With enhanced drawing and animation features including brand new Flash animation support, DrawPlus X2 is the ideal solution for anyone looking to create eye-catching, professional-standard artwork.

Whenever you need to create a stylish cover for your school or college project, an attractive family tree or business diagram, a photo-realistic art masterpiece, or even a high impact Flash animation youll find everything you need to create your most outstanding designs, ever.

The program is divided into four distinct categories--Digital Media, Games, Screen Savers, and Themes--each of which may be accessed through a single, convenient graphical interface. Of these, the Digital Media component is clearly the deepest and most interesting. Its handy utilities include an MP3 audio converter for transforming disk-hogging WAV and MP3 files into space-efficient WMA format, a music playlist organizer known simply as Personal DJ, an exceedingly capable CD label maker, 20-plus Media Player skins, and three animated Media Player visualizations (including one culled from the Xbox game Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee).

Music and video fans in particular will immediately gravitate to the Voice Command for Windows Media Player module, which allows users to operate most Media Player functions by issuing verbal commands into their computer microphone. Even when faced with garbled enunciation and loud background music, Voice Command faithfully recognizes commands such as "Volume Up" and "Pause." Sadly, Microsoft's seemingly innovative Speaker Enhancement tool is ultimately little more than a glorified tone control that often hinders rather than improves the sound of your speakers.

Of the three games included in the package, the most intriguing is Russian Square, a deceptively addictive puzzle affair that plays like a one-dimensional offspring of Tetris and Rubik's Cube. Far less involving are the arcade bowling knock-off HyperBowl and the three-dimensional Labyrinth, a virtual take on the real-life game that involves a tilting table, metal ball, and lots of ball-gobbling holes. Eight animated screen savers and four desktop themes complete the package, the most notable of which is the stunningly lifelike and absolutely gorgeous underwater screen saver called "Aquarium." Otherwise, the program's themes and screen savers are no better than those that can be downloaded free of charge from various Web sites.

With Plus! for Windows XP, Microsoft has assembled a multipronged mixture of useful and not-so-useful multimedia tools and lighthearted amenities into one easily accessible compilation. If you aren't the type to scout around the Internet for individual components and feel the need to spruce up your XP audio-video environment, it may be for you. --Gordon Goble

Adobe Contribute CS4 software enables users to collaboratively author, review, and publish web content while maintaining site integrity - without learning HTML.

You can edit within your browser
The new full-featured in-browser editor in Contribute CS4 provides a powerful yet familiar interface for editing and publishing web pages within your browser.

Contribute works with Dreamweaver templates
Easily edit advanced layout components using Adobe Dreamweaver templates, which provide editable regions within a protected design.

Contribute has a complementary publishing server
Contribute Publishing Server simplifies web content management further by enabling administrators to centrally manage access to websites, integrate with enterprise systems, track publishing activities across large numbers of websites and publishers, and more