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Rocket Spanish Review

For a long time I’ve wanted to learn more Spanish.  Spanish is a very important language to know, especially in the United States.  Not only that, but it’s becoming more important every year, as the Latin population continues to expand.  Knowing Spanish is also very helpful in business, and can give you a huge advantage over other prospective employees.  There’s no doubt learning Spanish is a big advantage in life.

After taking three years of high school Spanish, I decided I’d had enough and gave it up.  Since then, I’ve learned what a mistake that was and have been wanting to get back into it and learn Spanish fluently.  I thought, why not download Spanish lessons online?  After months of putting it off, I finally set out to find the best Spanish learning software.  I was looking for something that was inexpensive, and could help me learn Spanish fast.  I first looked at Rosetta Stone, after seeing all the commercials for it on TV.  Unfortunately, that runs about $500 dollars for the full package.  That’s out of my price range.  Then I started looking for alternatives.  I wanted to be able to download Spanish lessons and learn at my own pace.

After a few days of research, the best I found was Rocket SpanishRocket Spanish is a very popular Spanish learning software, and it costs under $100 dollars.  That fit right into my budget so I gave it a shot.  The course includes 31 audio lessons that all come with written transcripts.  Pretty standard.  There’s also an advanced grammar book (in pdf format).  This is a great addition to the audio lessons and very important part of learning the language.  The best part by far, however, are the software games.

Rocket Spanish comes with 3 Spanish learning software packages.  The first is a vocabulary game that teaches you common words by associating them with pictures.  This is a very important starting point in learning Spanish.  This will get you well on your way to understanding a conversation in Spanish.  Next is a spoken word software which helps you understand how native speakers pronounce common words.  This will get you to the point where you can understand a Spanish conversation.  Next, is the verb tenses software.  This is one of the most difficult aspects of learning Spanish, and this software makes it much easier.  It may be the most important Spanish learning software you will find.

This all comes with email support and a members forum, which is very useful.  I’m still learning, but I’m well on my way to understanding the Spanish language, and I attribute a large part of it to Rocket Spanish.  This is a great course at a great value.  It’s not often you can learn an entire language for $100 bucks.

Click here to check out Rocket Spanish.

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Driver Robot Review

Have you ever had to search the internet for a driver?  It’s a pain in the a$$.  Seriously.  And nobody ever holds on to the driver discs for all their hardware.  I’ve had to reinstall my operating system several times, and each time I end up spending hours looking for driver downloads all over the net.  It just sucks.  That’s why I set out looking for some driver download software that could automatically find drivers for your hardware and install it for you.  There’s a few out there, but Driver Robot seems to be the most advanced.  It automatically crawls the net for drivers and claims to support over 100,000 different hardware devices.

To test it out, it will let you scan your computer for free and it will tell you which of your drivers need updating.  I gave it a run and it seemed extremely accurate so I bought it for $30 bucks.  I was in the process of shopping for a new Netbook computer anyway so I figured it would be a good way to give it a test run.  I have tons of hardware laying around; phones, cameras, etc, and I never hold on to the driver discs.  I figure this would save me a few hours of trouble.

Well, it turns out that it was a great investment.  This thing seems like it can find and install drivers for just about anything.  My new Netbook was up and running at full speed in no time and I didn’t have to mess around with any driver discs or waste my whole day searching for drivers on the net.  Driver Robot delivers.  If you’re looking for automatic driver download software, this is your product.

Click here to check it out.

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Sonic Producer Review

Wondering how to make hip hop beats?  You’ve come to the right place.  Many people don’t know that you can make hip hop beats online using hip hop beat making software.  Making beats is no longer only for professional producers in multi-million dollar studios.  In fact, you can make your own rap beats or even rock beats using nothing but your home computer!

Sonic Producer is a popular piece of software that lets you produce music and make beats online.  The reason I decided to give it a try is because it’s the least expensive beat making software I have come across.  I’m used to using software like ACID Pro, which is a great piece of software, but extremely expensive.  Not only do you pay a heavy price ($300), for the software, but the sound loops will cost you even more.  Sonic Producer being only $30 dollars, I decided to give it a shot and see if it could stand up next to ACID Pro.

If you’ve ever wondered how to produce music, it’s a lot easier than you’d think.  There’s a lot of programs out there that basically provide you with sound loops in different categories like bass, percussion, guitar, etc.  The software helps you coordinate the loops so that they cooperate and play at the same tempo.  Your  job is to pick the right loops, tweak them, and set the pace.  It’s a lot of fun.  Plus it only takes about 30 minutes to make your own beat, once you get the hang of it.

Sonic Producer is a surprisingly fun and easy to use beat making software.  It doesn’t have every feature that ACID has, but it’s much easier to use.  I was extremely surprised at how much you can do with it for such a small price.  It’s only $30 bucks and you really can produce real professional sounding music.  It also has an easy export to mp3 feature which is nice to have.  If you’re just starting out producing, or are just making hip hop beats for fun, this is exactly what you need.  I use this more than I use ACID now, which I paid over $300 dollars for.  The quality of the output is nearly identical, but it’s much easier to use.  Unless you are planning to produce music professionally, I would definitely give this a shot before you spend hundreds on expensive hip hop beat making software.

Click here to download beat making software.

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Mobile TV Pro Review

Cell phones are becoming more and more like computers today.  This is giving them the capability to run applications, stream live video and web pages, and more.  One of the the most popular new features of smart phones is cell phone TV.  Cell phone TV lets you stream live TV programming on your cell phone.  The problem is that most companies charge around $10 dollars per month for the service, and you only get a couple channels.  Many people don’t see value in paying monthly fees for cell phone mobile TV.

Mobile TV Pro is a piece of software made for phones and mobile devices running Windows Mobile.  All it is, is a simple application that can pick up and stream around 200 TV channels on your phone.  It’s a one-time fee to use the software, rather than a monthly fee.  Once you have the software, you can install it on up to two mobile devices for as long as you want.  So basically you get 10 times the channels and you lose the monthly addition to your phone bill.

The application does what it says.  It works basically the same as any computer based internet TV software.  You get around 200 channels; some are good, some aren’t.  It’s still a much better selection than the average cell phone TV subscription.  The main obstacle is that you need a phone or pocket PC with Windows Mobile to run the application.

Click here to check out Mobile TV Pro.

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iSoftwareTV Review

Want to watch TV channels online?  Of course you do!  If you’ve been trying to find places to watch live TV channels online you’ve probably been fairly disappointed.  There are plenty of free internet TV sites out there, but they are usually not anything most people would be interested in.  The corporate sites like Hulu are useful, but they aren’t live!  Then you have subscription TV sites where you have to pay huge monthly fees to watch TV channels online.  In the middle of the two, are all the internet TV software packages that promise thousands of live channels for a small one-time fee.  Is that possible?  That’s what I wanted to find out.

If you’re wondering what the difference is between all of these “satellite TV to PC” software packages is, I’ll give you a hint.  Not much.  I tried a bunch of them and was surprised at the similarities.  They all offer roughly 3,000 to 5,000 live satellite channels with no monthly fees.  They usually cost around $30 to $50 dollars to download the software.  Besides that, you’re basically dealing with similar channel selections and fairly similar setups.

So how do you decide which is the best one?

The price and the user interface are really the only deciding factors, I’ve found.  My favorite of the bunch is iSoftwareTViSoftwareTV is one of the cheapest downloads and the user interface is fluid and easy to use.  The channel selection is almost the same as the more expensive TV to PC software packages as well.  You get all your basic news, sports, movies, etc.  You also get a lot of cool foreign channels.  It’s pretty interesting to see what people are watching in Iraq or China.

With almost any of these packages you can:

  • Watch local channels online
  • Watch premium channels online
  • Stream local sports
  • Watch local news live
  • Watch foreign channels live

In conclusion, if you want to watch live TV channels online, the easiest and cheapest software solution is iSoftwareTV.  Of all the packages I’ve tried, it’s the only one that I’m still using today.  It’s an awesome and convenient solution for when you’re on the road.

Click here to check it out.

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