There’s a plethora of music players to choose from, among which iTunes and Winamp usually have the upper hand. However, if you are curious enough, you might find that lesser known alternatives like MediaMonkey offer a reasonable amount of features and tools to organize and equally enjoy your music library.

MediaMonkey automatically scans your PC for all types of music formats. If you have playlists from other programs, it’s good to know that the application also adds m3u files, sparing you the pain of having to recreate them. The file explorer view on the left lets you easily navigate your music collection by categories like artist, genre or rating. You can convert tracks into any format you wish, depending on what size or quality of sound you’re looking for. MediaMonkey also lets you analyze and adjust the volume of tracks to increase your listening experience.

MediaMonkey has made its reputation on its advanced tagging management feature. Every time a track is added, the program will verify its tags. You can automatically fill in missing details with info from Amazon or Filename. The program can clean up your tags, move information into the correct categories and synchronize tags for selected tracks. You can also rename and move multiple files thanks to the auto-organize function. MediaMonkey also supports Winamp plugins and visualizations plus skins can be applied to spice up the interface.

If you want to make your own mix CDs, you’ll be happy to know that MediaMonkey rips and burns CDs and DVDs. Create a virtual CD of your favorite tracks and let MediaMonkey do its job. Budding DJs will enjoy the auto-DJ mode, which mixes tracks for you and the Party Mode, which blocks your configuration but lets anybody play their favorite tune. MediaMonkey’s versatility doesn’t stop there. The music manager also lets you synchronize with your portable music devices like your iPod or iRiver.

If you feel like completing your library with a couple of fresh albums you can browse sites like Amazon, Barnes and Noble or AllPosters and purchase tracks. However, unlike Songbird, where you can type in a URL, browse and save your favorite music blogs and sites, MediaMonkey only allows you to browse their selection of online stores.

We were disappointed with the web radio selection, which only features Shoutcast and Icecast, and were surprised to see no sign of podcasts anywhere in the application. However version 3.0 is planning on incorporating this to the application.

Despite these drawbacks, we recommend MediaMonkey to anybody looking for a solid alternative to iTunes or Winamp. This original music manager is more than capable of organizing a very large music library and offers advanced tagging management rarely seen in other music applications. While the browser and web radio are fairly limited, MediaMonkey allows you to rip your custom CDs and connects to most portable music devices. If you really take a liking to MediaMonkey, cough up a few bucks and upgrade to the Gold version, which will open up all of the program’s functionalities like finding missing tracks or creating auto (smart) playlists.

Download MediaMonkey 3.0.5.1187 in Softonic

Tab Mix Plus completely enhances Firefox's tab browsing capabilities. It includes such features as duplicating tabs, controlling tab focus, tab clicking options, undo closed tabs and windows, plus much more. It also includes a full-featured session manager with crash recovery that can save and restore combinations of opened tabs and windows.

Features:

• Undo close tab
• Duplicate tabs
• Open selected links in tabs
• Drag and drop reordering of tabs
• Display unread tabs in red

Download Tab Mix Plus Extension 0.3.7 in Softonic

A powerful tool for cleaning cobwebs of useless information clogging your system. SBMAV Disk Cleaner searches for and deletes temporary files and folders created by Windows and other applications, as well as searches for invalid links to documents that have long since been deleted. SBMAV Disk Cleaner also finds useless uninstall software, disables/enables seldom used fonts, deletes cookies, and searches for and removes duplicate files.

You can also use this tool to work with your documents: to find and delete old back-up files and duplicates based on various criteria you can select. The program is easy to operate for first time users, yet has a powerful mix of settings for advanced tweakers. The disk cleaning process can be launched automatically by command-line, reducing your supervision to save you time.

Download SBMAV Disk Cleaner Lite 2.86 in Softonic

AudioGrail (Formerly K-MP3) is the swiss army knife for everthing that is related to audio files (MP3, MPC, OGG...). It can very easily rename and tag (tag: info such as artist name, album, track title) your files automatically. It can also analyse quality, organize files on your system or create a "magic folder" for easier audio collection browsing.

K-MP3 features:

• Supports : MP3, OGG, MPC, APE, AAC, FLAC and WavPack files
• Automatically Albums Ranaming & Tagging (ID3Tag V1 & V2 tags, Vorbis (Ogg) comments and APEv2 tags are supported) Powered by FreeDB.
• One-by-one tag editor with queue (for multiple files edition)
• Audio files To Audio CD burning capabilities
• Files Names Normalizer (Case Standardization...)
• Tags normalizer (Case Standardization...)
• Mass tags remover
• Files organizer (Mass Tag To Name / Move To Folder)
• Duplicate files finder
• Playlist creator & analyser (Supported Formats : m3u, pls, xpl)
• Files lister (Supported Formats : Raw listing, Coma Separated Values, SQL, XML)
• Incomplete tags finder
• Quality analyser
• Internationalization support

Download Audiograil (K-MP3) 6.13.1.157 in Softonic

FastStone Photo Resizer is designed to make resizing of large numbers of photos on the move as easy as possible.

If you're a design professional or produce presentations on a regular basis, you'll find this program useful especially if you travel around a lot. You can perform several basic functions in addition to resizing such as rotating, cutting and pasting, colour alterations and of course adjust the brightness and contrast of your images. In addition, once resized, you can add text and watermarks to images although the text styles and formats are limited. Of course, this is nothing special for an image resizer but the big bonus is that it can be run directly from a USB stick in which case it doesn't need installing - perfect if you are in a hurry.

The interface is very easy to use and supports the dragging and dropping of images into the program which speeds up conversions of huge batches significantly compared to browsing to each file. It supports a decent amount of formats including the relatively rare JPEG2000 format which is unusual for any type of imaging utility. The batch renaming and resizing utility also saves you work and time (and the risk of duplicated images) by automatically renumbering adjusted images in sequential order.

This is an excellent portable image resizer and if you're looking for something in this area which is free, fast and simple, you need look no further.

Download FastStone Photo Resizer Portable 2.6 in Softonic

Vista Manager is a powerful software tool to tweak, optimize, maintain and tune up your Windows Vista, it bundles more than 20 different utilities in one. It will help your system to be stable, fast, secure and personal.

Information

Get detailed system and all hardware information on your system; show all detailed information of running processes and threads on your machine; Vista Manager offers 1-clicking and cleans your system automatically.

Optimizer

Tweak your system to improve windows startup and shutdown speed; tweak your hardware to increase system speed and performance.

Cleaner

Find out which files or folders engross your disk space and shown with chart; Find and clean junk files to increase Hard Disk space; Duplicate Files Finder can scan your computer for files with the same size, name and modification time; Registry Cleaner can easily checks your registry and repair incorrectly linked registry entries, automatically remove invalid entries; Registry Defrag rebuilds and re-indexs your registry to reduce application response time and registry access time.

Customization

Control what is started on Windows startup; edit context menus of mouse Right-Clicking; customize system desktop, menus, toolbar and notifications settings; automatically change your desktop wallpaper on background.

Security

You can improve desktop, menus, Windows logon securities, and enable numerous hidden performance options of system, disable system updates and error reports; hide and restrict to access drives, specify which applications are not allowed to be executed on your computer; encrypt/decrypt and shred files, change the location of system folders; Privacy Protector can maintain your personal privacy by eliminating the tracks that you leave behind; create lots of randomization password once.

Network

Optimize your Internet connection speed, manage all shares items; tweak your Internet Explorer easily.

Download Vista Manager 1.5.6 in Softonic

You'd be surprised to see how much disk space you're wasting with duplicate files. In fact, you can actually check it with this tool. Duplicate File Detector scans your system and finds all duplicate files, no matter how hidden they are.

You can analyze the whole drive or set several specific folders, but beware of the filters the program uses as default, as they may sort out folders that you want to include in the scan. The process takes a while, but in exchange for your patience the program delivers a complete list of all duplicate files in your system. This list also offers a preview of each file, so you're sure of what you're going to delete before marking them.

Duplicate File Detector works with a wide range of file formats and can detect duplicates based on a large variety of criteria. In fact, there are so many configuration settings that it may feel a bit overwhelming at the beginning.

Download Duplicate File Detector 4.5 in Softonic

HTML-Optimizer speeds up your web site by optimizing both HTML and script code on your web pages. It helps you stay organized by creating a duplicate site folder for the optimized files. An added benefit is that it leaves your original files untouched.

The program features Smart Handling which means that only those pages that have changed are processed. Besides optimizing, the program can also check for dangling tags, missing attributes and broken links and convert special characters. You should use your original web folder for editing and use the duplicate web folder for uploading.

Download HTML-Optimizer Pro 5.4 in Softonic

HTML-Optimizer Pro speeds up your web site by optimizing both HTML and script code of your web pages. It helps you keep organized by creating a duplicate site folder for the optimized files. An added benefit is that it leaves your original files untouched.

The application checks your web pages for dangling tags, missing attributes and broken links. The program also features Smart Handling which means that only the pages that you changed are processed.

Download HTML-Optimizer 9.9 in Softonic

Nowadays, people like to deliver their digital photos and pictures onto the Internet, and share them with their relatives, friends. Many enterprises resort to the Internet to demonstrate and promote their products.

However, duplication and dissemination of products'pictures are very easy, and many pictures are spread without authorization. In order to protect these pictures not to be used illegally, the pictures are watermarked before uploaded onto the Internet, which serves as an effective method.

Usually, we resort to specialized picture processing tool to complete the watermark work such as Photoshop. However, it's really too much work to do if you have a multitude of pictures to watermark, and it's also very inconvenient as you have to know some specialized knowledge. So, for your consideration, as a specialized batch add Watermarks software is designed for you - Batch Watermark Creator.

Download Batch Watermark Creator 6.3 in Softonic

When analyzing a software application one must praise its virtues, but also look for possible flaws that developers can improve in future versions. However, in the case of Glary Utilities it's really difficult to find anything that we don't like.

This excellent toolkit includes a handful of system utilities that enable you to tweak, repair, optimize and improve your system's performance. Tools are conveniently categorized so that you can quickly find what you're looking for: disk cleaner, uninstall manager, memory optimizer, file shredder, duplicates finder, tracks eraser... just about any tool you need. They're all generally very intuitive and in case they make important changes to the system (like the Registry repairing tool) the program creates a backup copy first.

Not all the tools included in Glary Utilities include configuration settings, something we missed in some of them such as the Disk cleaner. Also, we would like to have a Firefox Assistant, the same way the program includes an Internet Explorer Assistant.

Download Glary Utilities 2.6.1 in Softonic

You probably don't realize how much drive space you're wasting with duplicate files until you scan it for the first time with a program like NoClone.

This tool has been especially designed to find any duplicate files on your hard drive, with a quite high percentage of success. You can choose between scanning the whole disk or just one certain folder, and of course, select the template used by the program to decide which files are duplicate and which not.

I think these templates are the main strength of NoClone: there are quite a few to choose from, including duplicate email messages and duplicate MP3 files. Also, you can create your own template by deciding the elements and features NoClone should compare in each file to decide whether they're duplicates or not, which is very useful is none of the templates included suits your needs.

Once NoClone finishes scanning the system, it displays a list with all the duplicate files found and enables you to delete them straight away, saving precious hard drive space. There's even a contest on the developer's website to see who saves the most space thanks to NoClone. The program also exports the list to several formats (XML, CSV or XLS; no HTML or TXT, surprisingly).

NoClone is a quick and easy way to find duplicate files on your hard drive, delete them and bring all those megabytes back.

Download NoClone 2007 4.1.35 in Softonic

Advanced System Cleaner is a powerful utility to free up valuable disk space by analyzing disk space, uninstalling applications, cleaning up those unwanted garbage files, find duplicate files on your disk, cleanup invalid information in your Registry to improving system performance, protects your privacy by removing all the unwanted traces in your system. It safely removes cookies, history, recent documents history, any hidden user traces, and more with just a click.

Every day your hard drive gets littered with file fragments and debris you can't see. Unwanted files from daily usage and Internet surfing can build up over time, slowing down your system's performance and leaving a trail of your Web-browsing habits for anyone to see.

Download Advanced System Cleaner 1.8.1 in Softonic

dupeGuru is a tool to find duplicate files on your computer. It can scan either filenames or content. The filename scan features a fuzzy matching algorithm that can find duplicate filenames even when they are not exactly the same.

dupeGuru is efficient. Find your duplicate files in minutes, thanks to its quick fuzzy matching algorithm. dupeGuru is customizable. You can tweak its matching engine to find exactly the kind of duplicates you want to find. dupeGuru is safe. Its engine has been especially designed with safety in mind. Its reference directory system as well as its grouping system prevent you from deleting files you didn't mean to delete.

Download dupeGuru 2.5.4 in Softonic

Zortam MP3 Media Studio is an all-in-one MP3 application that contains an MP3 organizer for performing a range of tasks quickly and easily. Features of the program include searching and cataloging MP3 files into an MP3 library, and editing ID3v1 and ID3v2.3 tags (ID3 Tag Editor).

The program can also be used for converting audio CD to MP3 and WAV format (CD Ripper) using CDDB (Internet Compact Disc Database), complete with support for ID3v1 and ID3v2.4 tags. You can normalize your MP3s (Mp3 Normalizer), search for song lyrics from the internet (Lyrics Finder), and preform a batch lyrics and cover picture update from the internet.

Zortam also facilitates converting WAV to MP3 files and vice versa (WAV/Mp3 Converter), managing M3u playlists (Playlist manager), renaming files using ID3 tags (Mp3 Renamer), searching for duplicate MP3 files, (Find Duplicate MP3s),and listening to MP3's using your favorite player.

Download Zortam Mp3 Media Studio 8.30 in Softonic

PhotoSort is a fast, compatct and easy to use utility for finding and removing duplicate pictures. Its advanced engine will locate duplicates even if they are of a different type, have different size, different brightness, contrast or even some of them have added elements like text or logos!

Whether your job requires you to work with large quantities of images, you collect family photos or just download images from the internet, PhotoSort will save you time and help you better organize your photo collection.

It will sort images by similarity and show you resulting groups for which you define the similarity level. After you decide which images you do not need it will delete or move them somewhere else for you. As you will see, PhotoSort is so easy to use that you will start finding duplicates the moment you run the program for the first time.

Download PhotoSort 1.52 in Softonic

Need3Space is a comprehensive set of tools which helps you control and manage your disk space, while also gathering free space, for any drive. With Need3Space you can find duplicate files, temporary files, unneeded or junk files, old files, large files, and even empty files and folders. A vast number of options helps you customize your search.

Need3Space supports all drive types: hard disks, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, Network drives, USB storage devices, and memory disks. With the Analyze tool you can find out which folders and files are the largest on your drive with only a glance and a few clicks. One option with the Analyze tool is to group all files on selected hard drives or folders by file type, which allows you to see how much space is used by each file type (MP3, AVI, EXE, ZIP, etc.)

Need3Space has an optimized search engine, so it uses very little of your system's resources while searching for files. Also, at any time, you can send the application to background mode, or change its priority on the fly from the taskbar icon context menu.

The integrated Uninstaller will list for you the applications installed on your computer, calculate the estimated size (if possible) for those applications, and show you the total amount of space used by those installed applications.

Download Need3Space 1.5.1.20 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

Video DownloadHelper installs in the Firefox toolbar to enable you to download in just a few clicks.

When it animates, clicking on the video icon downloads it directly. This simple extension downloads anything from YouTube videos, to MySpace, Google Video, DailyMotion, Porkolt, iFilm and more. You can select the folder you want to download videos where you will find them in FLV format. To make things even easier to keep track of, the files are added to the list of Firefox downloads like any other file. So you can see in a glance exactly what you've downloaded and how many videos you have in your collection. The only problem you might find is that sometimes, the downloads don't start immediately. It can take time depending on the streaming on the video site server but also, it seems that the program itself has to process the file before it starts downloading. The latest version has introduced some major innovations in the interface which make it much faster to use. One example is that FLV videos that you view are now remembered by the program so you can view your viewing history at any time and request the download of several videos in one batch or go directly to their original page. You have to enable this function via the system preferences and select 'enabled' in the 'History' tab. The developers have also reduced the number o duplicate entries that used to plague the previous version and there are fewer memory leaks so it's lighter on your RAM.

A useful FLV video downloading tool for Firefox users and the latest improvements have fixed many of the speed problems which hampered it before.

Download Video DownloadHelper 3.2 in Softonic

Back up software has gone through something of a boom of late. With the huge increases in storage, more and more of us are on the look out for reliable, stable file protection. GoodSync is such a program - it offers fast, automated back up, synchronisation and restore between multiple devices - all in a relatively simple and easy-to-use environment.

Upon first launching GoodSync, you're immediately prompted to select source and destination folders (essentially, your original file folder and the new one you'd like to use as a backup location). The destination folder could be on the same computer, on an iPod, a network drive or any other external storage device. We tested GoodSync with a network drive and found it exceptionally fast.

Additionally, GoodSync's automation feature does exactly what you'd hope for: automatic synchronisation and backup with a raft of configuration options. If, like me, you're backing up important work documents to a network drive, you can easily pick how often this job should be done, to do it just on shutdown, or to allow the task scheduler to handle the job.

You can choose either to back up an entire folder (or folder system) or just specific files. This, along with GoodSync's effective duplicate controls, means that for a simple tool, this program offers you a highly customisable back up and sync solution, enough to offer any user true peace of mind.

A reliable and effective back up solution. Highly recommended.

Download GoodSync 7.2.9 in Softonic