14 DAY TRIAL // Last night, I found myself enjoying Nero Burning Rom while burning and checking some DVDs, and I must say I am really grateful to the hardware producers that give this program inside the retail package of their burners, although the versions coming this way are a little outdated. Anyway, today it's not about Nero, but another CD and DVD burner that I have found, so let's focus on it now...
Focus All CD/DVD Burner is the burning tool that I have here today, and its latest version is 2.1. What I have here is a feature limited shareware version, but we'll talk about the limits a little later. The setup package has 9.3MB in size and it was really easy to install the program. If you're going to like this tool, then you'll have to find 24.95$ for buying the full version and unlock all the features. I'll leave the features for a little later and start with the interface, as usual.
The first thing that surprised me about this program was its interface, because I can only say "excellent" when looking at it. The main window is well organized, the graphics are good looking, and the best part is that you can't get lost here, all operations being accessible from a single window that pops up after you click the New Burning button on the toolbar or use the item with the same name that can be found inside the File menu.
OK, so I already told you how to create a new burning project, but there's more to say about this. Focus All CD/DVD Burner can burn the following disc types: Audio CD, ISO, UDF and ISO/UDF Data CDs and DVDs, as well as ISO and CUE/BIN disc images. Just double click the project type you want to create and its window will open. The good part is that you can open as many projects as you wish, and apart from the burning features, this program can also create and save ISO disc images.
If you have used a burning tool before, then you can't get lost here, because everything's at hand. All you have to do in order to burn a disc is drag the files from the location on your hard drive into the panel that hosts the files and folders to be burnt and then you can hit the Burn Disc button! My greatest disappointment here was that I found no keyboard shortcut for changing the disc name, and I am not used to mouse-only renaming at all (no, there's not a context menu entry for this either!)...
Another feature that I expected to find here is an audio CD ripper, but unfortunately, it's not available yet. Maybe in the future...but let's move on and see what else we can do with this program, besides writing discs and creating images.
Focus All CD/DVD burner can copy discs on-the-fly, using only a fraction of the disk space required otherwise when performing disc duplications. The Utilities tool is an excellent addition to this program, allowing you to eject/close the drive door, get information about the medium, burning device and its capabilities, as well as erase rewritable media.
The trial version is very limited, and you can only burn four discs with it, and you also have to face some nag screens while doing this, but there's enough to make this program an interesting choice, so let's move on to the conclusions now and draw the line trying to answer the big question: is this worth your money?
The Good
Focus All CD/DVD Burner is very easy to use and has all the basic features needed to burn CDs and DVDs, its interface is excellent, the price is good and the built- in documentation is well done.
The Bad
In the future, I would like to see more keyboard shortcuts available and a shareware version with decent limitations - for example, 3 days trial period or at least a larger number of burns allowed, without those nag screens popping up that often.
The Truth
I am not in a great mood today, but I enjoyed trying this program, despite its drawbacks. Of course that, as you have seen, once you buy it, things get a lot brighter, and the shareware version's annoyances are balanced by the excellent interface and the ease of use. What else should I say? Go ahead and focus on burning!
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
