Others say...

"The Nero Wave Editor 2 (for audio) is awesome!"
Just thought I'd point out that for me this software was worth the entire price simply for the "Wave editor 2". That gets 5 stars from me. You can use it for things like editing .wav files with noise reduction (reducing pops and clicks from digitized LP tracks), and even more significantly (for my uses), you can merge two CD tracks into one via the "insert" feature. For example, if you want to merge the second and third track of a CD, you can pull the third track into the editor, then click "insert" and pull in the second track, which it will append at the front. If you've looked for this application, you know what I'm talking about; if not, well then never mind, but believe me it comes in very handy if you like to edit CD tracks. As far as authoring the tracks to CD, I don't use it for that (I use Feurio), but Nero apparently can do that too.

The rest of Nero isn't that great, IMO. Though the DVD copying tool (copies only uncopyrighted DVDs, as is proper) is useful if you don't have another way to do this on your PC. I did find the DVD authoring features tricky, somewhat flawed, and essentially useless. Of course, the whole endeavor of DVD authoring is tricky on any software; it's just a really complicated task. Even so, any software purporting to author DVDs should be better than this, in my opinion. So if you want to use this for more than just exact copying of a non-protected, non-copyrighted DVD, then you'd likely be better off with other DVD software. But again, the Wave Editor can't be beat for editing .wav tracks.

"0 stars!!!!!!!!!!!! dont buy this"
The tech support sucks. I spent hours trimming and editing a video of my son. I went to burn it to DVD. 8 tries later it still wont burn. Customer support was horrible. Their end solution was to uninstall and reinstall. I burnt the SAME .avi files with another product and it worked, NO problem. This tells me Nero sucks. I will end up buying Sony Vegas after I try the Demo. It sounds like a better product.
Did I mention that Nero sucks?


"It's the worst I've used"
I bought Nero 6 about 18 months ago and basically it has been dormant on my computer the entire time.
It is extremely difficult and will only perform basic functions that free software often does better.
After purchasing this product I found out that to get most functions an expensive upgrade was needed. Do not buy 7.

"Look somewhere else"
Ahead made some very robust programs about four years ago. I have no idea how they fell off like they did, but they certainly hit bottom pretty hard. Perhaps they suddenly decided that burning files to CD wasn't important, and they decided to add a bunch of other half-baked features to their program while its core got all soft. Perhaps they used all the money they got from hardware manufacturers who bundled Nero with their drives to snort so much blow that their brains fell out through their sinuses. Perhaps they just started employing less than adequate Indian programmers to write different parts of the program and then proceded to paste it together with old gum. It is a mystery. Unsuprisingly enough, Nero 7 is even worse. It's like the signal to noise ratio is losing badly. It already takes two updates just to get it to do the basic things right and then only half of the time. At this rate, Nero 8 will be declared a menace to global stability and will be removed by any competent virus protection.

Avoid.
This.
Program.

Anyone who tells you different was probably paid to.

"Better than Nero 7 but..."
I tried Nero 7 but it ruined my XP OS and was full of bugs. After reading the negative reviews on Nero 6, I decided to install as little of the program as necessary to burn CDs and test my drive/media. This installed and upgraded fine except for the latest upgrade for the software to test drives/media. The Help file did not work. In addition, I found out that the software to test my drive/media does not work with my Plextor drive.

I now have decent software to burn CDs. Even this part of the software does not seem as sophisticated as most of my other applications. Although I have not tried free software, I would not be surprised if it is as good or better.