The bundled software DVD

We all welcome a nice CD or DVD full of freeware goodies, or else of payware that becomes freeware for the lucky buyer! If a low-priced—although excellent—laptop such as my Asus T100, came with a free yet fully functional version of Office 2013, courtesy of Microsoft, I expected something similarly important for this camera, which incidentally is more expensive than an Asus T100!

Well, in this respect I find that Panasonic has let us down. The DVD bundled with the FZ300 carries four items:

• PHOTOfunSTUDIO 9.7 PE, which allows to download and process pictures. This piece of software has been qualified by some users as “poor”, “slow” and crashing”. Needless to say, one can alternatively use many other available programs, either payware and freeware.
• LoiloScope: this is just a trial version, which can alternatively be downloaded from the web.
• SILKYPIX 4.3 SE: alas, a reviewer has qualified this as “the crappest(sic) photo/raw image editing software i have ever had the unfortune of HAVING to use.” Enough said.
• The Advanced Manual: this, together with the Owner's Manual, in both English and Spanish, are available from the Panasonic webpage.

At this point, I find this DVD pretty useless: my advice is to store it away in the camera's box (just in case you wish later to sell the camera as complete as possible) and forget it.