Ahead Nero 7 Ultra Edition

Ahead's Nero burning suites have always been popular among computer users. The previous version, Nero 6, was our personal favorite because it was packed with awesome features and functionality. The new Nero 7 Ultra Edition certainly doesn't leave us disappointed. In this review, we will tell you about the variety of programs that Nero 7 Ultra Edition comes loaded with and how they work and if they are right for you.

To start, Nero 7 is built around the same "StartSmart" engine that Nero 6 was. It allows you to easily choose what task you wish to perform and the appropriate Nero application will start. This is very helpful to computer novices or anyone who isn't completely familiar with Nero's interface and variety of applications. The layout of Nero StartSmart is very easy to use and it puts all of Nero 7's applications at the users fingertips.

Nero 7 includes a new program called Nero Scout, which is a media organizer that keeps track of your video, audio and image files. It runs in the background and updates its database as you add, move or delete those types of files. Nero Scout can be useful if you have a lot of images on your computer because you can easily organize them into categories.

Nero Vision, Nero's video editing, authoring and slide-show application, has gotten a few updates too. DVD authoring is now more wizard based to make it a lot easier than it was before. Another added program is Nero Home, which is a Windows XP Media Center like application with a similar interface that allows you to watch TV if your computer has a TV-tuner card, control it via a wireless remote and time-shift the TV feed (if your tuner card supports it). You can finally make DVD's with chapters now with Nero Vision 7.

Nero 7 still does not support the DivX file format, but it does offer to use MPEG-4 instead. You can also now create HD-DVD video files, but you cannot create them in Nero 7 because there isn't a standard for that format yet.

Some other changes to Nero 7 is the interface of a few programs that were in previous versions of Nero. Nero Express, the wizard-based disc burning app, along with InCD, the rewritable CD program, have all gotten slight changes to their user interface for the better. Nero BackItUp (one of our favorite programs in the Nero suite) got a ton of new features. The file backup program now can schedule backups much better than before, the ability to backup or restore to external drives and FTP support.

Nero's new music composer, SoundBox, is very similar to Apple GarageBand because it allows you to experiment and create your own music. SoundBox, unfortunately, does not contain the more advanced features sound in GarageBand, but it is still a cool program to play around in.

Overall, Nero 7 is still one of the best of the best in CD/DVD burning and multimedia tools. In our opinion, it easily blows away Roxio Toast 7 due to its huge amount of included applications and tools. The new interface changes and feature additions really add to Nero 7 in a very good way. If you are looking for a new CD/DVD burning program, Nero 7 Ultra Edition is probably for you.