The extension takes little space and lives in your notification bar. Persistent chat windows exist at the bottom of your screen and can be minimized when you aren't using them.

You can still send pictures and emojis using the extension. Hangouts is a perfect extension if you have a lot of friends using Google.

Download Hangouts 1.2013.508.5 in Softonic

Gmail Touch+ for Windows 8 also supports Live Tiles, notifications, and multiple Gmail accounts. It also includes a shortcut to the desktop view to use its advanced features.

Since Gmail doesn't have a Windows 8 app yet, Gmail Touch+ for Windows 8 is your best bet for using Gmail from the Metro interface.

Download Gmail Touch+ for Windows 8 in Softonic

Usually webmails and mail clients like Microsoft Outlook, Apple Mail, Thunderbird or Gmail keep a list of people that you wrote to, but it is hard to create and export a list of anyone that wrote to you; it's even harder to filter it and to make it more organized.

Marketing, sales agents, accounts and system administrators. Technical and not technical people.

Download IMAP Addresses Exporter 1 in Softonic

Where it didn't play nice, Grammarly had problems picking up basic mistakes, and completely failed to notice some deliberate contextual howlers. Give Grammarly Lite a go by all means, but give it a test run (including some deliberate mistakes) before you rely on it for real.

Download Grammarly Lite for Firefox 1.80 in Softonic

Where it didn't play nice, Grammarly had problems picking up basic mistakes, and completely failed to notice some deliberate contextual howlers. Give Grammarly Lite a go by all means, but give it a test run (including some deliberate mistakes) before you rely on it for real.

Download Grammarly Lite for Chrome 2.62 in Softonic

Windows 8 Transformation Pack give you the look and feel of Windows 8 on older
Windows versions. The Metro design, themes, wallpapers, icons, sounds and other features can all be yours with this excellent free theme pack.

Features

Windows 8 Transformation Pack automatically installs several design changes and programs. The freeware comes with an imitation of the new Modern style and adjusts menus, cursors, screensavers and system sounds to emulate Windows' 8th version. You can also configure individual elements of Windows 8 Transformation Pack via the wizard.

Usability

Windows 8 Transformation Pack adds pizazz with its own Modern apps. By clicking on the tile store, you can manage programs and play mini updates or add extra apps. Standard elements include apps like Clock, Calendar, system settings, Gmail, Hotmail, Twitter, Facebook, Internet Explorer, Music and Photo Gallery.

Quality

Windows 8 Transformation Pack is a worthy successor to the popular Seven Transformation Pack. This early version of Windows 8 is a pretty impressive mimic. If Seven Translation Pack is anything to go by, as Windows 8 gets more advanced, so too will Windows 8 Transformation Pack, so keep an eye out for even more updates.

Conclusion

If you want a taste of Windows 8 on XP, Vista or Windows 7, download Windows 8 Transformation Pack asap!

Download Windows 8 Transformation Pack 7.0 (8TP) in Softonic

Features

With Skype you can not only have voice chats on your computer – just like telephone, only for free – but also make real phone calls at much lower rates, using the SkypeOut service and paying with Skype credit. Besides voice chats, Skype also includes standard IM functionalities (written conversations, emoticons, user avatars and so on) and also lets you have group video conferences and share screens.

Usability

These video calls are precisely the main focus on Skype's latest version. The program's interface has been completely redesigned with video conferences on mind. This means it's been made wider so that video fits in perfectly with your written chat, your contact list and a toolbar to manage conversation.

The new interface is transformed when you make a call, getting rid of all the clutter, so you just see the video images, and controls. Group video is still being tested in this version, and it's pretty cool.

The other major development is Facebook integration. This is a pretty big thing, as not only does it give you your news feed in the app - anyone can do that - but adds call and sms buttons to any of your friends who share their contact numbers.

If you’ve paid for Skype minutes, you can call your Facebook friends, and if they’re also signed in to Skype you can call them for free. One of the best new features is the automatic call recovery - drop a call and it’s put in pause. Restarting it is now really easy.

Quality

The sound quality during our testing was perfect: loud and clear. Video sometimes appeared a bit pixelated, but nothing we couldn't really deal with. There was also one nice detail, and that's the ability to see your own video image built-in on your contact's video, and the option to take a snapshot of your own image.

Conclusion

Skype 6 features a complete interface overhaul that now focuses more on video chats, and also adds some handy improvements to the way you communicate online.

What's new

Log in with your Microsoft account
Select and pin your favorite contacts
Facebook and Skype contacts combined into one Contacts list
Easier to understand premium subscription notices
Possibility to control Skype video rendering technology for backward compatibility for people who have trouble with video calls

Download Skype 6.3.60.105 in Softonic

Thunderbird is Mozilla's award winning and free solution to manage your mail more efficiently. And there are many advantages of switching to it too. Unlike Mail for example, it can handle virtual identities and create on-the-fly addresses and it's widely regarded as having one of the best spam filters out there. Most recently, it's been updated with a slick tabbed interface to make managing your e-mail easier.

The fact that like Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird can be beefed up with all manner of extensions makes it an extremely competitive mail client. It's also now much faster and more stable than before due to the Gecko 5 engine.

Getting going

Setting up Mozilla Thunderbird is painless. You can quickly import your mail and contacts from your Outlook or Mail account and set up POP3, IMAP or SMTP accounts in a flash. To stay well organized, Mozilla Thunderbird offers filters to deliver your mail into separate folders and inboxes. And of course, there's a built-in spell checker to make sure that your mails are professionally crafted.

What makes Mozilla Thunderbird slightly more unusual is the fact that it comes with an integrated RSS reader. Nowadays, this is a little outdated because many people use a separate application - or even Firefox itself - to follow RSS feeds but it may be useful if you only want to mail and follow RSS feeds at the same time when composing mails.

Searching your mail

The search tool in Thunderbird is excellent and searches happen in real time as you type. Search results are displayed in a separate tab. Tabs in general are a very big part of Thunderbird and like Firefox, you can have multiple messages open in separate tabs. This is a fantastic feature of Thunderbird although does tempt you to have too many mails open at once. Archiving is also another handy feature for those that don't want to delete messages but want to clear space in their inbox.

So what about security? You might think an open-source mail client would inherently be less secure than a paid one but Thunderbird is surprisingly secure with a fairly bulletproof spam filter. The reason being is that Thunderbird is regularly updated and crafted by volunteers who's main interest is making a better product rather than profiting from an end-product. Security updates are regular but small so as not to slow-down Thunderbird.

Exchange support

One of the biggest selling points of Mozilla Thunderbird is that it offers Microsoft Exchange support, meaning it will appeal to Office users who previously discounted it.

On the downside, the app is lacking some finesse in certain areas. Thunderbird still doesn't have conversation style email views like in Gmail (although an extension to do this can be downloaded separately) and there aren't many options for managing attachments and photos. There's also no calendar but again, this can be downloaded separately in the form of "Lightning".

Overall, Thunderbird is an excellent free alternative to Microsoft Outlook.

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Download Mozilla Thunderbird 17.0.4 (en-US) in Softonic

Features

The beta release of Chime has support for ten web services: Google+, Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, Quora, Flickr, GitHub, Foursquare, Reddit, and Stackoverflow. For Chime to recognize a service you must log into each of them separately from their main website. Once you’ve logged in to one or more of these services Chime will notify you of activity in three ways. First, a pop-up will show in the lower right corner of your desktop. Second, clicking the Chime extension icon will show a drop down list of all unread alerts. Last, you can open a Chime tab that will provide all past notifications.

With all of these great features it's a shame that Chime does not support other popular web services such as LinkedIn, Tumblr, or Outlook. Hopefully these will be included in the final release.

Usability

Chime is intuitive and easy to use. You will be presented with large icons of each of the supported web services, though there are no rollovers or headers for ones you might not be familiar with. Clicking on an icon will take you to the corresponding website where you can log in. Chime's functionality depends on your settings on each individual website. For example, if you disable notifications on Facebook, then Chime will have nothing to intercept. Clicking on a notification will take you directly to the corresponding website.

Despite Chime’s name there are no actual audio notifications or settings to change how notifications appear. At present you can only choose to enable/disable desktop notifications. You can filter and hide each service type in both the drop down menu and Chime tab. However, if you do not have log in cookies enabled filtering will log you out of a service.

Quality

Chime is coordinated with each network’s prime color: Facebook is blue, Reddit is orange, etc. Whenever a notification pops up or is checked it will have a clear colored banner. Chime has slow down when first logging into a service, especially if it’s accumulating hundreds of unread emails or replies. After the initial hiccup Chime works smoothly without noticeable performance issues.

Conclusion

Chime is a great way to stay on top of ten popular web services and social networks. The beta might have some minor performance and functionality issues, but it’s still an excellent means of monitoring popular sites.

Download Chime 1.73 in Softonic

Allows to schedule personalized in text/HTML format.Allows import/export of contacts from text files/excel/gmail/facebook. Allows to send mails base on day and hour limit. When your clients reply to your mail, you get informed on a single email address. Contains free email verifier that allows to verify your mailing list contacts and that verifies 5000 email addresses at a time..Designed for higher inbox delivery and no mail ID blocking.World class unsubscription.It allows you to send mails yourself. No need to hire people for bulk mailing agencies.Has a very powerful email scheduler.You can add multiple gmail and yahoo accounts to send mail. allows you to check bounced mails, inboxes etc.

You can add multiple gmail and yahoo accounts to send mail. allows you to check bounced mails, inboxes etc. You can also add any smtp server to it and send 30,000 per hour. 100% inbox delivery. Allows you to send unique mails.has a powerful email scheduler through which you can schedule mail sending to contact groups Has a world class contact grouping.

has powerful email extractor and email verifier.AB Bulk mailer is being used in 46 countries. Imagine how many orders you get when your sales mails goes to 1 million people every day.

Download AB Bulk mailer 6.5 in Softonic

Google limits to you select and delete only 250 Contacts at a time. But this software lets you delete entire Contact list in bulk. Unique software. No similar software available. One and only software.

Gmail users. Google Apps users Gmail Contacts users Google Contacts users Anyone who is using Contacts synchronization with Gmail.

Download Easy Contacts Delete for Gmail 1 in Softonic

If you just want a simple email application to unify all of your email accounts, Inky is definitely an app you should check out. Programs like Outlook offer more powerful features but they may be overkill for many.

The beauty of Inky is its simplistic interface. Big buttons allow you to access different accounts, settings, and features. There are a ton of keyboard shortcuts for those power users as well. Once you've created an Inky account, you can log into various email services like Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook.com so you can have access to all of these accounts whenever you log into Inky.

It's very easy to get started with Inky as your emails are displayed in the traditional column and preview pane. You can reply directly from within that email or you can choose to compose a new email. Everything is laid out logically and the options aren't intimidating.

Power users who love Gmail may find Inky lacking some important features, though. There no support for Gmail's labels and Google Contacts aren't pulled into the app, which is very disappointing. Only a select few contacts showed up. Inky features its own priority inbox and sorts relevance by different shaded water droplets. The symbols are too similar and makes it very difficult to use.

Overall, Inky is a great email hub for users who want basic features but power users will want to look elsewhere.

Download Inky rc20130103 in Softonic

Previously Google had a variety of different services that connected to each other. Now Google has released Google Drive which integrates Google Docs, Google+, and a cloud storage service into one.

While Gmail and Google+ are still separate from Drive, Google Docs was renamed to Drive with the addition of a free 5 GB of online storage. Like Dropbox, it adds a shortcut to your Windows Explorer so you can drag-and-drop files.

Once added, they are uploaded to your online account. Any type of file can be uploaded and are then accessible through the currently available Android app or online. The integration of storage with documents allows you to work with larger assets like images and video.

Friends can comment on anything you have uploaded, adding another level of social interaction. Drive is comparable to other cloud storage services, but the added connection to your Google account makes the unified system much easier to use. You can purchase more storage for extra space if necessary.

Google Drive has a lot of potential, but there is still room for improvement.

Download Google Drive 1.7.4018 in Softonic

Pokki is easy to install and launch. From there, you can search for and install a variety of different apps. Some fun games include Four Horsemen, Tweeki, and Mixtape. You can search for new apps to install directly from the app store on your desktop. App downloads and installs take no more than a few seconds usually.

Each app in Pokki has its own settings and must be individually configured and authorized in the correspondent web application. Although they don’t include all the functions offered by the original web app itself, they do display the number of unread items and show desktop notifications. This can be pretty useful when tracking email and social networks.

Pokki is ever increasing its app selection, and offers a variety of different apps for all ages and interests. The developer's website even includes a special area to encourage developers to create more app. Given time, Pokki will hopefully expand its app selection even more.

Pokki lets you pin websites, social networks and other utilities to the Windows 7 taskbar, as well as download challenging and fun games.

Download Pokki 1.0 in Softonic

eType works in full integration with almost every program, browser and Web site, including Microsoft Word, Outlook, Gmail, ICQ, Windows Messenger, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter to name a few.

eType serves not only as a dictionary for individuals to utilize, but as a dictionary for everybody who uses eType to benefit from. Contributions are gathered from global users all over the world and are centralized in one common dictionary.

eType is suitable for Men &amp;amp;amp;amp; Women between the ages 13-37 are using E-mails and spending most of their time on social networks and online in general.

Download eType 1.0.1.504 in Softonic

Currently, there's no comparable software on the market with as many functions combined to manage iPhone contacts. While a powerful utility, CopyTrans Contacts remains a simple tool to use

Simple use - for everyone - from the occasional technology Luddite to the business power user

Download CopyTrans Contacts 0.908 in Softonic

They say the first impression is what counts, but in the case of Screenpresso this could be a bit misleading. At first sight, Screenpresso seems to be the standard, simple screen capturing tool with no outstanding features. But after using it for a while you'll find it hides quite a few interesting aces up its sleeve.

To begin with, Screenpresso lets you choose between installing the program on your hard drive or using it as a standalone, portable app, which is always nice. After that, the programs sits unobtrusively in your system tray, from where you can access its main functions. There's also the possibility to use keyboard shortcuts, though unfortunately you can't customize them.

Screenpresso captures the image on your screen in several ways: full screen, user selected area, active window and even scrolling captures, which works great to have a screenshot of a complete website from top to bottom. The program lets you save images to all popular formats and keeps a history of all recent captures.

But that's not all: Screenpresso features a simple yet handy image editor that enables you to work on captured images. Just double click on any thumbnail in Screenpresso's history window and you'll be able to add shapes, text balloons, a blur effect or a nice border with reflections in no time. The history window also includes a link to share captured images directly on Twitter.

Screenpresso is an apparently simple screen capturing tool that hides very interesting features. Really worth a try!

Download Screenpresso - Screen capture 1.3.8 in Softonic

ICQ used to be the most popular IM application... until Microsoft launched MSN Messenger and thousands of ICQ users switched to it. In the meantime ICQ continued to be upgraded until finally reaching version 7.

ICQ 7 has a quick, painless installation process that hardly takes a couple of minutes and enables you to import contacts from other online services such as Facebook, Gmail and Windows Live, among others. Once installed on your system, the program plays its characteristic siren and launches, displaying a colorful, customizable interface – with the omnipresent banner at the bottom, of course.

Text chats are still the main function in ICQ. You can spice them up with smileys and tzers (the equivalent to Live Messenger's winks), customize the text font and color, save the conversation to message history and play games with your friends. ICQ 7 also enables you to transfer files and send short text messages via phone.

Video chats have also been integrated in the latest version of ICQ. The program features an excellent video image quality, but the video chat is displayed on a separate window from the text chat and makes it a bit uncomfortable to use.

The most outstanding characteristic in this new ICQ is undoubtedly its integration with social networks. You'll find a tab devoted to notifications from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr, which enable you to track your friend's activities at all times. Oddly enough, you'll have to set these services up from the ICQ website.

ICQ keeps working on new versions to measure up to its main competitors but fails to really offer any new functions.

Download ICQ 8.0 in Softonic