Audials One is designed as downloader and converter for music that, via it's subscription fee, allows you to download and copy music without fear of infringing copyright laws

The program tries to help you discover the kind of music you will like Simply select the music genre that you're into and click on "Start". The music is all copyright free because it has been recorded from over 15,000 internet radio stations that the program is affiliated to. If you don't find the kind of music you're looking for among the 100,000 artists listed in the MusicFinder database of regularly-played music, you can use the Audials One Internet meta-search engine to locate and download the MP3s you want. Whatsmore, the program comes bundled with a limited audio, video & DRM converter plus a simple CD & DVD burner to burn your favourite tracks. The converter is especially useful for recording music onto mobile devices with around 30 different formats supported. The aim to is to allow you to play your music, audio books and videos on mobile phones, MP3 players, MP4 players, PDAs, PSPs, auto radios and Apple iPods. In addition, there's direct access to podcasts from the community of listeners plus ID3 tagging options to organise your library.

This is a solid music program for those that want to download and share music legally although inevitably, the full subscription fee may put some people off.

Download Audials One Music Video Loader & Converter 3.1 in Softonic

We never get tired of Windows manager tools here in the Softonic offices, and after trying out this latest offering from Yamicsoft, we are still looking for a tool that strikes a good balance between usability and functionality. WinXP Manager may offer a fine range of options and tweaking utilities, but the delivery is haphazard with several sources of concern for the average user.

Let’s start from the beginning. The first time you open the program you are prompted to create a system restore point, just in case something should go horribly wrong. If you have system restore disabled on your computer, WinXP Manager will go ahead and load up anyway. What you are presented with is a detailed overview of your system specs. Through the tabbed navigation, you can switch the view to check out details about your operating system, computer, hardware, and processes. There isn't, however, any central tab that would display all the information in one place so that you could easily print out a complete run down on what you have in your box. Neither, for that matter, is there a print button for quickly converting anything to hard copy.

On further investigation, you find yourself digging through tabs of tabs to find what you need, or alternatively, opening pop-up windows that appear when you click buttons that lie alongside those that don’t produce pop-ups. Supposedly consistency wasn't high on the priority list. WinXP Manager runs inside a fixed width window, something that wouldn't usually merit any criticism but in this case the window is very small relative to the entire screen size and results in some scrolling.

Putting design and usability aside, there are a lot of positive things to say about WinXP Manager. As we mentioned, it does provide comprehensive information about all aspects of your hardware and software. There is a handy optimization wizard that guides inexperienced users through the process, and for every tick box you see, there is a corresponding detailed tooltip that will give you a clue whether or not you are on the verge of destroying your PC. There are an amazing amount of utilities for tweaking XP to the last, although we are concerned that the registry cleaner may be over aggressive.

Boiling it down, WinXP Manager is a fantastic utility for anyone that has a good general understanding of the many various elements making up their PC. If you have a tweak in mind and don’t want to bury yourself in the actual system files, then this program will serve you well. On the other hand, if you are after a quick all round maintenance fix and you don't quite get the registry or services, then you should look for a less hard-core solution.

Download WinXP Manager 5.2.6 in Softonic

Backing up your drivers is one of the best things you can do to your PC - if the worst happens, you know that you can always restore damaged and corrupt drivers in seconds.

In most cases when Windows is running slower, faulty driver installations are to blame. The problem is that Windows automatically stores versions of older drivers just in case you want to roll back but sometimes it these conflict with the new ones. Drivermax basically backs-up and restores driver in a very attractive and well presented interface. It has a powerful export wizard to help you export the drivers you need to backup by copying the required files to a folder or compressed ZIP file. After reinstalling Windows, the program can ensure that all drivers are reinstalled within 5 minutes according to the developers. While the process is nowhere near this quick - or straightforward because many drivers may not work properly first time round due to the special way they need to be installed - it is on the whole very easy to use and efficient. It certainly saves you the hours of searching and installing that you'd usually have to go through. The Import Drivers wizard is similarly straightforward and will take up to 10 minutes depending on how much you've got installed on your PC.

A powerful driver installation and restore tool that is easy enough for beginners and does the job in decent time.

Download DriverMax 4.3 in Softonic

One of most common reasons for your PC slowing down is processes that are hogging your system and taking all your CPU.

Process Lasso aims to solve this problem by reducing the priority of those processes that are not important and returned to a responsive level. It also works with multiple processes that are causing a problem so it can deal with more than one program at once. If you think that the program is prioritising the wrong processes, then you can define default processes that you want to be controlled or kept an eye on. Process Lasso also displays graphs and other graphical represeantations to show you which processes are requiring the most CPU usage. You can blacklist those processes that are showing rather high graph readings or that are clearly taking up more CPU usage than they deserve. Although the program requires no experience, it does offer advanced settings and twesking options to make sure that it only blocks those processes that are specified or targeted by yourself. Fortunately, the program itself is very low on resources so it will not add to your CPU hogging problems.

A very useful process monitor than will ensure your CPU only dedicates itself to those programs that really need it.

Download Process Lasso 2.96.1u in Softonic

Have you ever wondered how to download videos from Youtube without having to go through the pain of searching the browser's cache or using a complicated third-party app?

The answer is Free Video Zilla, a download manager that monitors the browser in the background and lets you download any video that's embedded on any website you visit. It works with all the main browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Maxthon and Netscape, and even enables you to configure a custom browser.

Free Video Zilla works in a very simple way: just browse video websites like you would normally do and the program will automatically grab all embedded videos and show them on its interface. Now you only have to click on those you want to download, making sure you do it before the waiting list times out.

This easy process has two sides to it: on the one hand the program doesn't require any complicated configuration and downloads videos really fast; on the other hand, as Free Video Zilla monitors the browser, it grabs pretty much anything embedded on the website, and this can sometimes make it a bit difficult to distinguish the video you want to download from the rest of them. Plus, videos are saved only in FLV format so you'll need an FLV player to view them.

With Free Video Zilla you won't have to worry about configuring a third-party to download online videos; simply browse your favorite online video website and the program will take care of everything!

Download Free Video Zilla 1.1.2 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 3.5.1 in Softonic

Revo Uninstaller has been made portable. Well, maybe not exactly. The developers of the original app have created a new portable version, which means that it can be saved to your USB memory device and run directly run from there, as it doesn't require installation.

Don’t this new Revo is a lesser version just because of this portability feature. On the contrary, it includes the same array of tools to keep your system perfectly clean and healthy. With Revo Uninstaller you'll be able to remove any software from your PC, erasing all possible traces left behind it. What's more, the program includes some handy tools to clean web browsing traces, erase junk files, check what programs are set to launch with Windows and more.

The original Revo Uninstaller is already one of those must-have apps that help you perform the necessary cleaning tasks in no time. This Portable version is even better, because you can take it with you and use it any time you need it. In fact, I could only find one small bug: I missed having a progress bar when scanning the system for junk files.

Uninstall software, clean junk files and optimize your system's performance the easy way.

Download Revo Uninstaller Portable 1.71 in Softonic

Taking control of your RAM is one way to free up resources as Windows can sometimes be very inefficient at managing it quickly.

However, it's also a very risky think to carry out as a third party application is effectively deciding what is better for your RAM management than Windows itself. The problem often is that initially, the RAM manager may make a noticeable difference to your machine but after a while, it simply can't hide the fact that you need to install more RAM in your system. SuperRam 5 doesn't do a bad job of increasing computer performance by freeing wasted memory and optimizing memory utilization your computer. Once installed, it doesn't require much setup apart from defining the threshold that you want it to start cleaning RAM. After that, it takes care of the job itself, flushing RAM when it reaches a certain tipping point. When it flushes, there can be a brief lag in your system performance but afterwards you will notice an improvement in performance. However, RAM is like a bottomless pit and the more you clean it out, the fuller it seems to get, especially when opening new applications. Eventually, you may find that the lags it creates when it flushes RAM are causing more problems than letting Windows do the job.

This program may solve your immediate RAM problems but over time, it can get tiresome and it's no substitute for upgrading your RAM.

Download SuperRam 5.7.7.2008 in Softonic

Writing PHP code and testing it on-the-fly can be a real hassle but this offering from DzSoft promises to ease the pain of coding by acting as a virtual server that can process code and display the results.

DzSoft PHP Editor is primarily a code editor, and includes the majority of features that you’d expect from this type of software. However, while most rival code editors tend to generalize, offering syntax highlighting for a multitude of languages PHP Editor is specifically tuned to the needs of web programmers who are working with the Hypertext Preprocessor language. Evidence of this can be found in the inclusion of common code and functions libraries and the ability to run and preview your work.

At first glance the program doesn’t appear to have a particularly intuitive interface. The design wouldn’t be out of place in Windows 95 and the main editor window is a typical reproduction of Notepad with each line numbered for easy reference. What appears to be a navigation bar on the left offers some hope of functionality, and once you get stuck in to coding it really delivers. The explorer bar tracks everything and records the location of each include, function, variable, and class you use. Should you wish to specifically save a reference point you can add up to nine bookmarks, although you can’t assign names to them - an addition that would have helped clarify what function each snippet serves.

To use the run and preview feature you must install PHP on your PC, a simple operation when compared to setting up your computer as a server that can process PHP. With a syntax check also included, this tool comes highly recommended to anyone that will be writing significant bodies of PHP. DzSoft PHP Editor may be a little rough around the edges, but with its outstanding functionality, that can be forgiven.

Download DzSoft PHP Editor 4.2.0.0 in Softonic

If you're a serious gamer then you'll need some help to get the most out of your system and ensure your graphics card is performing to the peak of it's abilities.

Game Gain 2 is the latest version of this popular gaming assistant which attempts to take gaming to the next level. It can help you enjoy games like you never have done before by using those parts of your processor and graphics card that had formerly laid dormant. The program is remarkably easy to use requiring just the tweaking of a few throttles and switches to blast your PC into the gaming stratosphere. However, you should use this utility with caution because it does change registry settings that could unbalance your system if your registry is already damaged. It works by making direct changes to system registry and system files to enhance memory, screen drawing, animations, refresh rates, CPU threading speeds. However the developers assure that it only optimises based on the capabilities of your system and won't try and push it past anything it can't handle. If you do experience problems afterwards, the system analyzer should help remedy them.

A great tool for gamers although if you've got the latest Intel Quad processors, you'll probably have little use for it.

Download GameGain 2.7.7.2008 in Softonic

PTLens is an excellent application to correct or add distortion to your pictures.

You'll be able to apply a fish eye effect, modify perspective, chromatic aberation and vignetting. PTLens also lets you correct barrel-pincushion distortion on a wide range of camera models. It doesn't seem to allow you to add new models though. Adding effects is really easy thanks to sliders and you can immediately see the changes in the preview. You can also simply disable an effect you don't want by unselecting it.

The program's interface does feel a little clunky, and you wonder why the directory is on the right, instead of next to the preview. We appreciate that a Photoshop plugin for PTLens comes in the installer though, as many photographers prefer working straight in Photoshop. The plugin will work exactly as the standalone application.

Despite the slightly unintuitive interface, PTLens is an excellent tool for correcting image distortion. Recommended for any serious photographer!

Download PTLens 8.7 in Softonic

If you regularly download torrents then you’ll know that it’s quite time consuming to keep going back to the torrent sites and scan through them to see if your favourite ones have been released yet.

One tool that can make your life easier is Torrent Episode Downloader (TED). The small program is a Java application that combines RSS channels and BitTorrent downloads. It allows you to subscribe to torrent RSS feeds and also configure key words as to which ones you want to download. In a nutshell, it does the hard work of tracking and downloading torrents for you without the need to even visit a site.

It works on a similar principle to the way iTunes subscribes to podcasts except that with Torrent Episode Downloader, obviously the file will be sent to your BitTorrent client rather than being played. This application is particularly useful if you’re following a series of torrents based on the same subject which are released on a weekly or monthly basis. Just make sure you’ve got enough space on your hard drive as it’s easy to forget that while you’re working, it’s busy downloading content.

If you're based in Europe and want to be first to see the latest TV episodes and releases, Torrent Episode Downloader can do the tracking hard work for you.

Download Torrent Episode Downloader 0.92 in Softonic

WinRemotePC for Windows is remote control/administration software. WinRemotePC offers industry leading performance and security. It allows you to quickly and easily access your server, home or office computer remotely anywhere.

With WinRemotePC, you can see the desktop of a remote machine and control it with your local mouse and keyboard, just like you would do it sitting in the front of that computer.You can also transfer files between machines, copy data via the Windows clipboard, and more.

WinRemotePC has two parts, a client and a server. The server is the program on the machine that shares its screen, and the client (or viewer) is the program that accesses and interacts with the server. It displays the screen of remote computer and transmits the keyboard presses and mouse clicks from the local computer to remote transfering data over a network.

Download WinRemotePC 2008 r.2 Lite in Softonic

Ant Movie Catalog is a free (opensource) program made to manage your collection of movies in DVD, CD (VideoCD, DivX, ...) and tapes.

Features:

• Can store catalog in two file format: its own binary format or XML
• Can store pictures inside catalog or link to external files
• Supports PNG, JPEG and GIF
• Loans management
• Statistics with chart and pies
• Can display the list as a tree, where movies are grouped by a specified field
• Printing, using customizable templates
• Import information from Internet (using scripts)
• includes scripts for IMDB (US), DVDFR (FR), Allociné (FR), Culturalia (ES)
• User-customizable links to do a search on movie websites
• Information importation from various media files
• Scripting technology, using Object Pascal language, allowing to modify catalog

Download Ant Movie Catalog 3.5.1.1 in Softonic

XfireTM is a free tool that automatically keeps track of when and where gamers are playing PC games online and lets their friends join them easily. It works regardless of game type, server browser, or gaming service that a player is using.

Xfire eliminates the hassles of running multiple programs like IRC, instant messengers, or in-game friends lists to keep track of when and where a gamer's friends are playing. It supports the best and the latest online PC games including server and non server-based first person shooters, real-time strategy, and role playing games.

Download Xfire 1.94 in Softonic

It's always a pain trying to remember to backup things so why not let an application take care of it automatically?

Cobian Backup works as both an application and service. The program is very light on resources for a backup program of its size and runs in the background very discreetly. it makes periodic backups but unlike some programs, doesn't seem to slow down your PC in the process. It acts too quickly to really slow down whatever you are doing although if it has to backup a very big file, you will notice some lag (more than 1 GB). The program only copies your files and folders in their original or compressed mode to another destination and does not perform any compression itself. This is to ensure that nothing is corrupted during the backup process but if you are backing up particularly large files, you might find this something of a problem unless you've got lots of backup space. However, there are limited compression and strong encryption methods available if you need to reduce the size of your files and protect them at the same time.

A very convenient program that backups quickly, quietly and without any further prompting from it's user.

Download Cobian Backup 9.1.1.193 in Softonic

It's useful to have the weather forecasts always available in a desktop application. WeatherMate is simple but effective and lets you choose different cities for which you would like to know the weather forecasts. They can all be present at the same time in different tabs, and an icon with a short description will tell you whether the next day it will be better to have an umbrella or not.

The program uses the information provided by The Weather Channel, which has been monitoring the World's weather since 1982. In the option menu, you can choose to display a radar image of the places you have selected and to have a detailed description of the current conditions. Switch between Fahrenheit or Celsius or select the 'speak the weather' tool to have the near-term forecast read by a voice of which you can select volume, pitch and speed. The design is sufficiently clear, although no effort has been made to render the application particularly pleasant.

With WeatherMate you can monitor the weather of cities of your interest and get predictions for the coming days, up to a week. It's not possible to have information about the pollution level and the UV index though, which would have been very useful information.

Download WeatherMate 3.3.4 in Softonic

WOT is a Firefox add-on that adds a coloured ring near the home page button of your browser. This tool lets you know easily, by changing colour, if a website is trusted, safe to use and also the general reputation of that site among end users. You can add your own rating by clicking the coloured ring and give your score on trustworthiness, vendor reliability, privacy and child safety.

If you click on “View scorecard for rating details” a new web page will be opened where you can write a comment on the web site you were visiting and read what other people say about it. Usefully, the program also displays references to that web site found on other sites. Another very interesting function in this page is the ‘Whois’ one. Click this to access lots of information such as front page details, indexed data, registry data, and server data. You can even find a physical address behind a web site. There are cases in which even just having the ability to access this information makes it worth having this program installed!

The only flaw I can see is that most end users can’t really know how a web site manages their privacy. What people can know about the personal data management of a website or if it saves malware or tracking programs for marketing purposes etc. This sort of information should be provided by a pool of experts to be accurate.

If you want to discover the reputation of a web site, try WOT and get a graphic report on the reliability and accuracy of any site, plus tons of other interesting details, such as the physical address behind a website.

Download WOT 20080519 Firefox in Softonic

Sofonesia Reminder is a simple reminder utility for those that need to be regularly reminded of dates, events and meetings.

The strongest point of the program is that its very easy to configure but it's also very basic and doesn't leave much scope for integrating it into Outlook or your e-mail client or sharing it with other users. To add a new event, just click on the "add" button and you'll be prompted for a name of the event, how you'd like to be warned and the date, time and frequency of the warning.

The program can be set to run automatically when you restart your PC so that you'll be reminded of anything urgent as soon as you log on. You can have just about any sound you choose as a reminder as long as it is in MP3 or WAV format. Alternatively, you can specify different alarms for different events and messages much in the same way as you can customise your ring tones on a mobile depending on who is ringing.

Reminders are categorised into three - day (for a particular day of the week), daily and regular which can be set to any date. If you're using this program to get you out of bed or don't want to be continually pestered, it also supports a snooze function, the length of which you can define.

Apart from that, there's not much to Sofonesia Reminder and anyone who uses Outlook won't find much need for it but all other users without a reminder system may be pleasantly surprised.

Download Sofonesia Reminder 1.0 in Softonic

Limewire, one of the world’s most popular peer-to-peer filesharing applications, has received a lawsuit from the RIAA, who are demanding $115 million in damages, claiming the application promotes the infringement of copyright. Similar applications like Grokster and Kazaa have been forced to go legal and there is speculation as to just how long Limewire will resist until they have to buckle and pay up. The existence of the popular P2P application is not under threat, but if you haven’t given it a try yet, here’s just what makes it a standout program.

In terms of file sharing, Limewire is the cream of the crop, offering the essential peer-to- peer tools in what is probably the friendliest interface of applications in its class. Beginners will appreciate the search bar, which allows you to select the type of file you’re looking for, video, image, audio, program or file. Limewire has a “what’s new” button to check out what popular files users have recently exchanged. We also enjoyed the direct connect option. If you know the IP address of one of your friends, type it in the box and Limewire will browse that user’s files. This is a quick way of sharing files with someone else and can come in handy when working on a project and exchanging documents. The only little snag we have with direct connect is that it doesn’t let you enter the username, much simpler than looking for your friend’s IP address.

Downloading with Limewire is very intuitive. After you’ve searched and found the file you are looking for, double-click on it to start the downloading process. The speed of your download depends firstly on the quality of your connection (broadband is a minimum), if you’ve correctly opened your router’s ports and whether you’re downloading a popular file or not. We would like to point out the effort that Limewire takes to make itself accessible to beginners. Not only does a tip pop up every time you launch the application, the help option also leads you to Limewire’s support centre, FAQs and a forum to get in contact with other users.

The lawsuit carried out by the RIAA is all the more surprising because of the measures Limewire takes to keep you in the realms of legality. If you decide to download Limewire from its website, you will first have to agree you will not use it for copyright infringement. When you’re configuring the application, you can set content filters, to avoid downloading files that copyright owners do not want you to share. To avoid embarrassing situations, make sure you tick the “block adult content” box, which will filter out any pornographic files from your searches.

The best way of checking the quality of the audio or video you’re downloading is via Limewire’s mini player. It’s fairly basic and to par with the players you find in similar filesharing applications, but we appreciated the way it was integrated in the application.

If there’s one thing that we’re still expecting from the Limewire team, it’s that it finally decides to jump on the BitTorrent bandwagon. Torrents are the way forward when it comes to peer to peer file sharing because of the speed, the security and freshness of downloads. Large files like movies or complete seasons of TV series are much easier to download via BitTorrent. We were also annoyed by the “buy the PRO version” window that popped up every time we started Limewire.

For its wealth of possibilities and huge base of users, (more than 4 million simultaneously on the Gnutella network) we encourage you to give Limewire a test drive. Because of the controversial nature of the application, you should always make sure that you aren’t using Limewire for illegal activities like copyright infringement. However don’t be scared off by the legality issue. Limewire, like most P2P applications is one of the most exciting possibilities that the internet gives us. It would be a shame not to give it a try. You should also check out Frostwire, the not-for-profit project of the Limewire development team.

Download LimeWire Basic 4.18.3 in Softonic