XYplorer is a simple to use file manager which replaces Windows Explorer with several enhanced functions and interface improvements.

Whatsmore, it's completely portable so you can put it on a USB stick and use it wherever you want and whenever you need it. The biggest advantage this program has over Windows Explorer is undoubtabley the Move and Copy dialogues. XYplorer allows you to configure hotkeys to carry out the most common copying and moving operations that you require meaning less mouse movements and faster management of your files and folders. XYplorer also removes the need for multiple folder windows along your taskbar because it employs the use of tabbed file management much in the same way as Firefox does with internet browsing. These tabs are fully customizable too - you can drag them around, rename them, hide them, lock them and much much more. This tabbed feature does give XYplorer a distinct browser style feel especially the featuring of an address bar which accepts not just folders, but also files, URLs, and search terms. This latter function can save hours of time searching through files by allowing you to search directly in XYplorer - without any need to use Windows search tool - simply by placing a "?" between the location and search pattern.

A truly impressive replacement for Windows Explorer - once you've used it you may never go back.

Download XYplorer 7.40.0025b in Softonic

If you're bored of Windows Explorer or would like to experiment with something a little different, then NexusFile may be your answer.

NexusFile is a powerful and fast file manager that allows you to browse through the contents of your hard drive with great ease. The vast majority of its functions can be controlled by keyboard shortcuts, which makes it quicker and more convenient than other programs especially Explorer. The program also includes integrated utilities that let you go beyond just file browsing and exploring such as a file extractor for compressed files in ZIP, RAR and ACE and it also allows you to create ZIP files, rename multiple files and directories simultaneously, add a description to your personal files and directories, and much more. The program features a very intuitive interface also can be customized completely, using colour coding to better distinguish the various elements, changing fonts and so on.

This is a neat little alternative to Explorer although it takes some getting used to but if you invest the time, you might find yourself sticking with it.

Download NexusFile 5.02.3196 in Softonic

Photo Collage is a full featured, easy-to-use application with which you can create beautiful photo compositions in no time. No technical skills required!

The program contains just about anything you need you create the collage – that is, everything except images themselves. The featured material includes background images, frames, clipart, borders and masks, all of them is such a large and colorful variety that you'll find it hard to choose just one. Besides, the program is extraordinarily easy to use: simply drag and drop the different elements of your collage on the interface, resize and rearrange them any way you want with your mouse and you're pretty much done. It's like scrapbooking, but without scissors and glue.

The only drawback I found to this great app is the fact that some frames don’t blend with the background properly, meaning they show a white border around the frame instead of being transparent. Also, I'd like to be able to save my work in other formats (HTML, EXE) rather than just as an image file, but at least I have a few graphic formats to choose from.

Photo Collage enables you to create amazing collages with your digital pictures, but only save them as image files.

Download iFoxSoft Photo Collage 2.06 in Softonic

If you've ever wanted more information about the photos that you've transferred from your camera to your PC then PIE is for you. It shows you the exposure information relating to each picture and can improve your understanding of your digital camera and improve your photo skills.

The exposure information saved in the JPG file (the meta data) remains as long as the file is not modified. Any modification to the JPG file will destroy this data but PIE works by preserving exposure information in standard text files which also may be imported into a spreadsheet or database. It gives your photos more user friendly file names than just generic numbers and always displays your photos in chronological order. It also allows you to rotate JPG pictures without any loss of quality and this is done without any decompression/compression so there's no loss of quality.

For serious photographers, this is a fantastic little tool. For those that don't need specific information regarding the details of their photo files, it's not really essential.

Download PIE Picture Information Extractor 4.27 in Softonic

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

HTTrack WebSite Copier allows you to download a web site from the Internet to a local directory, building recursively all directories, getting HTML, images, and other files from the server to your computer. HTTrack arranges the original site's relative link-structure. Simply open a page of the "mirrored" website in your browser, and you can browse the site from link to link, as if you were viewing it online. HTTrack can also update an existing mirrored site, and resume interrupted downloads. HTTrack is fully configurable, and has an integrated help system.

Download HTTrack WebSite Copier 3.43 B1 in Softonic

With multimedia portable devices growing in popularity and features, it's not surprising that DVD ripping tools have started to offer support for them so that you can take your favorite movies anywhere with you.

Xilisoft DVD Ripper Platinum is one of those applications: a full featured DVD ripper than can extract all data inside your DVD movies and convert it right away to another video format, including the most popular ones and – of course – video formats for mobile devices such as the iPod, the iPhone and the PSP.

The program lets you choose the video size, image quality and audio quality, and also create and use different profiles according to the target format or device, though I must say the profile creation process is not very intuitive. In addition to ripping the whole DVD, you can also select specific chapters and convert only those. The whole process is done via drop-down menus and the program is generally very easy to use.

With Xilisoft DVD Ripper Platinum you can rip the contents of your favorite DVD movies and convert them to different formats – including mobile video - in just a few easy steps.

Download Xilisoft DVD Ripper Platinum 5.0.40.0729 in Softonic

With the release of Vuze, Azureus is jumping onto the legal torrent bandwagon. This application features the classic and extensive Azureus torrent client and adds to it an online platform from which you can download and submit legal audio and video content.

Vuze’s interface is a complete shake-up to what Azureus users are used to. The bittorrent developer has decided to focus on online multimedia content and introduce user participation. The first thing the user sees is a list of thumbnails of the latest videos uploaded to Vuze. You can browse these files by using the left side menu, divided in time, main channels and tags. The menu at the top also links to hot and new content. Vuze takes the web 2.0 road and you’ll see that most of the files have tags. You can write out a comment and leave a rating. The program also makes it a no brainer to send a video by email and link to content directly from your blog or website. There’s also a little diggit tag for each file, to submit them to the ultra famous social news site. It’s still a shame that Azureus omitted all the other famous social networking sites like del.icio.us or reddit. Maybe in a few months?

If you’re only interested in using Vuze as a torrent client, click the “Advanced tab” and you will be taken to the original Azureus interface. You can open up the gazillion configuration options that have come to define this as the most exhaustive bittorrent client on the planet. There’s even access to extra plug-ins like 3D view, RSS feed scanner or share exporter.

We won’t expand on the qualities of the Azureus client, for which you can read a review here. Vuze tries to innovate by adding social tools to the program and providing legal content. There’s up to nine channels to choose from, be it Tony Hawk’s Boom Boom Sabotage the Film School or Travel, yet we were disappointed with the content in general. On some channels there’s very little to watch and on others you don’t necessarily find what you were hoping for. The trailers channel for example, offers new video games trailers instead of releases of movies. However, with Azureus striking up a partnership with the BBC, you’ll soon get Dr Who, The League of Gentleman and Invasion Earth and surely other content providers will flock to Vuze. Taking this into account, Vuze also includes a special tag to let you know if a file is High Definition or not.

On the downside Vuze does nothing to atone the principal drawback to Azureus: the over extensive use of PC memory. Yes, Vuze is still a bandwidth hog, and there’s nothing to do about it. We also find the new interface to be incredibly cluttered. The old downloads and currently downloading windows are too similar to have to be separated and we don’t understand why Vuze includes a Library tab when you can access content straight from the Home tab.

While the whole interface felt a bit clunky, and the number of legal content is still limited, Vuze is a promising application for sharing and enjoying legal content. If you’re already hooked on the original Azureus bittorrent client, take a leap into the future with Vuze.

Download Azureus (Vuze) 3 1.1.0 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

Beyond Compare is a powerful time-saving utility for comparing files and folders on your Windows system. Use it to manage source code, keep folders in sync, compare program output, and validate copies of your data.

Beyond Compare can create a snapshot of a live directory structure, and compare it against the live copy at a later date. The utility helps you analyze differences in detail and carefully reconcile them. It commands a wide range of file and text operations, as well as script commands for automating tasks.

Download Beyond Compare 3.0.2 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

Wise Disk Cleaner is a utility that helps to locate and eliminate those temporary archives that, with time, can litter your hard drive to critical point. The app can clear a wide range of different types of files including temporary Internet files, Windows updates, temporary user files, system files, and redundant archives.

One of the best things about Wise Disk Cleaner is that it allows you to add your own folders with temporary files not in use or those that you simply want to eliminate when executing the program. The program is very simple to use, and it's just a case of running a quick scan of your files then marking those that you wish to eliminate.

Download Wise Disk Cleaner 3.6.4 in Softonic

PC Tools Disk Suite attempts to cover all possible angles when it comes to hard drive management.

PC Tools Disk Suite offers all in one hard drive management that integrates disk optimization, a cleanup tool, a defrag utility and even a partitioning and backup tool in one well presented and easy to use pack. Like most PC Tools products, the interface is the same as used across the entire line of products and clearly presents the options available to you.

As is to be expected, the cleanup and optimize feature of PC Tools Disk Suite aims to reduce unnecessary files and indicates how much free disk space it's recovered for you at any one time. The defrag tool reorganizes files on your disk and should speed up your system and it supports both FAT and NTFS drives. It's nice that you can select whether to defrag quickly or slowly in PC Tools Disk Suite although the fast defrag doesn't seem to make much difference at all. On the other hand, the long defrag does take a while and you¡'d be best to use it overnight.

The PC Tools Disk Suite Backup feature allows you select which files you want to backup regularly either manually or via scheduler and finally the Partition feature allows you to create, merge, split, resize, delete, copy, and move partitions. However, you'd be highly advised to backup all your data using the total backup option on PC Tools Disk Suite as disk partitions can result in lost or corrupted data very easily if you don't know what you are doing.

PC Tools Disk Suite is an incredibly comprehensive suite that covers all the major areas you need to keep your PC in tip top condition.

Download PC Tools Disk Suite in Softonic

Making your own icons is a cool way to add a touch of class to your desktop without adding any widgets or changing the theme.

Easy Picture2Icon allows you to create snappy and customised Windows icons based on your favourite images and designs. So for example, if you have a favourite photo, Easy Picture2Icon can simply process it and turn it instantly into an icon you can use on your desktop. It doesn't accept all file types but at the moment, Easy Picture2Icon is able to convert digital pictures into BMP, GIF, JPEG, JPG and PNG files to Windows icons (ICO).

However, that's as far as it goes because Easy Picture2Icon then allows you to use your favourite graphical editor to retouch and add your own special effects to icons. Easy Picture2Icon does however allow you to make transparent icons and you can choose which color to make transparent.

Easy Picture2Icon is a great way to get started creating your own icons although it's a shame it doesn't come bundled with a more comprehensive editor.

Download Easy Picture2Icon 2.5 in Softonic

If you're looking for a powerful high-quality video converter, player, editor for MPEG, QuickTime, and iPod clips then MPEG Streamclip may fit the bill.

Not only that, MPEG Streamclip now edits DivX and can even download the latest DivX releases from the DivX corporation. It's clear that MPEG Streamclip is a multi-faceted utility that can be used to do a variety of things from playing most movie formats and then performing simple editing in terms of Cut, Copy, Paste, and Trimming clips (which isn't much but enough for most of us).

Because the editing feature is so limited however, it may make more sense to import the semi-edited files you have and then import them into a DVD authoring application to burn them to disk or another editing program such as Windows Movie Maker.

MPEG Streamclip is an all in one solution to convert MPEG video to multiple formats, from AVI or QuickTime DV up through MPEG-4 and perform basic editing on them.

Download MPEG Streamclip 1.2 in Softonic

With screen sizes, even on laptops, rapidly expanding and external monitors now well above 20 inches, sometimes it can be useful to be able to measure distances on your screen.

StormRuler is a simple utility that enables you to measure objects and distances across your screen. All that's required is that you place StormRuler next to the object you want to measure and anchor StormRuler at the point you want to start measuring from.

If it doesn't have much real practical use for most users, StormRuler does at least look quite cool with semi-transparent skin. However, unfortunately it doesn't seem to work in Vista yet and is only available for Windows 9X/2K and XP. It's rather annoying as well that you can only measure in pixels - there's no way to change the unit of measurement to imperial or metric units.

StormRuler is useful for designers or anyone else that needs to measure the pixels of a certain image or file and has no other way of doing so.

Download StormRuler 1.0 in Softonic

Lightscreen is a free, simple and practical utility to capture images for those that don't want to mess about with post processing or resizing tools.

Lightscreen offers three ways to capture screenshots - full screen, active window, and an area that you can select yourself. All three offer you enough scope to capture just about any type of screenshot. You can configure the format, prefix and suffix of the file (numeric or date format) and specify the folder to save it to. You can also configure a hotkey to make screenshots instantaneous. There are also some other additional little additions such as control over image quality or you can also configure a delay on the screen capture if you're using the hotkey. Once configured Lightscreen becomes especially useful to make multiple catches because every time you press capture, it automatically saves a file with the filename, format and parameters that you specified. The slight downside is that you can only configure a limited number of formats to save screenshots in namely PNG, JPG; BMP, PPM, XBM and TIFF.

A free and easy screen capture tool that will appeal to fans of The GIMP or those that just need a simple screenshot solution.

Download Lightscreen 0.3 in Softonic

There's nothing more annoying than downloading or ripping a film and then reaslising you don't have th right codecs to play it.

Or worse, the codecs that you have are corrupt and don't playback properly. If you've found yourself in this situation then m5Studio Codec is a neat little package which brings together most of the most important codecs you'll need. m5Studio Codec includes all the major codecs you'll need to make sure that you'll never have problems playing a film again.

Among the codecs included in m5Studio Codec are DivX or XviD, Ogg Vorbis or Cinepak or AC3 plus some some lesser known ones such as CoreAVC and Fraunhoffer IIS. Installation is simply a matter of double clicking EXE file and you've got a few configuration controls to control exactly how you want the codecs to perform.

m5Studio Codec is a useful codec package that will be able to playback most of the major formats that you can download or rip films to.

Download m5Studio Codec 8.3a in Softonic

Often the file you like to download is available on several different hosts. Phex will request different segments of the file from each host in parallel. After successfully downloading a segment Phex will merge it with the other segments of that file. This results in a much higher download speed. If a host is too slow the segment is split during download and given to another host. To make sure you never run out of hosts Phex is able to find new download hosts by itself with the automatic search functionality and features the Download Mesh.

You can choose for each download whether the segments should be chosen according to their availability (rarest first, BitTorrent-Style), their place in the file (earlier segments first, useful for previewing the file) or for previewing (the first 10MB according to their place in the file, after that according to their availability).

Phex offers very advanced configuration options. Much more than many other clients can offer. Especially advanced user can configure Phex according to their needs and are able to tune and see the effect of different settings.

With the passive search functionality Phex is able to constantly monitor the traffic that goes through the network and collect search results that match your passive search term. Also Phex snoops the traffic for new download candidates you need to finish your downloads faster. This type of searching is useful for longtime monitoring of available files on the network.

Other features include:

• Multiple searches
• Ultrapeer and compression technology for reduced bandwidth
• Integrated chat
• Browse host support
• Bitzi metadata lookup
• MAGMA support

Download Phex 3.2.6.106 in Softonic

There are loads of hard drive cleaning applications out there designed to ensure you enjoy maximum privacy on your PC but NVT Internet Privacy Cleaner is more focused than many of them.

Most cleaners try to clean absolutely everything, which is a bit surprising because after all surfing habits are one of the main reasons people want to cover their tracks which is the niche that NVT Internet Privacy Cleaner attempts to fill. NVT Internet Privacy Cleaner is an application that can eliminate all traces of web browsing making sure to delete session cookies, temporary files and other website data.

In addition, NVT Internet Privacy Cleaner can clean any trace of downloaded files, directories of temporary files, and even files that have been downloaded from the web and opened in WinRAR, WinZIP, MS Word etc. This marks NVT Internet Privacy Cleaner out from other hard drive cleaners because many comprehensive cleaners leave out tell tale signs like recently opened file menus in compression tools or other utilities that have been used in conjunction with your browser.

NVT Internet Privacy Cleaner only works with Firefox or Internet Explorer but as an effective and quick way to clear your tracks without clearing anything else, it does a solid job.

Download NVT Internet Privacy Cleaner 1.0.0 in Softonic