Anti-Malware 6 beta is 450% faster
Austrian security company Emsisoft has launched a public beta test of Anti-Malware 6, its flagship antivirus tool. And the focus this time around has clearly been performance, with the company claiming a new multi-core optimised scanning engine is on average 450-percent faster than the previous version.
The next benefit comes from a new scheme for identifying trustworthy files. These then don’t have to be scanned in the future unless they’ve changed, providing another speed boost. And, the company claims, further optimizations have “drastically” reduced Anti-Malware’s impact on the boot process.
Trend Micro Titanium 2012 targets encrypted malware
Internet security company Trend Micro Incorporated has released its Titanium 2012 range of products, which have been extended with a variety of new features.
Malware detection has been improved with some interesting new technologies. Perhaps the most useful of these allows Titanium 2012 products to detect applications that have been packed (encrypted), in an effort to bypass your defenses; once the file has been unpacked, it’s then scanned in real time using file-based signatures, which greatly improves the chance of detection.
Wake up your PC with TurnMeOnLan
Wake-on-LAN (WOL) is, in theory, a very convenient technology, able to wake up a sleeping PC on your local (wired) network just by sending it an appropriately formed “magic packet”.
The reality can be rather different, though, as WOL only works if your PC, BIOS and network card all support the technology and have it enabled (and even then you may run into issues with your router). Still, if you’d like to give it a try then NirSoft’s latest, WakeMeOnLan, is an easy way to get started.
Firefox 6 too slow? Try Pale Moon 6 instead
Recent Firefox releases seem to show that Mozilla are making a genuine effort to eliminate the browser’s performance issues.
If you’re not yet satisfied, though, Pale Moon 6, released today, may be of interest. The browser is based on Firefox -- looks almost identical, works in exactly the same way, supports most (though not all) extensions and add-ons -- but has been carefully optimized to deliver better performance and security.
Sync to the cloud with True Image Home 2012
Acronis True Image has always been one of the more feature-packed of backup tools, with the ability to copy your emails or select files, individual partitions, complete drives and more.
Acronis True Image Home 2012 extends its reach even further, though, with new support for data synchronization, and fully integrated online backup courtesy of Acronis True Image Online.
Find Windows' hidden icon troves
It’s easy to customize the shortcut icon for a Windows application, at least in theory: just right-click it, select "Change Icon", and choose whatever icon you’d prefer.
Of course you have to find a suitable icon, first, and that’s where life gets a little more difficult. Windows actually provides thousands of icons you could use, but tracking them down isn’t easy, unless you get help from a third-party tool like Icon Explorer.
Which Firefox is right for you -- 6, 7, 8 or 9?
The browser market moves at a hectic pace these days, and so while a month ago most people were happily using Firefox 5, Mozilla has released Firefox 6, Firefox 7 beta, Firefox 8 Aurora, and even Firefox 9 via the Nightly channel.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, most of the changes are internal and will make little immediate difference to most people. We ran a few benchmarks on the various builds, for instance, and found Firefox 9 had around a 4 percent lead over Firefox 6, but otherwise the performance of Firefox 7, 8 and 9 proved very similar.
Lost a Windows Registry key? Yaru can recover it
It's no secret that working in the Registry can be dangerous, and the standard Microsoft advice has always been to back up your Registry before you begin. If you're confident in your PC abilities, though, it's tempting not to bother, especially once you realize that most simple editing tasks are entirely safe.
If you don't make a backup, though, the day may come when you really do delete or change something important. And then there's no easy way to reverse the damage; even using a previous system restore point might cause problems with your installed applications.
Sniff out banking Trojans with DeBank
Security company Damballa announced this week that the source code for SpyEye, one of the most dangerous banking Trojans around, has been leaked online. Which is good for researchers, as they can better understand how it works. But it also means that a malware kit that used to cost more than $10,000 is now available for free, so is expected to become an even more pervasive threat in the next few weeks.
No need to panic just yet, though, as coincidentally Finnish security company Fitsec has just released DeBank, a portable tool that can detect the presence of all five major banking Trojan families on the target PC: SpyEye, Zeus, CarBerp, Gozi and Patcher.
You should be playing Ages of Empire Online right now
You waited a year for it. Now you can play. Microsoft has finally revealed the first full version of its Age of Empires Online game. And if you're a fan of empire-building Civilization-type games, or real-time strategy in general, then there's good news: Age of Empires Online will be free to play indefinitely, with no subscription fees to worry about.
The core plot is a familiar one. The game launches with your small village (Greek or Egyptian, your choice) all alone in a huge online world. But by collecting resources, managing buildings and units, and improving your technology you'll soon be able to expand, and so begin the process of transforming your civilization into a powerful empire.
First Look: Adobe Muse Beta 1
Adobe has revealed the first public beta of a new WYSIWYG web design tool, code-named Muse, which allows you to build entire sites without worrying about HTML, scripting or other low-level complexities.
The AIR-based application is a little short on features right now, no surprise for a first release. But as we discovered when we took a closer look at Muse, there's more than enough functionality to get a feel for how the program is going to work.
Advanced System Care: Does the first public beta do enough?
IObit has released the first public beta of Advanced SystemCare 5, its comprehensive PC maintenance and optimization suite.
The main addition in this release is ActiveBoost, a technology that aims to automatically improve PC performance by "intelligently managing system resources" in real time. Technical details are sparse so far, but we suspect ActiveBoost is tweaking process priorities and RAM use when it thinks this might be helpful. If that's the case then it can be a useful strategy in some situations, but didn't make any noticeable difference to us.
PC Doctor: Better at system surgery than diagnosis
The PC world is packed with tools that promise to optimize your system, but most do little or nothing useful. And so the news that Kingsoft Security had released another, their free PC Doctor, didn't exactly fill us with anticipation.
The reality was much better than we expected, though. PC Doctor is far more interesting than most of the competition, and while the program is currently flawed, it could already be useful for many people.
SSDownloader: 50 security apps in just a few clicks
Your friend's PC has been hit by malware, and you're trying to help him out. He doesn't have any security apps installed, though, and so normally that means a lengthy browsing session around your preferred vendors, locating and downloading the tools they need.
Unless, that is, you've a copy of the free, portable SSDownloader to hand. It's a small and easy-to-use download manager that can grab your choice of 50 security applications in just a few clicks.
File Blender: Process or encrypt just about anything
Image editing, file format conversion, encryption/ decryption: there are many reasons why you might want to process a file, and usually you'll require a different program to handle each one.
File Blender, though, is a little more ambitious. The program provides a simple front end to tools like IrfanView, FFmpeg, LAME MP3 Encoder and more, and can be further extended to provide a unified, portable interface for all your file processing needs.
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