5 Stars for the Program, 3 Stars for the Upgrade from X4
345361
I've been using PaintShop for many years, since version 7, both for personal and professional use. Even though I have and use Photoshop, I always recommend PaintShop to anyone looking for graphics software, even at a pro level. PaintShop has grown over the years and versions from a good amateur program to one that can stand side-by-side with the best pro software, but at cheaper cost and with more intuitive and easier start-up use.

I am currently using Ver X4 on one computer and this version, X5, on another. The differences, in my estimation, are not worth the cost of an upgrade. There are a few differences, but not enough to make the upgrade worth it. However, if you have any version prior to X4, or or choosing your first graphics and photo editing software, I do strongly recommend PaintShop Pro X5.

The most significant difference I saw between X4 and X5 was the ability to change the program display from the dark and moody black of X4 to a bland--and easier to use and see--gray or blue with X5. The program starts with things I don't really want, the "Manage" window and tools. I pop it over into the "Edit" screen and set the defaults to that and ignore the file management tools.

Every step PaintShop Pro has made has brought it closer to the capabilities of Photoshop, yet has kept many of the handy consumer-grade features. The photo retouching Make Over tools--add a 'suntan', fix blemishes, whiten teeth, brighten eyes--are handy and really do work very well. The One Step Photo Fix and Smart Photo Fix are also quite good and do a very good job, yet have overrides and tools that let you treat each adjustment element separately. You can also do nifty things like have it merge your series of family photos into one with everyone having their eyes open and smiling. Or delete someone in the middle and pull the others in together. Definitely cool tools and toys!

On a more advanced level, PaintShop Pro handles RAW format and has tools to work with that, as well as all the other standard image formats. I usually work in PNG and very much like the way transparencies and layers are treated. Layers are handled well and clearly (more clearly--that is easily--IMO, than Photoshop). In just about every instance I find it easier to accomplish what I want than to do the same thing in Photoshop. Part of that, of course, is familiarity, but a big part is menu and function clarity. The recent addition of the warp brush and warp mesh tools served to pretty much end any any real need I had for Photoshop.

If you're starting from zero and want photo and graphics editing software, I still do strongly recommend PaintShop Pro in this most recent version, but you will have a bit steeper learning curve than with the earlier versions as so many tools and functions have been added. But the ease is there, if you want it. Look under "Adjust" for the top two items, "One Step Photo Fix" and "Smart Photo Fix". Those are your primary exposure adjustment controls. After that, find the MakeOver tools I mentioned above, and you're pretty well covered. There is also a delightful assortment of picture frames and photo filters to give your pictures fun, distinctive looks.

I have not had any crash problems (Windows 7, on a quite a powerful, high-memory computer).
885677
With the expiration of Win XP, I needed an upgrade for my old HP, despite it being a dual core system. The program loaded fine, and has performed without issues for the past month. I know it is tough paying for a system upgrade, but at least Win7 was still available, and I didn't have to invest in a new machine.
3385053
Microsoft's Windows 8 Upgrade is a fresh change from the norm, but change can certainly be a little un-nerving. Some, like my wife, need IE9 to work from home, and so her satisfaction with the Windows 8 upgrade is very low. This isn't a problem with the Windows 8 OS as much as a problem with her IT not able to make compatible web apps. I won't go into OS functionality on this review because there's already enough of that going on. I'll just say that I like it a lot, but it does take some getting used to. Once you get used to it, flying around the software very easy; swiping down to close apps, using the Charms bar to print, using the Hot Corners to switch between apps, start screen, etc. It will take some time to become natural, but the overall performance increase more than makes up for the extra second it might take to switch between tabs in the browser.

I must also say that the free X-box music app is very appreciated. The News app is extremely browse-able (I just made up that word), and the Store's app selection is plenty to last until developers catch up with the Windows 8 platform and start expanding.
4858483
I purchased this program in March of 2010 to start making movies of and for my family.  With my very limited experience, I can tell you MoviePlus was not necessarily easy to use right out of the box; ditto the other 2 movie programs I tested.  Ultimately, I liked the features and support Serif offered in MoviePlus and found it more intuitive to use.

Since starting with MoviePlus, I have completed about 75 videos including 2 for family weddings.  And, each time I made a movie I found myself asking "What can I do different?" or "I wonder if I can add this ...?"  Then I would search via the 'Help' function, read the tutorials and experiment. It took time but the more I tried, the easier it became.

You can edit music, videos, and photos.  You can add backgrounds and affects and so on.  It is really about using your imagination and then learning how to make it happen. My movies average about 10 minutes and are a combination of video (from my camera), photos, and music.

Why 4 stars instead of 5?  MoviePlus needs to offer more envelopes for zooming and panning.

At this time, I have never had a problem with MoviePlus.  HOWEVER, if you are a novice and not willing to read the tutorials and experiment you will not be satisfied with MoviePlus or, for that matter, any program.
4043034
I have owned this product for about 2 weeks now and here are my experiences with it. This monitor calibrator is truly fantastic when it comes to its manin purpose - calibrating colors on your monitor - it is extremely accurate and the process is much faster than any other calibrator I've seen out there. I really enjoy the automatic profile adjustment feature based on the current ambient light conditions, kudos to that.

However, my review is 3 star only because the software is really, really buggy on OS X Lion. In order for the ambient light adjustment to work, there is a small utility called iProfiler that runs in the background. This utility (I've downloaded the latest version from X-Rite web site which is v1.2.0) has a memory leak problem - the memory consumption grows from 20 Mb to 800 Mb in less than 24 hrs (monitoring utilizing iStats). I have contacted X-Rite technical support and they are aware of this issue and have recommended turning off this feature. As such I cannot utilize this unit to its full capacity, and I am somewhat disappointed - for the premium price I've paid for this product, I would expect a premium quality software.
2848446
Such high hopes for this upgrade, but 2008 is for the most part a change of window dressing. We bought this  to be compatible with the occasional client who uses office, also for the email/scheduling system.

PROS:
Syncs with ical

Love the My Day app that let's you see a snapshot of schedule and tasks and flagged emails pop into this list.
Has had an immediate productivity boost.

Improved GUI, less cheesey.

Improved junk mail filtering.

CONS:
Fonts Loading: 20-50 seconds load time for each application in the suite. Then if you're using PowerPoint or Word clicking on the font list invokes a delay of up to 3 seconds. If you have a few fonts open and you're working on a document in PowerPoint doc it's a deal-breaker -- even turning off WYSIWYG font menu bears the same results unless you're rocking a Penryn. We're using keynote now.

Microsoft tells you, you can "install it on up to three computers". What they don't tell you is it can only be running on one -- it sniffs the network to find other computers and will make you quit. This is very annoying if you have a tower and a laptop.

PowerPoint Crashes

CONCLUSION
Overall I feel a bit duped by Microsoft -- new bells and whistles but feels like little effort has been put into overhauling the engine of this beast. If I were to do it again, I would buy ilife, but admit that I still use and prefer their email app. Entourage (mainly because of My Day).
2129952
I used PaintShop Pro 8 for years, but recently upgraded to a newer version of Windows. PSP 8 is buggy with Windows 7, so I had to also upgrade to a newer version of PSP. I'm somewhat disappointed in X6 for several reasons:

1. The software includes annoying ads that pop up frequently when you exit the program. There appears to be no way to disable the ads based on forum discussions on the Corel website. Ads in a paid product are unacceptable, especially when there was no warning they were present. I would have looked for other software if I had known.

2. The crop feature is shoddy compared to PSP 8. I found it much easier to precisely position and size the lines with the crop tool in the older version. The crop tool in this version has a mind of its own. I always seem to position the lines a little too narrow or wide. I have cropped tens of thousands of images over the years and could do so with precision in PSP 8, so this is a very annoying change. One of the bugs with PSP 8 is that it crashes intermittently when using the crop tool in Windows 7. I have usually found it more efficient to deal with crashes of the older version rather than use X6 for cropping. Hopefully, that gives you an idea of how bad the crop tool has become.

3. Zoom with the scroll wheel is shaky. The zoom in PSP 8 worked very smoothly to the point that I didn't have to move the scroll bars around to view the area of the image I needed. In other words, it zoomed in exactly where I wanted. With the new version I always have to move the scroll bars to view the part of the image I'm editing. That's an extra step that adds significant time when you have hundreds or thousands of images to edit.

It's possible some of the changes above occurred in past versions, but these are still annoyances compared to PSP 8. That version of the program worked well for me for a decade, so it's a disappointment that the software has decreased in usability.
1492260
I definitely need to get around to seeing if they have updated software for this thing. Onto the review:

It's been great. I ended up buying a $15 set of rabbit ears from Radio Shack and now am getting around 25 channels. Unfortunately, 3 are the kind I don't watch, and 7 of them aren't in English. However, I do get enough free channels that I do watch, so I miss not having Cable TV a lot less.

The picture quality has been fantastic. I have a 2nd monitor, and it feels just like a television set. The software it came with does crash quite a bit, and it is annoying.

Overall, it's been nice and it's making me look at getting a better antenna. It's also an incredible complement to a laptop computer.

Update: the WinTV application crashed like crazy just how. However, if you have Windows Media Center, it simply blows away WinTV. I got more channels with it and it's more stable
2150943
I brought this for my dad as a Christmas present. Buying an OEM version means that it will not include any drivers specific to your system - if you don't know how to load your own drivers or don't want to bother, you should buy the upgrade directly from your system manufacturer (ie Acer, Gateway, Dell, etc.).

I wanted to install the x64 version to allow 64 bit versions of software run - and to allow better memory access above 4 gigabytes.

The install went very smooth - and my Dad was up and running in about 30 minutes.  I went through a breif tutorial of the new features in Windows 7, as well as a tutorial of how Live MovieMaker and Photo Gallery work as well as how some of the new features work - like jump lists and the various libraries.

He's not very technical, but he caught on fast and likes Windows 7!
201719
As others have posted, this is NOT for the faint at heart, but it is indeed straight-forward, especially if you have upgraded from prior Windows systems.  Each package is numbered and ties to a specific computer.  One package per computer.  I bought TWO.  However, that said, the very same DVD will load up on any number of machines, but one and only one registration number must be purchased to activate the loaded system.  I took the choice to let it store off my old files but still for safety sake copied off my critical files to a USB GoFlex (not really needed, but it forced me to perform a much needed "back-up" of those files, and thus a valuable step before loading up W7).  Drawbacks: A few older applications simply do not like W7 and so I kept an old XP around to run those apps.  Many of the apps required a fresh re-install and then fresh updates from their vendor sites.  Some old apps ran well but lost a feature or two.  Thirdly, at this late date with W8 already out, there were about three reboots worth of updates from Microsoft just to get W7 up to the latest patches.  It takes a full day per computer and some babysitting.  Final result: Two of my older PCs were new enough to accept the upgrade and I love how it gives them a new lease on life.  My oldest XP failed the criteria test and so remains a just-in-case machine (and tertiary backup).
4574803
I recently went to a friends house and found out they had XP running on their machines and wasn't I amazed. The application that startled me the most was PowerPoint it is just fantastic with the new animations, this will make any audience say "WOW". The applications are also great with a much improved user interface, other improved applications are Publisher which is also my favourite application next to PPT. The other apps. such as Access and FrontPage hasn't changed a lot but they do look great with minor user interface improvements. With the look and feel of this version of Office you would surely even wan't to upgrade from 2000, thing for me is I don't have anymore money I already spent it buying Office 2000. But for those of 95,97 and even 98 it's worth the upgrade. My friends machine run's Win2k so he's O.K. I heard that it won't run on Win95, but that shouldn't be a problem just buy the upgrade for Win98 [it's cheap] and your done. Other nice features are Smart Tags, Task Panes they help a lot especially when it comes to doing school work. The only time I'm going to upgrade is in 2002 when WinXP arrives. Other products you should also try is MS Portfolio 2002 with hundreds of templates. One missing app. I miss so dearly is PhotoDraw, it was discontinued [shame on you Microsoft].
4134315
I have three different computers. One is an ailing Windows XP. This program worked well there. I have a Windows Vista 32 bit. The Magix does not work so well there. It does work on some things but not big files and big editing projects. I have a Windows Vista 64 bit which is not connected to the internet. Magix Pro 14 works well on that. I use that for most of my video projects now.
I received my Magix software for free from Magix because I used it on my videos at YouTube and they appreciated the free advertising I was giving them. While their software was free and I appreciate it, their customer support was sadly lacking, like most customer support. Their tutorial that comes with the software is OK but the narrator is speaking like a mechanical robot or some lifeless techno puppet.
The Help section of the software does not have enough info. Mine does not list the Clone or Cloning abilities, for example. Cloning is a big deal for videomakers. I use cloning very often in my videos. Magix should be raving about that and have tutorials about each and every effect they have built into this program. They could have it online and have a pointer from their Help section.
The good things about Magix are many. This program does 99 tracks of anything you might want. You can put a video track and an audio track on tracks one and two. You can add an audio musical pad on another track and a narration audio track on top of that. If you have two people conversing and two cameras recording them, you can synch them up and split the scenes wherever you want and slide one scene out of the way so the video track under it shows through. That means you can "cut" back and forth between them. You can do all sorts of audio effects on any audio track.
If you watch my video of Blasto Skymaster at YouTube you will see a scene where I am flying a plane and lightning is striking all around me. The plane is a jpg image I drew in Paint. I did a side view of myself with a green screen background. I used a video I made of some clouds in the sky as I panned the camera. I drew a streak of lightning in paint and added that to a frame here and there. I then added explosions I had purchased from a special effects supplier. I added an explosion sound on a separate track. That made a stack of five videos and one audio and sometimes more because I overlapped some audio and video. I had lots of tracks still free to use. I do not know of any other low cost video editor that can do that. If you have Windows Vista 32, I would carefully check before ordering this but it should work well on XP and it works well on my Vista 64. I use the name Featureman at YouTube. There are many cloning videos of mine there and other YouTubers who use Magix. Have fun with it.
3123695
Improved version of an excellent product - all formats including 4k
253773
I strongly regret upgrading from X2. In X3, I have to save after every move or I run the risk of the program crashing and losing everything (that's happened several times). The upgrade from X2 doesn't offer much at all and the Organizer goes back to the first photo every time you close the photo you're working on. In X2, it goes back to where you left off. I almost always take upwards of 60 photos every time I go to the lake or woods and it becomes tiresome to have to scroll across all the photos to get to the next photo to work on. When I emailed Corel support, I gave them all of the information: My operating system and verbatim what the error message(s) were when it crashed (says different things, different times). The response I received was "Corel PSP X3 is compatible with Windows 7. See our website for a list of compatible operating systems". Since that didn't even address the issue, I just said "forget it". A few days later received an email that they considered the issue resolved since I didn't follow up with another email. They didn't even act like they were paying attention in the first place, so why bother to keep emailing? I've learned to work "handicapped" with X3 and am waiting for Corel come up with another upgrade to eliminate the issues from their last.
3655380
I owned a couple older versions of this program.  I bought this becuase my older software wasn't compatible with my new XP operating system.  I was very disappointed when I found Microsoft has dropped many of the functions such as artistic edges and text enhancements such as shadows.  I loved these features and found they recommended an "upgrade" to the Digital Image Suite.  I thoguht I would do this, but I found you can't "upgrade."  You have to buy the full version of Digital Image Suite for the full price.  Ridiculus!  I went ahead and purchased Adobe Photoshop Elements.  I recommend you do too.
4356546
Buy this if: you want a speedier, more stable version of office for your Intel-based Mac.

I ordered this update not because I was looking for new features, but because I was desperate for a Universal Binary that would run natively on my MacBook. It fits the bill in this regard.

Don't but this if: you're looking for stellar new features.

Although some things are improved, the software is underwhelming - mostly stuff that should have been fixed in Office 2004. That said, I'm happy with the improved OS X integration, search and most importantly, Exchange support.

Overall: A worthy upgrade.
1192938
Do yourself a favor and DO NOT BUY any X10 products. Their customer service never answers any emails and there is no phone number for this company. If you can find one, please let me know what it is. When the program is working, it works ok at best. When it stops working, good luck with getting customer support for help.