Snap, crackle and zip
928159
This character-driven debut thriller runs on the buzz of adrenaline - Top Kiernan's drug of choice. Narrator Top heads an Athens, GA, research firm, Polymath, founded as a tax cover for his real job - operative for Shaw's Mercantile, "the world's leading booking agency for mercenaries, bodyguards, and probably worse." Top, wound tighter than the tops he collects, is itching for a challenge, but Shaw's cuts him loose instead. "My heart lurched against the inside of my rib cage as if I'd stood on the brakes in the fast lane....`What do you mean there's no assignment?' " His adrenaline jones has made him too reckless, a liability.
His severance package consists of a valuable heads-up. Shaw's just turned down a recovery-and-termination contract from a drug dealer who thinks Top has the money that disappeared when a courier, Dee Lane, disappeared.
Dee Lane is one of Top's boyhood friends. The other is Bob John, a cop. All of them enjoy the buzz of adrenaline, though none so much as Top. And now he has a job. Find Dee Lane, find the money, stay alive. The latter may be difficult as the drug dealer is not the only one who thinks Top has the money. Suddenly he's beset by DEA agents, redneck thugs, ambitious freelancers and worse - treacherous friends maybe.
Top is a delightful protagonist; witty, action-oriented and impossible to stump on a quote. His trusted employees, the quiet, knife-wizard Benny, and the beautiful administrator Gellie are always trying. How can you not like a widely read man who still throws up every time he sees a dead body?
The southern setting - from backwoods shoot-outs to decaying small-town insularity and hair-trigger racism - is well done. Bennie, deep and determined, and fast as lightning, is a valuable asset; complex, private and African American. The plot, though occasionally hard-to-follow or over-the-top, zips right along, but who cares about plot when the characters are so much fun and the writing sparkles with wit. Smart, funny and unapologetic, Top Kiernan is a winner. Let's hope we see more of him, and Benny, and the big, rambling old elementary school where they live and work.
3078679
There is a crackling sound in the background that is annoying.  And it is not the location of where the radio is placed.
There's something wrong with the radio
1602318
Sansa Clip+ and the newer ClipZip are the Best little affordable players out there. I've had several of these both for myself and my autistic boy. He has very little problem with the controls and I try to keep one charging while he's listening ( all the time) to the other. I've had a few other cheap players and the controls and menus were even frustrating to me so I don't even bother with anything else. The only major drawback is the small size which can get  lost in the couch or car. With the microSD card you can expand the memory which for me is very important since I'm always looking for something new to listen to.
1320337
Frankly, WinZip is the "gold standard" in compression and packaging / archiving utilities. While major operating systems (Windows, Mac OS X) have included very basic abilities to work with ZIP-format archives, none of the features come close to the level of Windows integration that WinZip offers. Direct-shell integration (right-click on an archive, right-click on a file or folder), super-fast compression engine, and support for password / encrypted archives, and support for multi-platform formats (RAR, TAR, 7Z, BZ2, ISO, IMG...) are just a sampling of the features you get by buying WinZip Plus.

The latest version, 15, offers direct integration with Windows 7, along with a Windows 7 desktop gadget for drag-and-drop ZIP/Unzip/Email, and a streamlined user interface that takes its toolbar approach from Microsoft's latest releases of Office. WinZip 15 also offers a new ZIP engine that offers compression for already-compressed files (eg. JPEGs), but at a cost of compatibility. Frankly, you're better off using "Legacy" compression to ensure that your Zip files can be read by any platform. Storage isn't nearly as expensive as it was 10 years ago when compression was important.

Also included is WinZip Courier, which provides direct integration with Microsoft Office and from popular email clients (Outlook, Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail) but sadly no support for Mozilla Thunderbird. It also requires the recipient of your email to have a copy of WinZip (if encrypted or using "better" compression).

Simply put, if you don't own WinZip, you need this.

I wish I could be so positive about the new activation system that WinZip requires. Unlike pretty much every other activation / license policy, you can only activate WinZip Plus on ONE computer. Come on - even the "big boys" (Adobe) understand that people have home and portable/laptop computers. It is for this reason that I can't give WinZip Plus the full five-stars that it should otherwise deserve.
3708087
I was able to download and listen immediately
4080847
Love the crackling sounds and real flame (and heat, too).
1250802
I used this to crackle some frames and they came out great!  Definitely some variation in the results depending on how thickly you apply it.  Love it!
1149498
I'm a VERY long-time user of WinZip and purchased licenses in the past so figured it was time for an upgrade. There's much to like with this version. If you use MS Office, you'll find the new interface very familiar. It took me a little getting used to (I still often have to look around to remember how to "extract" my files) but overall it's very clean and easy to use. I like the new features for unzipping to common directories (I have a number that I routinely am extracting files to) and there's a myriad of features that you may or may not use, like password-protecting zips, creating backups, etc. It's a tad harder to justify paying for this when there are good open source solutions out there now like 7-Zip, not to mention the built-in handling of modern OSes. I work with zips on a nearly everyday basis (as well as other archive formats) so this is definitely a product well worth having. If you are a more casual user, you'll want to decide whether it's worth the cost.
879186
The Crossover Cable works. Now to fill up space by putting words a lot. Word quota is now done did.
309797
I tortalky recommend download to tablet. For privacy. These left we follow you down. And if a book cover it
633448
The file you get from Amazon is a 208 kbps (VBR) which, under normal circumstances, should sound great. The problem is that this specific copy of the song has 'clicking' throughout, present both on the download and in Cloud Player. It's very noticeable on a song like this and ruins an otherwise perfectly good song. Find another version.
3010747
Any recent (or not so recent) windows installation offers a feature called "compressed folders".  This is file-compression (zipping) build right into Windows.  So why would you buy&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/WinZip-15-Standard-Plus/dp/B004I1PWDW/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">WinZip 15 Standard Plus</a>?  Well, there are lots of additional features that compressed folders do not offer.  All are detailed on this page, some of the more compelling ones are:
- Password protected and encrypted zip files.  Windows compressed folders no longer offers this option.  This may be worth the price of admission alone
- The ability to schedule files for periodic zipping
- Automatic zipping and encryption of e-mail attachments (enabled by Winzip Courier, which is included)
- A User Interface for managing your zip files

Regarding the User Interface, some time between WinZip 10 and 15 they upgraded to the Microsoft "Ribbon" paradigm used by Microsoft products like Word and Excel.
- Although Winzip's take on the ribbon is a little odd.  Checkboxes are generally not part of the ribbon, and in this case add confusion to the experience.  The Encrypt checkbox means to encrypt ONLY new files as they are being zipped.  It is deceiving to see it checked which has no effect on already zipped files.

I was somewhat disappointed with WinZips performance.  All results below are for my HP Pavillion d7 with a quad-core Inter i7 processor and 4 GB RAM.
Creating a Zip File:
- This was using Winzip's new high performance .zipx compression
- 26, 000 Files,  27 GB before compression
- Space savings 3.3 GB (12%)
- Time to zip: 8 hours (!!!!)
- Also, when I first started the zip process the Winzip UI hung, going unresponsive for a long period of time (> 15 minutes)

Encrypting a Zip File
- I  encrypted the above file.  The whole exercise necessary because the aforementioned UI resulted in an un-encrypted zip when I wanted an encrypted one
- Time to encrypt: 4 hours

In summary 3 stars.  For casual users they probably do not need this.  But if there is a specific feature you need, it is a worthwhile purchase.
3605436
the sound is a little tinny at higher volumes, the tempo of the crackling is a little fast. sounds like an aggressive fire.
2621632
I just love this unit for lectures and meetings.  The fact that it downloads the files  directly to a PC is a great advantage.  A 2 hour lecture downloads in minutes.

If there is ambient noise like AC or some other masking noise, I just run the file through SoundSoap with the speech toggle set and boom... all clear.

It's tiny size, independence of tape, built-in USB connection and hours of recording on a single AAA battery make it convenient and simple to use.
3342796
Great recorded actions. Very easy setup if not a bit slow Top update the device when connected to the PC. Great library but some missing categories. You can work around it but it's time consuming.
2729982
Short Review/
Update firmware with the free Sansa V01.01.32 patch.
Then you will have automatic bookmarking across multiple audiobooks be they Audible .aa files or plain old mp3s.

Start and stop three+ unique audio books. Later pick each up at the point you were last listening. This is not exclusive to Audible content. This is an option for any mp3s you place in the audiobook folder.

Long Review/
This was an average player yesterday with a music folder, and an Audible folder. I was running my "books on tape" as mp3's out of the music folder. I was sad to miss out on the convenient bookmarking of Audible's .aa formated files; I would lose my place and that was no fun.

Then I upgraded the firmware on 5/26/2009 to V01.01.32A and that has made all the difference. Now I have a music folder a podcast folder and an audio book folder for mp3 files - awesome!

Each file placed in the audio book folder will have an automatic bookmark where you left off; when you revisit your books on tape files you will be asked if you want to resume where you were last listening. This is not only a bookmark, it is bookmarks galore.

You can also choose to turn chapter mode on or off; meaning that if you accidentally hit rw << or >> ff it will not skip ahead to the next chapter, but will only advance xx seconds for each x seconds the button was depressed. You can toggle this option, but I like to have chapter mode off so that I can keep my place despite an accidental 1/2 second bump. There is also a hold/lock key, but I often do not engage the hold/lock so that I can turn the volume up/down based on background noise levels.

There is also an option to tweak playback speed betwixt slow, normal, & fast. Slow can be nice for studying a foreign language while fast can be nice for getting through long content in a shorter amount of time.

Unit also has a great radio, sleep timer, podcast folder, and music folder where you can sort & rate songs on the fly.

Two drawbacks: 1. I would like custom bookmarks in addition to the automatic ones, 2. this clip unit is light and I want to put it on my collar; as such I would like a 12 inch earbud/headphone cord instead of the standard ~ 1 meter cord.

Despite those last two points I can only say, thanks so much SanDisk for continuing to support your product with a great firmware update - the Sansa Clip 1GB rocks!
2360879
Nothing really to say. Works fine. No crackle. Fairly sturdy and hold up against weather. Great for DJ equipment or in the house.