** 0.5 page review / 447 words **
Bird of Prey CD-ROM

** JPEG of fish from Mike Kerslake here **

Mike Kerslake goes hunting with a Falcon and comes back with a big catch...

The Falcon, is a fine machine, but in order to make the most of it, we tend to add lots of little system improvements. However, building up a collection of suitable programs means plenty of disk orders from PD/shareware libraries or expensive downloads from your local bulletin board or the internet. Wouldn't it be nice if someone gathered together all the really good bits and bobs, slapped them on a CD-ROM, and made it available at a reasonable price?

The good news is that Floating Fish Studios have done just that and created, in their own words, Bird of Prey, The Ultimate Software Collection for the Falcon030!

Big title, big boast, but is there any substance to the claim? Happily there is. The CD-ROM contains an impressive array of Falcon system improvement software, utilities, applications, games, demos and commercial software demos. The authors reckon there's over 21,000 files on the CD, and claim they haven't put lots of fillers in to make the number up.

The files are divided into 12 main folders, then into categories, so finding your way round is reasonably easy. A proper rundown of what's on the CD-ROM would have helped - but I just happen to like lists! The files are uncompressed, and the authors reckon you can run most programs direct from the CD-ROM. In practice, many of the applications I tried to run direct didn't run directly from the CD and copying files across to a hard drive was the only solution.

As with other CD-ROMs, much of the software featured has been superseded by new and improved versions, but anyone equipping a Falcon from scratch should find the collection a good place to start from. If anything takes your fancy, you can always obtain a more recent version from the author or publisher.

I don't have the space to go in depth about the software I found on the CD-ROM but I have discovered lots of useful little utilities including one fantastic application, called Scape, which creates planetary space scenes.

There's loads to explore, so if you've got a Falcon and access to a CD-ROM player, save yourself a lot of time and trouble by taking a swim through this collection.

** PRODUCT BOX **
Product: Bird of Prey CD-ROM
Publisher: Toad Computing/Floating Fish Studios
Supplier: System Solutions
Telephone: 0181 693 3355
Email: ssolutions@cix.compulink.co.uk
RRP: £24.95
Requirements: Falcon and CD-ROM player
Pros: Wide range of excellent software.
Cons: More than a few items only function correctly when launched from hard drive
Rating: 75%
** end product box **