Packed with more file-management tools than you can shake a stick at, PentaWare's loaded PentaSuite Pro 8 boasts a series of basic, well-integrated utilities that will help you organise files, compress and encrypt archives, create PDFs, burn DVDs, and view and convert image files... the list goes on. While this jack-of-all-trades toolkit might suffer in comparison to powerhouse stand-alone apps such as Photoshop Elements, WS_FTP, and Nero, its overall breadth and bargain price are tough to beat.
Setup with PentaSuite 8 is a simple matter of launching the install application, which gives you the option of installing everything or picking and choosing your components. Once the utilities are installed on your system, just launch the PentaWare Manager: a grey, vertical toolbar that acts as a launchpad for PentaSuite 8's various tools. While the Manager is helpful for launching the first PentaSuite 8 tool of the day, we found that the other tools were so well integrated within each utility that we rarely returned to the launchpad; for instance, you can launch PentaSuite 8's DVD-burning app by clicking an icon in the file-compression tool. We also liked how PentaSuite 8's tools popped up in our contextual menus; right-click a JPEG file, for example, to turn the image into a ZIP file and mail it to a contact, add it to an existing archive, burn it to CD, or encrypt it with PGP. Nicely done.
PentaSuite 8's impressive toolkit of utilities covers a variety of file-management chores. First up is PentaZip, a drag-and-drop tool that compresses your files into ZIP archives and secures them with up to 512-bit AES, BlowFish, Serpent, DES, TDES, or Mars encryption. You can also create self-extracting ZIP files, modify files within a compressed archive, or extract files from older ZIP or PKZip archives. PentaBrowser is a souped-up version of Windows Explorer that exposes image and Word document files with thumbnails that you can expand to jumbo size, while PentaView acts as basic photo editor (including image cropping, rotation, a handful of filters, red-eye reduction, and colour tweaking) and lets you view files in about 60 formats, including AutoCAD DFX and DWG, JPEG, FIG, WMF, Doc, Excel, RTF, and multimedia files (in text or Hex formats). PentaCollector lets you pull together individual files into projects and perform batch functions, such as renaming (with the help of PentaRename) and file conversion (with PentaConvert); you can then compress your project into an encrypted archive or burn it to disc. PentaAlbum takes your snapshots and turns them into sleek photo albums; you can tweak the page and cell/border layout, add titles, headers, footers and copyright info, and output the results to HTML (there's also a wizard that steps you through the process).
Ready to upload your photo album to the Web? PentaFTP will handle those duties, complete with a simple Explorer-style interface and secure SSL transfers (that is, if your Web host supports them). PentaPGP lets you manage a set of encryption keys and create and send PGP-encrypted files to your confidants, while PentaPDF turns your images and documents into PDF files.
PentaSuite 8 certainly won't replace such stand-alone tools as, say, Adobe Acrobat or WS_FTP Pro. PentaFTP can't handle remote-to-remote file transfers; you can't create encrypted virtual drives as you can with PGP Desktop; PentaDVD won't burn music files in Audio CD format; and PentaView's basic image-editing capabilities don't hold a candle to those of Photoshop or even Photoshop Elements. That said, PentaSuite 8 scores points for the sheer breadth of its file-handling abilities; if you need to open a FPX, MRW, or SFW file or you need to take a quick peek inside a pile of DOC files, PentaSuite 8 is a handy tool in a pinch.
PentaSuite 8 comes loaded with plenty of illustrated help files, although there wasn't a PDF user guide at the time of this writing.
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