Software review

By JOHN TORRO
© St. Petersburg Times
published March 24, 2003

Total Burn Platinum Suite

• Company: Broderbund
• System: Windows
• Price: $49.99

Windows Media Player has some great features. Unfortunately, simplicity is not one of them. Even an old-time Windows user like me had problems trying to figure out just what I had to do to make a simple copy of one of my music CDs. If this is something you do often, the process is time consuming and inconvenient.

With Total Burn CD-Maker, all you need to do is put in the CD-R/CD-RW disc, the source audio CD and click the CD/DVD copy button. The Total Burn wizard will step you through the process of burning your CD, which is no more than a couple of mouse-clicks. Of course, to copy CD-to-CD you'll need two CD-ROM drives, a CD-RW to burn it and another CD-ROM/DVD-ROM to copy from. If your CD-RW/CD-R is the only CD-ROM drive in your system, then the benefits of CD burning software will not be as apparent. But it still will be easier than the built-in Windows XP methods.

Total Burn comes with the usual assortment of photo and movie editing and labelmaking add-on programs that seem to always be packaged with this type of software. I didn't give those a real workout, and I'll assume that they are functional but not spectacular. Besides, it's the CD copying abilities that really matter, and I found Total Burn to work as well as any other brand I've tried. What may make Total Burn stand out from the rest is its straightforward, user-friendly interface. It is bright and uncluttered, and it makes the more common functions such as CD copying the best I've worked with.

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