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Roxio Toast 9 Titanium

Childrens Toy Shop > Software > Software
from: Roxio

April 01, 2008
Great product though the customer support has a lot to be desired. Toast 9 introduces a few new enhancements but the manual, online help, and Roxio dont provide more than a paragraph of explanation.

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The Sims 3

Childrens Toy Shop > Software > Software
from: Electronic Arts

February 16, 2009
Great product though the customer support has a lot to be desired. Toast 9 introduces a few new enhancements but the manual, online help, and Roxio dont provide more than a paragraph of explanation.

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MobileMe Retail

Childrens Toy Shop > Software > Software
from: Apple

July 12, 2008
As a long-time Mac user, the one Apple product I have stayed away from is .mac and its successor MobileMe. Why? Because if you want email only, there are better and cheaper alternatives (try Gmail). However, I recently ran into need for two killer features that made this service worthwhile: seamlessly publishing my calendar for colleagues to see and iDisk file sharing. Now there are alternatives to accomplish both of these things on the Net, but they require some geekiness. With MobileMe, I simply said publish my calendar and there it was. Same simplicity for file sharing. Is it worth $x (retail price is $99, but I paid under $50)? It was for me. Four stars for functionality and integration into the Mac OS. Lose a star for high-price...

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Microsoft Flight Simulator X Deluxe DVD

Childrens Toy Shop > Software > Software
from: Microsoft

October 17, 2006
This game is very fun but there are some serious problems that hinder it's performance. There are many types of aircraft and different places to fly. There are even about twenty-five missions that you can beat. The detail that they were trying to accomplish is great in this game but even the best pc's don't have the power to run this program with the settings on high without lag. We have 4 gigs of memory and it eats that up and asks for more. In a couple years they will be probably be making PC's that can run this flawlessly but not at the present time. These are the requirements for you PC to run this program.

Microsoft® Windows® XP SP2 / Vista
PC with 1 GHz equivalent or higher processor
256 MB of system ... Read More:

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Family Tree Maker 2009 Essentials

Childrens Toy Shop > Software > Software
from: Encore Software

August 26, 2008
My wife is an avid genealogist and has been using Family Tree Maker for many years. I purchased this for her to replace FTM 2006 that she has been using for the last 3 years or so since that version would not run properly on our new Windows Vista PC (by the way, this 2009 version runs fine on Vista 64 bit, SP1). We had purposefully skipped the upgrade to FTM 2008 because of all the negative reviews we had read.

My wife has been using FTM 2009 for about 3 weeks now, and she loves it. She tells me that there is nothing she could do in FTM 2006 that she cannot do in FTM 2009. (One caveat here - she uses FTM extensively as a research tool and as, of course, a database, but she does not do much printing / publishing with it). She did say ... Read More:

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The Sims 2: FreeTime

Childrens Toy Shop > Software > Software
from: Electronic Arts

February 26, 2008
The game overall is fun, but the copyright protection prevented me from being able to start the game normally. About 50% of the time the copy protection (aka Securom) told me that I had a backup disk in the drive when I had the copy of the game that I paid for. I have since uninstalled the game and sold it to a local gaming business. If I buy a game I expect it to work 100% of the time. It was way too stressful trying to figure out how to start it.

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Apple iWork '08

Childrens Toy Shop > Software > Software
from: Apple

August 11, 2007
Keynote is so much more intuitive and polished than Powerpoint that I would gladly pay twice the price for Keynote alone. I also like Pages very much for its elegant and simple approach, though it doesn't beat Word by nearly as much as Keynote beats Powerpoint. Numbers still needs some work, but is already very promising (I still use Excel for more complex tasks.

My one big gripe is the lack of an auto-save function. These applications do crash (though Keynote never crashed on me during a presentation) and I have lost many hours of work because I didn't save often enough. So: Make sure to save often!

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Tomb Raider: Underworld

Childrens Toy Shop > Software > Software
from: Eidos

November 18, 2008
Underworld is a great game, with a clear focus on exploration, acrobatics and puzzles - all the things that make a good tomb raider game. The environments are the most beautiful ones I have seen in a long time, and I play a lot of games. Granted, there are some games that might be technically more advanced, but Underworld's levels are simply breathtaking. Also, a mid-range pc is fully satisfactory to run it (I use my Inspiron 1520 laptop).

Lara's model and animations have improved considerably too, so that she looks and moves more realistically. Further, the game is full of little details bringing Lara and the world to life; for instance, Lara brushes away leaves when she runs through foliage, she gets dirty when she performs acrobatics, she gets wet when ... Read More:

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Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard

Childrens Toy Shop > Software > Software
from: Logitech


Doesnt matter how good this keyboard is, if the parts start to wear out in less than 2months.... its useless.

My shift button now squeaks bad when I press it, with FPS games. Its getting worse. So much for being a gaming keyboard. My crappy generic keyboard outlasted this by 5 years.

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Garmin MapSource Topo U.S. 2008

Childrens Toy Shop > Software > Software
from: Garmin


This product does provide decent topo along with normal road, street and highway presentation. It is easy to manage moving to my Garmin GPSMap 60CSx the data I need. However, some updated construction is missing. I see no way to update the construction information.