Like the Duo Docks of yore, the Apricorn Aegis NetDock facilitates enhanced desktop mode functionality while retaining an ultralight's easy-to-carry portability when it's untethered. the NetDock is an external hard drive, a four–port, self–powered USB 2.0 hub, and in addition has a trade–loading optical CD/DVD burner/player drive, making it especially well-suited as a companion peripheral for the optical drive-less MacBook Air or many PC netbooks

Once you start "shooting raw," you'll never go back. And once you start working with ACR 6.1, you won't want to go back to earlier versions. Yes, it's that good. From Lens Profile Corrections to the new Noise elimination tools, to the enhanced Post Crop Vignetting and new Grain feature, this is a powerful update. ACR and Photoshop provide an image-working duo that creates a wealth of photo-manipulation, enhancement, and control. Even if you are using ACR on JPEG images, you will find increased functionality at the initial stages of image correction/enhancement that will carry through to the end of the process.

Convert PDF to EPUB on Mac OS X for reading on iPad, iPhone, iPod touch and other ereaders

If you've used Photoshop for years, get ready for some changes as to how you do things. With this new release, there are small traps hidden within a common interface. While none of these traps are bad, in fact most are great, they still might trip you up. But by no means should you let them get in your way to one of the best updates to Photoshop in years. This stellar release has many new ground-breaking features as well as many JDI updates we've been asking for for years. For some, the JDI (Just Do It) enhancements might be enough by themselves to make you want to update.

Illustrator CS5 has some of the most amazing new features ever presented in an Illustrator release, but still has the same amazing limitations it's had for years. I suppose we users are used to the limitations, but at least we can enjoy the Beautiful Strokes, Bristle Brushes, Perspective Grids, Pixel Perfect drawings, and the impressive Shape Builder to name a few features that will keep us working better, faster, and more intelligently than before. In other words, CS5 is a worthy upgrade.

Selling for $hundreds less than Adobe's Acrobat application, AnyBizSoft's integrated 6-in-1 PDF Converter for Mac converts PDF files to any of six supported editable document formats: Word documents (.doc), Excel spreadsheets (.xls), PowerPoint presentations (.pptx), HTML Web pages (.html), Text files (.txt). and Electronic Publication (EPUB) eBooks (.epub), with standalone applications for PDF to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint formats also available and a 20% discount off retail to Applelinks readers on the Word-only program

Bridge CS5 continues its development with improved speed, more output options, better customization in creating web galleries and PDF exports, better batch renaming, and the introduction of Mini Bridge, to name just a few of the new features in CS5. Despite all that, Bridge took baby steps compared to all of the other CS5 applications. Thus, while some of the changes are welcomed and desired, they are also limited and not fully fleshed out.

The task is truly daunting: the release of eighteen major applications along with a wide peripheral collection of many supporting applications, web-based applications, Flash-based applications, and associated shared resource applications. To release any one of these is a big task, to release them all, on the same day is, well, either risky or reckless. To be successful at it is amazing. To do it 5 times in a row, is battling luck. But if Pixar can be successful time after time, why not Adobe? And they have. The range of product improvements in Creative Suite 5 goes from subtle and cool to drop-down amazing.

FileMaker is back with another stellar update to its flagship product, FileMaker Pro. I always enjoy seeing what direction each update leads to; sometimes the updates are more for those who create the databases, and sometimes the updates are for the users. This release has a bit more for users and content manipulators, but it's hard to nitpick on this release. For example business users will appreciate the new charting features, while those who collect research data will appreciate the QuickFind and the new highlighting feature. Databases creators will appreciate the new Inspector and a plethora of ways to enhance the users experience. In other words, lots of people will be happy with this release.

Charles Moore reviews two large-capacity external hard drives; the G-Technology G-Drive Professional 2 GB and SimpleTech PRO1000Q Pro Drive Quad Interface 1TB, noting we've come a long way from the days of backing up files to floppy or Zip disks, and that external hard drives are the logical default choice for backup media these days, especially with Apple's slick Time Machine backup feature

MacSpeech Scribe is the first really purpose-designed transcription solution for users who need to work with recorded digital audio files. Scribe has the capability to transcribe with a simple button-click speaker-entered recordings made with an iPhone whenever a thought you want to record occurs, with an iPhone, a dedicated digital voice recorder, or even a mic and your computer, either from a recording of the user's own voice, or that of someone other if you have a voice training profile for them available

A freestanding media card reader can be a great convenience in transferring data from your camera(s) to your computer, or between computers and other devices that use media cards, such as the 13 inch and 15 inch MacBook Pros