CyberLink Power2Go 5.5 - Meets Your Disc Burning Needs

CyberLink Power2Go 5.5 is another offering in the realm of disc-burning software. There's no shortage of software to choose from when it comes to burning your content to disc. CyberLink Power2Go's main competitors, Easy CD Creator and Nero, offer a wide array of features to satisfy any user. Unfortunately, sometimes these programs offer too many features and menu options to make them attractive for the average home user who may only want to copy files to a disc. That is where CyberLink Power2Go 5.5 comes in. This seemingly simple-looking program makes CD and DVD disc burning a snap and offers enough features to meet most of your disc-burning needs.

As burning discs becomes more widespread, burning technology will continue to evolve and software programs will need to keep up. CyberLink Power2Go 5.5 may not look like the powerhouse its competitors are, but its support for current and next-generation discs makes it very appealing. CyberLink Power2Go 5.5 supports all the traditional disc formats as well as support for both Blu-ray and HD DVD formats, which provide you with greater disc capacities (15-30GB in the case of HD DVDs and 25-50GB with Blu-ray discs). CyberLink Power2Go 5.5 also offers support for dual-layer discs.

CyberLink Power2Go 5.5 gives you handy utilities at your fingertips to erase and copy discs, save and burn disc images, create DVD and VCD video discs, and rip and convert audio files. CyberLink Power2Go 5.5 also supports enhanced data security.

What's Hot: 
At $39.95, CyberLink Power2Go 5.5 is an excellent purchase. CyberLink Power2Go 5.5 is very straightforward to use and all the different burning options are easily available from the main toolbar. You can also use Power2Go Express to drag and drop files onto a disc without all the complicated menus many competitors include.

What's Not: 
The only thing that seems to be missing is the ability to do system backups, but there are numerous other programs available that you can use for that.

What's Hot: 
The installation of CyberLink Power2Go 5.5 itself was straightforward and completed with out any problems. After entering the CD key, Power2Go and Power2Go Express were installed. The package also includes a System Diagnostic application. Once you restart your PC, you’ll see that Power2Go Express loads on startup, giving you easy access to drag and drop files onto a disc. The programs installed fine on Windows XP and on Windows Vista.

What's Not: 
It’s only a minor thing, but personally, I’m getting a little tired of programs adding themselves to start up automatically. Every time I turn around there’s another icon in my system tray. Power2Go Express is a handy feature, but I’d rather be given the option to load at startup during the setup. You can turn this feature off by right-clicking on the tray icon.

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There are seven main options available when you launch CyberLink Power2Go 5.5; Data Disc, Secured Data Disc, Music Disc, Video/Photo Disc, Copy Disc, Mixed Disc, and Disc Utilities.

The Data Disc option allows you to burn data files to CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, DVD-RAM, Blu-ray, or HD DVD disc. Data files can include documents, images, and any other files. You can also create a bootable CD, DVD, Blu-ray, or HD DVD disc, which you can use to boot you

r computer from the disc.

To help protect your confidential files, the Secured Data Disc option allows you to burn password-protected data files to a CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, DVD-RAM, Blu-ray, or HD DVD disc. You can also burn secured data disc with file name encryption. Users will not be able to see the encrypted file names without the password. Data files can include images and any other document files. The Secured Data Disc option isn’t available for bootable discs if you are using Power2Go Express.

Enhanced security means that your data is protected if you should ever lose or have a disc stolen. CyberLink Power2Go 5.5 accomplishes this by using AES 128 data encryption. This means that all your files are password protected during the burning process when you choose secured data disc. You also have the option of keeping your file names hidden when you browse a disc using Windows Explorer.

The Music Disc option allows you to create CD-R, CD-RW, DVD+/-R or DVD+/-RWs with audio content on it. Prior to burning your audio disc you can select a content type such as Audio CD, MP3 Disc or WMA discs.

The Video/Photo Disc option allows you to create our own DVD or VCD from any movie file. The program also allows you to add one slideshow to your disc. This part of the program currently only supports CD and DVD formats. Hopefully future versions will support Blu-ray and HD DVD formats as well.

The Video/Photo Disc option allows you to create nice looking video content very fast and without much editing. This makes it an excellent product for the average home user. You can also author DVDs with Dolby Digital audio.

After you have edited your video and photo content you can continue with modifying the menu. CyberLink Power2Go 5.5 comes with only one menu theme, however, others can be purchased on the CyberLink website by clicking the “More” button.

CyberLink Power2Go 5.5 also includes some handy utilities for extracting and/or converting audio files from CD/DVD or movie files. You can also use the disc utilities to create and burn disc images, erase a rewriteable disc, and rip audio tracks.

CyberLink Power2Go 5.5 also supports Double Layer technology, which allows you to burn up to 8.5 GB of data, music, or video files onto double-layer discs.

Burning with Power2Go Express icons is fast and very convenient. To use Power2Go Express, simply drag-and-drop files from your desktop to the Express icons.  Then click the button and the program will start burning.

What's Not: 
Other competitors, such as Easy CD Creator or Nero, may offer a few more features but the only thing missing that I would have liked is the ability to do system backups or scheduled backups of selected files.

CyberLink Power2Go 5.5 doesn’t currently support Blu-ray or HD DVD disc formats for Video burning and the Photo/Video editing tools have very limited features. You can sort, move, and rotate images but if you’re looking to do more advanced editing then you may want to look at Adobe Elements 3.0, Power Director, or Pinnacle Studio. If you just want an uncomplicated way to create a video disc then CyberLink Power2Go 5.5 is perfect for the job.

What's Hot: 
CyberLink Power2Go 5.5's user interface is one of the easiest I’ve used. You can quickly choose an option and start burning your files without having to go through layers of screens. If you like customizing the look of your programs CyberLink Power2Go 5.5 comes with five default skins. If you register the product online you can also get seven more skins to give the program a look that’s appealing to you.

What's Not: 
Power2Go Express appears as rather large, stacked “blocks” that sit on your desktop. At first, this looked like a cool feature that gives you an easy way to drag and drop files onto a disc, but after a seeing those blocks on the desktop for a while it can become a little annoying. Fortunately, you can easily hide them with a simple right-click of the mouse.

What's Hot: 
The help files that come with CyberLink Power2Go 5.5 are very well written and offer step by step instructions for all of the various disc-burning options. CyberLink’s web site offers a wide variety of online support such as a knowledge center, product FAQs, technical support, and voice support.

Ability to do scheduled backups and support for Blu-ray and HD DVD discs for video burning.

Overall, CyberLink Power2Go 5.5 is a very well designed and first-rate program. People who are new to CD/DVD and Blu-ray burning will find this program very easy to use. Experts and power users may miss a few features, like more advanced video and photo options or additional options to edit audio content. Also, the lack of ability to create high definition video discs, such as Blu-ray disc or HD DVD is a disadvantage for people who want to use the newest media.

In addition to the good design and the ease of use, I also liked the option to create secured discs. This is a feature that you don’t see much in other software applications. For users who want to protect their sensitive private data from unauthorized access, it’s a big plus.

CyberLink's Power2Go 5.5's ease of use makes it highly recommended for people who are relatively new to disc-burning and who don’t want to spend too much time trying to figure out how to back up data or create photo and video discs. Overall, the features that CyberLink Power2Go 5.5 offers make it an excellent disc burning tool.

Easy CD Creator, Nero