Cameron Files 1 & 2 Collection Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)This game is like Riven where you move the mouse and you get a 360 degree view. The difference between this and Riven is that in Riven you have better control over the curser with the mouse. I have tried to play this game twice now and when you move the mouse the slightest bit the screen moves very fast. I am prone to motion sickness, so after a few minutes I get nauseous and have to stop playing. I have only been able to progress through the first scene but once I try navigating the hallways I start feeling nauseous. I am going to give it 3 stars because I think that it would be a fun game if I can get past the problems with the motion.

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East India Company Collection Review

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(More customer reviews)Well, I was excited for a summer pirate game, I loved the Pirates! series and even dabbled with the pirate MMO that's out there, but as much as I love the genre this game just misses the mark:
Pros: Pretty ship models, multiple ship fleet battles, strategic map and tactical combat for the best of both worlds, and a long campaign through the Age of Sail (1600-1750).
Cons:
Limited map (It's really just coastal Africa, Middle-East and India, and while the game styles itself a "sandbox" experience, you essentially just go back and forth between your home port and a few trade ports, in a very narrow strip of water and no sailing off the borders)
Poor UI: Lots of drag-and-drop, annoying battle camera mishaps and the feeling that nothing is quite as ergonomically designed as it could be (dragging and dropping 20 stacks of trade units every minute or so really wears you out, and the auto-trade system crushes your economy)
Titchy "economy": One big shipment of silk/spice/etc will destroy your market for that product for decades, so you have to micromanage your sales, making the game more tedious than it needs to be.
No replay value: While you can play as any one of the major powers (England, France, Portugal, Sweden, Denmark, Spain and Holy Roman Empire) there is virtually no difference between them besides their start position. No one has their own unique units, missions or objectives, which I just find astonishing.
Port conquest: Just a random coin-toss; Load up enough marines on your ships and if you win the hidden random roll, you win. That was very disappointing for someone who was hoping for at least a Pirates!-style avatar combat to decide such things.
Bottom line: Give it a pass, even at a very cheap price East India Company will annoy you more than it will entertain.


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Nitro PDF Professional V6 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)The best of the bunch I tested for home office use.
I use PDF creation way more than I thought I would. I hardly ever print out web pages anymore, I've possibly saved enough on toner to pay for the program, if not, I will.
I purchased Nitro PDF Pro 6 after I tested the trial version. I also sampled trial versions of Adobe Acrobat Pro, ABBYY PDF Transformer, PDFill, gDoc Fusion (a unique, very cool application) and Nitro PDF Express. I came to the conclusion that THERE IS NO PERFECT PDF PROGRAM, and suggest you make your choice on how much you will use the program.
Adobe Acrobat Pro is the original. It is the largest, most complete, most complex, and most expensive. It is fairly intuitive if you have used a lot of software. Of all the programs I tested, it would require the most time and effort to become a power user. It is the Big Boy PDF program, but it didn't convert to Word any better than Nitro PDF Pro 6. Actually, none of the programs convert with 100% accuracy. You can get Adobe Acrobat Pro for $125 at a number of sites. If you want the biggest tool box spend the additional $50 and get this one.
ABBYY PDF Transformer works and it come with an add on screen capture utility that allows you make a PDF file of whatever is displayed on your monitor. I thought less of its user interface than the others, I wasn't able to just jump right in and start using it. My biggest dislike is that the program's menus that plug into Word and Excel float on the desktop rather than on Word or Excel's tool bars. I did not check to see if there is a way anchor it.
PDFill did not interest me at all. I didn't test it enough to add comments.
gDoc Fusion is very cool. It is unique in that its interface is like touch technology, and it will work with touch screen monitors. I think it did the poorest job of converting PDF to Word. To be fair, though, it worked OK at converting PDFs generated by gDocs to Word. It is exceptionally good for scrolling through the pages of documents; better than all the rest. Check this one out just see how it works. Its price is comparable and there is a home user license option.
As a home office user, Nitro PDF Pro 6 is the program I liked the best. The interface uses ribbon menus similar to Office 2007. I was able to jump in and start using it. It opens with a tutorial asking what you want to do, create something new, convert something, edit something, combine or split something, sign or add security, or review, etc. Then it opens the instruction on how to do the chosen task. It won't take long for you to turn that opening tutorial off; the program is easy to learn. It converts as well as Adobe Acrobat Pro; though in all it is not as big and powerful (the program is about 1/10th the size). Regarding the files size issue mentioned in other reviews, Nitro Pro PDF6 gives you options. I converted a 98KB Word document using the Web Quality setting, the PDF file was a smaller 35KB. Using the Office Quality setting, the PDF file was a smaller 34KB. Using the Print Quality, the PDF file was a much larger 1.14MB. Nitro PDF Express does the creation and converting as well as the Pro version, but the interface I thought was much weaker. I searched and found a coupon and purchased a license for the Pro version for just $25 more than the Express version. I think the Pro version worth the extra expense.
My primary interest in a PDF application was to get my own documents onto my Kindle (to do so, set the document's font to a 20-24 pt font size and convert it to PDF/A, then, with the Kindle connected to a USB port, copy the PDF document to the Kindle's Document folder), but I have found I use it for saving info from web pages most of all.
UPDATE: Nitro has released a free update to v 6.1.2.1 which has significantly increased the speed of the program. It is noticably faster now.

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Nitro PDF professional, the complete Adobe Acrobat alternative, enables you to do more with PDF using powerful tools to create, convert, edit, combine, secure, annotate, form-fill, and save 100% industry-standard PDF files.

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