If you have to decompress files regularly, especially image files, you may find Zipeg interesting. It's definitely one of the nicest image decompressors I've used in a while and best of all, there's no registration or payment required.

The key feature of this program is a cool preview function which allows you to see what you are going to decompress before you do it. This is great if you can't remember what's in a file or are suspicious about its contents. It supports a huge variety of archive formats including:
ZIP, RAR, ARJ, LHA/LZH, 7z, TAR, GZ, TGZ, BZIP2, CPIO, RPM, ISO, CHM, Z, CBR, CBZ, WAR and EAR.

You can extract/unzip items simply by dragging them and the interface is remarkably easy to use and good looking. It can process archives in the background whilst you work, sorts content of folders by name, size or date and automatically checks for the latest updates.

This is one of the best image compression utilities out there although the thumbnails can take some time to appear when you select a file.

Download Zipeg 2.4.0.922 in Softonic

Getting a video out has always been one of the best ways to while away an evening at home. However, these days few people choose to trudge down to the video store, preferring to download a movie, or plunder the near-infinite archives on popular video sharing sites such as YouTube and Google Video. Until recently it's been impossible to obtain movies from these sites without having to stream them online. However, Vdownloader is one of a number of programs changing that, allowing you to download these videos to your computer in AVI or MPEG format.

Essentially what this means is that you don't need to wait an age for popular videos to start streaming and can keep your favourites on your hard drive to watch at any time. This application does the job as simply as you could wish for. The executable makes a very small footprint and although the interface is very barren, it makes it easy to grab videos from YouTube, Google Video, Grinvi or DailyMotion very quickly. Basically all you need to do is copy and paste the link to the video into the box provided and hit ‘download'. Alternatively, you can browse the sites themselves by selecting the portal of your choice from the drop-down menu.

In one sense, the sparseness of the interface is an advantage, as it keeps things as clean and simple as possible. In another respect we were left wanting for extra features and options to help us peruse and download the videos we want. Practically the only setting you can tweak is the via the format dialog, allowing you to specify the format of the saved video (AVI or MPEG), the size of the video and the audio bitrate. We feel that the addition of a built-in video search tool or some video compression utilities would have lifted the program from being a good program to a great one.

Add to the fact that you can't download embedded movies like the ones you find on the front page of Google Video and you can't help feel frustrated that VDownloader doesn't do quite as much as it perhaps could. Having said this, the app is still in the early stages of development and the fact that it is so lightweight makes it prefect for those who want to grab video content with the minimum of fuss.

Download VDownloader 0.73 in Softonic

Image burning is one of the fastest and most efficient ways to save large amounts of data to DVD or CD.

Images are increasingly popular on torrent sites and other download portals because they allow users to download high volumes of data in a relatively small file. What's more, it's instantly ready for DVD or disk burning. ImgBurn is an ultra-lightweight CD/DVD/HD/DVD and Blu-ray burning application that everyone should have in their toolkit. It has several 'Modes', with each one performing a different task.

These include "Read" which reads a disc to an image file; "Build" which creates an image file from files on your computer or network; "Write" which writes an image file to a disc and "Verify" which checks whether a disk is 100% readable. With this last option, you can also ensure that the data is correct by asking ImgBurn to compare your disk against an image file. Finally, you have "Discovery" which puts your drive to the test to find just what kind of speeds and disk types it can support.

If you are experiencing any burning problems, it may be that your drive is not fast enough to handle the settings you have configured or that you are using the wrong kind of disks.

A very lightweight an powerful image burner that requires little experience but will ensure all your images are burned in a flash.

Download ImgBurn 2.4.2.0 in Softonic

Although web-based e-mail has meant that many desktop based clients are redundant, there's nothing that beats your own personal client. Koma-mail is the sort of client you can take anywhere on a USB stick which makes it ideal for those that are worried about the security of web based mail.

Best of all, it requires absolutely no installation and supports the all important SSL and APOP protocols. It also features support, as you would expect, for POP3 and IMAP plus it includes some other extra security add-ons such as ActiveX script blocking. From an aesthetic perspective, it's not the best looking e-mail client you'll ever use but it's very easy to find your way around, much simpler than something like Outlook and has everything you need. If you share the client amongst colleagues and employees, you can

You can define multiple user profiles so that each of them have their own settings and it supports multiple accounts, use of templates and both a simple spam filter and RSS reader.

If you're looking for a portable e-mail client to use between various people, then you'll find this helps you easily configure multiple profiles and does a simple but effective job.

Download Koma-Mail 3.75 in Softonic

Sometimes having just one single desktop image is not enough. This is the right moment to use Desktop Takeover.

Desktop Takeover enables you to display several photos on your desktop, embedding them right onto your current wallpaper. Simply select the images from any folder on your PC and drag and drop them on the program's interface.

You can then arrange and resize them as you like, though I must say the resizing tool doesn't work very well. The final result obviously looks better when displayed over a neutral image, rather than a highly detailed wallpaper.

The images used in Desktop Takeover can be either static or turned into channels, which means they rotate according to a user-defined period of time. It's a nice way to show off your best shots, don't you think? Also, whenever you grow tired of your multiple-photo desktop background, you can go back to the regular wallpaper from the program itself. Strangely enough, the wallpaper appears then as tiled.

If you ever wanted to be able to use more than one wallpaper on your desktop, you should definitely give Desktop Takeover a try.

Download Desktop Takeover 1.0 in Softonic

OpenOffice 3.0 is already here, at least in beta version. The most popular alternative to the almighty Microsoft suite has released its first public beta to allow users to provide feedback and help fine-tune the final product. So here's our two cents.

First, though the OpenOffice site displays a warning about possible instability issues in this beta, fear them not. The complete suite was perfectly stable during our tests, with all its applications running as smoothly as expected. This new OpenOffice is compatible with all file formats from Microsoft Office, including the latest docx, xlsx, pptx and so on from Office 2008.

All OpenOffice tools, along with your more recent documents, are easily accessible from a launcher ("Start Centre") with freshly designed icons, which is one of the main new features in this version. The launcher includes a handy template manager as well, though it's quite empty at the moment.

The suite's applications met our expectations in every aspect: they're easy to use (especially if you're used to working with Microsoft's suite) and feature all the necessary tools to create complete documents, spreadsheets, presentations and databases. I particularly liked the wizard-style interface in Impress (the "Power-Point" app) which enables you to create presentations in no time.

OpenOffice 3.0 left a very good taste in our mouths. In spite of being labeled as Beta, the whole suite works perfectly fine and enables you to enjoy all of its new features right now.

Download OpenOffice.org 3.0 Beta 2 in Softonic

Sometimes the mouse cursor can blink way too rapidly when you're trying to aim it at a particular target or area.

SlowMousion is a discreet application that slows down mouse cursor's speed when pressing and holding down a key or button. SlowMousion gives you more sensitive control over mouse movements when drawing shapes, dragging shapes and just about anything else you are doing with a mouse.

SlowMousion is extremely easy to enable and disable which is essential because it can annoyingly activate itself when you least want it to. The best option is to use the program to define a hotkey instead because this saves any confusion. With repeated taps of the key, you can define exactly how fast or slow you want the mouse cursor to move or blink.

SlowMousion is a very basic application that does a simple job but is best activated from the keyboard than mouse.

Download SlowMousion 1.1 in Softonic

E-books are a great way to carry around a huge amount of literature that would prove impractical in physical terms.

However, the perennial question with e-book readers is which one is best for your needs? FBReader makes reading e-books that bit more comfortable by making letters more readable, allowing you to navigate contents and indexes much more easily and generally enhance your reading experience.

Probably the biggest benefit of FBReader though is the ability to search and find any phrase or subject no matter how many pages are in your book. Although this is a very common function in many applications, it's something that many e-book readers don't include for some strange reason, but FBReader does. In addition, if you should need to read a page upside down (why you would I'm not sure) you can rotate pages 270 degrees.

FBReader is a very easy to use e-book reader which improves your reading experience and makes searching texts fast and simple.

Download FBReader 0.8.17 in Softonic

VirtualDub is a video capture and processing utility licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It is designed to be a general utility that can trim and clean up video before exporting to tape or processing with another program. It does not possess the editing power of a general-purpose editor such as Adobe Premiere, but is streamlined for fast linear operations over video.

It has batch-processing capabilities for processing large numbers of files, which you can extend with third-party video filters. VirtualDub is best at processing AVI files, although it can read (not write) MPEG-1 and handle BMP image sets.

Download VirtualDub 1.8.5 Stable in Softonic

All My Movies is a nifty utility for cataloging one's movie collection. It supports all formats, new ones - DVD, Video CD, AVI and MPEG files, and old ones as well - VHS tapes, for example. The program helps easily track films - which movies are loaned, which ones are borrowed, etc. Most importantly, the program is specifically designed for DVDs and works fully automatically with all digital carriers.

Basically, all a user has to do is to insert a DVD or scan a hard-drive. The program will extract all movie information - title, director, actors, description, genre, languages, subtitles, etc. If absent, this information can be imported from online movie databases, like IMDb.com with one mouse click or entered manually.

The best thing about All My Movies is how easy it is to use. Having a tree-like database structure, program owner can quickly sort movies by genre, actor or director. Another great perk is an option to capture movie screens for DVDs and AVI files and attach them to the database. User comments can be added too.

True movie fans with thousands of titles in their collection are certain to like the fact that movie data stored with All My Movies can be exported to HTML, MS Excel or plain text files. In addition, the program comes with password protection options to prevent unauthorized access, and a straightforward loan manager. Another advantage is that the program support third-party plug-ins, including database import from other popular movie cataloguing applications.

Download All My Movies 5.0 in Softonic

Boasting the ability to improve the speed of your downloads by an incredible 300 percent, Download Accelerator Plus features multi-server connections to let you squeeze the best possible performance from your Net connection.

The beauty of the software lies in its simplicity, you just choose the file you want to download, tell the program where you want it to be filed away then forget about as DAP does all the donkey work for you. What’s more, if you get booted offline for any reason the software will automatically resume the download from the place it had already reached.

DAP even searches for “mirror sites” for you and this serves to make downloading a pretty painless process, with the app sucking up files fairly quickly. DAP is a veritable feature-fest making the whole process much easier by including functions like automatic hang-up on completion of a download, download scheduling, and dial-up configuration – a handy tool for anyone not yet blessed with broadband.

The only slight niggle for some people may be the fact that it is nigh-on impossible to turn the thing off, unlike most of its peers, where you can choose to manually download something fairly easily. Having said this, because the program is so easy to use and integrates beautifully with Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera browsers, there really is little reason why you wouldn’t want this great utility keeping watch of your downloads all the time.

Download Download Accelerator Plus 8.7 in Softonic

The world of dubbing and lip syncing has come a long way since the days when high-pitched voice actors would jabber away in not-so-perfect harmony to Japanese Kung Fu fighters in the martial arts movies of the 1970s. In fact, digital animation technology has improved so much that it’s now possible to animate your own talking heads from your home PC.

CrazyTalk Media Studio promises to give you all the tools you need to import images and photographs before quickly applying mouth, head and eye movement to create realistic looking avatars and fun animations. At first we were a little dubious about the value of such a product, but were soon pleasantly surprised by the power of the utility.

Granted, our initial efforts were limited to taking pictures of friends and giggling inanely as they repeated audio clips from famous movies or songs. These first experiments were a little clunky to say the least and looked far from realistic when we relied on the automatic lip-syncing functionality. However, once you delve deeper into the settings, you start to realize that you can actually produce some impressive animations.

With enough tinkering you can customize everything from the teeth in the character’s mouth to their facial movements and their range of movement. Best of all is the built-in timeline, which gives you complete control of the animation and sound, much as you would do in Flash, or a video-editing suite. Complete with alpha channel support, the program is ideal for producing talking presenters to welcome visitors to your web site or presentations. The simple-to-use export facilities allow you to save to a range of formats whether as a media file, email attachment or a personalized greeting.

There are a few flaws with the program that are a little frustrating, but they fail to prevent CrazyTalk Media Studio from being a great program. Minor niggles are the lack of MP3 audio import support, and the relatively low number of preset templates and characters. The app does have a fairly steep learning curve but it’s good fun to use and is surprisingly powerful.

Download CrazyTalk 5.0 in Softonic

One of the best things about the PSP, apart from the brilliant games, is that you can watch films on it.

However, if your favourite films are on DVD, you'll need some way to convert them and the quality of the conversions can greatly affect your enjoyment of the films. Xilisoft DVD to PSP Converter is powerful and highly user friendly DVD to PSP converter which helps convert DVD to multiple formats including PSP, MP4, MPEG-4, H.264/PSP AVC Video, DVD to PSP audio format MP3 and DVD to PS3 Video MPEG-4. In addition, it supports DVD to PSP MP3, AAC, DVD to PS3 Video (480p, 720p, 1080i) MPEG-4. Although it's ideal for beginners, it will also appeal to those who want a bit more control over conversions due to a multitude of customisation options. Depending on whether you want your video to fill the whole screen, it allows you to convert DVD to PSP by customising the resolution, file size and even the part of the DVD that you want to rip. Even better, you can avoid ripping subtitle and audio tracks that you don't need by choosing to ignore them completely. The interface is simple but elegant with a preview window in the bottom left hand corner to help you review conversions or select the section of DVD that you want to rip. The conversion time may be a little longer than you're used to with such apps but the all round usability more than makes up for that.

A quick, easy and convenient burner that will impress with it's usability and range of conversion formats.

Download Xilisoft DVD to PSP Converter 5.0.40.0729 in Softonic

As far as free PDF converters go, doPDF is one of the best out there saving you tons of cash on Adobe's patented version and whatsmore, doing it in half the time.

The program is remarkably simple to use. Just open a document in Microsoft Word, WordPad, NotePad or practically any other text editing software, choose Print and select doPDF. The program asks you where to save the PDF file and when finished, the PDF file will be automatically opened in your default PDF viewer. This process takes less than a minute and you'll be amazed at how accurate the PDF is. Occasionally, it can suffer with unusually formatted text and images and so they won't come-out exactly as you want but this can be remedied.

Unfortunately, there's also no option to print large web pages (such as long news articles or forum pages) without dividing it into separate pages so you'll end up with lines dividing the article up throughout your PDF documents. The other slight downside is that it seems the PDF files it creates can be rather large although if you ZIP them up, this is not much of an issue.

An excellent PDF converter that's fast, easy to use and serves as more than an adequate replacement for Adobe's software.

Download doPDF 6.1.271 in Softonic

Are you a real Softonic fan? If so, this toolbar has been especially developed for you.

The Softonic Toolbar brings the latest reviews, updates, blog posts and software apps published on Softonic right to your web browser. You'll be able to read all the new content published on the site with a single click and you'll always be up to date with the latest program versions and software news.

What's more, this toolbar also features a series of online services, such as local weather forecast, an embedded search engine, an email notifier, a translation service powered by Babylon and a radio player with support for streaming radio stations, although you may need to download a separate plug-in to make it work properly. I found the email notifier particularly useful, as it supports multiple Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo and POP3 accounts.

The Softonic Toolbar also includes a configuration menu where you can customize it by choosing the elements you want to be displayed.

A web browser toolbar that brings you all the best from the web: a variety of online services and all the latest news on Softonic and insideTonic.

Download Softonic Toolbar in Softonic

Spyware is the most common computer security menace; it impacts more than 80% of all PCs and recent reports show that estimate is probably low. CounterSpy protects your computer from spyware, adware, Trojans and other malware threats. It's the choice of IT Pros and a favorite of technology editors around the globe.

One of the most powerful features of CounterSpy is the History Cleaner which erases the trails you leave on your computer as you surf the Internet. It also features a PC Explorer that allows you to view and modify computer security and Internet browser settings that are normally difficult to change.

Finally, it also has a great Secure File Eraser that ensures the complete elimination of all files you want removed from your computer. Completely removes all traces of any document, image, music, movie, or application you choose.

Download CounterSpy 3.1.2315 in Softonic

Computers are great and all that, but some tasks can get a bit boring if you have to do them every day. That's why it makes sense to install a macro recorder to perform these mundane activities for you - and JitBit's solution isn't a bad option. The application lets you record mouse click sequences, typing and the movement of the cursor on your screen for later use. Once these actions have been recorded they can be 'replayed' at any time and even compiled in an EXE file.

The program saves you a lot of time in filling out forms, generating information and performing maintenance tasks, and it's also good for creating presentations and video tutorials (although you can't export to different movie formats). However, the best thing about the app is its scripts, which allow you to program certain commands, such as launching programs or web pages, or even shutting down your PC without you having to record the action yourself.

When it comes to accessing the web, the app is a little cumbersome, but for general computing tasks JitBit Macro Recorder can be a real godsend.

Download Jitbit Macro Recorder 4.11 in Softonic

As the saying goes - Timing is Everything - and Good Timing aims to ensure that you'll get it right everytime.

It's a very simple program that allows you to configure alarms in any way that you want for every occasion. In fact, it's one of the most flexible alarms you'll find anywhere. There's nothing complicated about setting the times. You can enable several alarms to trigger at one time which is useful if you have to time different events in succession or simultaenously. Of course, it can also be used as a simple reminder tool allowing you to configure a short text warning regarding the type of event you're setting it for - whether it's food in the oven or an important meeting you have to attend. You can also scroll through the history of your alarms which is useful if you need to know at what time a recurring event is finishing it and compare it with current trends. The best thing about this alarm however is that all the sounds are completely customizable. You can use audio files, including Mp3s, as the default sound which is preferable to the ones that come with the program which are rather uninspiring.

There's nothing fancy or difficult about this alarm and it's a great solution for anyone who needs to time multiple events or a highly customisable warning system.

Download Good Timing 1.92 in Softonic

DV Kitchen aims to be a complete video solution for preparing and uploading videos to the web. All in one workflow solutions just like these are becoming more and more common to make it easier for anyone to share videos online.

Although I did find the interface a little unfriendly, you can't resize it properly and the tabs at the top right are too small, the video production process is well streamlined. You start off by selecting a video and encoding it. DV Kitchen comes with over 77 formats to choose from, among which the most popular.

Upload to a server is very easy thanks to the folder browser. You can also create remote folders.

Because video production is complex, DV Kitchen have included three tools that make it easy for users: SampleLab, Budget BitRate Calculator and TimeFreezer. These are all great help for best preparing your video to your needs.

One thing that is missing out is presets for online web platforms such as You Tube or Brightcove.

DV Kitchen is a good all around solution for preparing and uploading videos to the web.

Download DV Kitchen 1.1.6 in Softonic

If you're a big fan of Wordpad but wish it was a little more advanced, then without doubt, TextPipe is for you.

With TextPipe you can specify all your text processing needs through one application rather than having to remember and manage several text editors, command line tools, custom scripts and Word and Excel macros. In a nutshell, TextPipe basically makes it fast and easy to convert, transform and re-form data in text files including HTML and XML documents. Probably the most outstanding feature of TextPipe is that it is very fast and can handle files of unlimited size. TextPipe is also remarkably efficient at handling multiple tasks simultaneously. The advantage of this is that you only need to learn how to use one tool rather than several to do multiple tasks. For those that have invested a lot of money or are planning to invest a lot of money in an editor, it's also a much cheaper solution. If the developers claims are right, it certainly packs an impressive punch when it comes to making corrections. They report that in a recent speed trial, TextPipe made the same number of changes to a document in seconds that took MS Word hours.

A very powerful all in one text editor, cleansing and conversion tool although it will only come into it's own if you're dealing with very large documents and tasks.

Download TextPipe Pro 8.1.8 in Softonic