ISOs have become popular in recent years, and can be very useful when sharing software or burning software to CD/DVD. With this new technology, Alex Feinman has given us a free ISO Recorder (power toy) for Windows XP, 2003 and now Vista. The program allows the user (as in the Windows version) burn CD and DVD images in Windows Vista), copy disks, make images existing data CDs and DVDs, and create ISP images from the contents of the disk folder. All of these tools can be very useful for computer use, and again, in the love of free software, this one is also offered for free here (http://isorecorder.alexfeinman.com/isorecorder.htm)
ISO Recorder is offered for 3 versions of Windows, Windows XP Gold (with no payment) 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 provides a tool called commandCreate, which you will need with any of the above versions of Windows to burn a CD.
To install the program, just go to the page I gave you and search for the version of Windows (Alex offers to determine what version you are running) and click the appropriate link. This will take you to the home page and more information about the version of the ISO recorder before you start the download. Alex provides information about the version including the release of the payment that he made and some problems during the installation and how to solve these problems. Alex also provides a troubleshooting guide when you’re about to download an ISO recorder release, so you know what’s going on ahead of time. This is useful to either prevent the event from happening or to let you know if the program is not going to do what you want. Alex provides a new line of ISO Recorder sections with each version, this way he simply tells what software he’s added and what issues he’s fixed. This is just some more useful information about the ISO recorder and some nice gestures from the programmer. Alex also has a FAQ with the most frequently asked questions and answers to these; it’s all about helping users to use ISO Recorder efficiently, which is very nice.
Once downloaded just run the installer and after a few clicks you’ll be ready to go, installation takes about a minute. I like simple installations and this one is very easy, once installed you can start using it. Alex provides lots of documentation on how to use ISO recorder on his website. ISO recording doesn’t actually use a GUI interface, but there is a shell that can be used in windows right clicking on files and that’s a new option.
Alex has gone so far as to make a tutorial section for each Version of the ISO Recorder, and has included step-by-step instructions with the release versions that users will see. This goes above and beyond for a free program, first I said that ISO Recorder is free, but now the programmer has appeared for you as a guide to go with ISO Recorder. Not too many programmers are going to do this because it takes time and effort, and since the book is an ISO recorder, they don’t get any money out of the deal. Alex has done a stellar job of documenting his program and giving it to users as much as he can (short coming to your home and giving you hands on photography).
As I said many times, ISO Recorder is a free program, but Alex has a Account”>Paypal account, and he accepts donations for his efforts , if you want you can always help the guy.
So what can you do with this software? Well, I’ve been burning ISO images of all my favorite software programs that I’ve brought back over the years. I wanted to have everyone in the world fail my system forever and I can’t lose my data back or my backup. So I made a CD writer using the ISO burner. This is one of the many tasks the program can be used for, I have also done some CD writing of my important data on my computer and in the form of an ISO image it is just convenient so that when I always need them I can just pop them on the CD.
The ISO recorder has received some good reviews and is also recommended by the MSDN download site along with Easy CD and Nero and is claimed to be used by many companies around the world. So if you want to try out ISO recordings, it would not cost more than a few minutes of your time. Go check out this awesome free program and start making your own ISO images today.
