There’s a plethora of music players to choose from, among which iTunes and Winamp usually have the upper hand. However, if you are curious enough, you might find that lesser known alternatives like MediaMonkey offer a reasonable amount of features and tools to organize and equally enjoy your music library.

MediaMonkey automatically scans your PC for all types of music formats. If you have playlists from other programs, it’s good to know that the application also adds m3u files, sparing you the pain of having to recreate them. The file explorer view on the left lets you easily navigate your music collection by categories like artist, genre or rating. You can convert tracks into any format you wish, depending on what size or quality of sound you’re looking for. MediaMonkey also lets you analyze and adjust the volume of tracks to increase your listening experience.

MediaMonkey has made its reputation on its advanced tagging management feature. Every time a track is added, the program will verify its tags. You can automatically fill in missing details with info from Amazon or Filename. The program can clean up your tags, move information into the correct categories and synchronize tags for selected tracks. You can also rename and move multiple files thanks to the auto-organize function. MediaMonkey also supports Winamp plugins and visualizations plus skins can be applied to spice up the interface.

If you want to make your own mix CDs, you’ll be happy to know that MediaMonkey rips and burns CDs and DVDs. Create a virtual CD of your favorite tracks and let MediaMonkey do its job. Budding DJs will enjoy the auto-DJ mode, which mixes tracks for you and the Party Mode, which blocks your configuration but lets anybody play their favorite tune. MediaMonkey’s versatility doesn’t stop there. The music manager also lets you synchronize with your portable music devices like your iPod or iRiver.

If you feel like completing your library with a couple of fresh albums you can browse sites like Amazon, Barnes and Noble or AllPosters and purchase tracks. However, unlike Songbird, where you can type in a URL, browse and save your favorite music blogs and sites, MediaMonkey only allows you to browse their selection of online stores.

We were disappointed with the web radio selection, which only features Shoutcast and Icecast, and were surprised to see no sign of podcasts anywhere in the application. However version 3.0 is planning on incorporating this to the application.

Despite these drawbacks, we recommend MediaMonkey to anybody looking for a solid alternative to iTunes or Winamp. This original music manager is more than capable of organizing a very large music library and offers advanced tagging management rarely seen in other music applications. While the browser and web radio are fairly limited, MediaMonkey allows you to rip your custom CDs and connects to most portable music devices. If you really take a liking to MediaMonkey, cough up a few bucks and upgrade to the Gold version, which will open up all of the program’s functionalities like finding missing tracks or creating auto (smart) playlists.

Download MediaMonkey 3.0.5.1187 in Softonic

Drive emulation has many advantages. You can use it to check the integrity of your disk image (e.g. ISO) files; you can avoid burning images to CDs loading them directly from your storage device; and by and large, loading times are slashed from what you could expect to get from your CD drive. DAEMON Tools has enjoyed a lot of support, being the number one choice for several years thanks to its light system footprint and distinct lack of strings attached. Unfortunately for the loyal DAEMON Tools users, things have changed a little in recent releases and more and more people are turning to Alcohol 120% as an alternative.

The problem lies in a small program called SaveNow, bundled with the DAEMON Tools Searchbar as an optional add-on for Internet Explorer. This spyware program has only become part of the most recent versions and can be avoided during the install process by de-selecting the option to include the Searchbar.

Controls for DAEMON Tools are dictated from the task bar, with a handy context menu that pops up when you click. Being a specific CD/DVD drive emulator, the options consist of choosing the number of virtual drives you want, where the image files for each virtual disk are located so that they can be mounted, and of course you can dismount images when you’ve finished with them.

With support for a wide range of formats, DAEMON Tools makes a good choice for users who travel frequently and would prefer to do so without lugging their CD and DVD library everywhere they go. It also makes a lot of sense for those who tend to scratch their CDs, because an initial backup will see them through unlimited uses without the danger of rendering the image unusable. Alternatively though, if you’re after a complete package with burning and ripping capabilities on top of the emulation, Alcohol 120% will be right up your street.

Download DAEMON Tools 4.30.0 in Softonic

When you first start up FxFoto it searches your entire hard drive for images and imports them into a handy thumbnail viewer. From there it’s as easy as a drag-and-drop operation to add pictures to your collage. You can also import you pictures directly from your scanner or digital camera.

If some of the pictures need a little tweaking, FxFoto provides you with all of the basic image adjustment controls and also has an impressive collection of filters which are all easily accessible from the well laid-out interface. You can add frames to individual pictures in your collage or to the entire creation.

FxFoto can also be used to make scrapbook pages and slide shows and has a great number of ways to publish your creations including, email, print, web sites and slide shows. This makes a brilliant for non-techy users or even small kids to use. There are a few more advanced photo management tools out there, but FxFoto provides a cheap alternative that is more than equal to most tasks.

Download FxFoto 6.0.070 in Softonic

SoftDisc is an image file creating/editing/managing tool. It also lets you emulate a virtual CD or directly burn a CD image file which is handy when, for example, you need a CD in use when playing a game.

The program lets you store disk information in ISO format. It allows you to record info on disk from local and network hard disk drives as well as removable media. What's more, once you have created an image file, you can modify it in any way you like.

SoftDisc integrates UltraISO, Daemon Tools and Nero in one making it an all-in-one solution for your CD/DVD images. It is capable of handling up to four virtual CD-ROM drives and is able to simulate various protected game CDs. The interface is nice, XP-ish and Explorer-like.

Download SoftDisc 3.02.320 in Softonic

BestCrypt creates and supports encrypted virtual disks, which are visible as regular disks with corresponding drive letters (for example, D:, K:, Z:, i.e. with any drive letter that is not used by another system device).

The data stored on a BestCrypt disk is stored in the container file. A container is a file, so it is possible to backup a container, move or copy it to other disk (CD-ROM or network, for instance) and continue to access your encrypted data using BestCrypt.

Any free drive letter in the system may be used to mount and to open an encrypted file-container for access. When the virtual disk is opened, you can read and write data as if it were a conventional removable disk.

Download BestCrypt 8.04.2 in Softonic

If you're constantly running applications from CD or DVD (like games), you may end up with scratched or damaged disks that will ruin your apps forever.

Phantom CD is the perfect solution for this problem. This tool enables you to access the contents of any CD or DVD by means of a virtual drive that doesn't require the physical disk to be inserted into the unit. The program works with ISO image files that can be produced with almost any disk imaging tool: just create the image from your favorite CD or DVD and use it in Phantom CD to mount a virtual drive. Not only it's safer for your disks, but also much faster as the reading speed in hard drives is always higher to that of disk units.

Despite its ease of use, we also found a few limitations in Phantom CD. First, it only works with ISO and BIN/CUE files, while other virtual drive managers also support formats such as CDD, NRG, MDF or MDS, to name a few. Also, we had no problems when mounting the drive – it worked perfectly well – but couldn't unmount it properly. The correspondent button simply didn't work, no reason why. In any case, if you use it to always mount the same image, this shouldn't worry you. Just remember that you'll need a lot of hard drive space in order to store all those image files.

Avoid using physical CD or DVD to run your favorite apps. With Phantom CD you can use virtual drives (only with ISO images, though) and run them faster and more comfortably.

Download Phantom CD 1.0.0.0 in Softonic

With Virtual CD you can create compressed 1:1 copies (virtual CDs/DVDs) to your hard drive. You can then store your originals safely in a cabinet! Your virtual CDs are then available with a simple click or even automatically with the autostart of the corresponding program.

No more drive noise, no more changing CDs, no more slow CD start-up. With Virtual CD you receive up to virtual drives that behave just like the "real" physical CD/DVD drives - except that they are up to 200x faster! The only noise you hear is music or the applictions sounds, and all you need to do is play, work and enjoy.

Nobody needs to handle fragile CDs any more in order to run applications. Your children don't need to, nor do your colleagues or you yourself! Music, games, searching programs, grafic programs - all will be loaded faster and is immediately accessible. You can simultaneously use a number of different CD programs without needing to purchase a number of CDdrives - this pays off quickly.

Virtual CD offers you more:

• You can use virtual CDs in a network
• You can burn virtual CDs to a CD-R
• You can protect your virtual CDs with a password or encryption
• You can protect your "real" physical CD/DVD drives with a password

Download Virtual CD 9.2.0.1 in Softonic

Copying and moving files from one location to another in your hard drive is one of those repetitive tasks that can improve a lot with just a little bit of help. And now with Piky Basket you can get it… for free.

This program works as a Windows Explorer plug-in by adding a whole new set of commands to the file's context menu. These new items will enable you to drop files into some sort of virtual basket, from which you can then copy or move them anywhere later on.

Of course, this means that you can copy or move files from different locations, just by grabbing them from their original folders, gathering them into the Piky basket and then copying or moving them to the target folder – something that is going to save you lots of precious time. Pity there's no hotkey support: keyboard junkies like me would go even faster.

Piky Basket also includes some extra tools that enable you to copy any file's path to the clipboard and open the command prompt window in the current folder.

Piky Basket adds new handy features to the standard Windows Explorer and enables you to copy and move files more easily.

Download Piky Basket 2.0 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

Symantec is a company that has been subject to criticism for dropping the ball with recent versions of their anti-virus and internet security software, so does their backup solution show any proof that they are building on their vast experience and that their popularity and reputation is somewhat justified? At first sight, it’s clear that the interface has followed in the footsteps of every other Norton product, meaning that you get a user friendly tabbed based window with a healthy quantity of wizards thrown in for just about every operation.

Unfortunately the make-over seems to have just touched the surface and as a result, each tool you want to use will open a new window. Not only can this lead to a cluttered desktop with lingering dialog boxes but may also cause your system to slow significantly or at worst, crash. Used properly though, Norton Ghost will let you backup your entire hard-drive to another partition, an external, or a networked drive on a regular scheduled basis and also gives you a variety of ways to restore the reserve copies should the worst happen.

For anyone with huge amounts of data to backup, the option to compress everything will come as a blessing and for those with sensitive documents there is password protection and encryption. What’s more, the processes involved have been completely dumbed down, with less jargon and step by step instructions. While this benefits those who want a backup solution that they install and forget about, it strikes more advanced users right where it hurts. You can’t even select what folders to back up and instead must be satisfied that it’s all or nothing.

Although the program didn’t seem to be entirely stable, there was no obvious hit to system performance, which was one of the main problems with other Symantec software. Norton Ghost will put your mind at rest with a comprehensive copy of your hard drive, but if you prefer to be in complete control or to restrict your backup to only your essential files, then you should look elsewhere.

Download Norton Ghost 12.0 in Softonic

The PCSX project has been running for a little over four years now, and since it's initial release has grown in compatibility. From initially just being able to run a few public domain demos, it's current state enables many games to boot and actually go in game, such as the 'famous' Final Fantasy X or Devil May Cry 3. PS2 Emulation is a complex task, far worse than emulating a console from the previous generation (PlayStation1, N64, Saturn), simply due to the CPU power required to get 'playable' speeds from a PS2 game under emulation.

This program does the job remarkably well although don't throw your Playstation 2 away quite yet. It struggles with high speed action and is prone to freezing or crashing at the most annoying moments. PCSX2 comes in 2 versions, the TLB and the VM (virtual memory) one. The TLB version is the pcsx2t.exe while the VM version is the pcsx2.exe. First try running the VM version, following the instructions given (type your account user name, log off/on and restart). If the program still fails to allocate the memory, simply use the TLB version and don't worry the speed difference is not that great. After that, the setup procedure is quite lengthy although if you're Playstation 2 is broken, you'll find this a more than adequate replacement.

Download PCSX2 0.9.4 in Softonic

Beatport SYNC makes for a good audio player for users looking to have fun with mixing features. The clean and crisp dark blue interface shows both your music library and the mixing tools. We found it very easy to browse between the different categories including our own music, playlists and even iTunes. Beatport SYNC can let you play music from any external device, whether a hard drive, an MP3 player or an iPhone.

The mixing features are fairly basic, but should satisfy any occasional DJ. Beatport SYNC includes two decks with pitch control, a crossafder and basic playback functions.

We were disappointed by the online radio feature, which only allowed us to connect to Proton, an electronic music station. You can also connect to the Beatport online store, via the Beatport tag, where you'll find a reasonable collection of tracks and albums by many different independent artists in all sorts of genre. Check out the charts if you don't know what to look for.

Beatport SYNC is an audio player/ online store with basic mixing features for users looking for an all around audio solution.

Download Beatport SYNC 1.0 in Softonic

As the name hints at, Search and Recover helps you find deleted files and reclaim them. You can get back deleted pictures, videos, MP3s, email, documents, spreadsheets, system files, and any other file or folder on your hard drive, CD/DVD media, MP3 player, digital camera, memory card, or other portable device using Search and Recover's powerful, easy-to-use interface. Recover data after your Recycle Bin has been emptied. Preview data before saving. Rescue files even after formatting the drive or device.

Don't wait until a catastrophe before putting Search and Recover in place. With Search and Recover installed, you can create instant mirror copies of entire drives the minute data loss is suspected and use them for flawless recovery. Search and Recover's disk imaging preserves data the right way by backing up all files - not just those you can still see.

Download Search and Recover 4.5.10.7 in Softonic

CryptoExpert creates encrypted virtual disks and these disks are visible as usual disks with drive letters (for example, G:, H:, Z:, i.e. with any drive letter that is not used by other system devices).

The data stored on a CryptoExpert disk is stored in the container file. A container is a file, so it is possible to back up a container, move or copy it to another disk (CD-ROM or network, for instance) and continue to access your encrypted data using CryptoExpert.

Any free drive letter (or choosen letter) in the system may be used to mount and to open an encrypted file-container for access. When the virtual disk is opened, you can read and write data as if it were a conventional removable disk.

You can do anything with a CryptoExpert virtual drive that you can do with a normal hard drive; only that with CryptoExpert, the encrypted volumes require password authentication before the files become accessible.

Major features:

• Uses powerful encryption algorithm to encrypt your data: CAST 128 bit
• Ability to create encrypted containers (files vault) up to 20 Mb in size
• Access your files on a virtual volume on the fly
• Maps any free drive letter like G:, F:, K: for virtual volume
• Requires password authentication before the files become accessible
• Really fast
• Looks like normal hard drive

Download CryptoExpert 2007 Lite 7.1.0 in Softonic

The system mounts a volume file to create a "virtual drive" that appears to applications like any other physical drive. User needs to enter a password to mount this container file as drive and can unmount it instantly by pressing special hot key. This PRO version additionally allows you to mount the container file that is stored on another computer over a local network. Encrypted drive can also be shared between local network users.

The data stored on a CryptoExpert disk is stored in the container file. A container is an usual file (but strongly encrypted), so it is possible to backup a container, move or copy it to other disk (CD-ROM or network, for instance) and continue to access your encrypted data using CryptoExpert. Any free drive letter (or choosen letter) in the system may be used to mount and to open an encrypted file-container for access.

Download CryptoExpert 2007 Pro 7.1.0 in Softonic

Secure your data and ensure absolute privacy with Cypherix's powerful encryption software, Cryptainer LE. It's powerful 128 bit encryption, creates multiple 25 MB encrypted containers (vaults) on your hard disk. These encrypted vaults can be loaded and unloaded when needed. You can view, modify and hide all types of files with a single password.

Phenomenally easy to use, Cryptainer LE's encryption works with all known file types. Cryptainer allows you to password protect and secure any file or folder on any media, including removable drives (Flash Drives, CD ROM's etc.)

Cryptainer can be installed directly on a USB / removable drive as a "stand alone" install. One can carry this installation of Cryptainer ('Cryptainer Mobile') to different machines without having to install Cryptainer on the host machine.

You can protect your files and folders and ensure total privacy with Cryptainer LE. Simply drag and drop the files and folders you want to hide and voilà! Your files are hidden! With Cryptainer LE you can hide the very existence of your confidential files and folders.

Additionally, Cryptainer LE allows you to send encrypted email files. The recipient need not even have a copy of Cryptainer LE installed to decrypt the files.

Download Cryptainer LE 7.1.0.0 in Softonic

Alcohol brings a new meaning to the word multimedia! It is without a doubt a leader in it's class, bringing the ability to emulate and record CDs and DVDs together into one amazingly easy to use software program. Using the latest technology, the program is constantly being developed and improved to add new features, allowing it to maintain it's position as a leading software package.

Imagine being able to store your most used CDs as images on your computer and just call them up at the click of a button! And then run them at 200x the speed of some CD drives and without requiring the CD itself! How about being able to make a backup of that CD onto another CD either using the CD itself or just using the image you have created? This is what Alcohol allows you to do and much more.

Download Alcohol 120% 1.9.6.5429 in Softonic

Getting all data about your CDs into the database is totally hassle free. Just start our FastScan function and place your CDs in the CD/DVD-drive one after another. Music Label will automatically download all data about the CD from the Internet and insert it into your database. You don't even need to push a button between the CDs... MP3, WMA, APE, FLAC and OGG Vorbis files are automatically scanned using tags.

You will always find what you are looking for in your collection no matter if you are experienced with computers or not. Music Label contains both a simple search and a more advanced search for a more accurate search result. Sorting is also easy; just click the column header and your collection will be sorted by that particular field.

Music Label will not only organize all your data. It also keeps track of your insurance and loans so that you will never again lose a CD. You can even make notes of CDs to purchase in the future and when they will be released. If you have a portable MP3 player, you can transfer files to it with only one click (from within Music Label).

Music Label offers a variety of pre-designed reports as well as a built in easy-to-use report designer. Powerful export options are also available, where you can define the export layout and export to XML, HTML, Excel and texfiles.

If you have multiple collections in your household, Music Label enables you to keep a separate database for each collection.

Download Music Label 2007 13.2 in Softonic

You need the Ultimate Boot CD if you want to:

• Run floppy-based diagnostic tools from CDROM drives. More and more PCs are shipped without floppy drives these days, and it is such a royal pain when you need to run diagnostic tools on them.
• Free yourself from the slow loading speed of the floppy drive. Even if you do have a floppy drive, it is still much much faster to run your diagnostic tools from the CDROM drive, rather than wait for the tool to load from the floppy drive.
• Consolidate as many diagnostic tools as possible into one bootable CD. Wouldn't you like to avoid digging into the dusty box to look for the right floppy disk, but simply run them all from a single CD? Then the Ultimate Boot CD is for you!

When you boot up from the CD, a text-based menu will be displayed, and you will be able to select the tool you want to run. The selected tool actually boots off a virtual floppy disk created in memory.

Download Ultimate Boot CD 4.1.0 in Softonic

FileBack PC is a file backup and synchronization utility designed to backup your data using media you are already familiar with: a hard drive, removable media drive, or network drive. Applications include backup, disk mirroring, or adding file versioning capability to Windows.

Take a look at all you can do with Fileback PC:

• Keep extra copies of your documents in multiple locations
• Keep files on your laptop and desktop PCs synchronized
• Go back "5 versions" of a particular file
• Copy your documents to a network server for universal access or centralized backup storage
• Mirror one hard drive to another according to a schedule
• Keep a copy of your documents on a CD
• Synchronize files between a home and work PC
• Backup your files over the Internet using a Virtual Private Network connection

Download FileBack PC 4.0.070430 in Softonic