Software
Review of: |
 While
watching one of my favorite programs (TechTV’s Fresh Gear) on satellite
recently, they tickled my curiosity by referring to a burner software as
most
elegant. Now I don’t know about you, but elegant does not describe
my relationship with most burner programs. Some are easier to use than
others, but few, if any, are easy to learn and use. But elegant?
Never! So you know I had to get my hands on Prassi’s
PrimoCD Plus to check it out. An e-mail to Le Mans, France brought a quick
response with the program as an attachment. Now most of the burner software
I’ve reviewed lately takes up scads of real estate on my hard disk, so
my first impression was, must not be much here. Boy, can I be mistaken
sometimes.
Installation and setup of this program is simple and quick. Clicking the icon on the desktop will bring up the Starter Screen. Choose Disc Copy, Data Disc, or Audio Disc creation. Or, click the PrimoCD Button at the right bottom of the screen to go direct to the Main Screen. The three above choices are available plus a Global-image and a video CD creation button. Once a button has been clicked, the job creation screen will appear. Identify the files you want to copy to the image file. Load a blank disc, setup the Edit - Record Options and Tools - Options, and click the Record button. A good idea to select Test and Burn the first few times to make sure your options will work. Fast, uncomplicated and rational. Plus the Help file is very well done with logical checklists for creating the various CDs. I was up and running in no time. I burned an audio CD using DAE (Digital Audio Extraction) from one of my nastiest CDs (it doesn’t support recording from the sound card). It does have a DAE test to check that CD before setting-up for on-the-fly recording. Or if you have two burners, it has HyperDrive to record to both drives at the same time. It supports MP3, WAV and windows media files for audio and MPEG1 for video burning. I haven’t found a way to print jewel case inserts or disc covers yet, but then I find pleasant surprises every time I go exploring. You can always copy the song titles to the clipboard and paste them in Notepad to print. Yes, it supports loading song titles from the big data base on the web and will burn to CD if your burner supports text write. Very few do. Now Prassi is not a household name to most consumers. They license their software to burner makers like Sony to be bundled with burner packages (Editors note: See related Sony review on page 50). They also make professional level CD duplication and DVD-R mastering programs. PrimoCD Plus is available direct from several resellers listed here for $79. The program requires Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000, about 1 GB of open hard disk space for the global-image file, and a supported burner.
Dale Swafford |