Review of Nero Premium 7.

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Commercial CD/DVD burning software -- Nero 7 Premium Review.

I recently bought a computer magazine, with a 30 day trial of Nero on the cover CD, never having tried it before, but having heard lots of people claim that it is the best burning software about, I thought I would give it a test run.
The installer is a hefty 127Mb, not including the help files, which need to be downloaded separately, installed the program uses over 300Mb of space.
Note: The Yahoo toolbar is included with the online trial version, but you can opt not to install it (that Yahoo toolbar seems to be everywhere lately!).
Installation was very straightforward and I chose the default settings for everything, this makes Nero your default application for most media file types.

Nero 7 Premium does a lot more than just burn discs, it will also rip music, backup files and drives, display and edit graphics and function as a media center.
The software suite is split into two main parts Nero Home which is the media center and Nero StartSmart, which is the main menu for the burning, ripping, backing up and image viewing/editing features.

The heart of the Nero Home Media Center, is the Showtime Media Player, this can play your videos and music files. It has more video display features than Windows Media Player 9 and works well.
Your media files are collected and cataloged by Nero Scout, which is rather slow and lacks advanced settings, you need to be very specific about the folders it searches, to stop it cataloging everything.
Providing you have a TV card fitted (I don't), you can view TV and timeshift TV programs, by up to ten minutes.
Nero Home can also view and create slideshows of your photographs, but I found this feature to be very poor and lacking in configuration settings.

Overall, the Nero Home Media Center was a great disappointment, my current Packard Bell computer, came with Cyberlink Power Cinema installed, which is a media center, that far outshines the Nero Home Media Center, in every department. The only good feature of Nero Home was the Showtime Media Player, but in my opinion, Windows Media Player 9 is superior, apart from its video display aspect settings.

Moving on, to Nero StartSmart, this menu system handles all the burning, ripping backing up and image viewing/editing features. There is quite a lot of duplication in the menu options, with the majority of options leading to the main program, Nero Burning Rom.

Nero Burning Rom is probably the main reason that most people will buy Nero and it is a very competent and fully featured burning program, handling every CD and DVD burning task most users should ever need. I wasn't keen on the file compilation prompts and the two window system was needlessly complicated, but it seemed to work well enough.

Personally, I preferred Nero Express for my burning jobs, it's very easy to use and has all the features I need, has an attractive appearance and starts and responds quickly.

Nero Express CD/DVD burning software.

After burning your CD/DVD you can use Nero Cover Designer, to create covers for your disc case and a label for your disc. A list of your audio tracks, or data files, is added automatically and you can choose from a selection of provided case graphics, or add your own graphics. This was one of the best Nero programs, working well, with a good selection of features and is fairly easy to use, after reading the help file.

Another nice feature is Nero BackItUp, this can back up your files to a partition, external drive, CD, etc. The program can handle Incremental and Differential backups, which saves time and space, but it did seem rather slow, compared to other backup programs I have used.

You can also backup your entire drive or a partition and restore it using a bootable CD, created by Nero. This doesn't seem to be designed for backing up an active partition (one containg an operating system) and is unable to lock the volume, resulting in errors. Looking on Google this seems to be a common problem, so it would probably be wise to use proper imaging software for backing up an active partition.

Nero also supports Packet Writing, with the program InCD, this allows you to use a CD-RW or DVD-RW in the same manner as a floppy disc, or hard drive, copying and deleting files.
InCD has to be installed separately from the main program, using Nero Product Setup, once installed you must format any disc you wish to use.
Unfortunately, although I could format a disc with no problems, I couldn't persuade the program to copy any files to the disc, every time I tried, the XP CD wizard offered to burn the files and despite a lot of head scratching, I couldn't solve the problem.
Note: I have previously used Adaptec Packet Writing software, but found it to be less reliable than standard CD burning, so wouldn't recommend Packet Writing for important data.

Save Tracks enables you to rip music tracks from a CD and save them in several popular formats, at the quality of your choice.
Nero SoundTrax enables you to mix your own CD's and transfer your LP's and cassette tapes to CD. (providing you have the correct cables)
Nero WaveEditor allows you to improve (or destroy ) your audio tracks, it can also apply some sound effects.

Using Nero Vision you can create and edit your own videos, you can even record video from a TV card, directly to your hard drive.
Nero Recode allows you to copy and recode a video, so that it fits on a DVD, but it will only work, with non-copy-protected videos.

Finally, Nero can also display your photographs, with Nero PhotoSnap Viewer, this installs itself as the default viewer, but it isn't as nice as the Win XP Picture and Fax viewer, loading slower and lacking the slide show.
Considerably better is Nero PhotoSnap, this is a simple image editor, but it has a good choice of tools and is very easy to use. It supports only the most popular image formats.

Nero PhotoSnap, image editor.

Uninstalling Nero was fairly painless, although I needed to run the System Restore point, created by Nero during installation, to recover some of my file associations. Ideally, if you are just trying the software, you should create a partition image, before installation (as I did), then you can be sure that your system is properly recovered.

So to conclude. Would I buy Nero 7 Premium, in short no. I found it a bit disappointing, it wasn't integrated together very well, with lots of separate windows of all sizes and some programs had a much older appearance than others, there was no single theme.
The media center menu was poorly designed and the SmartStart menu duplicated many functions. Both menus were slow to load, it would be easier and quicker to create desktop icons, for your favorite programs.
Individually most of the programs were pretty good, but you could find freeware programs, that match, or exceed, the capabilities and ease of use, of the majority of them.
There are a few gems, such as Nero Express, CoverDesigner and PhotoSnap, but it is an expensive piece of software, to buy for just those functions.
A great deal depends on what the buyer expects, if you want one program that does everything you possibly want, in media file handling, then you might find Nero very good. But more experienced users may find it lacking in some areas.

Commercial 59.99 Euros -- 30 day trial 127Mb -- Win 98,98se,Me,2000,XP

http://www.nero.com