In the beginning was Microsoft Office. Then OpenOffice appeared as an open-source alternative. And now IBM makes a new move and offers its own productivity suite, all free of charge. The idea is not new: there have been a few free suites launched lately, but all of them were online. IBM Lotus Symphony is the only desktop suite that, together with OpenOffice, can offer a free alternative to Microsoft's proprietary apps.

IBM Lotus Symphony offers three tools: word processor, spreadsheet and presentations. It's true that other productivity suites are usually more complete. However, Lotus Symphony stands out for a convenient, single-windowed interface from which you can launch the three apps. Simply click on the "Open" button and select the kind of document you want to open: the program's toolbar will change accordingly. What's more, you can have as many opened documents as you want at the same time, no matter which type, and switch between them in the top tab bar.

The suite includes all the basic tools that you could expect in such an application: spell checker and tables for documents, predesigned templates for presentations and charts for spreadsheets - to name a few - besides the usual configuration options as regards fonts, colors and the like.

In my personal opinion, I'm glad to have another possibility to choose from when deciding which suite I'm going to use. A little rivalry is always good and usually produces better and wider options for computer users. And it seems IBM is beginning to take the suite competition quite seriously.

IBM Lotus Symphony has left the beta stage behind and now offers a stable, highly functional productivity suite that, despite not being as complete as other suites, may perfectly fit your needs.

Download IBM Lotus Symphony 1.0 in Softonic

If you believe that worldwide improvements also come from personal choices and that no matter how small, an action combined with many others can make a difference, read on. You can really make a difference helping worldwide medical research.

Your computer is a useful computing source and can be used during moments of inactivity to elaborate data for research projects. Once it has processed a package of data it can connect to a centre to upload the results and download new material. If millions of people were doing so, the result would be to have a super-computer calculator's power, able to carry on an enormous amount of elaboration and simulation that otherwise would take years and years. This is the principle of distributed computing.

World Community Grid uses your computer for scientific-humanitarian projects. It runs a screen saver while elaborating data to conquer cancer, to fight AIDS, to study African climate change and so on. It doesn't affect your PC's performance as it works only when you are not working but your screensaver is. This programme is founded by IBM and collaborates with BOINC, an open source platform that works similarly for certain projects.

Start using this 'intelligent' screensaver and feel part of a scientific community that studies how to fight majors human diseases with the power of distributing computing.

Download World Community Grid 5.10.45 in Softonic

WinHex is a universal hexadecimal editor, particularly helpful in the realm of computer forensics, data recovery, low-level data processing, and IT security. An advanced tool for everyday and emergency use: you can inspect and edit all kinds of files, recover deleted files or lost data from hard drives with corrupt file systems or from digital camera cards.

Features include:

• Disk editor for hard disks, floppy disks, CD-ROM & DVD, ZIP, Smart Media, etc
• Native support for FAT, NTFS, Ext2/3, ReiserFS, CDFS, UDF
• Built-in interpretation of RAID systems and dynamic disks
• RAM editor, providing access to physical RAM and other processes' virtual memory
• Data interpreter, knowing 20 data types
• Editing data structures using templates (e.g. to repair partition table/boot sector)
• Concatenating and splitting files, unifying and dividing odd and even bytes/words
• Analyzing and comparing files
• Particularly flexible search and replace functions
• Disk cloning (under DOS with X-Ways Replica)
• Drive images & backups (optionally compressed or split into 650 MB archives)
• Programming interface (API) and scripting
• 128-bit encryption, checksums, CRC32, hashes (MD5, SHA-1, ...)
• Erase (wipe) confidential files securely, hard drive cleansing to protect your privacy
• Import all clipboard formats, incl. ASCII hex values
• Convert between binary, hex ASCII, Intel Hex, and Motorola S
• Character sets: ANSI ASCII, IBM ASCII, EBCDIC, (Unicode)
• Instant window switching. Printing. Random-number generator.
• Supports files >4 GB

Download WinHex 14.7 in Softonic

MyGeneration is a structured programming environment with the functions and options needed to plan and build scripts in C #, VB.NET, JScript, and VBScript using predefined templates and examples.

Developed in. NET MyGeneration is ideal for working in ORM architectures or other file-based O / R, as Gentle.NET or Nhibernate. It is compatible with Microsoft SQL, Oracle, IBM DB2, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Microsoft Access, FireBird, Interbase, SQLite, VistaDB and Advantage. It also allows you to assemble code compatible with both Windows and other operating systems. By default, the environment includes a large number of templates to help you implement code in C #, VB.NET, PHP, HTML, amongst others and it allows you to establish database connections to test your developments. MyGeneration can also generate code for non-Microsoft operating systems and enables you to adapt it's own templates or write your own to generate your particular architecture.

In terms of a flexible cross language programming environment for scripting, this has everything you need.

Download MyGeneration 1.3.0.1 in Softonic

How fit is your hard drive? Drive Fitness Test (DFT) is a technology that uses a PC-based software program that accesses Hitachi hard drive microcode to enable diagnosis of hard drive operations. This is perfect if you think you've been suffering from hardware or hardrive failure.

DFT microcode automatically logs significant error events, such as hard drive errors and builds a history of all reassigned sectors. This log is kept in a special reserved area of the drive which you can then use for technical analysis by the manufacturer or technician. DFT microcode also performs a mechanical analysis of the hard drive in real time. Parameters such as disk shift, servo stability, and Repeatable Runout (RRO) are calculated by reading the servo's Position Error Signal (PES) and analyzing the patterns in the PES. This is an interesting new test for hard drives - the signals that control the actuator are also used to analyze the mechanical status of the disk stack.

DFT microcode also supports the creation and use of a special protected "diagnostic partition" on the media. This volume is a separate range of sector addresses that can be used to contain the DFT software and other diagnostic software.

If you have a Hitachi manufactured drive, this tool can help you diagnose difficult problems although without a certified technician to analyse the results, they won't mean much to you.

Download IBM - Hitachi Drive Fitness Test 4.11 in Softonic

Add the ability to work with a scanner or camera from your application with VintaSoftTwain ActiveX. You can fully control an image acquisition process, use an automatic document feeder, clean up images using noise removal, auto border crop, blank page detection, save acquired images to disk or SQL server, upload images onto Web or FTP server.

VintaSoftTwain was tested and has examples of use in: MS VB.NET, MS C#, MS VB 6.0, MS VC++ 6.0, Borland Delphi 7.0, C++ Builder 6.0, Visual FoxPro 8.0, Gupta SQL Windows 3.1, MS Access, VBScript, JavaScript, MS Excel & Word, IBM Object Rexx language.

Download VintaSoftTwain ActiveX 3.7.1 in Softonic

Digital MediaRescue Professional recovers lost data from a whole host of multimedia devices - from digital cameras, audio recorders, MP3 & WMA players to PDAs and mobile phones. The program supports Hard Drives, CompactFlash cards (type I/II), IBM Microdrives, SmartMedia cards, MultiMedia cards (MMCs), Secure Digital (SD) cards, Memory Sticks and any other storage devices, with the addition of wide-range file format support: JPEG, AVI, MOV, MP3, WMA, WAV, etc.

Modern Digital Still Cameras and other digital devices allow files to be erased and the space on the media reused. So sometimes your information gets erased or crippled, either by physical damage to the medium (e.g. flash card crash), or because someone clicked the wrong button on your recorder. Through momentary carelessness, valuable data can be lost in an instant.

The media can also be bulk-erased or formatted, removing everything from the storage media. Of course you don't want to lose your valuable files such as important photos or favourite audio and video recordings. And there it is, our MediaRescue Pro is here to easily, quickly and absolutely reliably reconstruct the missing multimedia files.

Hope is at hand with Digital MediaRescue Professional for your lost digital media.

Download Digital MediaRescue Professional 4.4.3 in Softonic

According to the game story, the first Speedball league (founded in 2095) fails due to violence and corruption. As the organization gave place to anarchy, the game is forced underground, but five years later, from one attempt to regain public interest, Speedball 2 is born. The game starts in 2105 as a new team Brutal Deluxe emerges.

Speedball 2 is one of Bitmap Brothers' most successful titles and was released for several platforms including the Amiga, CD 32, Acorn Archimedes, IBM-PC, Atari ST, Commodore 64, Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, Master System, Game Boy and the Game Boy Advance. The first version was released in 1991, the final version ten years later.

Changes were made to the rules of the game, meaning that teams have 9 players on court rather than 6, and targets on the floor and walls can be hit for bonus points. The music, written by Simon Rogers and remixed and coded by Richard Joseph won the Golden Joystick award for best soundtrack.

Download Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe in Softonic

IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition is a no-charge, entry-level enterprise search software solution that enables rapid deployment of intranet and file system search for both employees and customers.

Features:

• Supports up to 500,000 documents.
• Search both the enterprise and the Internet from a single interface. Configurable integration with Yahoo!
• Integrates smoothly with existing infrastructures and intranet sites.
• Incorporates open source Apache Lucene technology to deliver the best of community innovation with IBM's enterprise features.
• Access to IBM's expert service and support professionals, available through a paid support option, ensures challenges are resolved in a reliable and timely manner.

Download IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition in Softonic

SQLWays is an innovative database migration product that easily converts all major databases to IBM DB2, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, Sybase and MySQL. Being a complete migration solution, SQLWays automates the entire migration process converting data, database objects, constraints and business logic. Highly flexible, it can be adapted to the unique requirements of various database conversion projects.

Supporting a wide variety of databases and using high performance technologies especially adapted for working with large volumes of data, SQLWays is an ideal choice for companies dealing with multiple databases.

Download SQLWays Build 494 3.9 in Softonic

Fast, easy and inexpensive LPD print server for Windows. SDI LPD prints reports from IBM zSeries (mainframe) iSeries (AS/400) and UNIX systems on your Windows local or network printers. Handles TCP/IP network printing for LAN, WAN or the Internet.

Download SDI LPD 2.5 in Softonic

PC INSPECTOR smart recovery is the new data recovery program from CONVAR for Flash Card, Smart Media, SONY Memory Stick, IBM Micro Drive, Multimedia Card, Secure Digital Card or any other data carrier for digital cameras.

If you have unintentionally deleted or formatted pictures, videos or sound files on your data carrier or have pulled it out during a write operation, no matter - PC INSPECTOR smart recovery can easily, quickly and absolutely reliably reconstruct the lost data.

Download PC Inspector Smart Recovery 4.5 in Softonic

z/Scope is a terminal emulator for accessing to AS/400 and IBM Mainframes that works both as a stand-alone and a web-based application. It can be run on Windows ME/NT/2K/XP platforms, and supports both TN3270E and TN5250E protocols.

z/Scope offers a unique web-to host solution that supports built in security. z/Scope provides connectivity to SSL enabled legacy hosts. It uses the Internet standard SSL security protocol as well as TSL security for data encryption to ensure that all z/Scope Warp sessions are secure. Users are thus able to work in a secure environment.

This is a multi-session/multi-connection terminal emulator. Its interface was designed to provide the simplest and quickest access to your hosts. With z/Scope users and system administrators alike have at their fingertips the most powerful, customizable and easy to use secure terminal emulator for Microsoft Windows available today. System Administrators can completely replace the traditional, and often difficult to use "green screen" with user friendly web-to-host and desktop-to-host interfaces using the latest in web scripting technologies, bringing your users everything they need.

Download z/Scope Warp 5.0 in Softonic

Zend Studio Professional is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) designed for professional PHP developers. Through a comprehensive set of editing, debugging, analysis and optimization tools, Zend Studio 5 Professional aims to speed development cycles and simplify complex projects.

Highlights of the package include:

Simplify web database application development

Speed up development time

Work smarter

Take control of your code

Powerful debugger

Work as a team

Download Zend Studio Professional 5.0 in Softonic

Gnuplot is a portable command-line driven interactive data and function plotting utility for UNIX, IBM OS/2, MS Windows, DOS, Macintosh, VMS, Atari and many other platforms. The software is copyrighted but freely distributed (i.e., you don't have to pay for it). It was originally intended as to allow scientists and students to visualize mathematical functions and data. It does this job pretty well, but has grown to support many non-interactive uses, including web scripting and integration as a plotting engine for third-party applications like Octave. Gnuplot has been supported and under development since 1986.

Gnuplot supports many types of plots in either 2D and 3D. It can draw using lines, points, boxes, contours, vector fields, surfaces, and various associated text. It also supports various specialized plot types.

Gnuplot supports many different types of terminals: interactive screen terminals (with mouse and hotkey functionality), pen plotters (like hpgl), printers (including postscript and many color devices), and printings to output file as vectorial pseudo-devices like LaTeX, metafont, pdf, svg, or bitmap png. Gnuplot is easily extensible to include new devices.

Download gnuplot 4.0 in Softonic

ZOC is a powerful and well-established terminal emulator and telnet client, well known for its outstanding user interface. ZOC lets you access character based hosts using telnet, modem, Secure Shell (SSH/SSH2), ISDN and most other means of communication. It can be used to connect to Unix/Linux hosts and shell accounts, BBS's, IBM mainframes (via TN3270 or TN5250) or internet muds.

ZOC's extensive features and functions, including a typed command history, scrollback, multiple window support and others, make it the ideal tool for people needing to access Unix shell accounts from a Windows platform. With ZOC's support for the Linux (Xterm) emulation, complete with full colors, meta-keys and local printing, Linux admins will feel as though they are sitting at their native consoles.

Download ZOC 4.14 in Softonic