What's New in OEM Software

Here's some software from ArcSoft that's likely to come free with your next scanner or printer purchase. According to the company, about 85 percent of its business comes from OEM software bundled with hardware products. These products are very basic, so I recommend you get them free or not at all.

ArcSoft's $39 Scan-n-Stitch is a one-trick pony that lets you scan documents that are larger than the glass on your flatbed scanner. The software then stitches the pieces together.

ArcSoft's $30 Photo Greeting Card software does just that. It creates holiday, birthday, seasonal and other greeting cards. Just about any other graphics software package you might have already purchased does that too, of course, as do a variety of online photo services.

More interesting is that ArcSoft is getting into the backup business. Its $50 Backup & Burn has an easy-to-use interface to backup a variety of file types to CD, DVD, hard drive, or server. It asks you what kinds of files you'd like to backup (photos, Microsoft Money, music, etc.) and then instructs you to back them up. Again, the software is basic, but in this area, basic might actually get people to actually perform the backups. ArcSoft has not announced yet which products would bundle this software.