Driving games differ in a number of different ways, not just because they contain different kinds of vehicles (cars, bikes, Formula 1) but also in the type of challenge they present.

In the case of Pure the main objective is not only crossing the line in the first place, but also performing as many jumps, tricks and other acrobatics while you’re on air, flying at top speed over bumpy trails with your quad bike.

Before actually starting the race, Pure makes you go through a training session that also works as a kind-of tutorial. It's a good way to get used to the game's quite confusing controls, which inexplicably mix up keys from the standard WASD combination and the arrow keys.

After you learn how to preload, boost and do a basic trick, you're ready to go: it's time for a real race! This time the track is much more fun, because it enables you to compete against other drivers and also includes higher jumps in which you'll be able to show off everything you learned during the tutorial stage. The realistic, highly detailed graphics in Pure serve to make it even more enjoyable, and a lively rock-style soundtrack adds the final touch.

Pure requires a bit of dexterity, so if you don't get any trick during the first few minutes of gameplay don't panic. Also, note that you’re supposed to perform different tricks on each jump (repeating penalizes) and that if you’re successful with the basic ones, you’ll unlock more advanced tricks.

On the downside, I must admit Pure let us down for various reasons. The first one is the file's size, which is simply too heavy for such a short demo. They could have removed all those promotional videos and include at least another track. The controls are also a bit complex: just performing a basic trick involves four different keys, which are usually configured very far apart from each other on the keyboard. Finally, the game has some absurd restrictions. I don’t know what’s wrong with going a bit off the track or even trying to turn around and racing in the wrong direction, but you simply can't. Pure interrupts the game and puts you into track again. Seriously, a bit more freedom for the player wouldn’t hurt, even if that means I don’t win the race.

Pure is not just about racing: it's also about performing the craziest airborne tricks during the race. Too bad the demo is so short that you hardly have time to enjoy it.

Download Pure in Softonic

Backing up your drivers is one of the best things you can do to your PC - if the worst happens, you know that you can always restore damaged and corrupt drivers in seconds.

In most cases when Windows is running slower, faulty driver installations are to blame. The problem is that Windows automatically stores versions of older drivers just in case you want to roll back but sometimes it these conflict with the new ones. Drivermax basically backs-up and restores driver in a very attractive and well presented interface. It has a powerful export wizard to help you export the drivers you need to backup by copying the required files to a folder or compressed ZIP file. After reinstalling Windows, the program can ensure that all drivers are reinstalled within 5 minutes according to the developers. While the process is nowhere near this quick - or straightforward because many drivers may not work properly first time round due to the special way they need to be installed - it is on the whole very easy to use and efficient. It certainly saves you the hours of searching and installing that you'd usually have to go through. The Import Drivers wizard is similarly straightforward and will take up to 10 minutes depending on how much you've got installed on your PC.

A powerful driver installation and restore tool that is easy enough for beginners and does the job in decent time.

Download DriverMax 4.5 in Softonic

The default Windows Task Manager has often been criticized for offering very scarce information about the currently active processes and apps on your system. This is why Task Manager Extension comes in very handy, chiefly for the most tech-savvy users.

Task Manager Extension is a standalone application – no installation required – that adds a bunch of new data to the Task Manager window, you know, the one you open by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del. As soon as you launch it, you'll notice some slight differences when comparing to the default task manager.

To begin with, each process is identified with the program's icon, which makes the list easy to browse. If you right click on any entry, a context menu opens up with a wide variety of commands: from a Properties window with highly detailed information about the selected process to the possibility to see associated threads, loaded drivers and other data.

Like I said before, while Task Manager Extension is certainly a very useful add-on for power users, it may be a bit too technical for more computer-challenged people. A good way to solve this gap would be to have two modes or interface types in the program: one for beginners, one for advanced users.

With Task Manager Extension you can power up the Windows default Task Manager, adding more functionality and information to it.

Download Task Manager Extension 2.1 in Softonic

To keep your PC organized and running properly, you'll need to defragment your hard drive every now and then. Despite a rudimentary interface, UltraDefrag is a useful and speedy defragmentation tool. The top of the interface shows the different drives you can carry out actions on. The best to do is start by analyzing your drive. The length of the analysis will really depend on how much files you have on your drive and how messy it actually is. Once this is done you can choose to defragment or compact your drive.

Click the fragmented button and a browser window will open up with a list of all the files that have been fragmented. While the list seems to be pretty exhaustive it lacks any real explanation or easy browsing function. Another useful feature in UltraDefrag is being able to rescan your drives. You can do this to verify file size or check if there's any drive you might have missed.

If you go into settings you should be able to create filters. This function is pretty limited as you'll have to type in the name of files you want to include or exclude (but there's no explanation as to how you can enter multiple files) and you can set the program to ignore files greater than a certain size.

Despite some drawbacks, UltraDefrag is an effective defragmentation tool.

Download UltraDefrag 1.4.0 in Softonic

If you've always dreamed of driving a Mercedes but can't afford one, this could be an intermediate solution while you're saving money.

Mercedes CLC Dream Test Drive puts you behind the steering-wheel of the awesome Mercedes CLC Coupé. The game is free though quite limited, as it only includes two gaming modes: a race against five other computer-controlled Mercedes through the streets of London and a single lap time trial against your personal best record. At least the scenarios are pretty realistic, giving you the opportunity to do some high-speed sightseeing around London or enjoy cool races at night.

The only choice of car available is obviously a Mercedes, but there are some customization options available such as changing color or getting new wheels. There are also three different difficulty levels that tailor the game to your driving skills.

That said, the truth is that Mercedes CLC Dream Test Drive is not a very fun driving game and it has some surprisingly odd characteristics, like the absence of driver or the fact that the car is not affected by crashes. In a way it feels more like an interactive ad than a real computer game, so unless you're a fan of the famous German car brand, I'd recommend downloading other driving games before this one.

Mercedes CLC Dream Test Drive is definitely a game for Mercedes fans: other people may find it too limited and a bit frustrating.

Download Mercedes CLC Dream Test Drive 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 6.1.274 in Softonic

One of the big disadvantages of PC laptops is that many of the components are made by companies independent of the manufacturer.

This means that keeping up with the latest drivers can be a nightmare. That's where DH Mobility Modder comes in. It's designed to make sure that ATI Radeon graphics cards are kept up to date with the latest drivers. This is a far better option than constantly having to check the manufacturer website for the latest updates.

In fact, DH Mobility Modder doesn't work quite like that - it basically modifies the ATI Catalyst drivers so that they are compatible with graphics cards in OEM laptops. For DH Mobility Modder to take effect however, you need to instruct it where to decompress the drivers (which are pretty hefty on arrival), which you can usually define using the simple path C:\ATI\Support. Once you've located the decompressed files using DH Mobility Modder, you simply select "Modify" and the rest is taken care of automatically within less than a minute.

It's not exactly the easiest way to keep Radeon drivers updated but it's certainly one of the only ways and much quicker than manually checking the manufacturer website all the time.

Download DH Mobility Modder 1.1.1.0 in Softonic

A system analyzer is often overlooked as the toy of PC modding fanatics, but the reality is that these applications are very effective at dissecting your PC and giving you the hard truth about its performance. PC Wizard aims to explore the insides of your system and give you the complete low down on its strengths and weaknesses.

Once you launch PC Wizard you’ll notice it takes some time to detect all the hardware installed on your PC. Use the left side of the interface to navigate through the different categories. PC Wizard reveals all the basic details of your hardware, like ports, drivers and processors, but you’ll soon realize there’s much more to it, like analyzing system files or investigating the configuration of elements such as your Internet connection or your Control Panel. Over-sized icons make it fairly obvious what you can inspect, however we would have appreciated an explorer type window to navigate through components and select exactly what to analyze.

The core of any self-respecting system analyzer is the benchmarking tool and that is where PC Wizard excels. The application lets you inspect everything from processors to cache, RAM and multimedia like DirectX, MP3 compression and video. Benchmarks provide the results as a list of information or via comprehensible graphs. These will show you straight away where you’re PC stands and the “compare with” button will let you measure your processor up against well known models. We have to warn beginners though that the information is fairly technical and will be more relevant to experienced users. Just for fun, test out the video benchmark to obtain a swarm of multicoloured balls and lines all over your screen.

That’s the only bit of excitement you’ll get with this application though. PC Wizard is not here for fun it's here to be effective. The detailed information and thorough benchmarking tests give you reliable data on all the characteristics and components of your PC. The complexity of this type of application means beginners are best kept away from it altogether, however advanced users will revel in the wealth of knowledge it will uncover on their PC’s performances.

Download PC Wizard 2008 1.86 in Softonic

TechPowerUp GPU-Z is a simple but practical utility to find out which graphics card is installed on your computer.

But much more than that, it gives you the full lowdown on its capabilities, status and whether it can handle the type of games or applications you¡re trying to push through it. The program is compatible with just about every brand of card there is and gives you data such as the name, brand, model, memory, bios version and DirectX driver among many other things. The other nice thing is that there's absolutely no installation required. An added bonus is that the program can take you directly to the TechPowerUp website which shows the percentage of users who use each brand and where in the world they can be found. Apparently, the program does have a slight bias towards NVIDIA and ATI cards but its very useful for diagnosing if you're suffering from overclocking.

This is a simple but handy tool for anyone wondering whether their graphics card is able to handle the latest programs and games.

Download TechPowerUp GPU-Z 0.2.7 in Softonic

With Vista becoming ever more widespread, users are demanding more control over how it is installed. vLite allows you to remove unwanted components in order to make Vista run faster and to your liking. Note that this is not a hacking tool - all files and registry entries are protected as they would be if you installed the unedited version only with the changes you select.

The program works by configuring the installation directly before the installation itself, meaning you'll have to remake the ISO and reinstall it. This method is much cleaner, not to mention easier and more logical than doing it after installation on every reinstall. You can select which components to remove but note that unchecking a component will not remove it. The developers say this has been done because not all components are supported by the program and disabling the check boxes removes any confusion. Be very careful when removing components however because they cannot be reinstalled afterwards. The program warns you to be careful with major components by displaying a "Caution!" warning label when you hover over it.

This is a great tool for Vista users but use it with care because if you remove something you didn't mean to, you'll end up doing the whole Vista installation over again.

Download vLite 1.2 Final in Softonic

In the ever increasing battle against malware, you can never have too many good malware removers and detectors. Malwarebytes Anti Malware scans disks and devices connected to your PC and removes all types of malware.

The program is constantly updated with a list of the latest known malware threats across the net so you'll always be fully covered although the update prompts can be annoying and should be switched off. They may also slow down your PC momentarily but it's worth it to keep up to date. The program cannot be schedule to offer real time protection bit it can scan your system at any time. There is also a list for the files in quarantine and one for those which can be ignored. If an infected file is detected, the programs "Fileassassin" can be launched although use it with caution because it is potent and you may end up deleting essential drivers and files.

If you want realtime protection, you can register online although you'll have to pay for this service.

A powerful and quick scanner but it's a shame there's no realtime protection with it.

Download Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware 1.28 in Softonic

BookPrint prints booklets or books and saves paper by printing 2, 4, 8, or 16 pages on both sides of a sheet (with or without a duplexing printer).

A series of booklets are combined to build a book. BookPrint makes it easy to produce professional looking booklets or books by rearranging the order in which the pages in your document are printed so the sheets can be folded in half to form a 5" by 8" booklet, or cut in half and inserted into binder.

With BookPrint you also may print posters by sticking together (like a mosaic) two, four, eight or sixteen sheets. One DIN A2 poster for example results from four DIN A4s, or one DIN A3 poster results from two DIN A4s. You can determine the width of the sticking edge beforehand

BookPrint also operates as a printer driver that may be used by any Windows application that provides a Print function. If BookPrint is defined as the standard printer, you simply start BookPrint with the print function of the current application.

Otherwise you can select the BookPrint driver from the list of printers from the printer setup dialog of the application.

Download BookPrintXP 2.2 in Softonic

My sister, who actually works in a bank, is always saying that she would love to be a truck driver and travel all over Europe. I guess she's the kind of person that would love to play Euro Truck Simulator.

This driving simulator puts you behind the wheel of a powerful truck and entrusts you with several different missions. These usually consist on taking cargo from one place to another and getting paid for the delivery. Saving enough money you will eventually be able to buy better and faster trucks to be able to work more and earn more money.

I find the main idea in Euro Truck Simulator is quite original. We're somewhat used to car, motorbike and even airplane driving simulators, but not that much to trucks. Also, the game features excellent, highly realistic graphics.

So far, so good. The problem is that Euro Truck Simulator becomes a boring game quite easily. I don't know if it was due to the repetitive sound of the engine, the slowness of my driving or the lack of real action, I started feeling sleepy shortly after starting to play. Maybe if you could play your own music on the truck's radio, or get into some more action by delivering illegal stuff and occasionally being chased by the cops, Euro Truck Simulator would be more exciting. Also, I didn't like the fact that I can't choose the UK as the starting country for my career as truck driver!

Euro Truck Simulator is a pretty original game, with especially outstanding graphics, but which gets boring quite easily.

Download Euro Truck Simulator 1.00 in Softonic

There are so many graphics cards and chipsets nowadays that compatibility problems with software inevitably arise. PowerStrip provides advanced, multi-monitor, programmable hardware support to a wide range of graphics cards - from the Matrox Millennium I to the latest ATI X850 and NVidia SLI solutions.

The developers claim this is the only program of its type to support multiple graphics cards from multiple chipset vendors, simultaneously, under every Windows operating system from Windows 95 to the x64-bit edition of XP. A simple menu pop up from the system tray provides access to some 500 controls over your display hardware, including color correction tools, period level adjustments over screen geometry, and driver independent clock controls.

The program automatically detects when programs are launched and responds by activating specific display settings, gamma adjustments, performance switches and even clock speeds - returning everything to normal when the program closes. A quick setup wizard gets you up and running with minimal fuss and and live updates are supported to ensure you're always running the latest release.

If you've had problems with games or compatibility issues with other software, look no further than PowerStrip.

Download PowerStrip 3.82.632 in Softonic

Wavosaur is a powerful free audio editor for editing, processing and recording sounds. Wavosaur has all the features to edit audio (cut, copy, paste, etc.) produce music loops, analyze and record.

Wavosaur supports VST plugins, ASIO drivers, multichannel wav files and features real time effects processing.

It also includes a Multiple Document Interface for working with many files in one session and
many processing options: mute, channel convert (stereo->mono, mono->stereo), insert silence, change volume, normalize level, fade in/out, invert/flip, undo.

It has accurate waveform representation, fast zoom in/out, clean easy to use interface Right mouse to scroll/display context menu.

Download Wavosaur 1.0.3.0 in Softonic

For all those in agreement with the French government that proprietary formats are damaging to the legitimate spread of digital music, then Tunebite will be right up your street. Proprietary music is essentially locked, so it can only be played using a particular brand of player. This software can be used to make any music playable on whatever portable devices you have or to burn your own music CD. It works by creating a playlist in the file’s native player, (Media Player for WMA, iTunes for M4B, M4P) playing the list and recording each track as an unprotected file. It could be seen as the modern equivalent of recording radio onto cassette, although Tunebite will automatically separate the different tracks.

The installation of this program is a bit tongue-in-cheek with a notice to say that you may see a warning during the process, swiftly followed by a pop-up warning letting you know that a particular driver hasn’t been registered with Microsoft. Following the advice of the previous notice and ignoring the warning dialog lets you finish the process. You are then taken to the configuration wizard where you complete six steps to choose what file format you want to record in.

The interface is so intuitive that when you first open the program you should have no doubt as to how to get recording. The three main elements of the interface are clearly marked as the “songs to record” window, the “recorded songs” window and an unmistakable “GO!” button in the centre. To get started you can either drag and drop your music files or use the “add file” or “add folder” buttons within the program. From there, it’s a simple matter of clicking the “GO!” button and letting Tunebite go to work.

Because the files are protected, they must be played through their own player, for example iTunes, and recorded in real-time. During our test, we happened to have another audio player in use as the recording began and as a result, the unprotected file was an incomprehensible mix of two tracks. This also means that if Tunebite is making a recording, you shouldn’t use your computer for other tasks such as browsing the net since every click sound that plays when you hit a link or even the Start Menu button will be recorded as well. With recording taking place in real-time you should plan for times when you won’t be using the computer, especially if you have a large music collection.

Tunebite is a solution to a problem that many music lovers face as control over their digital content becomes tighter and more restrictive. Protected tracks that have been paid for can easily be copied to any MP3 player or burned to CD for use in regular stereos. Admittedly, the method for recording is not ideal for everybody, but used properly, the results will be of the highest standard possible today.

Download Tunebite 5.1.120 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

There's an increasing demand for alternatives to Adobe's resource hogging, RAM sapping, not least expensive PDF creator and PrimoPDF weighs in as an excellent alternative.

The fact that this program is free makes it all the more appealing. One of the problems with these PDF programs is that invariably, they change the formatting of your text, once you've converted your Word, Publisher etc. document to PDF. PrimoPDF largely avoids this however converting to PDF as faithfully as the original. It's also remarkably fast and the installation is equally speedy.

Once installed, the program appears as a virtual printer in your Printer Driver preferences too. The main downside, of which there are few, is that you are regularly prompted to register although this is a small price to pay for an excellent program. It's also a bit unreliable when converting images. Text is fine but images can sometimes be in the wrong position or formatted incorrectly when converting from Office documents. It also doesn't use Windows standard way of saving documents - it has it's own format which doesn't suggest a file name but it's a small drawback.

A really excellent PDF creator that will have Adobe critics laughing all the way to their virtual printers.

Download PrimoPDF 4.1.0.9 in Softonic

Driver Magician Lite identifies all the hardware in the system, extracts their associated drivers from the hard disk and backs them up to a location of your choice. Then when you format and reinstall/upgrade your operating system, you can restore all the "saved" drivers just as if you had the original driver diskettes in your hands.

Download Driver Magician Lite 3.41 in Softonic

RemoveAny is a lightweight and simple anti-spyware utility that helps to ridentify dangerous processes on your PC.

If spyware or malware gets rooted on your system, then it can be an absolute nightmare to get it off. Some applications can do more damage than good while others don't seem to have any noticeable effect whatsoever. RemoveAny anti-spyware is not exactly a heavy duty solution but it can pick up malware pretty quickly and will delete it immediately. The program is extremely lightweight and is completely free to use. It works in real time monitoring executable files, drivers, modules and processes as well as displaying additional information about executables. When you start your PC, RemoveAny shows users what processes have started on their PC by seperating modules into three groups - suspicious, unknown and trusted. If you see suspicious modules or processes, you should not immediately delete those files. To decide whether the file is really suspicious or not, it's useful to do a Google search to find out what exactly it is but be careful what you remove!

Although it doesn't identify what each process does, for those in the know, RemoveAny will instantly alert you to illegal or strange processes on your system.

Download RemoveAny 2.13 in Softonic