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Ashampoo MyAutoplay Menu was available as a giveaway on December 9, 2010!
Ashampoo MyAutoplay Menu takes all the work out of building autoplay discs with a simple point-and-click interface. And it includes CD and DVD burning so that you can create your finished discs without leaving the program.
In addition to CDs and DVDs, Ashampoo MyAutoplay Menu can also build USB thumb drives that “autoplay” directly on insertion, complete with interactive multi-page menus.
When the disc or USB thumb drive is inserted a graphical menu is displayed for user interaction. You can also design and display a “splash screen” – a graphical page that displays for a short definable period before the menu appears.
Creating your menus couldn’t be easier: You just point and click to add objects and position them!
Windows XP/ Vista/ 7
20 MB
$19.99
Ashampoo Burning Studio is the complete suite for all burning projects on CD, DVD and Blu-ray Disk in full HD. Special upgrade price for GOTD users - only $19.99 instead of the regular price ($49.99).
I don't understand the people that say they get spammed to death by Ashampoo. I have several of there products and even one fairly recently. And I only get offers from there every so often. I get more junk mail from places that i have never even been to then I get from them.
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Installed without any problem, I will keep it.
Thanks a lot.
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Ashampoo is great. They can send me as many emails as they please and it will not bother me at all. Their products are great, reliable and their price are excellent. I truly trust them.
When comes to Ahampoo I don't question, if I need I just download.
Thanks Ashampoo and GOTD.
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The last time I downloaded an Ashampoo product, they spammed my e-mail account with offers from their line of products, despite no interest seeing as how the only product I got from them was for free.
This spam kept coming even after I prompted them multiple times to stop sending me the offer mails. I even had to register as a member to prompt them to quit, and still, the spam kept coming.
No thanks to another Ashampoo product.
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#26: "My question (I purchased this program from Ashampoo months ago) is whether anyone has had it work as an Automenu (not requiring any other selections) on a USB stick with Windows 7? I have never had it work!"
If Autoplay is turned on in Windows 7, when you insert a CD/DVD/BD disc or USB stick by default you'll get a menu with several choices -- the choices are made up of: 1) the software you've installed that's added itself to the autoplay menu for that type of media, 2) Windows Explorer, & 3) if there's an autorun.inf, the program it refers to will show up. The autoplay menu also has a checkbox to always repeat the same choice, or you can set the default app in the properties dialog for the drive.
If autoplay's turned off you won't get the menu, & it won't open with any app automatically... In those situations all you can do is assume that the user looks at the contents in Windows Explorer, & either sees a readme.txt file you've included with instructions, &/or spots an .exe file that's an easy choice to double-click. Beyond that there's not much you or anyone else can do, except maybe include a physical note somewhere.
* * *
#27: "Downloaded at 8:30 this morning. Still no email with reg info"
Then something's wrong -- do it again. the web page showed the key before I bothered checking for the e-mail.
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Help. I clicked on the register button. This took me to the Ashampoo web site where they showed the "requested license key" as AMS**7-77***C-73**EF (I added some *s here to not giveaway any keys). Anyway, the license number without the *s just didn't work. On the registration screen of the program it says "the entered key is invalid." ALSO - nothing in my email from them and I do get many, many other emails from them (so it's not in 'junk mail). What should I do???
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Ashampoo MyAutoplay Menu is a nice app, but it has a couple of serious limitations... it doesn't include any built-in players &/or viewers, nor can you edit the commands to start an included app with your file opened. That means if you want your video file to play for example [let's say you created a slideshow using the very recent Wondershare GOTD] you have to hope the host PC/laptop can play it. You've no idea what app owns that file type on someone else's PC/laptop, if it's configured properly, or even if it works. Normally you'd get around that by supplying your own player, adding your video to the start command, but you can't. In fact, to open anything in any app you included it seems you'd have to use the MyAutoplay Menu to open another autoplay app, which makes the MyAutoplay Menu kind of senseless. [I wish it weren't so, & really tried many work-a-rounds, but sadly none seemed to work]. And while I used a video example, the same thing applies to most all types of files -- when you in effect double-click any file on an unknown PC/laptop, you don't know what's going to happen, & the person viewing your menu may not appreciate you opening P/Shop for an image, or their MP3 cataloging app etc.
What MyAutoplay Menu will do is create a stand-a-lone app that can show a Splash Screen you design/create, leading to a menu or set of menus you again design/create. If you choose the HTML option you get an autorun.inf file pointing to an html page it creates -- IMHO if that's what you're after you're better off using a regular HTML editor, & writing the .inf file in Notepad. MyAutoplay Menu has some decent tools for setting up your menus, & you're able to import images etc. or use what's included, but a good html editor/web page design app just easily outclasses it.
That said, MyAutoplay Menu seems to have very low system requirements, so it should behave well on lower powered PCs/laptops. It's not portable, but it relies on just 5 new registry keys, & it takes up ~55 MB in 759 files, 15 folders -- don't think that because there are 759 files it comes with huge amounts of content, as 276 are flags for things like the language selection dialog, & another 195 files are for different, available languages.
Overall I think Ashampoo MyAutoplay Menu is a nice app to create menus for limited projects where you keep any ambition fully in check. I could see using it to jot down a quick note, maybe with a greeting card background, & when you click on buttons it opens some folders of holiday-themed mp3 files for example on the CD -- one button for classics, one for rock etc., leaving it up to the viewer to decide what if anything to do with them. If you used an app to turn video files into .exe files [or Flash video into self contained .exe players], that should work. Beyond that sort of thing I'm hesitant to say use MyAutoplay Menu to just open files [with no idea what will happen] because by creating/including a menu you're now responsible for it working well on someone else's PC/laptop -- in effect you own the experience -- & IMHO you're often better off just giving them the files to play however they want... that way you'll avoid the calls for tech support, perhaps the occasional comment that you don't know what you're doing, & maybe even blame if something goes wrong with someone's PC within the next month's timeframe.
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I actually own Ashampoo Burning Studio 10 and they do have a section that handles AutoPlay, but I'm curious if anyone knows whether or not there is anything extra that comes with this standalone version. Anyone know if this was just taken out of something that already comes packaged with Burning Studio, or does this have more features?
Thanks to anyone who's willing to help. (Now, everybody vote this down. You know you can't help yourself. :))
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Traditionally, Dianne, autoplay menu setups have been used for software install discs. Condescending much, Mike(#15)? ("Traditionally" - heh!).
AutoRun and AutoPlay are not the same feature. AutoPlay scans removable media for music and video files, then offers to open them with one of the apps that are already installed on your computer. AutoRun runs an app that is included on the removable media itself.
Despite its name, Ashampoo MyAutoplay Menu creates AutoRun apps, just as Ashraf(#1) and mike(#15) described. It has been exploited by the SillyFDC worm that infested US Defense Department computers, by the Conficker worm that prompted Microsoft to recommend disabling AutoRun (after finally fix the bug that had prevented it from being disabled), and by the Stuxnet worm that has infested industrial computers worldwide via infected PCs.
So, yeah, AutoRun is evil, just as Jo Bleaux(#8) said. (And even Microsoft confuses AutoPlay with AutoRun. Maybe that's because MS still includes the AutoRun app as an AutoPlay option if AutoPlay is disabled.)
You only need this, Diane(#6), if you're creating a CD to distribute apps that are buried somewhere an end user isn't likely to look for them, or if you're distributing web pages that include script to end users who will browse it with Internet Explorer. Otherwise, keep the CD directory structure tidy, keep the good stuff near the top of the hierarchy, and label the files clearly or include a readme.
(An early IE "feature" allowed Javascript stored on a local drive to run as a shell script, able to read and write the filesystem and to run other programs. Javascript loaded from the Internet is much less privileged, able to change only the web page that loaded it. If that web page is saved along with its Javascript, though, that toothless Javascript from "out there" will have the power of a shell script when the saved page is opened in IE. Oops! Instead of fixing the security hole, Microsoft preserved the feature by instead displaying a warning whenever a local web page loads a script, leaving it up to the end user to decide which scripts were safe. Other browsers don't share this defect.)
@mike(#15): (1) Only IE has this particular problem displaying local web pages, and it only affects pages with embedded script or which load scripts; (2) An organization that has blocked HTML scripts on removable media as a security measure won't likely permit execution of an unsigned app on that same media; (3) The default cluster size for NTFS or a typical FAT32-formatted flash drive is 4096 bytes. Unless your flash drive is FAT16-formatted (like the 5 MB drive on the IBM XT), small files do not take up any more space on a "USB stick" than on a HDD.
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I can't stand these dolts who constantly moan because they get a couple of emails from a company who is giving them great software for FREE !!
I get about 2 emails a month from Ashampoo, for about 10 great FREE programs.
Mind boggling !
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Ashampoo makes good software I took adavantage of a promotion they had a bitsdujour dot com where I bought 100 dollars worth of software for 20 bucks, I am happy using Ashampoo WinOptimizer 7 and Ashampoo UnInstaller 4, Ashampoo Burning Studio 10 and todays GAOTD software.
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Downloaded at 8:30 this morning. Still no email with reg info
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My question (I purchased this program from Ashampoo months ago) is whether anyone has had it work as an Automenu (not requiring any other selections) on a USB stick with Windows 7? I have never had it work!
Sparky
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The Good
* Straightforward and easy to use.
* Allows users to create EXE or HTML menus.
* Menus are fully customizable by the user, from the background image to the content on the menu to the buttons and everything in between.
* Menus can be multi-paged.
* Can burn menus directly onto CD/DVDs, be placed directly onto a thumb/flash drive or external hard drive, and be saved into a folder on the computer for manual transfer.
The Bad
* Doesn’t allow for retrofitting menus onto already existing thumb/flash drives or external hard drives (or re-writable CD/DVDs).
* Not very well suited to work with the anti-autorun.inf culture.
* Splash screen background images only be .JPG, .PNG, and .BMP files – no .GIF support.
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For Damon:
The Premium Version they are referring to is Burning Studio 10! Nothing at all to do with AutoMenu!!
Sparky
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@Dianne, You are spot on! Ashraf, other reviewers and even the program marketers are so well educated in computer technology, that the layman's terms for what the product actually does and how it benefits us is often omitted, even with thorough reviews.
I hope to see a layman's introduction precede how GOTD programs can benefit the average beginner and intermediate user before all of the intricate details of the program.
It's disheartening to read a lengthy review and still not know how a program can benefit us.
I consider myself an intermediate at computers but many of the programs go right over my head so I can only imagine how many programs discourage the average user. (especially the partitioning and back-up programs.)
Thanks to #13, #15 and anyone else who has attempted to dumb this down for us average users - and thank you Dianne for bringing this necessary subject to the table.
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I'm not afraid to write a bit of code from time to time, and despite the description, creating an autoboot CD/DVD is not very difficult. Still, it might be nice to have an elegant program that will do this in a more convenient manner.
My complaint with this software is that it:
1) Installs a toolbar by default (the new spam)
2) Demands that the user to enter a valid e-mail address.
3) Refuses to accept my gmail e-mail address which I specifically use for these sorts of demands.
I'm not about to open myself up for yet more spam, and couldn't get past this, so I uninstalled the program.
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you don't get alot of spam from these guys i have several of their programs
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Will not download I am still being spammed to death by this company. If I wanted spammed to death I would join a spam group on yahoo. I am a writer and do not have time to spend deleting a lot of spam mail. Thank you for the offer I will turn this one down as I do all others given a way's by this company.
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@#3 "Ashampoo as a company is great – in the past I was aprehensive about registering – They have my keys for my products stored with my account (including this free one in case I need to install it again) NONE of the others do that for us that I can think of, it’s usually a one-shot install."
Paragon also keeps a list of your software, and the keys, in your "account" (the email you used for the key). These are great companies.
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#9: "... But would this mean one could possibly include a password as a menu item on the Thumb? Or am I just wishing? Thanks muchly."
FWIW the easiest way I can think of to lock content on a USB stick is using a prior GOTD from Wondershare called USB Drive Encryption & later from Gilisoft called USB Stick Encryption http://goo.gl/U7jWL . Truecrypt would be better, but not as easy. Either way the user is locked out of all content -- they can't see let alone access the actual file(s) without using a password 1st. Menu systems are like web pages -- it's all about the content. Some content can be protected, some can't, and for the stuff that can't, protecting everything by enclosing it in an excrypted virtual disk *might* work well.
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Just wanted to say: I have several Ashampoo products and they have never changed my home page. I don't receive spam from them. I do get an occasional notification of available upgrades - something I am glad to get.
Good software. Good company.
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#6: "Good Morning! I am NOT being facitious, but, what would you do with this?"
Traditionally, Dianne, autoplay menu setups have been used for software install discs, for [usually touch screen] kiosks providing stuff like visitor information at places like tourist attractions, for [often employee] training/learning discs, they might be used for retail in-store job application PCs, they're useful for sales demos & presentations, they can be handy for non-DVD movies, they're sometimes used on DVDs to provide PC-only content & interactivity [not as popular today, it's how you add hyperlinks to a DVD, inserting a DVD player in a web page], and/or in general any time you want/need a menu system to guide the viewer & present information, whether it's on a disc, USB stick, or hard drive... Think of almost anything you've seen on the web, & you can present it this way without needing on-line access -- it may be less of a headache to setup & maintain, is more secure, & it provides an amount of control in a work or school setting since unlike the web or some intranets, viewers are *stuck* in the program you set up, without the possibility of getting sidetracked.
At 1st thought it might seem a no-brainer to just set things up the same way you normally would on the web instead of creating a special program, but very often on a CD/DVD/USB stick you can't... To start with, browsers like Internet Explorer won't work with a lot of CD/DVD/USB stick content without giving the browser special authorization, which the user may not have permission to do in a work or school setting, & is a bother regardless that many people won't fool with. Other problems come from not knowing what the user has installed (including what versions), where it's located on their hard drives etc., & there aren't many methods available to you to find out from a CD/DVD/USB stick. Those problems are especially acute when it comes to playing video. Using an application instead of web pages also makes sense when you consider that most people have autorun turned off nowadays, & so have learned to double click the .exe file on something like a software install disc -- many don't have any idea what to do when presented with .htm/.html files, especially more than 1, plus the many small (often image) files that web pages use eat up space on a USB stick at a surprising rate [they take up *Much* more space than the same files on a hard drive].
That said, if/when you want to use web pages the Opera browser can work well, & has a Kiosk mode so you can set it up & include it with the rest of your content. Video can use Flash, or you can include the VLC player which can also do video DVDs, and has a playlist setup that you can use to control what the viewer sees to some extent. You can also use portable apps. The portableapps.com menu player has it's own autorun setup [it can run whatever portable app when the menu program starts], &/or you could use its pop-up menu to give viewers/users a heads-up on where to start, choices on what to do etc. While we're used to seeing Flash banners, video, & games, Flash Shockwave once had a lock on the market for CD autoplay programs, & still works well. Demoshield is another company that at one time had loads of marketshare, & for pro work with lots of flexibility there's also IndigoRose, which has been around for years with apps like its Autoplay Menu Studio http://goo.gl/RzRr .
Of course Ashampoo's MyAutoplay Menu isn't going to go head-to-head with pro apps costing hundreds of dollars, but you might use it to add something -- to do more than just stick a bunch of files on a CD/DVD/USB stick & expect whomever to know what to do with them.
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Oh my god! I was waiting for this to come on giveawayoftheday :D:D:D
Yay! Its finally here, im definely downloading it
Thanks Giveawayoftheday :D
-Tom
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@Dianne: The purpose of this software is fairly specific. It would be good for someone wanting to make a CD, DVD or thumb drive that would present a window and let the person pull up a website, install software, send an email, look at pictures, etc. Instead of making a disc, it could also perform these tasks for creating a web page.
@Jo Bleaux: I think you have autoplay and autorun confused. Autoplay is a Windows feature that remembers how you want to handle a type of disc (play a DVD with PowerDVD, pull up burning software for a blank disc, play a music CD with Windows Media Player, etc). Autorun performs a specified task when media is inserted. Autorun is exploitable by viruses. Autoplay is not.
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thankyou very much
just if this software make faster run is better
and more easiest way to use.
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Still waiting for activation email. Seems to work in portable fashion as well....in trial mode/pre-registration anyway. Will wait until registered for final "portable" comments.
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This is a decent program if you need a simple menu for a CD or website. The one thing I would like it to do is accept switches for executables for unattended installations of software. It does not do that.
You are fairly limited with what you can do with this software. The software I use is called AutoRun Pro Enterprise. It has a lot more flexibility but has a larger learning curve than Ashampoo's offer today.
It doesn't hurt to grab this offer. You never know when you might need it. Ashampoo gives you an installer and a serial number that could be installed even after this offer has expired.
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Question: Under Ashraf's 'The Bad' above ... "Doesn’t allow for retrofitting...." I assuming one would be required to reformat the USB Thumb in order to install and run this program. No problem there.
But would this mean one could possibly include a password as a menu item on the Thumb? Or am I just wishing? Thanks muchly.
DT
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Autoplay is evil. I'll decline on this one, thanks.
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Good Morning! I am NOT being facitious, but, what would you do with this? Can someone give me an example of how they would use it? Aside from not knowing what to do with it, it installed very easy, was extremely easy getting the key and the program seems very user friendly. I went through the entire "Help" menu and AShampoo really spelled things out.
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During installation they have pre-checked boxes to make Ashampoo your default search engine, homepage and something else I can't remember. These can be unchecked.
You must click on a button during installation to get the full license. That takes you to their site where you must enter an email address, and then a link is sent to that email address.
Once you click on that link emailed to you, you are taken to their site again and asked to join their newsletters which is optional. You then click a button to have the key sent to you. They key will then be displayed on that page as well as being sent to your email.
It's worth jumping through the hoops although I was disappointed at the end of the installation to learn this is not the premium version.
You will see this offer at the end of the installation:
http://www.freepichosting.com/share/328643-ashampoo.png
No big deal as this is still a great tool as described by reviewer #1.
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I'm gonna sound like I work for somebody here for saying all this...
This program Installed and ran fine in Windows 7 64 bit tonight. Tested it a little, everything seems to work well. The interface is very simple. I wanted to make my Dad an autoplay disk with some stuff a few months ago, and the free tools I found were awful, so I don't know of a good alternative, but Ashraf is always a good source in that area.
Ashampoo as a company is great - in the past I was aprehensive about registering - They have my keys for my products stored with my account (including this free one in case I need to install it again) NONE of the others do that for us that I can think of, it's usually a one-shot install. So I happily registered an account with them long ago, and I have never regreted it. Now any free or paid product goes on my account list - Thumbs up.
When I first installed a GAOTD version of Ashampoo Burning Studio a long time ago, they got me to change my homepage during install which really irritated people here bad. But they have so many positives it just didn't bother me at all, and I felt compelled to leave it - so I didn't change it back.
That's right, Ashampoo Search by Conduit (powered by Google) is my Homepage, and I use the search. You may say I'm crazy, and I posted this last time we seen Ashampoo here
- they can have my homepage, they're that good (it's just a simple Google page you can always change it back, or type in your own yahoo, google, ect.)
Did they do it again with this?
Anyway...
I have Nero 8 and their Ashampoo Burning Studio does things I can't do in Nero and visa-versa, so I use one or the other for almost everything. Ashampoo Burning Studio is $20 right now if you need a good burning suite at a good price.
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The Good
* Straightforward and easy to use.
* Allows users to create EXE or HTML menus.
* Menus are fully customizable by the user, from the background image to the content on the menu to the buttons and everything in between.
* Menus can be multi-paged.
* Can burn menus directly onto CD/DVDs, be placed directly onto a thumb/flash drive or external hard drive, and be saved into a folder on the computer for manual transfer.
The Bad
* Doesn't allow for retrofitting menus onto already existing thumb/flash drives or external hard drives (or re-writable CD/DVDs).
* Not very well suited to work with the anti-autorun.inf culture.
* Splash screen background images only be .JPG, .PNG, and .BMP files - no .GIF support.
Free Alternatives
Compact AutoRunner
For final verdict, recommendations, and full review please click here.
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