Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate 6.5 review: Robust, fast, and feature-rich

Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate is an easy and capable ideo conversion utility, but it faces stiff competition from free software such as Freemake Video Converter, as well as pro-level programs such as Sorenson Squeeze 9. At $60, its integrated disc authoring and burning may not be enough to entice users away from the freebies.

Professional in power, yet easy to use, the Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate interface makes short work of even batch operations.

Wondershare's interface is wonderfully easy without seeming childish. Drag a file to the program window, select a destination device from the drop-down list on the right, and click on the convert button. There's a large selection of Apple and Samsung devices, a decent selection of Motorola devices, and then...nothing.  Owners of HTC and other brands of devices need to know their format and resolution and select from the list of those that Wondershare also provides.

Video Converter Ultimate can convert multiple videos at once, and preview them all for you while transcoding in small video windows to their left. I found the program roughly equal in performance to the modern competition, though it's not quite as quick with large batches as Sorenson Squeeze 9.

Disc authoring and burning is integrated.

Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate no longer rips commercial DVDs, but it will still author and burn. It's handy to have these capabilities under the same roof. There's a decent selection of menu templates, and you can change the text and background image as well as add your own music to the menu.

You may also download and convert video from the Web. Wondershare provides an add-on for the major browsers, and you can also cut and paste a URL into the program. I didn't have a lot of luck with the plug-in/add-on outside of YouTube, but the program downloaded from a wide variety of Web site URLs emplying Flash video, but not Silverlight.

Wondershare also includes a very capable and smart-looking video player which rivals VLC for features and format support. It actually seemed a bit more stable and bug-free. Alas, it took over all file associations without asking during installation: not a sin, but not polite to be sure.

You can download videos from just about any site that uses the flash format.

As I said up front, selling a consumer-grade video converter is a tough row to hoe when there are capable freebies available. But Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate is easy, competent, and fast. There's a free demo (albeit one with watermarks) so give it a whirl—it might just suit your style.

Jon L. Jacobi has worked with computers since you flipped switches and punched cards to program them. He studied music at Juilliard, and now he power-mods his car for kicks.
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Invasion of the tabletop tablets: Are these fiendishly clever hybrids the ultimate family PCs?

Windows 8 has spurred a lot of unusual hardware designs, but few are as intriguing as the tabletop tablet. Imagine a full-fledged all-in-one PC that lies flat on whatever surface you have handy. It's a design that offers all the screen real estate and CPU performance of a touchscreen all-in-one, along with the portability of a battery-operated tablet.

With display sizes ranging from 18.4 inches to 27 inches, the new hybrids are ostensibly perfect for modernizing "family game night." And, indeed, these machines are bundled with touchscreen versions of board games, air hockey, poker, and other digital diversions. If you use these PCs as their manufacturers intended, your hybrid machine will be a family-room desktop computer by day and a living-room gaming platform by night.

But is this an experience that consumers want or even need? Asus, Dell, Lenovo, and Sony sure hope so. Each computer maker took an independent path toward the invention of this novel form factor, though the companies were certainly compelled by a single market force: Traditional PC sales are falling off a cliff. HP plans to get into the game, too, but its Envy Rove won’t ship until July.

These portable all-in-ones just might usher in an entirely new multiplayer gaming experience.

As with any experiment in crossbreeding, the goal is to generate a new life form that's superior to its parents. Is that what happened here? Yes and no.

None of these machines pose a threat to Apple’s iPad or any small tablet running Android or Windows 8. After all, these monsters are too big to fit in a backpack or messenger bag. And three of the four lack a key feature common to the best all-in-ones: an HDMI input, which allows you to plug in a gaming console or set-top box and use just the display. Finally, none of these computers provide enough GPU horsepower to fully support graphically intense games such as BioShock Infinite or the latest Call of Duty installments.

LenovoThanks to their massive touchscreens, you can operate these giant hybrids flat on a table or propped up in your lap.

That said, the new tabletop tablets deliver all the key features we've come to expect from all-in-one PCs, including the ability to run all the same software, and to connect to printers and other peripherals. And by virtue of their large displays, the new hybrids deliver better Web browsing and media streaming than any tablet I’ve used. Finally, while action games may not make sense for this new kind of system, these machines could reinvent multiplayer gaming, with multiple people gathering around a single, giant tablet to play electronic versions of Monopoly or Risk.

Could this new form factor save the desktop-PC industry? “Portable all-in-ones alone won't help revitalize the PC market,” says Patrick Moorhead, founder and principal analyst at Moor Insight and Strategy. "But combined with hybrids, convertibles, and thin notebooks, they will have a positive impact. Ironically, success comes down, in part, to a successful reception of Windows 8, which currently lacks enough apps to inspire some buyers."

Some of these all-in-one/tablet hybrids are better than others, but all of them are interesting. And whatever you think of Windows 8, you can thank Microsoft’s maligned OS for their existence. Read on to discover how well each company executed on the promise of marrying the all-in-one desktop PC to the portable Windows 8 tablet.

While Dell, Lenovo, and Sony adopted the same essential design for their respective all-in-ones, Asus—in typically inconoclastic Asus fashion—took a completely different approach. In fact, a better description of Asus's machine might be “all-in-two,” because the Transformer All-in-One P1801 is essentially two discrete computers, each with its own CPU and operating system.

The Transformer P1801’s base houses one computer powered by a quad-core 3.1GHz Intel Core i5-3450 CPU and 8GB of DDR3/1600 memory. When the 18.4-inch, ten-point-touch display is docked to the base, the combination functions as a conventional desktop all-in-one. Remove the display from the dock, and it becomes a giant tablet running Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean). The display provides a native resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels.

AsusAsus took the most daring design route, but its remote-desktop mode is problematic.

The base unit is a well-equipped computer all its own. In addition to the quad-core CPU, it has a discrete graphics processor (Nvidia’s GT 730M, with its own 2GB frame buffer), a 1TB 7200-rpm hard drive, wired and wireless network adapters (gigabit ethernet and 802.11n), a DVD burner, four USB 3.0 ports, one USB 2.0 port (occupied by the transceiver for the wireless mouse and keyboard), and a memory card reader.

The base also has built-in speakers, mic and headphone jacks, and an HDMI output so it can connect to an external monitor. With a second monitor attached to the system, one person can use the base station as a regular Windows 8 computer while someone else uses the display as an Android tablet.

ROBERT CARDINThe Windows computer is in the Transformer P1801's base, and can run independently of the Android computer in its detachable display.

That’s because the tablet has its own quad-core microprocessor—an Nvidia Tegra 3—with 32GB of flash memory. You can access the storage in both the tablet and the base station while you're using the system in Windows mode, but the Android side can see only the tablet storage. The tablet has its own 802.11n Wi-Fi network adapter, so you can surf the Web as well as download, install, and use Android apps and games. While the display is docked and the Transformer P1801 is operating in Windows mode, you can initiate a download and undock the display, and the download will continue uninterrupted.

The Transformer P1801 has a third mode that renders it truly unique in this group.

The display has its own stereo speakers, a mic/headphone combo jack, one USB 2.0 port, and a memory card reader, but its 1-megapixel webcam operates only while it’s in PC mode. The display’s built-in handle makes it easy to carry, and its fold-out stand lets you use it on a table or desktop (reclining at up to a 100-degree angle). The Transformer P1801’s display is only slightly heavier than that of Dell’s XPS 18 Touch, weighing 5.29 pounds.

In addition, the Transformer P1801 has a third mode that renders it truly unique in this group: It can switch between running as an Android tablet and as a remote Windows 8 desktop. This flexibility means you can remove the display from its base and take it into another room, where it will function as a wireless touchscreen for the Windows 8 session running on the docking station. You have limited range in this mode, however, and response time can be laggy. Most people will find having a truly portable Windows computer to be a better value.

The Dell XPS 18 Touch scored better on our WorldBench 8.1 Desktop benchmark suite—earning a mark of 171 to the Transformer P1801’s 153—but we can attribute that difference primarily to the presence of the SSD cache drive on Dell’s machine. The Transformer P1801 performed better with games and productivity apps. The Asus model delivers a better price/performance ratio too, especially when you consider that you can use its base unit as a PC (provided that you connect another display) while someone else uses its display as an Android tablet. But the Dell unit has more sex appeal.

Asus Transformer P1801

Pros:

Two computers in one

Desktop Core i7 CPU in the base unit

1TB, 7200 rpm hard drive

Cons: 

Mode switching can be clumsy 

Webcam not functional in Android mode

No HDMI input on either the base or the display

Bottom line: 

The Transformer All-in-One is a world apart from the other portable all-in-ones we’ve seen, but it’s not as sexy as Dell’s XPS 18 Touch.

Rating: 3.5 stars

The XPS 18 Touch is one of the best tablet/all-in-one hybrids I’ve seen, but I hope Dell introduces a second, larger model. While an 18.4-inch touchscreen is ginormous for a portable computer, it’s just a little small for a desktop machine.

The screen boasts a high resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels, however, and photos, movies, and websites look great on it. And since the device is outfitted with an Intel Centrino Wireless-N 2230 Wi-Fi adapter, you can stream its video output to a big-screen TV with a built-in Wi-Di adapter or to a box (such as Netgear’s NeoTV) that can connect to any TV. The XPS 18 Touch provided very good battery life of 4 hours while streaming HD video in our tests, so it should last much longer if you’re just surfing the Web.

ROBERT CARDINDon't buy a Dell XPS 18 Touch without its excellent stand.

Because the system relies on the graphics processor integrated into the CPU—a low-power 1.8GHz Intel Core i5-3427U with hyperthreading support—you shouldn’t expect to play hard-core games on it. While it did manage to run Dirt Showdown at the display’s native resolution at a rate of 44.9 frames per second, it turned Crysis 3 into a slideshow, with a frame rate of just 1.5 fps. Its all-around performance was much better, achieving a WorldBench 8.1 Desktop score of 171 (compared to our reference all-in-one system, an Acer Aspire U A5600U-UB13, which scored 100).

Unlike your typical tablet, Dell's XPS 18 Touch comes with a 500GB hard drive.

The XPS 18 Touch has 8GB of DDR3/1600 memory. And unlike your typical tablet, this device comes with a 500GB hard drive (supplemented by a 32GB SSD acting as cache), plus a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. The tablet has a media card reader, two USB 3.0 ports, and a combo headphone/microphone jack. A 720p webcam is built into the top bezel, alongside a dual-mic array for Skype videoconferencing.

Measuring only 0.7 inch thick and weighing less than 5 pounds, the XPS 18 Touch is easy even for small children to carry. Two plastic feet flip out of the back for use as a conventional all-in-one on a desk or tabletop with the mouse and keyboard. Alternatively, you can lay it almost flat (completely flat if you fold the feet in) or prop it up in your lap and use the touchscreen.

ROBERT CARDINThe Dell XPS 18 Touch is amazingly thin and light.

Dell bundles two games that take advantage of the touchscreen display when it’s lying flat: the music game Fingertapps Instruments and an air-hockey simulator. Games and programs that rely on finger taps, such as pinball simulators and the aforementioned music game, offer the best experience with touchscreens. While playing the air hockey game, I noted considerable lag between the time I slid my finger across the screen and the graphically rendered puck responded.

Dell also provides a sturdy stand (an optional accessory on the less-expensive models) that will charge the tablet’s battery on contact. But the stand doesn’t provide much in the way of guidance as you lower the display into it. A Dell spokesperson said this was an intentional design decision, so that children wouldn’t need to place the display in precisely the right spot, but the tablet won’t charge if they don’t. (Personally, I wouldn’t want small children toting an 18-inch tablet around the house in the first place. But that’s just me.)

The XPS 18 Touch’s smaller dimensions render it much more transportable than my other favorite monster tablet, the Lenovo IdeaCentre Horizon, and its ultrathin profile and low weight beat the tar out of the Asus Transformer All-in-One P1801 and the Sony Tap 20. I like it a lot.

Dell XPS 18 

Pros: 

Very thin and very light

Supports Intel's Wireless Display technology

32GB SSD for fast boot times

Cons: 

No discrete GPU

5400 rpm hard drive

Plastic feet feel flimsy

Bottom line:

It's great to see such a solid execution of a new form factor this early in the game. The XPS 18 Touch would be even more exciting if Dell took a page out of Asus' playbook and added a more functional dock.

Rating: 4 stars

Lenovo’s IdeaCentre Horizon is the boldest expression of the portable all-in-one concept to reach the market. Asus, Dell, and Sony have giant tablets. Lenovo has a computer the size of a tabletop—its display measures a full 27 inches. In fact, the company showed us the prototype of a cool rolling stand for the Horizon earlier this year, but it’s not yet available for sale.

Lenovo does bundle several other accessories for playing games on the Horizon, including four joysticks, four strikers (for playing air hockey), and one example of “e-dice” (a wireless die that informs the computer which number is face up after a roll). The Horizon comes with a variety of games that take advantage of its tablelike design, including Monopoly, air hockey, and roulette.

LenovoThe Lenovo IdeaCentre Horizon's massive 27-inch screen is its biggest selling point, but that feature also makes this computer exceedingly heavy.

The large display renders the Horizon the best all-in-one PC in this group, as well as the best casual gaming platform, but it has one drawback: Its resolution is limited to 1920 by 1080 pixels. If you’re a stickler for detail when it comes to precision tasks such as photo editing, you probably won’t like seeing the pixels spread so far apart. But that’s not the type of application Lenovo’s engineers had in mind when they designed this machine.

The Horizon's oversize display makes it a great all-in-one PC and the best casual gaming platform in its class.

The other drawback to the Horizon’s massive screen is its considerable bulk: This monster tips the scales at 18.95 pounds. On the positive side of the ledger, it has a discrete graphics processor, an Nvidia GeForce GT 620M with a 2GB frame buffer. The balance of the Horizon’s spec sheet is equally tasty. You'll find a low-power 2GHz Core i7-3537U, 8GB of DDR3/1600 memory, and a 1TB hard drive (unfortunately, it’s a 5400-rpm model).

ROBERT CARDINLenovo was the only manufacturer that thought to include an HDMI input on its tablet.

The slow hard drive significantly depressed the Horizon’s WorldBench 8.1 Desktop score, lowering it to 111. But the fast CPU and the discrete GPU gave this machine first-place finishes on the image-editing, audio- and video-encoding, and file-compression tests that also make up our benchmarking suite. Battery life was surprisingly good: The IdeaCentre Horizon was able to play an HD video for 3 hours, 28 minutes.

The IdeaCentre Horizon is the only portable all-in-one in this roundup to include an HDMI input. It’s puzzling that no other manufacturer thought to include this feature. The all-in-one PC in my kitchen is connected to a satellite set-top box, and it serves as a TV almost as much as it acts as a computer, so I don’t know if I’d buy one that lacked that simple feature. The rest of the Horizon’s features include a 720p webcam, a media card reader, an 802.11n Wi-Fi adapter, and a wireless mouse and keyboard.

The Horizon’s humongous screen, fast CPU, discrete graphics processor, and fun accessories drive its price tag up to $1849. That’s higher than the rest of the machines in this roundup, and it’s several hundred dollars more than Lenovo’s conventional 27-inch all-in-one (the IdeaCentre A720 goes for $1559). Dell’s XPS 18 Touch makes a better giant tablet, but Lenovo’s IdeaCentre Horizon is the superior family-gaming platform.

Pros: 

27-inch display

Fast CPU and a discrete GPU

HDMI input

Fun gaming accessories

Cons: 

1920-by-1080 resolution (on a 27-inch display)

Very heavy

Expensive

Bottom line: 

The Horizons's size makes games and everything else more enjoyable, even though it also makes it more difficult to move around the house.

Rating: 4 stars

Sony deserves credit for establishing the portable all-in-one market, having introduced the VAIO Tap 20 last winter. This model boasts a Core i7 CPU, 8GB of memory, and a 20-inch ten-point touchscreen for just $1100. On the downside, its display resolution is disappointingly limited to 1600 by 900 pixels.

SonySony's Tap 20 is the oldest model we looked at in this group, but it's a good buy at $1100.

The Tap 20 also relies on the GPU integrated into its mobile 2GHz Intel Core i7-3517U processor to drive that display, and its 750GB hard drive spins its platters at only 5400 rpm. The Tap 20’s fast CPU helped it deliver good performances on the content-creation elements of our benchmarking suite (image editing and audio- and video-encoding tasks), but the absence of a discrete GPU generated a goose egg in our GPU-accelerated image-editing test. In the end, the Tap 20 earned a WorldBench 8.1 Desktop score of 95 (our reference all-in-one, Acer’s Aspire U A5600U-UB13, scored 100).

Moving the Tap 20 from room to room is an awkward task due to its 11-plus-pound bulk.

I found the Tap 20 only slightly less difficult to carry from room to room than the 27-inch Lenovo Horizon. Sony suggests using the kickstand as a handle, but to do so you must tilt the computer forward, grab the bottom of the kickstand, and rotate the entire machine upside down. The computer is then difficult to set up at a new location because your most natural movement is to first set it face down on the desk or tabletop—not a good idea.

ROBERT CARDINThe Tap 20 is thick and much too heavy for its size.

Moving the Tap 20 from room to room is an even more awkward task due to its 11-plus-pound bulk—this computer is almost twice as thick as Dell’s XPS 18 Touch. I was also surprised by the Tap 20’s relatively poor battery life: It played our HD video for just 2 hours, 21 minutes before it pooped out.

When Loyd Case reviewed the VAIO Tap 20 back in October 2012, nothing comparable was on the market. So even though the model he tested had a Core i5-3317U processor and only 4GB of memory, he awarded four stars to the new and innovative (for its time) concept. The competition has responded aggressively since then, and the Tap 20 has lost some of its luster. Fortunately, Sony has adjusted its pricing accordingly, and the current street price of $1100 renders this machine a good value.

Pros: 

Intel Core i7 CPU

1TB hard drive

Sony's Bravia video technology

Cons:

Thick and heavy for its size

Short battery life

5400 rpm hard drive

Bottom line:

Sony essentially created this market, which means the Tap 20 has been around for a while. This computer is thicker and heavier than it should be, but Sony has priced it aggressively.

Rating: 3 stars

A lapsed musician, Michael is passionate about home and personal audio. He uses his home as a real-world test lab for evaluating consumer electronics and home control technology.
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Ultimate guide to SSDs (plus reviews of 7 new drives!)

Jon L. Jacobi has worked with computers since you flipped switches and punched cards to program them. He studied music at Julliard, and now he power mods his car for kicks.
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Installing an SSD in your PC, be it a laptop or a desktop, is one of the easiest and most effective ways to boost the machine’s overall performance. The change won't be merely noticeable—it will startle you. Your system will boot more quickly, windows and menus will jump open, and programs and data will load much, much faster.

In case you don’t know what an SSD is, the acronym stands for solid-state drive—that is, solid-state as in no moving parts, and drive as in the fact that an SSD appears as a hard drive to your computer. But instead of storing data on one or more spinning platters, an SSD writes and reads data to and from nonvolatile flash memory. In addition, an SSD contains a controller that's analogous to the memory controller in your PC’s CPU or core-logic chipset.

Many vendors sell SSDs, but the devices are far from equal. Flash memory and controller technology have both advanced so quickly that what was fast last year is now second-class. The drives you might find in the bargain bin will be faster than a consumer-grade mechanical hard drive, but they won't deliver the astounding performance boost you'll be looking for after you read this article.

To get the skinny on state-of-the-art consumer SSDs, we brought seven drives from five vendors into the PCWorld Labs and put them through the wringer. We tested Corsair’s Neutron and Neutron GTX drives; Kingston's HyperX 3K; OCZ's Vertex 4 and Vector drives; Samsung’s 840 Pro; and the SanDisk Extreme. We also retested Intel’s 240GB Series 335 SSD using our new benchmarking procedure (if you're curious, read our original review). Each drive delivers either 240GB or 256GB of storage, which is the current sweet spot in terms of price and performance. Each drive we tested proved to be a solid performer that will offer a significant boost over whatever conventional drive your machine has now. Some drives, however, are definitely faster than others.

If you’d like to upgrade a computer equipped with an older second-generation SATA interface (which maxes out at 3 gigbits per second), note that we also checked out the Apricorn Velocity Solo x2, an add-in card that upgrades any computer with an available PCIe 2.0 x2 slot to the newer SATA 6-gbps standard.

But before we dive into those reviews, here’s a primer on SSDs that will tell you everything you need to know about this technology.

The memory/interface controller proved to be a major factor in determining each SSD's performance. Three of the drives we tested use a SandForce SF-2281 controller: the Kingston HyperX 3K, the SanDisk Extreme, and the Intel Series 335 (the controller firmware on this drive is tweaked to Intel’s specifications). OCZ’s Vector and Vertex 4 drives both use OCZ's proprietary IndiLinx controllers, namely the Everest 2 in the Vertex 4 and the Barefoot 3 in the Vector. Corsair is blazing a path with its Neutron series drives (the GTX and Neutron) by using Link A Media's LM87800 controller. Samsung's 840 Pro utilizes the company's proprietary MDX controller.

As you'll see in our performance chart, drives with the IndiLinx, Link A Media, and Samsung MDX controllers boasted significantly faster write speeds than the SandForce-based competition. In fact, counterintuitively, each of the five drives using those controllers wrote faster than they read. The SandForce-based drives were all good readers, but their comparatively slower write speeds dragged down their overall scores.

On the next page (scroll down past product-reviews for the link), I'll discuss memory types, interfaces, and how we measured performance.

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M-Go Poised To Be Your Ultimate Entertainment App Across Devices

At SXSW, hugely popular production and media companies DreamWorks and Technicolor are previewing their yet-to-be-released M-Go TV app, touted as the only app you’ll need across all your entertainment devices. M-Go wants to wrangle your fragmented library of multimedia into a single platform to act as your one-stop shop of consolidated content. We hopped into the company’s fully decked out purple bus on our way to the Austin Convention Center, and this also served as M-Go’s demo time for the app.

Right now, M-Go is being exhibited in private beta mode, slated to launch with 10,000-plus video titles available for purchase on demand.

“The idea is to create a service that works to bring all your media into one place,” said M-Go’s Cory Schaeffler. “It can work on your Apple device through an HTML5 app, on your Android device, your smart TV, PC, and more. After all, your content is only as valuable as the amount of devices it’s stored on.”

Technicolor is working with major studios to join in on providing content for the app. Ultimately, it will integrate live TV, smart TV and VOD including the ability to search and get recommendations within the app. The service is also partnering with Samsung and Vizio, so TVs, Blu-Ray players, tablets and other products carrying these brands will have the app preloaded onto the hardware. Intel Ultrabooks will also ship with M-Go built in.

All in all, it’s an impressive offering that could substantially alter the current landscape of service providers. M-Go is set to launch sometime later in the year, but no definite date has been nailed down yet.

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Visual Explorer Ultimate

One of the things you learn as a reviewer is just how long the long tail really is. There are more "alternative" browsers out there than most people could guess, and it's hard for most of them to offer any reason to switch from the top tier. Visual Explorer Ultimate offers one major piece of functionality that's tempting, but narrowly focused.

Video Explorer Ultimate may be my choice for archiving videos from the Web, but not too much else.So let's go for the good stuff first. Streaming video is wonderful but transient; sites vanish, videos are pulled for legitimate and illegitimate reasons, and the time you most want to watch a particular video is always when you can't get an Internet connection for some reason. There are many plug-ins for downloading streaming video for different browsers, but my experience with them has been uneven and, being plug-ins, they often break when the browser is upgraded, which now happens approximately once a week with Firefox. Visual Explorer Ultimate builds video downloading--and, even better, conversion--right in.

If you're on YouTube, or any of the dozens of other supported sites, you merely click the disk icon (if you're under 20, you'll recognize this as the abstract image every program uses to mean 'save,'), and it will save the active video. One of the more useful functions is stripping out the video and just saving the audio as an MP3, which is a surprisingly annoying process otherwise. Visual Explorer Ultimate is almost worth keeping around just for that; I've got standalone programs that do the same thing, except less easily and reliably. You can also save in iPad format, MPG, and others, avoiding conversion hassles.

While Visual Explorer Ultimate supports many streaming sites, there are some it does not, mostly in the, ahem, skeevier side of the net. In the interests of fully testing the program, I will note it does support some sites dedicated to what the song famously notes the Internet is for, but you will need to research this on your own.

There are some features that Visual Explorer Ultimate provides which are uncommon and deserve mention, though I don't personally find them compelling. One is the "cloaking device" which makes the window partially transparent, allegedly to foil people glancing sidelong at your screen... but if it's transparent enough to hide what you're doing from them, it's too transparent to use, or at least that was my experience. There's a "video browser" mode that changes the normal URL bar into a customized video search engine, and allows you to create custom sets of video sites to search from, which is nice, but useful only if most of your time is spent searching for videos (which it might well be).

Other than that, Visual Explorer Ultimate is... a browser. It has tabs, it has sidebar bookmarks (something Chrome still doesn't have, I must note), it renders pages adequately most of the time, and so on. It is also somewhat quirky; I found a few bugs in rendering and general functionality when I reviewed 3.0; these are very quickly fixed for 3.1, which is the final version being reviewed, but there were still oddities and one crash to desktop during general browsing. While every browser is occasionally unstable, Visual Explorer Ultimate seems to have more minor glitches than average, many of which do go away if you hide and then show the window.

Being free, Visual Explorer Ultimate is worth considering if you do any kind of regular video downloading or converting. The development team is active and responsive, always a positive sign. If you've been unsatisfied with plug-in solutions or third party programs when it comes to getting streaming video off the screen and onto your hard disk, Visual Explorer Ultimate is definitely worth downloading.

--Ian Harac

Visual Explorer is the ultimate, fully featured web browser that comes with advanced privacy and security features, one-click Google searches, support for Internet Explorer favorites, add-ons and much more. Your privacy protected - easily remove private data such as web site addresses you have typed into the address bar or content from web pages you have visited. Use the Cloaking Device feature to make the browser semi-transparent so casual observers cannot snoop on your browsing activities. Security when surfing - the integrated safety filter protects you against phishing websites. It performs checks before loading each web page and, unlike other browsers, also uniquely checks the final destination page (to protect you against the original website re-directing you to a phishing website). Instantly find text on the current web page - with options to highlight all instances, using the Advanced Find toolbar. Perform Google searches with a single click - right-click any word or phrase on the current web page to search for it using Google or your favorite search engine. Additional pre-installed search sites include Yahoo, YouTube, Amazon, eBay and Facebook. Print web pages how they appear on screen - Visual Explorer is the only known browser that respects the WYSIWYG philosophy when it comes to printing pages. While other browsers reformat printed pages, Visual Explorer faithfully sends to the printer the exact page layout and format as seen on screen. Block unwanted ads and other media - with a range of content filters, Visual Explorer gives you control over what you see. Easily block unwanted websites or website content from appearing (Flash adverts, pop-ups, harmful scripts and more). Customize to suit your needs - Visual Explorer is fully customizable from themes and skins to mouse gestures, keyboard shortcuts, toolbars and menus. Visual Explorer supports Windows 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, Vista and Windows 7.

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Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate Review: Easy and Powerful, but Not Perfect

Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate ($66 direct, as of February 1, 2012) is a lot more than its name implies. Yes, it converts video, and it does so quickly and capably to a multitude of formats. But it also rips DVDs, records and downloads online video, and even edits and processes video with special effects. It's more a video toolbox than a simple converter.

Video Converter Ultimate handled every test video file I possess--including some rarer types such as Real Media and Ogg Theora. (With every other video converter I've tried, I've had to insert a "nearly" or some other qualifier in that statement.) The program provides handy conversion templates for a host of specific handheld devices, such as iPhones, iPads, Android phones, and even my HTC HD7, which runs Windows Phone 7--a mobile operating system that other packages often ignore. As with other programs of this ilk, you simply select the target playback device, and the software generates the appropriately sized output. It also supports outputting video optimized for social sites such as Facebook and YouTube, but the program doesn't facilitate uploading the video for you.

Editing in Video Converter Ultimate is surprisingly simple. It offers a basic trim editor, but it also provides a post-processor that allows you to add effects such as grayscale, negative, or an old-film look. If you wish, you can perform freehand crops, rotate, watermark the video, and add subtitling. Everything I edited and converted in Video Converter Ultimate worked perfectly: I encountered no missing key frames, redraw issues, or crashes. The program uses AMD, Nvidia, or Intel GPU acceleration if it's present.

Video Converter Ultimate will rip your DRM videos to nonprotected versions, but this feature works only if you have the original tokens for the video involved. It works via Windows Media Player's DRM support. It will also capture Web videos with audio from YouTube and the like, though it isn't as easy to use in that respect as browser plug-ins like Video DownloadHelper in Firefox.

Alas, in my tests Video Converter Ultimate took a misstep in the most unlikely of places--with the long-established technology of DVD. Wondershare understandably doesn't play it up, but the program rips protected DVDs. However, in my hands-on trials, DVD playback stuttered noticeably, and more unfortunately, so did converted output. Wondershare was unable to replicate this behavior, or provide a fix.

Wondershare is a powerful if slightly pricey video converter and light video editor, and it performs its core tasks very well. The DVD playback and ripping glitch is a puzzler, but that isn't part of the program's core functionality anyway--and according to the company, the feature should work.

--Jon L. Jacobi

Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate is an all-in-one DVD Video Converter, by providing you a one stop solution for family video/DVD conversion. You can convert both SD and HD videos to any video format for your portable media player or cell phone including iPod (Classic, Nano and Touch), iPhone, Apple TV, Zune, PSP, Pocket PC, Creative Zen, Archos, and 3GP mobile phones, etc. You can rip DVD to video in any format for enjoying them on your mobile devices on the go. You can also burn video to DVD and edit DVD from video for playback on your home DVD player. Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate is surprisingly easy and amusing for family media enjoyment, by allowing you to merge multiple files into one file, to clone a file, to clip one file into multiple segments, to trim the file length, to crop video, to adjust video effect, to edit either text or image watermark, to add subtitle, to set video and audio output settings, to capture images from video/DVD files, to customize DVD menu and so on.

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