The most recent Download Reviews from Incisive Media

Paint.NET 3.5

Chris Wiles — 2009-11-07T00:00:00.000Z

Chris Wiles, V3.co.uk, Saturday 7 November 2009 at 00:00:00

Powerful & modern paint program

Jointly developed by Washington State University and Microsoft, Paint.net is intended to be a replacement for the free MS Paint software provided with all Windows operating systems.

It offers many of the powerful features found in commercial editors, including the ability to work on multiple layers, full transparent PNG support, unlimited history, and a plethora of visual effects.

An interesting feature is the way each tool window becomes transparent when covering the image. This enables better implementation of effects and is something the big image editors are currently lacking.

New v3 features include a multi-document, tab-based interface, so you can open and edit more than one image. An improved and more powerful toolbar and user-definable colour palette are some of the other highlights.

Super Flexible File Synchronizer 4.78

Tim Smith — 2009-11-07T00:00:00.000Z

Tim Smith, V3.co.uk, Saturday 7 November 2009 at 00:00:00

Synchronise documents between different locations

If you regularly transfer and work on files in different locations it can often be difficult to make sure that you are always using the latest version. Super Flexible File Synchronizer takes care of that for you by updating the contents of different folders.

Each synchronisation is set up as a different profile that you can run when you want or update if your needs change. Files can be synchronised over networks or with internet sites.

There is a wizard mode as well as an advanced mode that can schedule synchronisations to happen automatically.

Nero Free 9.4.12.708

Chris Wiles — 2009-11-06T14:34:00.000Z

Chris Wiles, V3.co.uk, Friday 6 November 2009 at 14:34:00

Burn basic data & audio discs with this free tool

For most people, simple burning software is all we need on a day-to-day level. Some of the popular burning applications have migrated in to multimedia production suites over the last few years, which means they ship on a DVD-based installer, rather than a simple download to burn data and audio CDs.

Some software developers have recognised this and there are now many smaller simple burning tools that do a few things well – burn data, audio CDs and produce disc labels. Nero have also recognised a need for this market and have released a free basic version of their burning suite.

Nero Free is a simple cut-down version of the full burning package and enables you to burn discs, quickly. Quite a few features are missing. With any free burning software, you won’t be able to work with MP3 files or burn a DVD, due to the lack of an MPEG-2 codec. If you need these features, you’ll need to upgrade to the full version.

There’s no time limit on this application and it’s completely free.

Mozilla Firefox for Mac 3.5.5

Lee Collins — 2009-11-06T12:20:00.000Z

Lee Collins, V3.co.uk, Friday 6 November 2009 at 12:20:00

Minor release of the popular web browser

Some users were disappointed with the release of Mozilla Firefox 2.0. After months of betas, release candidates and previews, the new features weren’t as spectacular as people expected. However, there is only so much you can do to improve a web browser.

With the release of Mozilla Firefox 3, Mozilla decided to work hard on speeding up the rendering engine, so the web graphics has received a completely new upgrade. Dubbed ‘ Cairo’, the new graphics rendering engine should improve the output across different platforms, as it’s being developed as an open-standard.

With other improvements in the way that pages are ‘painted’ on screen, improved SVG support and CSS enhancements, the general improvements for Firefox 3.0 are based around the way it will render web pages through the browser. The new browser also ships with a new user-interface, improved bookmarks and many other new features.

This is the major new long-awaited v3.5 release with features such as private web browsing, speed improvements and much more.

VirtualBox for Mac 3.0.10

Lee Collins — 2009-11-06T12:00:00.000Z

Lee Collins, V3.co.uk, Friday 6 November 2009 at 12:00:00

Host a virtual operating system

This is the software publisher's description.

Powerful x86 virtualization products for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). See "About VirtualBox" for an introduction; see "innotek" for more about our company.

Presently, VirtualBox runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh and OpenSolaris hosts and supports a large number of guest operating systems including but not limited to Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4 and 2.6), and OpenBSD.

VirtualBox is being actively developed with frequent releases and has an ever growing list of features, supported guest operating systems and platforms it runs on. VirtualBox is a community effort backed by a dedicated company: everyone is encouraged to contribute while innotek ensures the product always meets professional quality criteria.

On the VirtualBox site, you can find sources, binaries, documentation and other resources for VirtualBox.

Version 3.0 ships with major enhancements such as support for up to 32 CPUs per virtual guest OS, the ability to use DirectX 9 within a Windows guest, support for Windows 7 and much more.

VirtualBox for Windows 3.0.10

Chris Wiles — 2009-11-06T00:00:00.000Z

Chris Wiles, V3.co.uk, Friday 6 November 2009 at 00:00:00

Host a virtual operating system

This is the software publisher's description.

On the VirtualBox site, you can find sources, binaries, documentation and other resources for VirtualBox.

Version 3.0 ships with major enhancements such as support for up to 32 CPUs per virtual guest OS, the ability to use DirectX 9 within a Windows guest, support for Windows 7 and much more.

Mozilla Firefox 3.5.5

Chris Wiles — 2009-11-06T00:00:00.000Z

Chris Wiles, V3.co.uk, Friday 6 November 2009 at 00:00:00

Minor release of the popular web browser

This is the major new long-awaited v3.5 release with features such as private web browsing, speed improvements and much more.

Foxit Reader 3.1.3

Max Fernandez — 2009-11-06T00:00:00.000Z

Max Fernandez, V3.co.uk, Friday 6 November 2009 at 00:00:00

Portable & quick PDF reader

When it comes to PDF readers, the abundance of free and competent titles suggests that the need for anymore is unnecessary. The Foxit PDF Reader is, however, slightly different.

With a download size of less than 4MB, Foxit is an extremely light and speedy PDF reader with an almost non-existent installation process.

This makes it extremely portable; just slip it on a USB key or CD and you can use it anywhere with little fuss.

Unlike many mainstream readers, Foxit is not resident on your PC so it doesn't sap anymore memory than it should. Obviously, this does mean fewer features but the simplicity and portability of the software easily makes up for this shortfall.

Note that this release is much more than a PDF reader. Some of the new features include a form designer (but some of these features are evaluation only with this Reader Edition), enhanced zoom tools, spell-checker for PDF forms, an improved IE-plugin and much more.

The latest v3 ships with a host of new features include an updated select tool, advanced toolbar control, improved popup notes, Firefox support (so you can see your PDFs within Firefox) and much more.

Nocs Google Docs Editor

Tim Smith — 2009-11-05T11:14:00.000Z

Tim Smith, Computeractive, Thursday 5 November 2009 at 11:14:00

Edit Google Docs online and offline

Nocs is a Windows Notepad-style application that uses Google Docs to synchronise text files.

Editing in a browser can be powerful but it is sometimes problematic. Nocs is a basic editor that can create and edit word-processing documents online using Google Docs.

You cannot apply formatting to text but Nocs has a tabbed interface to edit more than one document at a time. As the documents are held on Google Docs it is also possible for several people to edit a document at the same time.

Nocs can be set to autosave documents if it is left idle, a useful idea to avoid losing work. It can also encrypt text before it is sent to Google Docs to avoid anyone snooping on your work on the way.

The editing font can be changed, which is a good idea as Courier New is not easy to read for long periods.

The developer can be followed on Twitter so you can see the latest news and submit your own suggestions.

Flock 2.5.5

Chris Wiles — 2009-11-05T11:04:00.000Z

Chris Wiles, V3.co.uk, Thursday 5 November 2009 at 11:04:00

Test the latest browser based on the Firefox 3 engine

Flock is a web browser that combines integrated photo sharing, social networking with RSS support.

Bloggers are a target audience for Flock, which is based on the Mozilla Firefox, because it has been designed to keep people up to date with news, blogs and when friends appear online.

Favourite websites can be kept up to date with other computers that a user may have access to by using the del.icio.us and shadows services. These websites can then be shared with other users,

Flock organises news from RSS feeds in a pane rather than as bookmarks. Each feed is checked for new stories hourly. Flock shows an incon in the address bar to show that a feed is available from that page. Simply click on that icon to sign up.

Flock can automatically add photos and snippets of other webpages to blogs written with Blogger, LiveJournal, Typepad and WordPress. A special web snippets bar has been added to store quotes from other websites. Users simply drag pictures onto the Photo icon to upload, or drag and drop images which are automatically stored on to a Flickr or PhotoBucket account.

Search with Flock is slightly different from other browsers because as text is typed in, Flock will start searching from the web as well as a user's favourites and history. These initial results are shown in a drop down menu.

Note that this is the major release of v2 based on Firefox 3.

Taskbar Meters

Tim Smith — 2009-11-05T10:49:00.000Z

Tim Smith, Computeractive, Thursday 5 November 2009 at 10:49:00

Get more information about computer health from the Windows 7 computer

Taskbar Meters take advantage of the improvements made to the Windows 7 taskbar.

Taskbar Meters displays a separate icon for CPU, memory and hard disk activity that gradually fills as the computer works harder.

The icons also serve as useful shortcuts to the Task Manager and Resource Monitor to get more information on how the computer is being used.

The update frequency can be adjusted and you can also change the level at which the bars change colour from yellow or red to indicate utility-resource usage.

Defraggler Portable 1.15

Lee Collins — 2009-11-05T10:43:00.000Z

Lee Collins, V3.co.uk, Thursday 5 November 2009 at 10:43:00

Defragment your drive with this portable application

Your old system might appear to need an upgrade, if you’ve been using your computer for over a year. It just seems to become slower, over time. Windows takes longer to boot, applications take a few more seconds to start and your system can feel a lot more sluggish. One option is simply to purchase a brand new and faster hard drive. Re-install Windows and your favourite applications and you’ll suddenly find everything is a lot more snappy. However, after a few months of using the new drive, your system will be sluggish again.

Why does this happen? Simply as the more applications you install and remove from your computer, the more likely your drive will become fragmented. This occurs when files are stored in different locations on your drive and your drive has to spin more than usual to load Windows and your applications. Defragment your drive and the contents will be stored in one continuous block, so you’ll find your system starts more quickly and your PC appears to be running more smoothly.

The Windows defragmentation tool isn’t the best available. It’s rather slow, so if you have a huge hard drive it can take hours to finish defragmenting your drive. Worse, you can’t really do anything whilst it’s performing the defragmentation process.

Defraggler is a new tool from the developers who brought you CCleaner. It’s small and compact and will enable you to defragment a collection of files, as well as your entire drive.

Note that this is the portable version of Defraggler.

Process Monitor 2.8

Lee Collins — 2009-11-05T00:00:00.000Z

Lee Collins, V3.co.uk, Thursday 5 November 2009 at 00:00:00

Monitor open system activity

This is the software publisher's description.

Advanced monitoring tool for Windows that shows real-time file system, Registry and process/thread activity. It combines the features of two legacy Sysinternals utilities, Filemon and Regmon, and adds an extensive list of enhancements including rich and non-destructive filtering, comprehensive event properties such session IDs and user names, reliable process information, full thread stacks with integrated symbol support for each operation, simultaneous logging to a file, and much more. Its uniquely powerful features will make Process Monitor a core utility in your system troubleshooting and malware hunting toolkit.

This major update to Process Monitor adds real-time TCP and UDP monitoring to its existing process, thread, DLL, file system and registry monitoring. You can now see the TCP and UDP activity processes performed, including the operation (e.g. connect, send, receive), local and remote IP addresses and DNS names, and operation transfer lengths. On Windows Vista, Process Monitor also collects thread stacks for network operations.

Paragon Disk Wiper 10 Personal

Chris Wiles — 2009-11-05T00:00:00.000Z

Chris Wiles, V3.co.uk, Thursday 5 November 2009 at 00:00:00

Completely wipe a partition or drive

There are fewer reasons to justify upgrading your old PC, apart from the graphics card if you’re a seriously gamer or the hard drive if you find you’re running out of space. Upgrading your hard drive is far easier than you would expect. There are tools such as Paragon Disk Copy or Hard Disk Manager that will copy the entire contents of your old drive across to your new drive. Simply connect the new drive and remove the old one, then reboot. Simple.

However, what happens if you want to get rid of your old slow hard drive? There’s no point connecting it up as a slave drive as you’ll probably find that it slows down read/write access to your new and primary drive. You might want to give it to someone else or simply throw it away. Whatever option you choose, you need to dispose of the contents. Even if you re-format the drive, there are many tools that will enable another user to retrieve the pre-formatted contents.

The solution is a disk wiping tool that will completely erase the disk contents but also uses an algorithm to make sure that by wiping the contents, the old content can’t be retrieved.

This is a tool you’ll probably use very infrequently, but it could prove invaluable if you want to make sure a partition or entire drive is completely wiped and contents are irradiated.

Note that this trial version will not actually wipe your disk. It will only show the functionality involved.

K-Lite Mega Codec Pack 5.4.0

Chris Wiles — 2009-11-05T00:00:00.000Z

Chris Wiles, V3.co.uk, Thursday 5 November 2009 at 00:00:00

Collection of video & audio codecs

There are three or four key compression formats that most people use to compress video (or audio) for playback on the Internet and users will generally use QuickTime, Windows Media Player, RealPlayer or DivX Player to playback your video.

However, it’s not always as simple as this. Some people avoid the mainstream players, as these players require the end-user to register in order to use their software and people see this as an invasion of their privacy. However, some of the freeware and Opensource video players don’t always ship with the relevant codecs. Indeed, if you try and playback a video compressed in the 90’s, you might find it was encoded with an old Intel codec or other popular codecs that have long-since been discontinued.

The K-Lite Codec Pack is a collection of codecs and related tools that will enable you to playback just about any video/audio format you’ll find on the Internet. A codec is short for Compressor-Decompressor. Codecs are needed for encoding and decoding (playing) audio and video. With the K-Lite Codec Pack you should be able to play all the popular movie formats and even some rare formats.

Note: with K-Lite's developers linking directly to the download on our server, and then this being mirrored across the Internet, we've had to take this direct download offline. The download here now links you to the K-Lite download page on their server.