Would you like to impress your friends with an impressive presentation of your last holiday pictures and are you looking for a special way to do it? What could be better than having a whole art-gallery just for you, maybe set in an ancient castle, or in a modern skyscraper or, why not, in a Chinese garden?

Photo! 3D Album is a simple free program that lets you upload your photo collection in very nice 3D settings that you can choose from a menu that pops up when you create a new project. If you don't like your original selection, don't worry as you can change the template later. It's like a first-person computer game, where you navigate through the gallery and you attach your photographs to the available canvases. Although there are many, frames are limited and this is a real problem for medium-size collections.

When you have finished navigating and uploading, you have several options in order to export your photo-collection. You can create a screen saver or a stand alone gallery which can be run with a double-click, or alternatively a web gallery in VRML or Shockwave format. For the latter format you will have to register, for free, on the developer's web site. When you launch the final video, press F1 if you want to navigate freely around the gallery.

Photo! 3D Album is great to create cool animations with the photos you want. Unfortunately the spaces available in the art gallery are limited, as they would be in a real one. It's also an interesting program to create your own personal screen savers.

Download Photo! 3D Album 1.1 in Softonic

EarthView is a dynamic desktop wallpaper and screensaver, which displays beautiful views of the earth with daylight and night shadows. It produces colorful, high quality, high resolution images for every screen resolution - even beyond 1600x1200. The program supports map and globe views, urban areas, city lights, atmospheric effects, clouds, local time display and much more.

EarthView supports different maps that show our planet earth in different ways, like photographic or artistic. Many options allow total customization of all view parameters. EarthView has won many awards for its absolutely breathtaking images.

Main features:

• High detail view of the earth
• Day and night view
• Atmospheric effects
• Urban areas and city lights
• Clouds (internet download possible)
• Map and globe projection
• Several beautiful maps to choose from
• Location and local time of more than 3000 cities worldwide
• Wallpaper and screen saver support
• Multiple monitor support
• Many options for full customization

Download EarthView 3.9.1 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

Playing Flash files is increasingly important because of the proliferation of sites such as YouTube and DailyMotion.

Flash Movie Player is absolutely free and as the developers say, has no nag screens, no ads, no spyware and no time limit. It gives you much greater control over Flash movies than most players, allowing you to rewind swf movies, animations and Flash games to any position in playing or paused mode. The program can extract Flash movies from EXE projector files and save them in SWF format plus it even allows you to compile playlists, sorting functions and has a full screen mode with an auto-hiding navigation bar which conveniently disappears when the movie is in full flow. In addition, you can create snapshots easily although your saving formats are limited to JPEG or BMP format. The program allows you to explore cached SWF files which means you can add SWF files from IE, Firefox and Opera's cache to your playlist. In addition, the program can even trigger a Flash Movie as your screen saver from a random selection of clips.

A great Flash player that gives you 100% full control over your playlists and file playing options.

Download Flash Movie Player 1.5 in Softonic

There are a few utilities out there which can make your life so much easier, you wouldn't contemplate living without them. As someone who works on the web, I'm taking screenshots all the time and SnagIt is the only tool I'd use for this vital element of my job.

In its latest incarnation, SnagIt has added a lot of new features and a jazzed-up interface. While the old familiar 'big red button' remains, much of the UI (particularly in the Editor window) has been completely overhauled. Gone is the XP blue of previous versions, replaced with a Vista-friendly charcoal look which works pretty well.

The program's key features (taking and editing screenshots) remain pretty much unchanged. You still have a huge amount of power of just what type of screenshot you can take, with timers, cursor settings and profiles all still playing a major role. I was pleased to see that my profiles from the last version of SnagIt were kept as it would have been a real nuisance to have to re-program them.

The biggest improvements to this new version are certainly connected to the Editor window. For example: whereas previously, you had to take a capture, work on it, save it and then take your next one; now you can take as many screenshots as you like, using whichever profiles, and work on them all as you wish. This is a huge time-saver and a very welcome addition to the program.

Another feature that has been added is of less obvious use. SnagIt now supports meta-tagging and labeling of captured images. The idea behind this feature is that you start to use SnagIt to categorize your images as well as capture them. I can understand the thinking behind this addition but I'm not sure if it's really much more than feature-creep. I can't see myself changing my workflow to fit with SnagIt, nor do I want to lose the capability of moving image files around at will (if you use Windows Explorer to move tagged images, the tags and labels are lost).

SnagIt 9 represents a big step forward for a great utility. While some of the new functionality may not appeal, the most significant changes are major improvements to what was already a very good piece of software. Strongly recommended.

Download SnagIt 9.0.0.351 in Softonic

If you want to send someone your PowerPoint presentation, distribute it via the internet or through a CD-ROM, the best way to ensure that everyone can view your presentation (not only those who has the needed version of PowerPoint installed on their computers) is to convert to to a self-running slide show using PowerPoint Slide Show Converter.

Generation of a slide show screen saver from your PowerPoint presentation is also possible. PowerPoint Slide Show Converter itself requires Microsoft PowerPoint 2000, XP or 2003, but the self-running slide shows created with it do not require Microsoft PowerPoint. The conversion is a one-way process, the source .ppt file cannot be restored from the converted .exe file, so PowerPoint Slide Show Converter is also useful to protect PowerPoint presentations from unauthorized editing.

Download PowerPoint Slide Show Converter 3.1.2.1 in Softonic

Let’s say you need to make a presentation which includes associated text and photos, and you would like a more homely design than the professional, at-times flat PowerPoint slideshow. eXPress Collage Suite might help, as it allows you to create simple presentations as e-books, collage albums, or even calendars.

The outcome will appear rather amateur, but depending on its purposes, can be what you are looking for home-made feeling presentation. The way you carry on your project is also a bit rudimentary and icons look a bit messy. The general rule to follow is that you can import images, text and audio file simply by clicking the import button on the left menu. Change the layout with the menu below and apply changes to see a preview of your document. The GUI can be a bit confusing and there’s plenty of room for usability improvements.

Althought eXpress Collage wouldn’t be suitable for professional purposes, it can be interesting for amateur photo albums, calendasr, eBooks and collages as it lets you create for free virtual books, to present texts and images in a different way.

Download eXpress Collage Suite 5.0 in Softonic

One thing that Windows lacks is decent calendar. Active Desktop Calendar is a fully customizable calendar which features notes, tasks, alarms, and merges neatly into whatever desktop wallpaper you have.

One of the best features about this calendar is that it allows you to share dates and data with others on your network. It also integrates with Outlook so that your appointments and tasks are displayed clearly on your desktop. You can even make it synchronize with your PDA via Outlook.

The calendar is fairly customisable. There are several options for changing calendar icons, fonts and colors, marking weekdays of choice and marking dates with notes and/or alarms. If you find the calendar is running slowly or slowing your system down, you can also revert to a text only version of the calendar. If you need hard copies of your important dates, there's also a very easy to use print option for calendar data. Although it's not necessary, there's also a world clock screen saver that shows your computer's system time, plus five major time zones around the world.

All in all, this is an excellent calendar although it's going to find it hard with things such as Google Calendar which are accessible from anywhere.

Download Active Desktop Calendar 7.48 in Softonic

The SysInternals Suite is a full-featured pack of system utilities that cover a wide range of functions and needs and which are especially addressed at expert users and system administrators.

Of course, this doesn't mean that average users can't take advantage of the more than 60 different tools included in the package. Simply bear in mind that they are not designed to be particularly easy to use, but just useful and straight to the point. Also, the featured utilities are presented as a ZIP archive with all the standalone files, rather than under a single interface which would have been definitely easier.

That said, the truth is that SysInternals is a very complete suite with all sorts of tools. Many of them include command-line controls, and most of them enable you to take full control of the way the whole system works, plus analyzing everything that's going on and preventing any malware from running without your knowledge.

In spite of not being very user-friendly, the SysInternals Suite is still a very valuable piece of software with a rich collection of system tools and tweaks.

Download Sysinternals Suite 07.04.08 in Softonic

Easy Desktop Keeper gives you the ability to save, restore, manage and lock your desktop layout that includes files and folders located on your desktop, placement of desktop icons, desired wallpaper and screen saver. If you choose to lock your desktop layout, every time you reboot your PC, the program will restore your desktop icons and bring them back to their original positions as well as return your old wallpaper and screen saver to the background.

You can create an unlimited number of desktop layouts for different purposes such as gaming, working, surfing the Internet as well as provide different users with their own desktops. Easy Desktop Keeper is very easy to use: simply place your icons wherever you want them on your desktop, select desired wallpaper and screen saver, double click program's tray icon and click the Save button to create a new desktop layout file.

If your icons ever get moved or deleted by any user or after entering the safe mode or changing the screen resolution, just open the program and click the Load button to return your desktop to any previously saved state, or simply reboot your PC if you are in the Lock Desktop mode. Many of you, after meticulously arranging all the icons on your desktop, have been frustrated to no end when somebody else or Windows itself randomly re-arranges them.

It is getting more frustrating when you get your icons deleted from your desktop without an ability to recreate them back. System administrators working in educational institutions will realize that Easy Desktop Keeper is just a must for their PC labs because it can be easily used to stop pesky students from changing desktop wallpaper, deleting desktop icons and so on. This easy-to-use utility will give you new exciting abilities to manage and secure your desktop; you'll get rid of a lot of headaches, and get a peace of mind.

Download Easy Desktop Keeper 2.3 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

My sister loves cats. She's got four or five of them and she treats them just like her own children. I'm sure she and other cat lovers like her are going to love this screensaver.

Cat Licking Screensaver could be defined as the sequel of Screen Clean Screensaver, where a not very good-looking dog carefully cleaned your screen with its tongue. Now this cute cat is in charge of the same task and licks the whole screen without leaving a single area untouched.

The screensaver is very easy to install and features a simple settings menu where you can disable the licking sound if you don't like it. Even mute, the images are still very funny to see and the cat looks very realistic, although there's only one model included and no option to choose among several cats. Anyway, maybe it's because I prefer cats to dogs, but I like this screensaver better than the dog one.

Cat Licking Screensaver is a cute, funny screensaver that will appeal to all cat lovers.

Download Cat Licking Screensaver in Softonic

Systemometer is a unique monitoring tool that shows system activity and resources as a screen saver or a thumbnail window. It allows you to create different monitoring profiles out of the Windows performance counters available on your system or remote hosts. The interface displays the values of monitored parameters connecting all measured points in one polygon - a snapshot view that helps to read the overall system status at a glance. This method is also suitable for understanding load balance of a specific parameter (e.g. CPU utilization) among several items like computers or applications.

Different shapes of monitoring polygons draw visual patterns associated with normal or critical system states. One look at the screen will tell you what is happening with the system. The history of counter values can be recorded to the log file in either HTML or CSV format. Systemometer is helpful for system administrators working in Windows environment with network, printers, databases, Web servers, etc. It is a nice toy for your home office.

Download Systemometer 1.6.2 Personal in Softonic

The problem with players nowadays is that they are bloated with too many ads, extensions and other useless add ons.

Vuplayer is a refreshing break from the norm featuring highly intuitive controls with a simple interface and ultra quick response times. VUPlayer is a freeware multi-format audio player for Windows supporting a huge number of very rare formats including MOD, MTM, S3M, XM, MPC plus all the normal reliables like Mp3 and Mp4. There are numerous nice little features in addition to this that make it suitable for those looking for something that plays files their normal player can't usually handle. These include gapless playback options, optional 32-bit mixing and a solid 9-band graphic equalizer. There's also support for multiple visuals via a plug-in system, encoding to Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, APE, WMA & WV formats and even Audioscrobbler support. The problem is that it's not particularly easy to navigate around - many of the advanced options are particularly confusing. Plus it can crash when another application tries to access your soundcard at the same time.

Nevertheless, this is an interesting player that plays those unusual formats that may be causing you problems and features some juicy add-ons for a free player.

Download VUPlayer 2.49 in Softonic

I always wanted to be a breakdancer but nowadays this is about as close as I will ever get. My dreams of being in a Jason Nevins video died a long time ago.

But this is not bad in way of reminding me of what could have been and whatsmore, even learn a few moves. Free B-boy 3D Screen Saver is a fun screensaver that displays a skeletal outline of a break dancer that jumps around like it's got ants in his pants. Around his moves, are trace marks so you can see exactly everything that he's done and how he's done it. So it's great for those that are simply fans of the art-form or even those that want to learn a thing or two (although I wouldn't advise trying the head stand followed by double back somersault). It's a shame that they couldn't have added some decent music and perhaps made the skeleton a real B-Boy - which can't be difficult - but nevertheless, it's a great little screensaver that gives you something a bit different on your desktop that people will certainly notice.

Very impressive moves and lots of colour combine to make this one of the better screensavers out there and a must have for B-boy fans.

Download Free B-boy 3D Screensaver in Softonic

Fresh Desktop is a useful utility that lets you manage vast collections of wallpapers for your desktop with ease. Fresh Desktop integrates a powerful picture downloader that can search pictures meet your specifications from web sites and download them automatically.

Fresh Desktop changes your wallpaper at Windows startup or specified intervals, creates slideshow screensavers with 150 kinds of transition effects from the pictures in your collection, shows a fully customizable calendar and a daily notice on your desktop etc.

Feature List:

Rotate Wallpaper

Change your wallpaper at Windows startup or specified intervals.

Pictures Slideshow Screen Saver

Create slideshow screensavers with 150 kinds of transition effects from the pictures in your collection.

Pictures Downloader

Search pictures meet your specifications from web sites and download them automatically.

Calendar and Notice

Shows a fully customizable calendar and a daily notice on your desktop.

Create Thumbnails

Easy to preview thumbnails or create pictures thumbnails files for your web sites.

Download Fresh Desktop 4.0 in Softonic

For many people, the only reason worth upgrading to Vista if for the look since the functionality and basic framework really don't differ that much from XP.

If you think the same way, then you'll be more than happy with Vista Transformation Pack. Once installed, the program makes superficial changes to XP that give it the Vista look. The main changes are that it "Vistarises" your start-up screen, cursors, sounds, screen-savers, tool bars, clock, etc. The transparent effect in Vista is hard to emulate on XP machines but by combining with Windows Blinds, Vista Transofrmation Pack does a surprisingly impressive job. Be warned however that some users have complained the program changes driver DLLs in XP which make it difficult to remove, or at least, it leaves problems behind when you do so.

To be fair to them, the developers advise you to view their user discussion board before installing to be warned of any potential problems as they readily admit that they are not aware of all the bugs it may cause. Note that if you're simply updating Vista Transformation Pack, there's no need to uninstall the original - just install the patch. They've also added a user selection feature whereby if you log onto your PC as a different user, you can select whether you want to transform your XP desktop to Vista.

This is probably one of the best transformation packs out there although be warned that it's likely that you'll suffer conflicts with programs from time to time, and may have problems with XP when it's uninstalled.

Download Vista Transformation Pack 8.01 in Softonic

Remember that amazing morphing effect that made our jaws drop in Michael Jackson's Black or White videoclip? That was back in 1991 and graphic technologies have evolved a lot since then, but morphing animations still remain as an eye-catching effect you can now easily apply to your pictures with Abrosoft Fantamorph.

The program offers three trial versions (Standard, Professional and Deluxe), differing from each other in the amount of available tools and functions. We recommend trying the Deluxe one, although you can always select another in the Help – Choose Trial Edition menu if you change your mind.

Fantamorph stands out for its ease of use. Once you launch the program and pass the morphing capacity diagnosis test, a wizard leads you through the process of creating a morphing or warping effect. The first one creates a transition animation between two pictures, whilst the second one generates an animation based on a single picture. Both effects are worked out in a very similar way, so you'll be mastering them in almost no time.

Morphing is based on dots that you place on the picture to point out the exact areas the program will use to create the animation effect. So for example, to create a morphing effect between two close-ups, you add dots around the face, eyes, nose and so on, creating a dotted outline of the source image and arranging these same dots to coincide with the face, eyes, nose and everything else in the target image. So, the more dots you have, the more realistic your effect will look. Fantamorph does a good job at managing these dots: you can add dots simultaneously to both photos, move them around easily, lay a grid over the image for improved accuracy or even zoom in the picture. However, the zoom tool makes it a pain to move around the image as the working area is pretty small and cannot be resized. The same objection can be pointed out about the interface's buttons, which are too small to be comfortable. Luckily enough, you can count on tooltips to reveal their function.

For those of you who feel too lazy to start adding dots, Fantamorph includes an amazing tool called Face Locator which, as its name clearly states, is able to find the face area in any picture you want to use. This comes in very handy when you want to create a face morphing effect as it gets most of the work done for you.

In case the morphing and warping effects are not enough, the program features a wide range of effects you apply to your pictures, such as background images, masks, music or transition effects. You can select them through the wizard or from the program's interface, and see how they look like in the preview window. When your project is finished, you can export it as an AVI video, an image sequence, a webpage or even a screensaver, amongst others.

In short, if you want to create an appealing morphing effect in a surprisingly easy way, Fantamorph is definitely the application you're looking for.

Download Abrosoft FantaMorph 4.0.2 in Softonic

One way to make your favourite photos more special is to turn them into screensavers. My Screensaver Maker allows you to create a slideshow screensaver based on your favourite photos. Not only that, but it allows you to create a screensaver setup file which you can send to friends and allow them to enjoy the screensaver you've made for them.

Unfortunately, it only supports BMP and JPEG image files although if you want to add a soundtrack, it includes support for WAV, WMA, Mp3's. Once you've loaded your pictures into the interface, there are more than 120 transitional effects. You simply drag and drop images and flash animations into your screensaver sequence. If you've got flash animation skills, you'll also be able to add them to give your screensavers an extra special look.

Once your screensaver is complete, you can output it into either an .EXE or a flash .SWF file. If you want it to be a video, you can turn it into AVI, MPEG, ASF and WMV. If you just want to create a single stand-alone screen saver for your PC only, you can create an .SCR file to add to your control panel.

This is a great tool and a lot of fun but it's a shame that it doesn't support a wider range of image formats as you may find you spend more time converting images than using the program.

Download My Screensaver Maker 4.62 in Softonic

Access Lock is an easy-to-use system-tray security utility you can use to secure your desktop when you are away from your computer. Just configure the program, define a password and double click the Access Lock system-tray icon every time you need to disable and hide your desktop.

While it is locked, the system keys and taskbar are disabled and the mouse cursor is trapped, unauthorized password entries are met with an audio alert and logged to disk. The only thing available in this mode is a pop-up password-entry dialog with an input area for the password that restores your desktop.

Access Lock enables you to lock your PC by two methods. The first one hides your desktop and shows a screen saver while the second one does not hide it allowing others to see what is on screen. It also prevents unauthorized access on boot and allows people around to leave messages while the system is locked.

Download Access Lock 3.2 in Softonic