While the iPod is best know for being the music lovers best friend, it can also be a useful tool for movie buffs.

Xilisoft DVD to iPod Converter lets you extract DVD video and audio tracks of DVDs and convert them to audio and video formats compatible with the iPod Video (MPEG-4, MP3, AAC or M4A formats). Like most Xillisoft converters, it's very easy to follow and use with a good looking interface to boot. Conversions are fast but most impressive is the quality which is as good as any iPod converter you'll find. The conversion process is very simple - you can choose to either rip and convert a whole film or sections of a film. Apart from this, there are some customisation options too such as setting a file limit for your conversions, normalizing audio or the ability to compress files that have been extracted to fit your iPod - useful for if you've filled your hard drive with too many tunes. You can also customise the audio, subtitles and part of a DVD that you want to rip. If you've got an iPhone, the program has also now been updated to allow you to put films on your hard drive too.

Flexible, simple to convert and fast, Xilisoft DVD to iPod Converter has more than enough to fulfil your conversion needs.

Download Xilisoft DVD to iPod Converter 5.0.32.0314 in Softonic

When it comes to P2P file sharing, eMule usually wins hands down but UseNeXT is an interesting, slightly more sophisticated offering which has a lot to offer.

For starters, depending on your connection, it can be remarkably quick. You can download at speeds of up to 25 Mbps with DSL/Cable and it¡s pretty constant rather than the fluctuations you often get with such services. The network also prides itself on security over it's rivals such as Limewire and eMule - with ISPs continually cracking down on users, UseNeXT promises users far more anonymity than most.

The Usenet archives are supposedly some of the biggest in the world - more than 300 Terabytes of data available at all times and they claim that around 2,000 Gigabytes of new files are added daily. The problem in the past was that UseNeXT used to be a very complicated affair that only tech geeks can handle. However, nowadays, it's been simplified to such an extent that eMule, Limewire and other P2P users will feel more than comfortable with it.

While it can't possibly hope to compete with the reach and depth of the major P2P networks, UseNeXT offers an impressive selection with some super fast downloads.

Download UseNeXT 4.61 in Softonic

If you are the type of person who always changes your mobile ring-tone, this application is a must-have for you. EZ Ringtone allows you to convert music, either from CD tracks or mp3 file, to different ring-tone formats compatible with all modern devices.

The interface is really clear and simple: you just have to open an audio file to have an image of the right and left channel. Then select the part of your music you would like to convert to a ring-tone and press the format button compatible with your mobile. That’s it.

It’s annoying though that the trial version limits the duration of ring-tones to 5 seconds and it is a shame that there is not even a simple editing tool. It would have been good, for example, to have the possibility of mixing different parts of a song or maybe different titles as well. A fading or echo effect to end the recording would have made the final ring-tone a bit more ’professional’.

The tool that compresses MP3 files size from 30% up to 70% is also useful, saving valuable space on your mobile phone in case it’s not yet as capacious as a proper MP3 player.

Don’t be bored with your ring-tone ever again and drive all your co-workers mad with your favourite songs!

Download EZ Ringtone 1.6.3 in Softonic

Are you tired of typing all your e-mails or are you just a slow typer and don't have time to reply to everyone?

Then why not speak your responses? Free TalkMail enables users to long, high quality voice emails for free to any email address around the world. The e-mails can then be played back on any PC, Mp3 player and replies can be made for free. It's an ideal tool for mobile professionals who are not in the office regularly and have to shoot off a few e-mails on the move, to college students who just want to have a bit of fun online. The big drawback with this program is that the files are often very large - I don't understand why the developers couldn't have given the files a higher compression ratio or included a small compression utility. The other downside is the interface which looks very archaic. It looks like something out of Windows DOS and there's certainly no scope for changing the skins. Then again, this is not the kind of program you use just to look at - it's designed especially to do one particular function which it does well - the sound quality is good and it's very easy to use.

A useful little utility but it's a mystery why the files are very large and there's no way to change the rather ugly interface.

Download Free TalkMail 1.0 in Softonic

Soundbase was created to fill a gap in the large amount of free and commercial mp3 players. It doesn't pretend to have the ultimate MP3 or audio solution, but it will most likely fit somewhere into your MP3 playing experience. As a player, as a tag editor or as an organizer. It will always give you a quick way of doing common tasks.

Soundbase uses the windows subsystem that compresses and uncompresses audio files, the Audio Compression Manager (ACM). By using this windows subsystem the player does not require any additional DLLs or drivers, and as such a basic install of Soundbase will take less then 2mb (5mb if you install the 60 basic skins too). Windows itself supports the most common formats (MP3 , WAV, WMA). You might need to read the help section on installing more sophisticated formats (APE, FLAC, Ogg) to enable playback for those files. The Help section provides you with links to free (ACM) codecs packs and will give you information on how to best install the different codec packs and the teams personal preferences on quality and performance of these codec packs.

You can skin Soundbase, organize your music to different locations, edit tag information, search, filter, create playlists. Soundbase doesn't use any registry entries but stores all in one ini file, it is completely anonymous, it can run from any location with limited user access rights, and much more.

Download SoundBase 2008.02.22 in Softonic

With so many different types of optical storage platforms around at the moment it's easy to get confused about the best software to use to rip or copy your disks. StarBurn is a nice solution because it supports a wide range of different disk formats, and it's also free. With StarBurn you can record data, music, an image of a CD or DVD, extract tracks of audio, generate a disk image and even compress different formats from audio in MP3 or OGG.

Anyone with even a passing knowledge of Windows XP will be able to pick up and use the program straight away, as its file explorer panel mirrors the OS precisely. Although the actions you'll need are presented in the form of a wizard, meaning that although burning times aren't the quickest around, this is a very simple, free solution for copying any type of disk.

Download StarBurn 9.8 in Softonic

Although many programs are now able to rip your CDs to multiple formats, few are as powerful as Kat CD Ripper.

Kat CD Ripper allows you to rip a whole CD, selected tracks or even parts of selected tracks while supporting CDDB at the same time, meaning you don't have any time consuming relabeling to do when you are done. As is standard with such programs, you have full control over sampling rates and other parameters regarding the quality of the Mp3 or WAV files that you rip. It also features a useful volume normalisation function which allows you to make sure that if you're mixing different tracks off of different CDs, the finished product does not sound all over the place. Probably the most unique feature however is the ability to select a section of the CD in a window display which allows you to select the "range" of the track - basically the start and the end position. You can also record sounds directly into the program from a microphone. The downside however is that the program has been designed with Windows XP in mind which means that Vista users may experience certain glitches in recording and problems in ripping.

Overall, a very powerful ripping tool that gives you maximum control over exactly what you need to record.

Download Kat CD Ripper 1.8 in Softonic

Traverso is an open source cross platform multitrack audio recording and editing suite, with an innovative and easy to master User Interface.

Normally, you'd pay good money for such a multitrack audio editor so it's definitely worth a look if you're thinking of pslahing out on one soon. The program is aimed at both professional and home users although if you've got no multitrack experience you will have to spend some time getting to grips with it. Traverso is a complete audio mixing solution from recording to CD authoring. The advantage of this is that once you've mastered it, there's no need to learn a whole host of other programs to see your final product. This constitutes one of the biggest selling points of the program - speed as it offers a complete non-linear audio processing solution. Since it's open source, there are various add ons and plugins that can be easily added and all edits can be replayed in real-time with no rendering or waiting time. This is a massive bonus if you're working with Mp3 tracks or other compressed formats that usually require conversion or decompression before playback is allowed. The program has now been expanded to include native reading of FLAC, OGG, Mp3 and WAV format. It's also been updated to handle the importing of different sample rates regardless of your sound card's capabilities.

Traverso is no substitute for a professional multitrack editing program and professionals will find it limited but beginners should look no further to get some experience.

Download Traverso DAW 0.42.0 in Softonic

FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec. Grossly oversimplified, FLAC is similar to MP3, but lossless, meaning that audio is compressed in FLAC without any loss in quality. This is similar to how Zip works, except with FLAC you will get much better compression because it is designed specifically for audio, and you can play back compressed FLAC files in your favorite player (or your car or home stereo, see supported devices) just like you would an MP3 file.

FLAC is freely available and supported on most operating systems, including Windows, "unix" (Linux, *BSD, Solaris, OS X, IRIX), BeOS, OS/2, and Amiga. There are also build systems for autotools, MSVC, Watcom C, and Project Builder.

The next generation of audio compressors is here.

Download FLAC 1.2.1 b in Softonic

Picasa is a lesson to the world in usability design. In less than five megabytes, this image organizer succeeds in being a completely rounded package with many editing tools that will satisfy part-timers and enthusiasts alike. However, what really makes Picasa stand out is the beautifully-executed interface, which proves a complete pleasure to use thanks to its speedy pace and some clever animations and fades.

Thanks to an initial image scan, you won’t ever have to go digging through your hard drive for last summer’s holiday snaps, and it will even order every picture you have chronologically, letting you quickly browse to any obscurely-named files in seconds. While Picasa can be used as a viewer, it has not been designed for that and so viewing should be left to another program such as the free FastStone Image Viewer. Where it does excel is in retouching your pictures with colour corrections and a few effects such as blur or film grain. Each edit can be done on the fly with an instant preview of the result and, of course, if something doesn’t quite work out, you can always go back via the undo button.

While these editing utilities cater for the majority of users’ needs, it would have made sense to include the ability to resize images, especially as Picasa includes features that make it easy to publish to the web in the form of a blog. You can also email any single or collection of images through Outlook or directly from Picasa if using your GMail account.

Some of the additional extras give this program a touch of class that you rarely find in Windows software, including the ability to make a collage from a set of images and a handy star rating system that lets you mark your favourite snaps and later single them out giving you the best of the best. Having been acquired by Google, Picasa is now freely available to the masses and is continually improving with each new iteration. With this in mind, it comes highly recommended for photography novices and pros, who have a significant number of images to organize on their PC.

Download Picasa 2.7.37.37 in Softonic

Expstudio Audio Editor is a powerful and best of all, free audio editor. It supports a wide range of formats. It offers all the features of the professional edition but can only save audio files as uncompressed WAV PCM (*.wav) and mp2 (*.mp2) files. It also features free updates although user support is limited. Get editing your audio in a jiffy!

Download EXPStudio Audio Editor 4.22 in Softonic

Sick of your audio ripper leaving behind lots of junk files? Audiolib CD Ripper is an easy to use tool which can rip audio CD tracks to Mp3, WAV or OGG format without creating any temporary files. It also retrieves album and single information as CDDB is supported via the free DB server. The program supports ID3 tags, track titles can be renamed and a Winamp playlist can be generated.

One nice feature is that the ripper can convert CD's to the lossless APE compression format. This gives you super compressed files but with no loss in sound quality. It's also a very good looking burner - there are tons of great skins to choose from. One other thing worth adding is that it can support multiple CD-ROM devices so if you'd like to connect external ones, you'll have no problem with this program.

There's not a great deal to fault with Audiolip CD Ripper except that sometimes, the buffer does not load as quickly as it should although this may depend on your CD-ROM device.

Download Audiolib CD Ripper 1.1 in Softonic

JetBee attempts to be one of those programs that burns absolutely everything. For the most part, it achieves this aim and makes burning easy and simple. To get started, you simply add files to the required project which can be burned onto a CD data disc, Audio disc, DVD disc or UDF disc.

After that, it's simply a case of clicking the 'Burn' button and you're done. Of course, there are plenty of configurable parameters too but in the case of the simplest burn, it's as easy as that. You can also burn ISO images, copy discs or save disc images to burn later. It also has a handy wizard to guide you through the process of creating an ISO image from your files a

The developers claim that JetBee supports all popular disc burning devices: CD burners, DVD burners, Blu-Ray burners and HD-DVD burners. However, there seems to be no definitve list of compatible devices on the developer site so this is not guaranteed. The only problem I had was burning some files with codecs that the program would not recognise. It was easily solved however by updating Windows codecs to write MP3, WMA and other compressed files.

If you need an all-in-one burning solution with a simple interface, then JetBee does the job well.

Download JetBee Free 4.0.5 in Softonic

Xidie claim that their Security Suite offers for free what most other developers make you pay for. They say that tools like WinZip, encryption software and a decent shredder will set you back at least $150 but they all come for free in their Security Suite. The evidence is certainly convincing - Xidie Security Suite is compatible with WinZip archives, it implements strong encryption algorithms (like AES and Triple DES) and proprietary (DX, MDX) and the password manager is both powerful and easy to use.

Whatsmore, it's also integrated into Windows Shell. Almost all modules can be easily accessed from Windows Explorer or the Desktop so you can create encrypted archives, secure deleted files or folders and many other options direct from Windows Explorer. For beginners, there are also several setup wizards for almost all actions that will guide you through all the necessary steps needed to protect your data. Probably the most unique feature is the Steganography module which enables you to hide and encrypt files within other files. This allows you to encrypt sensitive information, while at the same time hiding it in a file that will not look suspicious, so nobody even knows that there is any encrypted information.

This is a really impressive security suite although unzipping options are limited compared to WinZip. However, considering it's for free, it's a great set of tools made on the better by Windows shell integration.

Download Xidie Security Suite in Softonic

Monkey’s Audio is a lossless audio compressor which aims to reduce the size of audio files as much as possible without losing any sound quality. The program uses its own file format, .ape, which is known to have a better compression rate than the lossless FLAC format, but files tend to be larger than lossy compression formats like MP3 or AAC.

We recommend using Monkey’s Audio to compress audio CDs to your PC. Your songs will not lose their quality but will take up less space than if they were uncompressed. What’s more, Monkey’s Audio handles tag support, keeping all your file information, like artist name, track numbers and playing time.

Monkey’s Audio can decompress files back to their original type without losing any quality and the program features an option to verify the MD5 checksum of compressed files. Compressed .ape files can play in any of the major media players and the program can also install a plug-in to compress audio files directly from Winamp.

Monkey’s Audio is a great solution if you’re worried about losing any quality when compressing audio files. However, because it only compresses to .ape, you’re pretty much stuck with playing your converted files on your PC. To enjoy them on your mobile music player you’ll have to use another program, like dbpowerAMP Music Converter or Switch Free, to convert your audio files to MP3 or AAC, which remain the most widely supported audio formats.

Download Monkey's Audio 4.01 beta 2 in Softonic

View your photos fast and easy using the many easy-to-use built in features. Turn your gallery into a single web page using the built in Thumbnail Generator. All it takes is a single mouse click and Visualizer IB will handle the rest.

Turn up the volume and let Visualizer IB play your MP3 files. Add background music to your slide show. Pick an image folder, add your soundtracks and go! MP3 Player, MP3 Playlist and MP3 Encoder included. Convert and Compress your Photos to small size JPG files. The JPG compression tool will reduce the file size, making your photos suitable for the web or e-mail attachments. Select an image and send it as an e-mail.

Start resizing your images fast and easy with Visualizer IB. Resize several images at the same time. Add a fixed size for all images in the activated directory and go!

Download Visualizer IB 2.5 in Softonic