I will admit that I am not exactly the most tech-minded person around. However, my love for Japanese PS1 games got me into the world of ISOs many years ago and any program that focuses on image processing gets my attention. That is why today I am taking a closer look at PowerISO which is a very popular image file processing program.
How to Download PowerISO
To download PowerISO, click on the Download button at the end of the review and choose the operating system you use
The Program Review
To start with, PowerISO now lets you also make Blu-Ray discs as well which is cool. Granted I have not dabbled in the world of Blu-Ray yet, but it does also support CD, DVD, and even burning to a pen drive/USB drive if that is more of what you are looking for.
You can download and try out PowerISO for free, but the free trial is very limited as the files it allows you to work with are very small. The price for the whole program is $29.95 for lifetime use and I do not think that is a bad price… in theory. I say that because there are many other free programs that offer what this does for free.
If you ask me, the reason that you would decide to pay that $29.95 is for ease of use. PowerISO makes making a new bootable drive or even a PS1 disc of a rare and expensive game you want to play nice and easy. I am sure most people just want something that allows them to burn their ISO file to a DVD, CD, Blu-Ray, or USB drive and this makes that as easy as possible.
While I am pretty basic when it comes to this kind of stuff, PowerISO does have many advanced features. You can compress a file if you wish, split it into multiple volumes, and even give it some kind of password protection. Granted these more advanced features are not for most users, but it is great that they are there.
I found the whole user interface to be very easy to figure out. Granted, I only played around with the more basic functions, but everything was laid out very clearly. On the site, they have a fantastic tutorial section that has many different sections that teach you how to use all of the features. This is actually done very well and it breaks down each thing you can do with the program into easy-to-follow steps.
While there are many free programs that do offer a similar service as to what PowerISO is offering. I must say that I think the ease of use this gives you does make that $29.95 very attractive. If you do any kind of work with ISO-type files then it is well worth considering downloading.
