Stories by Molly Furzer

Oz accounting for SMEs: EzyCashBook+

EzyCashBook+ is an Australian-made program aimed at taking the pain and time out of bookkeeping and Business Activity Statements (BAS).

Cost-effective accounting: JustInvoices

MYOB's new JustInvoices is just right for people who run their own business and don't feel the need for a full-blown accounting package with a full-blown price. As its name suggests, this capable and simple $79.95 program is an invoicing solution aim...

New office alternative: EIOffice 2004

Have you heard the news on the street? Alter-natives to Microsoft Office are greatly improving with every version release and cost just a fraction of the price commanded by the market dominator. StarOffice and Ability Office have been around for a wh...

Sun’s office alternative: StarOffice 7

When my hard drive died last year and my Office 2000 CDs were inexplicably missing, I turned to OpenOffice — a free download — and it’s served me well. Twelve months later and with fewer crashes, hangs and errors, I am now an alternative office conve...

Home productivity suites: Works Suite 2004, WordPerfect Family Pack 5

Home productivity suites from Microsoft and Corel have long been favourites with consumers keen on having all the necessary tools at less cost than full-blown office suites. The value in this year’s releases of Microsoft Works Suite 2004 and Corel’s ...

Graphics editor with extras: PhotoImpact XL beta

For a long time, PhotoImpact has been positioned in the mid-tier image editing market. Competing products include Adobe’s PhotoShop Elements and Jasc Software’s Paint Shop Pro, from which Ulead’s PhotoImpact differs in its packaged bundle and the eve...

Full antivirus protection: Norton AntiVirus 2004

Symantec’s Norton AntiVirus has long been at the top of the list of antivirus options. The latest version turns its attention to non-virus threats such as spying, hacking and unauthorised remote access.

Easy Web editing tool Contribute 2

It doesn’t seem very long ago that we first looked at Macromedia Contribute, the $226 desktop Web maintenance tool designed to make Web content updates easy for everyone.

Bargain PDF creation: Jaws PDF Creator 3.0

As any Internet user will have noticed, the use of Adobe’s Portable Document Format (PDF) has proliferated. And it’s little surprise why: PDFs offer a safe and reliable way to share documents on multiple platforms.

The evolution of Office: Office 2003 Beta 2

The final public beta of Microsoft’s Office 2003 sits the suite firmly in the enterprise league as a complete front end system.

Staroffice 6.1 beta 1

The simple fact that Office 2003 will run on Windows 2000 and XP only may be just the impetus for some users to look elsewhere for their next productivity suite.

Interactive Guitarcoach

Budding bedroom guitarists who can’t afford face-to-face lessons and find books a poor substitute can use this interactive CD-ROM that provides all you need for self-based learning.

Ulead DVD PictureShow 2

With digital cameras hitting the mainstream, the newly digitally acquainted will be looking for ways to show off and share their pics with friends and family. I can highly recommend Ulead’s DVD PictureShow 2 Digital Camera Suite.

Ezijobz Business Manager

Ezijobz’s $399 Business Manager is designed for small and medium-sized businesses averse to accounting lingo but still requiring a tool to manage all facets of a business enterprise.

Directory Opus 6.2 File Manager

If you’ve everwondered if there was a better way of doing things when using Windows Explorer, this is the program for you. Directory Opus, built from the ground up for the Windows OS (and now supporting XP), offers an Explorer replacement and much mo...