About this article Over the years, we at ZATZ have had the opportunity to publish articles by some well known authors and true experts in the field. When we set out to review Nero 6 Ultra Edition, we really wanted to find someone who truly understood the product. No one could possibly have a better, comprehensive perspective of Nero than Wallace Wang, author of The Book of Nero. The Book of Nero published by No Starch Press (at http://www.nostarch.com/nero.htm), guides readers into understanding the various features of Nero, one of the most powerful CD and DVD burning programs on the market today. We're thrilled that Wally's able to write this review for us. And now, Wallace Wang's review...

Describing everything that Nero can do is like asking the proverbial group of blind men to describe an elephant. There's a lot there, and no matter who you ask, you're likely to get a different perspective of the product. That said, if you want to erase, play, save, or rip data off a CD/DVD, chances are good that Nero can do it.

Beware though. At first glance, Nero can be intimidating because instead of offering all of its vast features through a single user interface, Nero divides its multiple features among no less than a half a dozen different programs, all of which sport different user interfaces. So not only do you have to know what you want to do with Nero and which command you need to choose, but you also must figure out which particular Nero program to use and where a particular command may be buried in each Nero program.

Needless to say, this can cause confusion, especially since you can choose identical commands through different Nero programs and different interfaces. For example, in one Nero program, you can choose a command by clicking on a menu. In another Nero program, you can choose that identical command by clicking on a button.

Some Nero programs even overlap in functionality. For power users, Nero offers the Nero Burning ROM program, which displays a list of folders and files that users can drag to burn on to a CD or DVD. Since novices may be intimidated by the drag-and-drop approach, Nero also offers a simplified version called Nero Express, which displays a separate window that lets users click on a file or folder individually that you want to burn to a CD/DVD.