The product comes on a DVD and took around 15 minutes to install on a reasonably fast XP system. Add another 10 minutes for the basic training and microphone testing and you are ready to go. Give it some documents and emails to analyze (this can take a few minutes) and it will already have a good idea of your style, this will help. My initial few test sentences had only one error that to me is near perfection.

You write on a sheet of paper with the special pen and all your strokes are recorded in what looks like a paper clip, plug this clip into a USB port and then you can see what you had written on the paper on a PC screen. At this point it can be saved as a graphic or even a PDF file. Run another piece of provided software and it could even turn into text. This last piece of software works a little like OCR software works on printed output works on scanned input.

PDF Converter Professional 5 sets out to allow the user to create and edit files using the ubiquitous Adobe PDF standard that dominates the electronic document market plus take a PDF file and convert it into a range of other popular common text file formats. As is standard practice with Nuance products (and it has to be said those from several other companies as well), you will need to enter a product serial number. In this case it consists of 16 characters.

While we take precautions with anti-virus software, pop-up blockers, spam filters and various security devices (well at least I hope you do), how many consider the danger of having our personal data falling into the hands of others through our own fault.  This can easily happen when we sell, donate or otherwise dispose of computer equipment that is no longer wanted.  Relying of the delete command to remove data from a hard disk is asking for trouble.

Some members of my family have the distinct impression that I am a hoarder who never disposes of anything.  I can hardly blame them for thinking thus as I have learned from bitter experience that whenever I do get rid of something, it isn't long before I discover that I need that very item to complete an important task.  Fortunately when that item is a file, there is a possibility that it could be resurrected.

My is over a year old but only now have I managed to get hold of the version that I requested at the launch of the product that the demonstrator walked up and down the large room whilst demonstrating, true Wireless technology using a DECT headset.

As Office 2007 has been available for download or on numerous computer magazine cover discs almost anyone can trial it for sixty days. So this look will not major on what is included. There are various versions but apart from the Basic Student version (Word, Excel, One Note and PowerPoint), there are three other main versions Small Business, Standard and the one I was sent Professional.

The CardScan Executive is a maximum of 16.5x10x4cm, silver grey in colour and will accept a maximum 10cm width card. It can scan both portrait and landscape cards. While the card unit is easy to use it is only a rather good scanner that enables you to easily scan information from business cards. The all important part is what happens to the details and this is all controlled in software.

Windows Vista The first thing is that there is no manual with Vista - like a lot of other software packages today - help files and even PDF files are not manuals. This is described as a companion and not a crutch. I think this means that while it covers how to, it certainly will not tell you how to use a mouse so you need a working knowledge of Windows.

The work area has vertical and horizontal rulers to help with the positioning of items plus palettes handling aspects of colour, formatting and content.  Tabs allow you to switch between the different areas covered by each palette.  There is also a storage area for images that might be used during the current project. PagePlus X2 PagePlus provides a range of tools for handling your publishing needs.

With my first disk-based computer I was able to fit the operating system, along with a word processor and various documents on a single floppy disk that had a storage capacity of 180K.  Those were the days when tight code and other constraints meant that we had little need to consider any form of compression when transferring data from one location to another.

The setting was the rather new and impressive British Library. Although Office 2007 is stated to work with Windows XP the first proviso is all the new features will only work with documents opened using the new extension. Should you need backward compatibility then it can open documents using the 'doc' extension and more importantly save them in the same way but of course none of the new features will be available.

In the normal course of events, Windows writes data to the first available space it finds.  As a result files will be broken up into parts that will fit into whatever spaces there are.  This fragmentation of files can, over time, seriously affect the performance of your system as it will need to access the fragmented files from different locations before loading them into memory for your use.

Tesco Personal Finance, as distinct from the numerous financial services currently on offer from the UK's leading supermarket conglomerate, is a software product.  Licensed from Reilly Technologies (a new name to me), this title is one of the six products that make up the initial release offerings from Tesco.

The stated price of Tesco Complete Office is £19.97 and it should be available in most larger Tesco stores or online at There are four full applications and three applets within the package and all in all while there may be some things it cannot do most people only use 20% of the features of a package like Microsoft Office and unless you need something special this could fulfil your needs at a tiny percentage of the cost of Microsoft Office.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 Preferred comes on two CD's and say's it needs 1.3GB of hard disc space, the actual space taken on the notebook was 1523MB and the install time was only 12 minutes. On starting the program you get a toolbar along the top of the screen, so as not to give it anything I used Windows Notepad and started speaking, reproduced below are the first words I spoke and the three errors, with what I intended added in brackets, I was astonished.

The two main components are WordPerfect and Quattro that's two thirds of WordPerfect Office X3. However far from that being that you also get a range of other items some full packages and some limited time offerings. These two items are the full products as found in the main package WordPerfect Office X3 the only main missing component is Word Perfect Presentations.

The world of DTP (Desktop Publishing) can clearly be divided into two distinct sections - professional and budget.  If you are a member of the publishing fraternity then you are probably familiar with the powerful features of products such as Quark Xpress and Adobe InDesign.  However not everybody can afford the high price being asked for these titles.  Fortunately there is an alternative with products such as PagePlus from Serif.