cinema-quality presentations using Keynote ‘08 and its new features Text effects & transitions, Action Builds, Instant Alpha, Voice-over Recording, Smart Builds and Apple-designed Themes.
Numbers ‘08 does everything from setting up your family budget to completing a lab report using Intelligent Tables, Interactive Print View, Flexible Canvas, Import & Export Excel, Charts, Images, Text Labels and Customizable Templates. New Templates - Use more than 80 new templates Keynotes ‘08 - Text effects & transitions - Captivate viewers with elegant transitions Action Builds - Move objects along a path Instant Alpha - Change backgrounds with simple click & drag Smart Builds - Add photos with sophisticated animations Apple-designed Themes - 9 themes for creating a professional presentation Numbers ‘08 - Intelligent Tables - Create multiple resizable tables Interactive Print View - Scale and arrange documents Flexible Canvas - Move objects wherever you like with comments, photos and graphics Import & Export Excel - Share spreadsheets with Microsoft Office Charts, Images, Text Labels - Add 2D & 3D charts, photos or a map Customizable Templates - For Home, School and Business System Requirements - Macintosh computer with an Intel, PowerPC G5 or PowerPC G4 (500MHz or faster) processor, 512MB RAM, 32MB video memory, Mac OS X Version 10.4.10 or later, QuickTime 7.2 or later, iLife ‘08 recommended, 1GB free space and DVD drive required for installation

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars iWork as gift
I purchased iWork as a gift for two granddaughters, ages 11 and 13. I’ve enjoyed using it and I hope they will too.

4 Stars iWork, finally I can read…
My mother keeps sending me .pps files, which on a Mac I can not read or even open. However, I found out that Keynote, which is part of iWork, opens and plays them with no problem. There are a few files that should have sound, but I don’t seem to get the sound. However, despite that one flaw I can a least get the images and the slideshow effect that you usually get when on a PC. I’d say it’s worth the money to purchase this because the three programs that come in iWorks are similar programs found on PC so you can now do much more on a Mac than you could before!

4 Stars Pages works beautifully… with room for improvement
I’ve been a Mac user and Microsoft Word user since 1984.

I made the switch to Pages a year or so ago, and while I periodically still need Word, for the most part, I’ve converted to Pages. If I do use Word today, it’s more out of habit than anything else, because Pages has performed to my expectations and has done whatever I’ve asked it to do, including being able to read Word documents and “save as” Word docs for my Windoze friends.

As an author, I put Word through paces; as a Publisher, even more so. Pages is ahead of Word in that it is *ridiculously* easy to create a PDF file in Pages: Simply “save as” PDF. Word, however, involved needing to convert it which would “need distiller properly installed”, and you’d have to “print” it as a PDF file as opposed to saving it as one. It’s an additional and apparently unnecessary step, but typical of Microsoft.

Pages hasn’t frozen on me yet. Always a plus. However, one area that could use improvement is its standard templates. Word comes with far more templates of various types than Pages. There are other areas as well, but it could stem more from my being so used to Word, more than a deficiency on Pages’ part. One thing I wouldn’t want is for Pages to become excessively bloated and inappropriately priced like Word (and Office).

I haven’t needed to use the other software included in iWork yet, so no comments there.

For the price, Pages does the job, and it’s worth it to be free of the Microsoft monopoly.

5 Stars perfect substitute of MS Office
Apple’s iWork 08 is a great product and the perfect substitute of MicroSoft’s Office suite.

5 Stars I Just Love Apple Software
It’s a personal choice. I prefer Apple and it’s software.

Simple and elegant!

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Civilization IV Warlords Expansion Pack

Sid Meier’s Civilization IV: Warlords is the first expansion pack for the Firaxis Games’ award-winning title, Civilization IV. Paying homage to some of history’s greatest military leaders, the expansion delivers eight unique and interesting scenarios, giving players the chance to change the course of history with the help of their new powerful ?warlord? unit. Civilization IV: Warlords includes new civilizations, leaders, units, and wonders that offer even more fun and exciting ways for players to expand their civilization’s military power as they strive for world domination. Leader Traits - In addition to the many existing leader traits in Civilization IV, two new leader traits accompany the expansion. New Wonders - There will be three new awe-inspiring wonders, all contributing new benefits and culture to your civilization. Unique Buildings - Players will now be able to construct buildings unique to each civilization. Units, Resources, & Improvements - Many new items not available in the core game will be introduced in the new scenarios Core Game Tweaks and Additions - Expanded features and gameplay tweaks will be made to the core game Requires the full version of Civilization IV for Mac OS X to play Requires Operating System - Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later with PowerPC G5 or Intel running at 1.8 GHz or faster

User Ratings and Reviews

2 Stars end of game is slow, requires disc
you will need to have the disc to start this game. a bummer when you’re on a laptop on the road and you just want to play a video game. most people don’t carry around the cds that come with their software anymore. it also doesn’t stop people from copying games illegally or cracking them to use without discs (do a google search).

that said, the game play is good, the graphics are nice, but the end game gets to be pretty slow moving. i have a fairly recent macbook pro and this game gets really sluggish as there are more units and map revealed. kind of sad since that’s when it gets more interesting.

buy world of warcraft instead. this game is a poor port to the mac platform.

5 Stars Great
My sons have spent hours creating their civilizations. This game seems to be very entertaining.

3 Stars Great game but terrible programming
Civ IV is a a lot of fun. Similar to old PC games like Master of Magic.

Unfortunately, the Mac version is moderately buggy. Let me count the ways:

1) Audio glitches. Occasionally an old sound will seemingly ’stay in the buffer’ as an annoying buzz for several minutes.

2) Video. After playing for a few hours some of the terrain improvements turn completely black. Restarting the game works for this one.

3) Video. After a few hours it gets slow and the video glitches. The menus become partially unreadable. Restarting also works here and there is no noticeable corruption of the autosave files.

4) Complete Crash. Several times I have had my whole machine lock up when playing in full screen mode. Its interesting in that its not a complete freeze, but instead the mouse slows down to 1/100 of its normal speed. However, I am unable to exit the game at this point and am forced to Hold Down the Power Button !!! to hardware restart. This is atrocious and the only program I know of that actually crashes the OS.

I have a 2.4 GHz iMac Intel Duo with 2 GB of RAM and running Tiger.

1 Star Will not run and Amazon will not help
I received this program and loaded it into my Mac Book. The software gives an error message when starting up and cannot use. I tried to contact Amazon but they do not answer and make it very difficult to find them. I had no option but to begin a dispute through American Express.

A waste of time and money.

1 Star Terrible, until Aspry decides to support this game…
Im going to start by saying that the Mac port compared to the windows version is ok at best. What I am truly frustrated by is the lack of support Aspyr is placing in its software. I bought this game with the intention of playing multiplayer with my friends, all of which own PC’s and were able to buy the gold edition for half what I payed. Regardless, I put up the absorbent amount of money for this three year old game and attempted to play multiplayer with my friends. To my dismay I discovered that Mac users were not allowed to play multiplayer with PC users because Aspyr has not released a patch compatible with the windows patch 2.13. To make matters worse I also discovered that gamespy is no longer supporting the internet play of the Mac version. So even when the patch is finally released I will only be able to play direct IP connect. After learning this crucial information I called Aspyr support to find out if they plan on releasing a patch soon so I could make my $80 investment worth while. But to no avail, the tech support told me that the incompetent Aspyr “is working on it” but have no definite date for release. The final nail of the metaphoric coffin was the fact that Mac users could also not get the latest Expansion beyond the sword. What makes it even more offensive is the fact that Aspyr has no plans of releasing this half year old expansion pack in the future. Please heed my advise and do not buy this game until Aspyr gets their act together!!!

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Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 Mac

Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 software combines power and simplicity so you can make your photos look their best, share them in imaginative ways, and easily find and view all your photos and video clips. Get tips and tricks, download video tutorials, and a free issue of the Photoshop Elements Techniques newsletter. Register online for free eSeminars that help you get the most out of Photoshop Elements 6. Easily order prints, share photos on the web or on CEIVA Digital Photo Frames, and more. See a full list of books, DVDs, and other materials that will help you get the most out of Adobe Photoshop Elements. Express your ideas in customizable layouts Create photo books with greater ease and flexibility Entertain friends with custom slide shows and interactive web galleries Share with family and friends using a variety of fun options Instantly download photos from your camera Categorize photos and video clips with easy-to-use visual tags Group photos into convenient Albums Develop creations more quickly by gathering the photos you need for a specific project in one place View and organize your photos quickly, even when your library grows to include thousands of photos System requirements - PowerPC G4 or G5 or multicore Intel processor, Mac OS X v10.4.8 through 10.5, 512MB RAM minimum, 64MB RAM, 1GB free space, 1,024×768 display resolution, DVD-ROM drive, QuickTime 7 software required for multimedia features, and Internet connection required for Internet-based services

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars Excellent for basic image editing
I find PSE a great option when either budget, or need leans away from it’s full featured relative. For most people looking for basic image editing options, it has more than enough punch, at a reasonable price point.

1 Star Buggy, buggy, buggy
This software would not install at all on my Intel-based Aluminum iMac running Leopard 10.5.6. I was able to get it to install on a PowerPC G5 running Leopard 10.5.6, however, it is barely usable due to constant crashes. I’m very disappointed.

4 Stars Wish it came with a users manual
Photoshop Elements is a great tool for editing your photos …once you get the hang of it. I wish it came with a users manual or quick reference guide. You can purchase books, but they cost about as much as I paid for the software!

5 Stars Works fine for me with Mac OS 10.5.6
For those who are hesitant (as was I) to buy this product because of the comments about it not working with Mac OS 10.5.5 or later, I’ve been using the free demo version of Photoshop Elements 6 for a few hours now on an Intel Mac with both Mac OS 10.5.5 and Mac OS 10.5.6, and everything seems to work just fine. The only thing that made me a bit nervous at first is that it seemed that layer styles (and effects) were not working. It took me several minutes to notice the small ‘Apply’ button (unlike Elements 4); once I clicked on that, the effect took effect. I definitely plan on buying this (from Amazon, of course).

2 Stars Elemnts for Mac, thumbs down
Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 (Mac)I’m not nearly the Adobe basher you’ll find in most reviews. For years I was actually an Adobe supporter and in fact gave a five star review for elements on windows. I recently converted to a mac. It claims to work with iPhoto. If it does I never found the connection as opposed to other products like Aperture. Reluctantly I gave up and went a different direction. It’s not up to par on Mac as it’s Windows counterpart. I’d look elsewhere for a photo editing product. It wasn’t without it’s attributes, some of the tools still worked well but if you’re on a Mac, iPhoto is the best organizer and Elements doesn’t work and play well with it.

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