Free Software

In an ideal world there wouldn't be any viruses at all but, since there are, the next best scenario is to have an antivirus program to protect you. But what happens once it's too late? If you get a virus infection how good are antivirus and clean up tools at repairing your system?

Independent testing organization AV-TEST set out to resolve this question with a comprehensive 10-month test using 17 different software packages.

Moonchild Productions has released a minor update to its Firefox browser variant for Windows with the release of Pale Moon 24.7 and Pale Moon x64 24.7.

Version 24.7 is primarily a bug fix release, and also includes the latest security fixes recently incorporated into the main Firefox build.

Get engrossed in your latest web research project and you’ll soon be navigating an array of browser tabs, each one with some vital piece of information -- it’s very easy to lose track.

Firefox offers a few very basic options to help you maintain control. Clicking History > Restore Previous Session will reopen whatever you were viewing last time, for instance, or you can bookmark all open tabs for reference later.

It can often be useful to keep a local copy of a web page, and your browser’s "Save Page As" option is a good place to start. But typically this saves an HTML file and a separate folder with its resources, or an archive format like MHT, not so convenient if you’d like to share the document with others.

Wkhtmltopdf is an open source tool which quickly converts HTML to PDF, ready for viewing just about anywhere. It’s written for the command line, but don’t let that put you off -- you’ll be using it productively in seconds.

Your PC’s taking an age to boot? It could be launching too many programs when Windows starts. There are plenty of freeware "startup manager" tools which claim they can help, but Autorun Organizer is better than most.

The program checks a good range of startup locations, for instance: the Startup folder, the Registry, Task Scheduler. It’s not Autoruns, but there’s more than enough to be useful.

It’s that time of the month when Piriform issues its regular CCleaner update for Windows PCs, and undeterred by the recent CCleaner for Mac 1.08 release, the company has shipped CCleaner 4.16 and CCleaner Portable 4.16 right on schedule.

The new release adds support for a number of new programs, improves its Firefox and Chrome cleaning tools and adds a new Repair option to the uninstaller should it be needed.

Do you sometimes need to collaborate on drawings or sketches? Drawpile is a cross-platform application which allows 20+ users to use the same canvas, all at the same time.

The drawing engine initially looks quite simple. There’s a pen and brush, a line, rectangle and ellipse, they all support a range of color options, and you’re able to add text annotations as required.

Bern-based developer iterate GmbH has released CyberDuck 4.5, a major update to its Windows and Mac FTP and cloud-storage browser tool. This open-source tool provides users with a user-friendly means of browsing FTP/SFTP, WebDAV, Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage and Rackspace Cloud Files servers.

Version 4.5 restores support for Microsoft’s Azure Blob Storage connections, adds a new SSH/SFTP protocol implementation and adds support for updating Windows users via the Taskbar’s Notification area.

IOBit has unveiled Driver Booster 2.0 Beta, a preview of the next major version of its driver update tool for Windows. The utility offers simple updating to free users, while a paid-for Pro version adds the ability to back up drivers along with faster download speeds and other enhancements.

Version 2.0 opens with an overhauled user interface, designed to make the program even simpler to use. Users also gain the ability to make the program semi-translucent via a Transparency slider in the program’s Settings menu.

They’re extremely basic, horribly limited, just about the most low-tech form of computer animation you can get. But then animated GIFs are almost 25 years old, so we probably shouldn’t expect too much. And even now, they’re still useful as a reliable way to display simple animations on just about every platform.

We’ve discussed several ways to create animated GIFs before, but the latest is Movie to Gif, which does exactly what its name suggests: point the program at a video and it’ll render a finished GIF for you.

Piriform Ltd has released CCleaner for Mac 1.08, a minor update to the Mac version of its freeware cleaning tool. Unlike the Windows version, which is updated monthly, CCleaner for Mac’s updates are more sporadic -- this is the first new release since November last year.

The new version opens by adding support for the OS X 10.10 Yosemite Developer Preview, which should mean it’ll work with the final version when it’s released later this year, although a further update for official compatibility is likely.

Are you a Mac user who’s just installed Windows 8 alongside OS X via Boot Camp? Or perhaps you’re a Windows user who’s just been tasked with the job of getting data from (or to) a Mac-formatted hard drive. In either event, to get full access to your hard drive requires third-party help.

Previously, gaining full read and write access to a drive formatted using Apple’s HFS+ file system would cost you money. If you’re a Windows 8 user, however, then give thanks for the release of Paragon HFS+ for Windows 8/8.1 Free Edition 1.0.

Paragon Technologies has released Paragon Rescue Kit 14, its free-for-personal-use disaster recovery environment.

The program creates bootable recovery media based on Windows PE, or, new to this version, SuSE 12.3. The second adds support for migrating a Windows system to a different hardware platform, including 64-bit setups using UEFI.

In the second of our (hopefully) regular competitions, we have quite a treat for you. You've read the headline so you should know what's up for grabs, but if you missed it, the prize is a year's subscription to Office 365 Home worth $99.99.

Microsoft has very kindly donated a full subscription for us to give away, but this is more than just one copy of the world-famous office suite -- you can install Office 365 Home on up to five PCs or Macs, as well as five tablets. Enough for all the family!

Dashlane, Inc has released Dashlane 3.0 for Windows and Mac, a major new build of its secure password management tool. The new release is joined by Dashlane 2.7 for iOS, which has been updated to work with version 3.

Version 3 sports a completely redesigned user interface, adds a number of new tools, including a Sharing Center, Emergency Contacts section and a simpler way of viewing password histories.