Move Action is designed to allows your webcam to detects motion and set it up as a security camera.

This can be used to trigger a blocking mechanism on your PC or signal an alarm. Alarms can either be sent via e-mail or even text to warn you of intruders. The PC blocking function works by blocking your PC and requiring a password to access it again. It can also save webcam shots in JPG format and then send them submit them by mail or transfer them by FTP, play a sound file or run external applications. However, as impressive as this is, the most intriguing feature of this program is that it can compare two images captured at different intervals. This way you can monitor a site without having to look at the videos on the camera constantly. This saves you sitting there for hours on end monitoring and is great if you need to use evidence to prosecute or charge someone.

A great little program for those concerned with security although the configuration is rather complicated.

Download Move Action 2.5 in Softonic

Problems with the Windows registry are a common cause of Windows crashes and error messages.Registry Repair allows you to fix your registry and optimize your PCs performance.With a few easy steps, you are able to find problems caused by invalid entries, references and links in the Windows registry and provides a list of the errors found, you can choose to selectively repair each item or automatically repair them all.

Registry Repair uses a high-performance detection algorithm to quickly identify missing and invalid references in your Windows registry. These problems can occur for many reasons including being left-behind after the un-installation or incorrect removal of software, by missing or corrupt hardware drivers, or orphaned startup programs.

Download Registry Repair 3.0 in Softonic

Creating collages with your photos is an easy way to breathe new life into an ageing or rather dull photo collection.

With PhotoCool, you can print multiple photos in one page and arrange them in custom designed collages. Alternatively, you can make photo albums, passport photos, mini ID card photos and CD covers via simple templates. Most templates have wizards which take you through the setup process in 4 steps.

However, note that you'll need glossy paper for best results when it comes to printing. PhotoCool can be used as a TWAIN app too which means that I will retrieve photos from your external device or camera without the need for using third-party software. Once detected, you can drag-and-drop images into PhotoCool or alternatively, you can arrange them by thumbnails and allow PhotoCool to extract them automatically on it's own.

PhotoCool makes it easy to create collages, passport photos, ID photos and just about any other kind of photo template you can think of.

Download PhotoCool 2.01 in Softonic

PowerFolder is a program to synchronize folders over the internet or on a local net. It uses peer-to-peer technology to exchange the files. This means you do not need a hosting server. Every client holds a local copy of the folder. It can be used to exchange every type of data for example music, photos, own documents or videos. PowerFolder automatically detects changes and synchronizes.

Download PowerFolder 3.1.1 in Softonic

Registry errors are one of the main reasons for the slow operation of your PC or frequent crashes. Baku can ensure that if your registry does have malicious entries, they can be removed safely. Baku also deletes empty folders, 'History' folder contents, 'Recent documents' folder contents, 'Temp' folder contents and temporary internet files. It can also search Windows log files, shortcuts to missing files and folders and user specified file types. The registry scan itself aims to remove unused and obsolete keys, including ActiveX, Application Paths, Fonts, Help files, Icon files and pesky uninstallers.

Like all such programs, it backs up your registry in case of any wrongful changes although I found that this wasn't exactly easy to restore. Probably the most useful function is the registry compacting facility which does seem to make a notable difference to the running speed of your PC. The developers claim the program uniquely works by recreating each registry hive "from scratch", thus removing any slack space that may be left from previously modified or deleted keys. Note that this function does NOT change the contents of the registry in any way, nor does it physically defrag the registry files on the drive. Be warned though that it takes a little longer than programs such as CCleaner and you'll have to wait more than few minutes for the registry backup to be made.

Download Baku 3.6.3.31921 in Softonic

Protecting yourself against the worst is something that all PC users should do since you never know when your hard drive might just decide to die on you.

Paragon Drive Backup is an all-in-one backup utility that gives you a host of backup options in a few clicks. By using Paragon Drive Backup, you can fairly simply undo software malfunctions or crashes, and safeguard your data. Not only that, but Paragon Drive Backup optimizes storage utilization to keep your system running at top speed.

For instance, Paragon Drive Backup can help you free up lost disk space via the Smart Backup option which can help detect those areas of your hard drive which are being wasted or underutilized. What's most useful about Paragon Drive Backup is that it enables you to create a rescue drive - even one that can fit on a USB stick - so that your system can be restored via the USB drive if it fails.

There are so many other backup options with Paragon Drive Backup that's it's impossible to list them all but they include booting from a Backup Capsule, file filter and it now supports backups to Blu-Ray.

Paragon Drive Backup is an extremely comprehensive backup tool that probably goes beyond what the average user needs but for serious backups, it's a top notch solution.

Download Paragon Drive Backup Personal Edition 9.0 in Softonic

WinMerge is an Open Source visual text file differencing and merging tool for Win32 platforms. It is highly useful for determing what has changed between project versions, and then merging changes between versions.

Features:

• Visual differencing and merging of text files
• Flexible editor with syntax highlighting
• Handles DOS, UNIX and MAC text file formats
• Unicode support
• Difference pane shows current difference in two vertical panes
• Location pane shows map of files compared
• Highlights differences inside lines
• File filters in directory diff
• Moved lines detection in file compare
• Shell integration
• Rudimentary Visual SourceSafe and Rational ClearCase integration
• Archive file support using 7-zip
• Plugins
• Localizable interface via resource DLL
• HTML-based manual

Download WinMerge 2.8.6 in Softonic

Don't fall prey to keyloggers and snooping software that records your activities. Privacy Shield provides firewall-like protection for your keyboard, screen and open windows. You'll know right away and in real-time if anyone tries to spy on you. The application protects you at the lowest level of Windows XP and detects all known and unknown threats. Lengthy and unreliable file scans are a thing of the past with this exciting product. Try it free for 15 days and you won't be disappointed.

Download Privacy Shield 3.0.79 in Softonic

Though your iPhone or iPod can be synchronized with iTunes, you can have problems if you try to use it with more than one copy of iTunes or on more than one computer. TuneAid helps you easily solve that issue.

TuneAid connects to your device and displays its content (namely music and video) organized in a similar way to that of iTunes: a list of audio and video files you can sort by artist, song, album and more. You can then select certain songs (or simply all of them) and copy them straight away from TuneAid to your computer.

TuneAid can copy the content to any folder on your hard drive or directly to your iTunes library. It comes really handy not only to transfer songs from one computer to another, but also as a backup copy.

Just make sure your device is not protected by an access code: my iPhone was and it took me ages to figure out why TuneAid wasn't detecting it.

With TuneAid you can easily copy and transfer the content of your iPhone or iPod between different computers.

Download TuneAid 3.03 in Softonic

RemoveIT is a free trojan, adware and spyware scanner that searches and destroys dangerous viruses, trojans and spyware.

However, the effectiveness of it is open to debate. The developers claim that it's so good, it "locates and removes many new dangerous files including spyware, malware, virus, worms, trojans and adware that other popular AV programs do not find." This program therefore is NOT a real-time scanner - it's based on cleaning-up after something has installed itself on your PC rather than real-time protection which I always think is a dangerous approach.

There's nothing flashy about this program - the interface is based on Windows Explorer shell which also includes a slightly more advanced and expanded version of Windows Task Manager (to stop and block illegal processes) and the same with a Service Manager which gives you an overview of the services and program currently running on your PC. With these tools, you have more control over what runs on your PC both during startup and day-to-day operation. The Services Manager is recommended for beginners as you can see clearly the actual names of the programs running while the Process Manager only shows those files that are running as parts of programs and as a result, you may shut something down that you didn't mean to.

For a free and light malware scanner, this is a solid program although it does not seem to detect anything that other scanners (such as Ad-Aware) can't so it's maybe not as effective as the developers claim.

Download RemoveIT Pro 4 SE 25.7.2008 in Softonic

Have you ever wanted to record audio for a radio broadcast, phone call or media player but couldn't be bothered fiddling with complicated software to do so?

If that's the case, then Meda MP3 Recorder is a useful solution for those that want to record Mp3 audio outputs. Meda MP3 Recorder can record form just about any type of source including internet broadcasts, video games or media players such as Windows Media Player, Real Player, Quick Time, Winamp and more.

Even more useful, Meda MP3 Recorder can also record conversations you have on VoIP software such as Skype and any other audio input that comes through your microphone jack, CD player and other audio from your sound card. The name Meda "MP3" Recorder is a bit misleading because it doesn't just save MP3 audio - it can save just about anything but unfortunately, only in MP3 format although for most people, this is the best format to save audio in anyway.

Meda MP3 Recorder also doesn't rely on you starting the recording on time. Meda MP3 Recorder has a useful Auto detect control tool which can auto start , auto stop, auto pause and auto restart according to when the audio kicks in.

A versatile and simple to use audio recorder, Meda MP3 Recorder is not really for professionals but for those that need a simple and flexible audio recorder.

Download Meda MP3 Recorder 1.5 in Softonic

Registry problems are the common cause of Windows crashes, error messages, and degraded performance. RegDoctor is designed to safely and quickly clean and repair Windows registry problems with a few simple mouse clicks.

The app uses an intelligent, high-performance detection engine to accurately identify missing and invalid references in your Windows registry. Identified registry problems are listed and rated by risk level using an easy to understand color-coded system.

You can choose to have RegDoctor automatically repair all identified problems, or choose which problems to repair immediately. RegDoctor also offers a Restore feature to create registry backup files, giving you the capability to safely undo any registry changes.

The auto-start feature of RegDoctor helps to support its regular use. By using RegDoctor regularly to clean and repair your registry, your system should not only be more stable but it will also help Windows and your software run faster.

Download RegDoctor 2.04 in Softonic

Some anti-virus programs cause more problems than they solve. Avast! Home Edition anti-virus is thankfully not one of those as it exceeds expectations while remaining free. Lightweight, vigilant and most importantly, effective, this could be the answer to your prayers if you’ve had no luck finding a virus checker you like.

The developers make a point of stressing that this program is strictly not for institutional use – it is designed specifically for the threats most home users face daily. Their philosophy is that efficient home virus protection is essential in preventing users one day being struck by a serious global virus. What impresses you immediately with Avast! is its vigilance. It’s likely that within minutes of installation, you’ll receive a pop up alert due to a Trojan or virus that had been incubating on your PC. If not, rest assured that it won’t be long before Avast! sets off its trademark siren and alerts you that something has been detected. The latest version of

Avast’s antivirus kernel promises 100% detection of ‘In-the-Wild’ viruses (viruses already spreading between users) and excellent detection of Trojan horses. Avast! provides 24 hour protection via its ‘On-Access’ scanner but you can initiate manual scans via the fairly simple user interface. You can start additional modules from here, such as the Virus Chest, Updater or Log Viewer. Another great feature of Avast! is the option to change the skin of this interface. The developer website features practically hundreds of distinctive designs made by aficionados and even offers a guide to designing your own.

Something often overlooked by major virus checking packages is P2P applications installed on your PC but Avast! covers this with a P2P and Instant Messenger shield. Whilst chat applications themselves do not impose any serious security risks in terms of viruses, their less sophisticated file sharing methods can easily lead to virus infections if not properly monitored. With so many infected files on P2P networks such as Kazaa and eMule too, it’s also good to know that Avast! won’t let you open them without quietly checking them first.

The program also features both a Web and Network shield that constantly monitors traffic. The Web Shield acts as a transparent HTTP proxy and is compatible with all major web browsers. One of the truly outstanding features of Avast! is that unlike heavyweights such as Kaspersky or Norton, you hardly notice it working in the background. This is because of a unique feature the developers call ‘Intelligent Stream Scan’ that scans objects on-the-fly, without needing to cache them locally. Even the virus updates are unobtrusive. Avast! downloads the updates gradually and only those that are absolutely essential instead of the whole database. You receive a ‘Virus database has been updated’ voice message every time this has been completed along with a small popup which you can turn off if it annoys you.

There really is little to fault Avast! on in a market that is saturated with too many ineffective virus checkers. Although it doesn’t guzzle resources, if you’re running it on an older machine, you might find it slows you down. Some new users also complain that conducting a simple manual scan is more complicated than it should be but if you’ve spent anytime with virus checkers, you’ll realise that its more than worth your while getting to know this excellent program.

Download Avast! Home 4.8.1229 in Softonic

When it comes to securing your PC nothing is enough. All right, you've already installed an antivirus tool, a firewall and a antispyware solution, but if you still feel unprotected, then maybe this app is for you.

Comodo BOClean is a security tool that prevents any kind of malware from infecting your computer. This includes Trojan horses, keyloggers, rootkits, hijackers and other nasty creatures. The program stays out of sight most of the time, asking for user intervention only in case it detects any threat.

Comod BOClean features pretty self-explanatory configuration settings. On the downside, it doesn't include the option to analyze the system in search of any malware that could have already infected your PC.

Download Comodo BOClean 4.27 in Softonic

UnHackMe is specially designed to detect and remove Rootkits. The intruder installs a rootkit on a computer using a user action or by exploiting a known vulnerability or cracking a password. The rootkit installs a backdoor giving the hacker a full control of the computer. It hides their files, registry keys, and process names, and network connections from your eyes.

Your antivirus could not detect such programs because they use compression and encryption of its files. The sample software is Hacker Defender rootkit. UnHackMe allows you to detect and remove Rootkits.

Download UnHackMe 4.8 in Softonic

CloneSpy is a very efficient program that finds duplicate files on your PC, allowing you to free space on your hard disk. This ensures your operating system to run better and even faster, depending on the type of duplicate files you had.

You almost surely have doubled music files which occupy useless space on your HDD. This happens when, for example, you borrow a music CD from a friend and you copy it all without realizing you might already have some of the songs included in your friend’s CD.

Before you can start scanning your system though, add a folder in the ‘pool1’ section. When you browse the directory you want to analyze, bear in mind you need to press the ‘add selected folder’ or the ‘add all sibling folders’ button, otherwise the process will not work, and you will be left with a feeling of not knowing what happened. If you don’t change settings, the program will ask you every time before deleting a file, always showing you the two supposedly duplicate files.

Although ConeSpy’s GUI is surely not so user friendly, the program is so useful that we can close an eye on that. It helps you find all duplicate files on your computer to free space on your hard disk and make your PC work better.

Download CloneSpy 2.33 in Softonic

Notepad++ is a free source code editor (and Notepad replacement), which supports several programming languages, running under the MS Windows environment.

This project, based on the Scintilla edit component (a very powerful editor component), written in C++ with pure win32 api and STL (that ensures the higher execution speed and smaller size of the program), is under the GPL Licence.

This is what Notepad++ has to offer:

• Syntax Highlighting and Syntax Folding
• WYSIWYG
• User Defined Syntax Highlighting
• Auto-completion
• Multi-Document
• Multi-View
• Regular Expression Search/Replace supported
• Full Drag ‘N' Drop supported
• Dynamic position of Views
• File Status Auto-detection
• Zoom in and zoom out
• Multi-Language environment supported
• Bookmarks
• Brace and Indent guideline Highlighting
• Macro recording and playback

Download Notepad++ 5.0.2 in Softonic

If you need to synchronise a particular file or directory regularly then SmartSynchronize can help make sure that it's taken care of.

SmartSynchronize is a multi-platform file and directory comparison tool which is designed to continually compare two files or directory trees, merge changes between files and directories (i.e. synchronize them) or to 3-way-merge changes of one file which has been changed independently.

What marks SmartSynchronize out from other synchronizers is that it's extremely intelligent as to what's changed and how much synchronisation is needed. This means that SmartSynchronize only copies those parts of a file that are necessary and doesn't keep kicking in at annoying moments. It utilises something called "inner-line change detection" to detect the most subtle changes

SmartSynchronize also gives you a high degree of control over which files, or parts of files, you want to keep synced. It's useful if you want to use on other machines too as you can save sync profiles so that you can perform the same synchronization routines on other computers without having to setup anything other than install SmartSynchronize.

The major drawback of SmartSynchronize however is that it's all controlled from a command line interface. While this should not be a problem for advanced users, beginners will find it confusing and difficult to use.

SmartSynchronize is a useful way to target and synchronise one or a few particular files across multiple machines but it's not the most user friendly option out there.

Download SmartSynchronize 3.0.2 in Softonic

Clean Centre is an all-round cleaner for your hard drive to ensure that your system is not bogged down by malicious files or strange system problems caused by registry errors.

It can detect over 60 types of junk files (which doesn't sound a lot considering how many there must be out there) and allows you to delete them in 3 simple steps. Unfortunately, you can't help getting this feeling that this is a slightly "cheap" program because the interface looks really basic and shoddily put together. It is at least very easy to use and allows you to select those cookies or sites that you'd like to treat as exceptions. In fact, it's highly customisable allowing you make exceptions of such aspects as your Temp folder, Recycle Bin and even your registry. After cleaning, you're presented with a list of files that have been cleaned or removed from your system although you're not given a chance to say whether you definitely want them removing which is a bit annoying. However, at the same time, it does the job a lot quicker than programs that are constantly bothering you with prompts about whether you are sure and if you want to continue etc.

Overall, this is not the best cleaning package I've ever used but at the same time, at least it's quick and easy.

Download CleanCenter 1.87 in Softonic

ShareAlarmPro is a network tool that allows network administrators and users easily perform shared folders and resources monitoring. Using ShareAlarmPro you can monitor users attempting to access secured shares and confidential files, detect and log network access to shared folders, monitor security events and create alerts for specific events occurring on your computer, monitor open files, disconnect users from open files or deny network users access and send console messages.

ShareAlarmPro detects and notifies about remote connections to shared folders and resources, allows you to see parameters of the workstation, which tries to establish a connection with your computer. The remote workstation user and OS, permissions and path of the accessed folder, connection time will be available via this tool. ShareAlarmPro, optionally, will notify user on every new connection detection by playing any user selected audio file.

ShareAlarmPro includes an intrusion detection system based on security events log analyzer. Security Event Log Monitor monitors the security event logs of Windows servers or workstations and depending on configuration will notify user on selected events detection by showing a small popup window with event details. ShareAlarmPro also allows you to easily browse your LAN and view all shared resources whether they are hidden or not and connections to shared resources on remote workstations.

The program has a firewall system that allows you to block any unwanted connection to your shared resources. ShareAlarmPro keeps log for all detected events (access to shared folders, security events) in HTML format. This software also provide you ability to manage and monitor all shares on your workstation, disable or enable default administrative shares, hide your workstation in network, view how many users are currently connected to each shared resource on your workstation.

Download ShareAlarmPro 2.0.6 in Softonic