For those who may be interested, Zoner, a company that makes photo editing and manipulation software, is offering a really deep discount on all of its products of 90% off until the end of the day (midnight) today. After that the discount drops to 70% for the next week, et cetera. At any rate, their programs run on a basic tier of $50 or $90, so for today, those programs go for $5 or $9.

I'd like to hear y'all's thoughts on the functionality/ease of use/compatibility/et cetera of IrfanView 4.0 as compared to FastStone Image Viewer 3.2. (I'm lazy and I don't want to test both programs personally in the absence of some feedback.) Thanks!

I finished Star Wars: Republic Commando not too long ago. I found the game to be highly enjoyable, although there were parts that were really tough going for people like me who don't have "console fingers" or teenage reflexes. However, the game tells a sufficiently-compelling story that one is drawn to complete the game. This is a Jedi-free game, with the exception of a mention of Yoda at the end and a dead body with a lightsaber (that your character can't pick up). The game tells the s...

I got my latest issue of Computer Shopper yesterday, and it includes a pretty glowing review of WinStep Xtreme 7.4. I thought users of WinStep software might be interested in this.

Recently, I finished the Age of Empires III single-player campaign and I have played through a few skirmish matches. What follows are my impressions of the game on its own and in comparison with its predecessors, Age of Mythology and Age of Empires 2 . AoEIII does represent, as my title suggests an evolution in the concept of the real-time strategy game. Many reviewers have commented on this; specifically, I choose to use this term because of the implementation of the concept of th...

I watched Hollywoodland last week. It begs comparison to the other recent, true-but-unsolved-crime period piece, The Black Dahlia . It's a favorable comparison for the former film. Black Dahlia stars Josh Hartnett and Aaron Eckhart (two actors I've never really cared for) as L.A. cops and Scarlett Johannson as the third point of their love triangle. Ostensibly, it's a move about the murder of the lady posthumously referred to as "The Black Dahlia," one Elizabeth Short; Short was killed i...

No matter what your political persuasion may be, you must concede that this is very disturbing video: Link . My eyes were starting to weep blood like the villain in Casino Royale . The footage on CBS News showed that even Bush had a curious expression, hovering somewhere between amused and bemused, as this was taking place.

I should first point out that I had a certain bias against this movie long before I saw it. Why? Daniel Craig strikes me as a poor choice of physical type to play the character of James Bond. It was the production company's decision to terminate Pierce Brosnan's tenure in the role, and frankly, I don't see why. Brosnan, who had been considered for the role many years earlier, finally was available after Timothy Dalton's run, and he was easily as good as any of the previous actors. The Brosna...

I just returned the Hellboy: Sword of Storms DVD to Netflix. In many ways, I found the movie to be superior to the live-action version. The characters felt very similar, thanks to the fact that the filmmakers hired most of the same actors for the animated movie. The story seemed to flow much more naturally than in the live-action film, probably because this story was written specifically for this medium and this movie. I have commented previously in this space about how I felt the live-ac...

I just finished Demon Stone from Atari a few days ago. The unusual thing about that being that I "finished" and didn't abandon it as tedious and pointless, which I have a tendency to do with action-oriented games. While I'm still not entirely convinced that "winnable" is actually a word, I did apply it in this instance. I generally play shooters on the easiest setting, because I lack the console- and really good PC-player's ability to repeatedly press buttons in various awkward configuratio...

I have to confess that I'm still waiting for a game-to-movie conversion that blows me away. Mediocrity is more or less the pinnacle of achievement that can be claimed by this particular subgenre. I borrowed the film version of Silent Hill yesterday from our local library, and while it wasn't as bad as Doom or House of the Dead , neither was it as good as Resident Evil: Apocalypse . I suppose I should point out that with the notable exception of Doom , I haven't played any of the ...

The missus and I recently went to the theater and watched Pan's Labyrinth , the new film by Guillermo del Toro. I can't usually get her to watch foreign films that are not dubbed, but she was really interested in the trailer, and we both loved the movie. It's a dark fable about a little girl who discovers a window to a world of magic and fey creatures in the midst of the chaos surrounding Franco's rise to power in 1940's Spain. The effects are impressive, and the story is compelling. After v...

I just upgraded (?) to IE 7 at work. We use all Dell computers because it's a state contract, but I found this tip that turned out to be rather useful at the attached link on IE 7 and HP/Compaq machines (by some weird coincidence, I have a Compaq as personal desktop at home). When I completed the upgrade, restarted, and opened an Explorer window, I found that my menus were nowhere to be found. There's an easy fix for this, but the fix listed on the website is only temporary. You have to go up t...