ISO’s have become very popular in the past years, and can be very useful when sharing programs or burning programs to CD/DVD. With this new technology Alex Feinman has given us ISO Recorder, a free (power toy) for Windows XP, 2003 and now Vista. The program allows the user to (depending on the Windows version) burn CD and DVD images (DVD support is only available in Windows Vista), copy disks, make images of existing data CDs and DVDs, and create ISP images from content of a disk folder. These can all be very useful tools for a computer user, and again keeping with my love for free programs this one is also offered free here (http://isorecorder.alexfeinman.com/isorecorder.htm)
ISO Recorder is offered for 3 versions of Windows, they are Windows XP Gold (with no service pack) and Windows XP (with Service Pack 1), Windows XP SP2 and Windows 2003 (including 64-bit OS), and finally Windows Vista (RC 1). Alex also offers a command line tool called CreateCD which will work with any of the above Windows versions for burning CD’s.
To install the program just go to the website I gave you and find the version of Windows you are running (Alex offers away to determine what version you are running) and click on the appropriate link. This will take you to the download page and more information about the version of ISO Recorder you are about to download. Alex offers information about the Version includes a release log stating what he has done and some problems you might face during install and how to solve these issues. Alex also offers up known issues with the release of ISO Recorder you are going to download, so you know up front what might become an issue. This is helpful so you can either prevent an issue from happening or know if the program isn’t going to do what you want it to. Alex offers new features to ISO Recorder section with each version as well, this just simply tells what he has added to the program and what issues he has resolved. This is just some more helpful information about ISO Recorder and a nice gesture from the programmer. Alex also has a FAQ with the most asked questions and answer to these questions; he is all about helping the users to use ISO Recorder most effectively, which is very nice.
Once downloaded just run the installer and after a few clicks you will be ready to go, installation takes about a minute. I like simple installs and this one is very easy, once installed you can start using it. Alex provides lots of documentation about how to use ISO Recorder on his website. ISO recorder doesn’t actually use a GUI interface but it is a shell that can be used in windows by right clicking on files and it is a new option.
Alex has even gone so far as to make a tutorial section for each Version of ISO Recorder, and has included step by step instructions accompanied by screen shots of what the users will see. This is going above and beyond for a free program, I mean first ISO Recorder is free but now the programmer has given you a visual guide to go along with ISO Recorder. Not too many programmers would do this, because it takes time and effort, and since ISO Recorder is free, he isn’t getting any money out of the deal. Alex has done a stellar job of documentation of his program and providing users with as much assistance as he possibly can (short of coming to your house and giving you hands on tutorial).
Like I said many times ISO Recorder is a free program, but Alex has setup a Paypal account and does accept donations for his efforts, if you want you can always help the guy out.
So what can you do with this program? Well I used it to burn ISO images of all of my important free programs I have downloaded over the years. I wanted to have them all on disk incase my system ever freaks out and I can’t get my data back or my backups fail. So I made some CD’s of the programs using ISO Recorder. This is just one of the many tasks the program can be used for, I also made some CD’s of important data on my computer and having them in an ISO image format is just convenient so when ever I need them back I can just pop in the CD.
ISO Recorder has gained some good reviews and it is even recommended by MSDN download site along with Easy CD and Nero and is claimed to be used by a number of companies around the world. So if you want to go test out ISO Recorder, it’s not going to cost you more than a few minutes of your time. Go check out this awesome free program and start making your own ISO images today.
