UPDATE STAR keeps ur softwares up2date

There are plenty of ways to check to see if your software needs updating. You can manually visit the website for each program you run on a regular basis. Or if you'd rather use a method that doesn't take all day, you can install an application that will check for updates automatically.

While we like File Hippo Update Checker and AppSnap, UpdateStar might just take the blue ribbon when it comes to freeware software updaters. UpdateStar won't automatically download and install software like AppSnap, but it makes up for that deficiency by offering a huge library of programs. It catches all sorts of installed and updateable software that the other programs miss.

UpdateStar will automatically scan your PC and search for any of 8000 applications. When it detects those programs on your computer it will check to see if newer versions are available. When you click on an application you get a brief description and a link to download the newer version.

Odds are you'll still have a few applications on your PC that UpdateStar will miss, including any application that didn't have an installer file. But of the update checkers we've tried, UpdateStar appears to be the most powerful.

CD/DVD burner XP4 : freeware

Despite its name, CDBurnerXP is not just a CD burning application for Windows XP. It's actually one of the most full featured free CD and DVD burning utilities you're likely to find for Windows 2000/XP/Vista.

CDBurnerXP 4 was recently released, and it has some impressive new features:

• Support for burning Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, and Double layer DVDs
• Support for FLAC audio files
• Disc to Disc copy for audio and data
  
• Save discs and compilations as ISO files
• Support for WPL playlists

While Windows XP and Vista include some basic CD and DVD authoring features, CDBurnerXP is about as full-featured as many commercial applications out there. And it's free. The program is donateware, so if you want to download the latest beta versions you'll need to make a contribution.

MS Office 2008 for MAC

Microsoft Office 2008 for the Mac, due sometime after Macworld San Francisco this winter, has been the subject of much obsession among Mac folk ever since Apple started the Intel transition, mostly because the current incarnation of Mac Office, 2004, runs like a dog on Apple's Intel machines and hasn't seen a code change in over four years. While we're satisfied that at least Microsoft is consistent (they often go 4 years between Windows Office releases, too), we were really hoping Office 2008 would've been Office 2007 (or Office 2006).

Lest we digress. There's a new gallery of Office 2008 screengrabs here. We were given an opportunity to see the new software demonstrated, and the rumors about the speed increase are very true. This thing runs circles around its predecessor on Intel hardware, and we're especially geeked about the speed and zest of Microsoft Word. Paginating a 500+ page document on our 2 gHz Macbook Pro only took about 8 seconds. The other thing that's immediately obvious about this new Office is the addition of "object insertion bars" in all the apps, allowing you quick access to objects usually dealt with in other parts of the suite--for example, rapidly inserting a chart into a Word document. Entourage still has a case of the IMAP hiccups, sadly, but its interface has been improved as well. That immobile navigation bar that clogs up the top-left corner of the 2004 version is gone, gone, gone, and we couldn't be happier. All in all, this update appears to be coming along great.