USB memory sticks are undoubtedly very handy devices to carry and share files anywhere, but the way Windows handles them is still slow and annoying.

Desk Drive can help you manage USB removable devices in a much more comfortable way by automatically creating a desktop shortcut every time you connect a USB device to your computer. This is the way USB memory sticks are usually handled with in Mac OS and Linux, so if you're used to those operating systems and miss that functionality in Windows, you'll love Desk Drive.

The program is really easy to use: simply launch it and it'll rest in silence on the system tray, waiting for the moment you plug a USB device, in which it'll create a desktop shortcut to access the USB content.

Desk Drive makes USB device management easier on Windows, but my advice is to disable the autoplay window, as it interrupts the whole process and makes the program not that useful anymore.

As long as you also disable the autoplay dialog window, Desk Drive makes USB memory device management really comfortable on Windows – just like Mac OS and Linux.

Download Desk Drive 1.6.4 in Softonic

Mac users are often regarded as very loyal customers, but that's because they have very good reasons, such as iTunes, to stick to Apple products.

iTunes has become one of the most widely spread music managers today. The release of the iPhone and the new iPod models has only contributed to increase this popularity, thanks to the seamless synchronization of contents between the computer and your device.

Now with iTunes 8, Apple continues to develop and improve this music software masterpiece with fresh new features that enable users to make the most of their multimedia library.

Managing your iTunes library is a piece of cake. You can view extended information about each track, edit their tags and rate them. Also, iTunes lets you comfortably browse through your library with the amazing Cover Flow system or the newly implemented grid view, which displays cover artwork sorted by album, artist, genre or composer. And for those of you who work in a LAN environment, the great news is that you can share your music libraries with your network mates.

One thing I particularly like of iTunes as music manager is its ability to create playlists. The Smart Playlist tool enables you to create almost any kind of playlist based on just about any criteria you set: artist, genre, date added, star rating or even the number of times you've played each song. Another great playlist is the so called Party Shuffle, which comes in very handy when you invite some friends over to your place. You can then leave iTunes working as a DJ and play music on its own, but if you drop by the PC at any time, you can freely add more songs to the list or rearrange them in any way.

Regarding playlists, iTunes 8 includes now an exciting new feature called Genius. Just like other popular music sharing tools, Genius learns from the tracks you play on iTunes and recommends you similar songs, either from your own library or from the iTunes Store. In this way you can easily build thematic playlists by grouping similar songs, and also meet new bands you may not know about. The only drawback is that Genius needs to gather information about your music library and send it over to Apple in order to work, something that privacy freaks won't be happy about.

However, if there's something where iTunes is not perfect yet, that's the player function. You may disagree here, but I think the iTunes player falls too short, especially when compared to its music manager side. It does have some interesting features, like the Smart shuffle function and crossfading playback, but I still find it too simple. I also missed the ability to control the player from anywhere with global hotkeys, which is great if you listen to music while you're working on the PC with other apps. Fortunately there are some plug-ins that cover this need.

In all, despite these slight flaws, iTunes is probably the best choice to manage your music collection –and that includes Windows users.

Download iTunes 8.0.1.11 in Softonic

FoxTab is an innovative new way to organize your tabs in Firefox in order to view what's on them and what you've got open at a glance.

FoxTab is probably best utilized by those that have way too many tabs open to, excuse the pun, keep tabs of. It can spread your tabs in five different ways depending on which view you prefer - inevitably you'll end up preferring one or the other so four of the views very quickly become redundant.

The five layouts that you can choose from are "Stack" - tabs which are stacked in 3D form one behind the other; "Wall" which are tabs are displayed on a wall (basically your desktop); Grid means that tabs are aligned on a grid; Row means tabs are arranged horizontally and finally Circle where tabs are placed around a 3D circle. To change views, you simply use CTRL+TAB (or a key combination of your choice) to cycle through them one by one. If you've ever used CoverFlow on the Mac, then FoxTab is based on the same principle

FoxTab is an innovative way to view the number of tabs you've got open and what's on them. However, it does tend to put quite a load on your RAM so make sure you've got plenty free otherwise it's more hassle than it's worth.

Download FoxTab 0.9.9 in Softonic

Angry IP scanner is a very fast IP scanner for Windows. It can scan IPs in any range. Its binary file size is very small compared to other IP scanners. Angry IP scanner simply pings each IP address to check if it's alive, then optionally it can resolve hostname, scan ports, etc. This program is mostly useful for network administrators to monitor and manage their networks.

It also has additional features, like NetBIOS information (computer name, workgroup name, currently logged in user and MAC address), results saving to CSV, TXT, HTML, XML or IP-Port list file, can be used as a command-line utility in a batch file, etc. With help of plugins, Angry IP Scanner can gather any information about scanned IPs. Anybody who can write code is able to write plugins and extend functionality of Angry IP Scanner. It is using separate threads for each scanned address to increase scanning speed.

Download Angry IP Scanner 3.0 Beta in Softonic

Floola is a freeware application to efficiently manage your iPod or your Motorola mobile phone (any model supporting iTunes).

It can be run directly from your iPod and needs no installation under Linux, Mac OS X and Windows (Windows Vista is supported).

Floola supports all most common used features including podcasts. Take a look at the feature list to see what you are missing!

Download Floola 3.5 in Softonic

If you are looking for an external hard disk drive solution that can be used interchangeably between Windows XP, Windows 98, Mac OS and Linux, there is only one way to prepare the hard disk and SwissKnife does it for you. You can create, delete and format partitions on your hard disk drives in one smooth, simple process.

While the product has been tested up to 400GB, it should support hard disks of up to 2048GB. SwissKnife allows creation of FAT32 & NTFS partitions. FAT16 option is provided for compatibility. Supports Internal interfaces such as IDE and SCSI and External interfaces such as Hi-Speed USB, Parallel port, PCMCIA, USB On-The-Go, Firewire®, SATA interfaces etc. Creates Fixed and Removable Disk Format types.

Download Compuapps SwissKnife 3.22 in Softonic

Managing passwords is a difficult and sometimes stressful ordeal if you've got hundreds of different ones for various sites but Lastpass makes life that bit easier.

Lastpass is basically a free password manager that makes your web browsing easier and more secure by bringing everything under one password. Lastpass can create strong passwords that protect all sites, meaning that logging into your favorite browser, network or secure network becomes a one-step affair.

Lastpass is particularly useful for those that want to work together securely in different locations because it allows you share credentials to log in via Lastpass. This includes those that are working on Mac and Windows platforms as it works across both. Of course, the big concern is security - if your Lastpass password is lost or obtained by someone else, it makes everything protected under it vulnerable. However, it does use SSL and RSA encryption so you should be OK.

Lastpass is a great way to manage passwords under one umbrella without worrying about remembering the access credentials to them all.

Download Lastpass 1.28 in Softonic

AllWebMenus is a DHMTL menu/Javascript menu builder for web navigation that requires absolutely no DHTML or Javascript experience. It creates any cross-browser, pop-up or drop-down web menu that works alike in all browsers supporting DHTML held by all popular platforms (PC, MAC, Unix).

DHTML/JavaScript menus are designed with a tree-like approach. Users can tailor their menus by using the Properties Pane or by choosing from a series of predefined themes from the Theme Gallery. The menu can be either vertical or horizontal (pop-up or drop-down menu), it can be movable, stay visible while scrolling, contain static or animated images, borders, colors, and much more. Once everything is set, you can use the Link Menu to Web Page command to link the menu to your Web page in a fast and easy manner.

AllWebMenus offers:

• New ready-to-use Themes
• Optimized Style Editor
• Creation and saving of customized Themes
• Free Dreamweaver extension and NetObjects Fusion component
• Import FrontPage Navigation Structures
• Support for .JPG, .GIF and .PNG image files.
• UNDO/REDO function
• Right-to-Left language support (Arabic, Hebrew, etc.)
• Non-English font support
• Optimized menu building process with separate javascripts for different browsers
• Use menus over flash objects, form elements, applets and iframes
• Use multiple menus in the same page
• Create popup, hidden, horizontal and vertical menus
• Free Sitemap generator based on the menu structure
• Specify optional Javascript Commands

Download AllWebMenus Pro 5.1.742 in Softonic

Librarian Pro is a very flexible application to organize all your books, movies, games or whatever you wish to keep a list of. Although the program still feels quite unstable (importing or exporting didn't work properly for me), we'll let that go for now as the program is still a pre-release. What makes Librarian Pro interesting is how easy it is to view your list and create new smart collections.

You can customize the layout of lists you export and send them to the web or to your iPod. Librarian can also import elements from mulitple sources, like borrowers from your Address Book or item information from a number of sites. You can view your Amazon cart from the application and even retrieve things like album covers.

Librarian Pro is a great program to keep updated lists of your favorite items and always be aware of who's borrowed what from you.

Download Librarian Pro 1.3.3 in Softonic

The nightmare before Christmas? Almost. In Christmas Crisis you need to help out Santa delivering presents by guiding his sleigh and dropping presents over houses, whilst avoiding jets and airplanes. The game is certainly a good idea for the holidays and an original adaptation of the Space Invaders style, yet Christmas Crisis is on the whole rather disappointing.

First of all, and this may sound cheesy, but I quite like when there's a little introduction to the game, or at least some sort of setting. Christmas Crisis drops you right in without any explanation as to why you need to replace Santa. There's only a small window to explain the controls.

Movements in Christmas Crisis are simple. Use your arrow keys to navigate your sleigh and the space bar to shoot the presents onto houses. On the whole though, they feel a bit clunky, and there's a little delay every time you move the sleigh. Christmas Crisis is a bit difficult and I couldn't manage to hit all the houses in the first level. Getting used to it doesn't take much though, but the increase of planes flying around as you pass levels does make it challenging.

Even though the game lacks an introduction, and controls are clunky, Christmas Crisis is an OK time waster for the holidays.

Download Christmas Crisis 1.2.3 in Softonic

WinMerge is an Open Source visual text file differencing and merging tool for Win32 platforms. It is highly useful for determing what has changed between project versions, and then merging changes between versions.

Features:

• Visual differencing and merging of text files
• Flexible editor with syntax highlighting
• Handles DOS, UNIX and MAC text file formats
• Unicode support
• Difference pane shows current difference in two vertical panes
• Location pane shows map of files compared
• Highlights differences inside lines
• File filters in directory diff
• Moved lines detection in file compare
• Shell integration
• Rudimentary Visual SourceSafe and Rational ClearCase integration
• Archive file support using 7-zip
• Plugins
• Localizable interface via resource DLL
• HTML-based manual

Download WinMerge 2.8.6 in Softonic

Have you ever wanted to align all the Windows you have open on your desktop Mac OS style?

If so, and this should be standard with Windows in my opinion, allSnap Portable is a small system tray app that makes all top level windows automatically align like they do in programs such as Winamp or Photoshop. Simply double click on the allSnap Portable system tray icon or right click on it and your windows will snap into line.

Once allSnap Portable is up and running, all windows will snap into each other and the desktop while you are re-moving and re-sizing. Alternatively, you can hold down ALT while sizing and moving windows to toggle allSnap Portable on and off if the snapping becomes a bit too annoying (which it can do if you don't particularly want your Windows). You can access the allSnap Portable program settings by clicking on the system tray icon as well.

allSnap Portable is a nice little windows organisation tool that rips of Mac OS a little bit but that's no bad thing in my book.

Download allSnap Portable 1.41 Beta in Softonic

A little game of pool is always good fun and MacPool makes it possible.

We liked the sleek graphics, the way the balls roll, the semi transparent interface window and the colors used in the game. Hitting balls is all done by dragging your mouse to add force to your shot and calculate the angle. You use the arrow arrow keys to adjust the hitting point on the ball and add effects like top spin.

The game offers detailed instructions for anybody who might not know the rules of pool and the advanced settings, available from the top menu, allow you to set table cloth color or table quality (traction and cushions). You can supposedly play online against competitors from anywhere in the world, but we never managed to connect with anyone when we tried out MacPool. There's more than a dozen narrator voices to comment your play, some of them rather annoying and others amusing.

MacPool is an entertaining pool game. Although the controls are a bit tricky at first, once you get used to it it should prove loads of fun.

Download MacPool 10.5 in Softonic

Avid editing systems are standard across the video editing industry but in more recent times, they've also become available to home PC and Mac users. Managing video projects can still be tricky on Avid systems though which is why MediaMover was developed.

However, organizing video editing projects in Avid is not always as easy as it seems and MediaMover is designed to lend you a helping hand. MediaMover works with a wide range of Avid products including Avid Media Composer, Nitris, Adrenaline, Mojo, Xpress, Liquid, NewsCutter, Symphony or DS. The basic principle of MediaMover is that it makes backing up and deleting projects much quicker which is a huge task when you can be working with projects several hundred gigabytes in size. MediaMover works with both local and network drives so it doesn't matter where your media is stored.

MediaMover is quite useful if you're not sure how much space you've got left on a storage media because it dynamically monitors drive space and will warn you if a project is going to fill up your drive or lack space before you spend lots of wasted time capturing or copying video files. In addition, if you're working with multiple drives, MediaMover can generate reports for each one and can be programmed to automatically backup projects at specific intervals.

MediaMover is a useful tool for an Avid editor who finds themselves dealing with huge amounts of video data but has no easy way to manage and back it up.

Download MediaMover 3.0.3 in Softonic

Avidemux is a free video editor designed for simple cutting, filtering and encoding tasks. It supports many file types, including AVI, DVD compatible MPEG files, MP4 and ASF, using a variety of codecs. Tasks can be automated using projects, job queue and powerful scripting capabilities.

Avidemux is available for Linux, BSD, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows under the GNU GPL license. The program was written from scratch by Mean, but code from other people and projects has been used as well. Patches, translations and even bug reports are always welcome.

Download Avidemux 2.4.3 in Softonic

Synchronisation is becoming increasingly important with so many different portable devices able to handle huge amounts of data - the ability to work on the road has never been easier which is why Super Flexible File Synchronizer was made.

Super Flexible File Synchronizer can back up data and to synchronize PCs, Macs, servers and notebooks. Everything is neatly organised in multiple profiles and it supports FTP servers, ZIP compression, data encryption, and a scheduler for automated backups. In Windows NT/2000/XP, the Super Flexible File Synchronizer scheduler can run as a service - without users even having to log on which makes it a good solution for network administrators wanting to make sure users continually back up their data.

The GUI is elegant and well designed with Super Flexible File Synchronizer allowing you to choose files and folders across the whole folder hierarchy in tree-views. Super Flexible File Synchronizer also features support for e-mail notification, profile categories, and various filters. Super Flexible File Synchronizer is most effective when used via the scheduler though - it can be configured to backup to an FTP server without any need to even log on.

Cross platforms, an attractive interface and quick synching make Super Flexible File Synchronizer a decent proposition for anyone working on the move.

Download Super Flexible File Synchronizer 4.22.103 in Softonic

Now that we can access the internet from almost anywhere and any device the difficulty is getting access to your information all at once. It can be store all online or you can keep everything synced up on all your devices.

EverNote is a application/service, still only accessible by invitation, which lets you capture, store and sync anything on multiple devices. EverNote works on any OS, whether PC, Mac or phone and can capture anything you throw at it, from notes, to images, media or passwords. All your information is stored in the program and you can use tags and notes to categorize it.

If you have EverNote installed on your devices, all it takes is having an internet connection and pressing the 'Synchronize' button from the menu, to ensure that you have the same information stored on all devices.

Although it's still a closed Beta, EverNote is a very promising application to capture, store and sync any sort of information on all your devices.

Download EverNote 3.0.0.681 in Softonic

It has happened to us all. We've lost or deleted a file at some stage that was really important. Of course, nowadays, with so many external backup options there is less chance it's going to happen but if it does, there is still hope. R-Studio Data Recovery, although sounding like a music program, actually helps you recover lost or accidentally deleted files. It's not a sure-fire solution but it can help depending on the type of file you've deleted.

When R-Studio Demo version has found a lost file larger than 64KB you may simply double click the file to preview it. However, in this demo version, if you want to open it you'll need to register the software to obtain the R-Studio registration key. However, if you have enough disk space on any additional hard drive or on an alternative media the developers recommend that you create an image of the recognized partition where the lost files were found, because Windows OS constantly writes some information on disks and there is a risk that the sectors where the deleted files reside may be overwritten. According to them, "If that happens, the files still may be found, but may contain incorrect data or cannot be found at all." They assure however that the created image can be processed the same way as the original partition. The program supports a wide range of drives including dynamic disk and RAID drives. It's also able to recover encrypted and compressed files so if your lost file was zipped-up, there's still a chance you can recover it. For those who know how to edit MFT file records and MBR/LDM structures, they can be viewed and edited in the program's accompanying disk hex editor.

The program makers do issue one serious word of warning however - never try to write the image file or recovered deleted files to the same disk where the files reside or you may lose the data on your disk.

R-Studio can't guarantee to rescue all files but it's definitely worth a shot if the worst has happened.

Download R-Studio Data Recovery 4.2.127464 in Softonic

Deluge is a popular Linux BitTorrent client that has now been ported to Windows while keeping its ease of use and excellent transfer speed, the two main features that have contributed to its success.

First of all, bear in mind that this app was originally written for another operating system, which means that the Windows version, according to the author's own words, is not as stable as the original one. In fact I got the odd error message while testing it, but other than that, the program worked fine. Transfer speed was excellent, along with the array of tools the program puts at your disposal to handle torrent files. Also, the program was totally unobtrusive for the user and very light on resources.

Deluge features a clear, uncluttered interface where you can easily manage all your file transfers and see information about each one of them. Also, the program's configuration settings enable you to tweak its behavior in great detail: you'll be able to limit bandwidth usage, configure a proxy server and also enable special plug-ins to add extra functionality to the program.

In all, Deluge is a powerful, easy-to-use BitTorrent client that's worth a try and will hopefully improve its stability under Windows in future releases.

Download Deluge 1.0.0 RC 3 in Softonic

If you'd like to switch to Mac but haven't made up your mind yet, you can have a sneak peek at the operating system with the LeopardXP BricoPack.

LeopardXP BricoPack is a visual theme for Windows XP that completely transforms your old Microsoft OS into the brand new Apple system in just a couple of clicks. Unlike other visual themes that need certain libraries and drivers, or require you to install third-party apps on your own, LeopardXP BricoPack includes everything you need and is incredibly easy to install: click on the Next button a few times, wait for a while, restart and that's it.

LeopardXP BricoPack is obviously not like the real thing but it does quite a good job in trying to make Windows XP look like the Leopard OS. Not only does it install new skins, wallpapers and icons, but it also adds new functionalities such as a Mac OS style dock bar, a Spotlight clone (which by the way doesn't seem to work properly), a top toolbar and a similar file explorer. All of these are included in LeopardXP BricoPack as extra tools and you can choose not to install them. Also, LeopardXP works fine even in systems with low resources.

On the downside, there are still a few areas in which LeopardXP BricoPack could be improved: for example, there are some Windows icons that the theme doesn't replace and don't really fit in, like the Windows logon and switch off screens.

LeopardXP BricoPack is an attractive visual theme that completely transforms Windows XP into Mac OS Leopard. It includes everything you need and is extremely easy to install and uninstall.

Download LeopardXP Bricopack 1.0 in Softonic