hmm actually many build since 6.0 and all are free for 6.0 owners. the most recent releases offer some improvements for the blind, so this definitely belongs on the jfw list. 6.0 for instance required one to go into the menu's to find remaining time left. think the latest build addresses this quirk. ftp.nero.com sighted users had visual graphs to indicate this. first in my opinion nero is the very best tool, though it does have some quirks. like the inability to crop the size down on a dvd disk. the premere tool is not in the same ball park. my suggestion is simply this, use a seperate ripper program for ripping mp3 stuff. if ease of use is what you desire. cdexe is free and can fill the build. nero can do this but find it easier to accomplish in other programs. the best tool for this is not free and has easy in its name, but is not associated with easy cd creator in any way. easy cd creator makes this super easy in version 6 and earlier but does not offer normalization as a batch operation. so don't consider it. think the other program is called easy cd extractor. its main advantage over cdexe is it does more disk. its disadvantage is it cost money. you may also want more formats that a dedicated ripper can provide. like a losless format like flack. nero directly supports flack but win amp requires a plug in to use flack. or mp3 pro or a variety of many compression formats. use nero for making custom cd roms and data disk. use clone cd for copying audio cd roms and backing up software programs if you can afford it. nero can also do this, but clone 5 seems to do more disk than any other program. if on a budget nero will copy most of the disk if you set the options up correctly. turn on rau channel support for best results in any program you use for copying cd roms. the more info you can read will result in a more exact copy. to get this feature in easy cd creator you need version 6 or later. they where a little slow to offer this feature. so it comes down to what you want to do, and if you intend to need lots of power, if you do nero delivers. plus nero offers drag and drop support, or the more blind friendly copy and paste. so nero basicly becomes an extension to windows explorer if you desire to use it that way. or you can use its own explorer interface. their is a guy in england that does a tutorial on nero. also acb radio did a review but last time i checked the review on nero 6 had no link up their. their missing several links, no idea why. bill bill -- To post a message to the list, send it to jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send a message to jfw-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line. Archives located at: //www.freelists.org/archives/jfw If you have any concerns about the list, post received from the list, or the way the list is being run, do not post them to the list. Rather contact the list owner at jfw-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx