Alcohol 120% 2.1.1 Build 2201

Overview

Alcohol 102% will make powerful, comprehensive copies of CDs, DVDs, and video/computer games. Even Play Station games can be copied using this program. Some scorn Alcohol for its piracy capabilities, but don’t let that scare you away. If you are worried something may happen to your favorite disks, this program is the one to use to back them up.

Installation

Installation was very easy save one thing and can be done on any version of Windows including Vista and 7, bit not on Win98/ME. Halfway through you have to restart your computer. You can't skip this step because it's required in order to enable virtual drives emulation functionality. Restarting a computer is troubling enough, especially if you are doing many things already, but once you restart you also still have half of the installations to deal with. Despite that hiccup the installation lets you customize how much you want to install (with the desktop shortcut and all or not). The setup file comes bundled with the developer's toolbar, which you can uncheck if you wish. Once the setup is done you can click on the shortcut and start the program.

Interface

First complaint: if you have the trial version you must wait a few seconds before the program will open for you. This is because the full version is offered to you and you are given about ten seconds to take it or continue to the trail version. If you want, updating could help your disk backup endeavors. You can also pay extra for either a year of updates or a lifetime of updates. If you stick with the trial version you get no updates. 

The moment after you click to go with the trial version, the main screen pops up. From there it is easy to see what you need to do to burn a disk. There are wizards for making and burning images, simple copying, erasing, converting audio, finding images, managing your disks, and extra wizards.  

Pros

The best I've seen. And no disc player is needed to install software, or play games. Alcohol 120% is easy to use, makes perfect backups, and allows mounting of different image formats. Its burn section is very customizable allowing for exact copies, especially when creating images of game discs.

Burning images to a disk is a great way to store tons of them if you don’t want to keep them cluttering your camera or computer. The wizards are as easy as the installation and the copying is too. If a disk gets full of stuff you don’t want or need, then you can erase it. You can also record new things onto a disk if you please.

Decent customer services exists despite the lack of a number to call.

Cons

The check for updates to product feature can be annoying but you can disable that. It does come at a decent price but if it was 19.99 US dollars id buy a copy for every machine in the house. All 8 of them!

Alternatives

Nero Burning ROM, now part of Nero Multimedia Suite, is one of the best alternatives. It has both burning features and virtual emulation. Nero combines huge amounts of features in a compact and easy to use package. It handles disc duplicating and pre-mastering with ease, supported by a cover designer and even an audio file editor. The excellent GUI desing keeps all the functions handy and guarantees that simple tasks can be done quickly. DAEMON Tools Lite is another alternative. It focuses on virtual emulation and it is also free.

Conclusion

I highly recommend this software. Takes a few minutes to figure out how to use the various options in the interface, but honestly it's pretty intuitive. It’s free, it does everything you would want a disk copier to do, and it’s very easy to learn and use. I personally came across no problems.