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While your computer is an excellent storage device for your various digital media files, it can also provide the means of transferring data to other devices. With rewritable CD/DVD drives now being included as a standard component of desktop and notebook systems, users have the ability to create optical media with content that suits their own individual tastes. For example your favourite songs, from a variety of sources, can be burned to a single disk and then replayed in the car or other locations. You just need an appropriate optical drive, some blank media and software designed for the purpose. Record Now! Deluxe sets out to fulfil the latter element.

Available on the Roxio label, now a division of Sonic, Record Now! Deluxe comes with the claim of being “as quick and easy as 1, 2, 3” (which some might remember as being the title of the killer application that helped kick-start the personal computer revolution). Installation requires the input of a 17-character serial number and gives the option of a typical, custom or complete installation that takes up 15MB of hard disk space on a system running Windows 98SE or later. After a system restart you can run the program.

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The design of the Record Now! Deluxe interface is similar to that adopted by some MP3 flash devices with regards to its overall shape. Running beneath a display area, showing the current drive used for burning activity, is a series of tabs that lead to the various features of the program. The first tab automatically opens and closes the optical drive while the second tab provides links to various tasks such as erase a disk and label creation.

Record Now! Deluxe divides its functionality into the four main areas of music, data, backup and video. The first of these can be accessed from the third tab. Here you can carry out tasks that include burn an audio CD containing music stored on your hard drive; make a copy of a disk; create a disk using one of the popular audio file formats; and convert audio CDs to MP3 format.

The data section includes options to create a data disk; making a data image of a disk that had previously been saved to a hard disk; and making a copy of a disk. The backup tab allows you to target specific files or your entire system for burning to disk. Finally the video tab lets you transfer home movies or photos to a CD or DVD media.

In each case the user is lead through a series of easy to follow steps as content is selected before the burning process starts and the optical media is created. At this point you are offered the opportunity to produce a label for the media. This label can be of the paper type to insert in the CD case or media based format.

This latter type makes use of the HP LightScribe technology which permits a label to be burned on to the reverse side of LightScribe enabled media. This produces professionally looking results but does have a time penalty in that it can take up to 28 minutes to burn a single label. Roxio has provided a number of templates that allow for no customisation which rather limits the possibilities that can be achieved with the LightScribe feature.

Record Now! Deluxe is an easy to use product that is ideally suitable for the novice user. Priced at £19.99, the title requires Windows 98SE or later with 15MB of hard disk space, Internet Explorer, Macromedia Flash 6.0 or greater and Windows Media Player 7.1 or greater.

http://www.roxio.co.uk/products/recordnow_deluxe/index.jhtml