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Virtual Makeover 2 (PC)

Focus Multimedia Ltd
Cosmopolitan Virtual Makeover 3

Mindscape
Fighting Fit with the Royal Marine Commandos

Europress

Getting fit can be quite a challenge. If you think you are fit already, then this CD might be enough to convince you otherwise. Produced in conjunction with the Royal Marines, it includes some of the toughest exercises and training regimes you'll find anywhere. You begin with the software by completing a basic set of fitness tests. Then it will set itself to suit your current fitness level. The software automatically designs a week by week regime that should make you fitter if you follow it. You keep a record of your performance, and complete regular tests to see how you are progressing. It is a good thing that you don't have to start at the sharp end as Royal Marine recruits do, though you can skip over and take a look at what they would be doing during the same week of their training as you are currently on. In addition to the exercises, there is advice on completing different kinds of exercises, information about the clothing and other equipment you'll need to get fit, a database of information about the Royal Marines, guidance on healthy eating, and even some first aid tips. Fighting Fit might not make you into a Royal Marine, but it should help you get fitter than you are already, and provides a lot more than just a raw exercise plan.--Sandra Vogel
PC Fitness - Your Personal Trainer (PC DVD)

Focus Multimedia Ltd
Greenstreet YOGA: Sitting Fit Anytime (PC)

Greenstreet Online Ltd
Sugar Virtual Makeover

Focus Multimedia Ltd
Cosmopolitan Virtual Makeover 2

Mindscape

Keen to try out a new look? Too broke--or cautious--to head out to the stylist and demand an overhaul? Wish you could really get a sense of all of your choices? If so, Cosmopolitan Virtual Makeover 2 may be just the program for you--a risk-free means of assessing which hairstyles, makeup combinations, and accessories look good enough to try out in the real world.
The first stage of the virtual makeover process involves loading a scanned picture of yourself into the program and providing personal characteristics from your head shape to hair color. From there, an infinite combination of choices can be overlaid onto the photograph. Match bridal hairstyles with designer eyewear, try out hats, experiment with lip liners, or attempt to reshape your eyebrows. The resulting makeover images can be compared with the original picture and printed out; or, if the results are disastrous, they can be discreetly trashed. Only you need know you were never meant to be a redhead!
While Virtual Makeover is very helpful in narrowing your fashion choices, the end result of the makeover process is subject to the whims of technology. If your scanned photograph is of poor quality, it will be harder to judge the alterations you make to your look. Every computer monitor distorts colours slightly, affecting the way make-up will look on your skin. Additionally, the program is conservative in the fashion options it provides: the available hair colors are all natural tones and the accessory options are limited to hats, glasses, and the like. This suburban sensibility won't necessarily stop you from creating a hot new persona. Additionally, you can have loads of fun doing things the program isn't specifically intended for: putting wedding veils on photographs of male friends and relatives, for example, or doing a makeover on your pet cat.
Cosmopolitan Virtual Makeover 2 is simple to operate and allows you to check out hundreds of potential new looks in a very short time. If you are digging for fashion inspiration, or even just curious to explore your possibilities, you will find that this program can be an entertaining and useful tool. --Alyx Dellamonica
Allen Carr's Easyway to Stop Smoking (PC)

Avanquest Software

Allen Carr's Easyway to Stop Smoking is a CD-ROM self-help guide for those wanting to give up the dreaded weed. Allen Carr once smoked 100 cigarettes a day. Then he stopped. Instantly. And apparently without any problems. Allen Carr's name is associated with clinics throughout the world, and now this software adds another way of accessing his stop smoking method.
The CD-ROM's contents are divided into 17 chapters--the "Addiction" chapter shows that nicotine is a drug and explains that you get addicted to it faster than cocaine or heroin; "Special Cigarettes" gets to grips with those cigarettes that seem particularly good (for example, the one just after a meal or the first of the day)--Allen explains that the reason these are special is that they follow times when you couldn't smoke (because you were eating or sleeping) and that it's the addiction kicking in, nothing more.
Work through Allen Carr's Easyway to Stop Smoking and you will understand why you smoke, and how you can get your attitude in order and stop right now. When you've worked through the CD-ROM (which you can easily do in a single session) you should be ready to stop smoking immediately. And with a 90 percent success rate you may never buy another pack again. --Sandra Vogel
British Medical Association Family Health Encyclopedia

Dorling Kindersley Ltd

Everyone needs advice about health, and this authoritative electronic reference from the BMA could replace many a well-thumbed medical dictionary. It combines several books in one, sensibly arranged to make it easy to find what you are looking for. In addition to a dictionary of symptoms, the contents include an atlas of the body, a guide to first aid and emergencies, background information on some common diseases and advice on positive health and caring for others. The approach is thus thoroughly modern, advising how to live healthily as well as what to do when something is wrong. The self-diagnosis section gives you advice and information about particular symptoms. You can start by selecting the nearest description from a lengthy list, or choose by pain site or body system. For example, you could choose "chest pain" as a pain site, or "respiratory symptoms" from the body systems screen, or "difficulty breathing" from the A-Z list. Having chosen your starting point, you enter a flowchart where you answer questions about your condition to narrow down the causes. If the possibilities are serious you are advised in clear terms to phone your doctor straight away. In addition, the CD offers more thorough search facilities than a book's index, and you can thread your way through cross-references with a single mouse click. The coverage is excellent, from children's health to the care of older people, and the tone is always reassuring and professional. Emotional and mental health problems are covered as thoroughly as physical symptoms.--Frank Pennycook
Teaching-you Feng Shui Skills

Focus Multimedia Ltd
Glitter & Gloss Total Style Makeover

Focus Multimedia Ltd

Total Style Makeover allows you to play with every aspect of your look from the neck up. You'll need a digital photo of yourself (though for starters you can practise on one of the provided models). Once the photo is loaded you can change your own or your victim's appearance by altering make-up, adding glasses and coloured contact lenses, altering the hairstyle, and accessorising with earrings, tattoos, hair beads and grips, and so on. Getting objects like hair and glasses onto a model is just a matter of clicking on them, though getting the make-up right requires brushwork.
The kit is provided by Specsavers opticians, Miners and Tommy Hilfiger, and there is plenty of variety. You can save the new look as a digital image, print it for future reference, and, if you're feeling brave, email it to a friend. The software is very easy to use, and the help that walks you through the first five minutes or so should be all you need. --Sandra Vogel
Natura Sound Therapy

Cosmi Europe Ltd
Joanna Hall's Step By Step Guide To Weight Loss

Avanquest Software

Joanna Hall is something of a health and fitness guru--more than likely you've seen or heard her on television or radio. Joanna Hall's Step by Step Guide to Weight Loss CD-ROM is a weight management programme covering exercise and healthy eating, and provides plans that can be followed over periods of six, eight or 10 weeks.
You need to give the software quite a bit of information about yourself--a range of measurements (including height and weight), what you like to eat (do you include read meat, for example) and how (on the run, at home, at work). You also need to tell it what days you are able to exercise. Once this information entered you are provided with a menu comprising a two-week eating plan that you rotate throughout your programme. You also get two exercise regimes, one of which involves physical activity (including jogging, skipping, stair climbing, walking) and the other comprising resistance sessions (exercises to stretch and strengthen different parts of the body). You can pick and choose meals from the provided database to vary the food intake and change exercises to suit your requirements. To keep you focused each week you also get a task to focus on--week one's task is to sort out your water intake.
Joanna Hall's Step by Step Guide to Weight Loss is an all round programme which is flexible enough for you to tailor to your requirements, yet rigid enough to have the desired effect. The only irritation is the computerised voice of 'Active Annie' your on-board help system. Luckily you can turn her off. --Sandra Vogel
Cosmopolitan Virtual Makeover Sampler

Softkey
Anne Hooper's Ultimate Sex Guide

Dorling Kindersley

Anne Hooper's Ultimate Sex Guide is a DK title that brings the wisdom of sex-counsellor and marriage guidance expert Anne Hooper to CD-ROM. It is designed for people seeking to improve their sexual experience, whether in a new or established relationship.
Laid out like a book, it is built around four main themes: questionnaires, case studies, "sexopedia" and programs. The questionnaires and programmes work together to individualise Hooper's expertise. Like the software itself, the questionnaires are password-protected, to ensure the user's privacy, but also to ensure that those for whom the adult content is inappropriate can't access it.
Well-designed and easy to use, this software uses explicit live video clips to demonstrate sexual positions, with categories from Exotic Sex to Advanced Positions, as well as animated clips to explain essential items of sexual health, contraception and pregnancy.
With voice-overs and lots of snippets of text, there is a lot of information in here, and quite a lot of depth and ideas for experimentation, as well as factual advice on disease, adolescence and bodily functions. Hooper also explores the psychological side, such as repression, fears, expression and developing self-confidence.
This CD is well-organised, with a main menu which is always accessible, and on which you can access the video library, A-Z index, Your Case File and related topics. In look, feel and content, it is exactly like a DK printed manual, but the multimedia content is well integrated, and really does provide excellent add-on value.
The content is firmly aimed at heterosexual couples, and as a shared tool to use and read together, it should prove valuable particularly for those who are new to a relationship, or seeking to further intimacy in an established one, or just wanting to know more about sex.--J Collins
Dr Ruth's Encyclopedia Of Sex

Focus Multimedia Ltd
Family Doctor 3rd Edition

Focus Multimedia Ltd
Young & Modern Makeover Magic

MGI

If you feel as if you have spent the last month chained to your desk, a makeover may be what you need. But why go to all the hassle of leaving your home, when it can now be done without anyone touching a hair on your head? This supposedly rhetorical question is the premise of this slick new CD-ROM, which promises you a complete new image--the only catch being that it's a virtual one.
The idea is, you scan a picture of yourself into your PC and then the fun begins. There are over 350 hairstyles to choose from, and unlimited hair colours, plus a complete make-up set and the added possibility of a change of eye colour. Style yourself with hats, earrings and necklaces. Then, just to show that there is more to this "new you" than meets the eye, you can blend your image onto the cover of a magazine, print it up and e-mail or show it to all your friends. This CD-ROM is fast and funky, with great graphics and decent quality visuals. Of course, if you are going to spend all this time sorting yourself out with a virtual makeover and choosing a new look, there's no reason to not give yourself the real thing too. --Toby Green
Dr Hilary Jones' Doctor In The House

Avanquest Software
Personal Gym

Softkey