Articles about Free Software

If you’d like to know what someone else is doing on a PC then the "Recent Items" (or "Recent Files") folder is a good place to start looking.

Just browse to C:\Users\%UserName%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent and you’ll find shortcuts for anything recently double-clicked in Explorer, or that’s been opened by a standard Open dialog box.

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If you’re still missing the Start Menu in Windows 8 -- or even the more desktop-friendly 8.1 -- then there are plenty of ways to bring it back (Classic Shell is probably our favorite).

It’s not immediately obvious why we need yet another Start Menu alternative, then. But Spencer (yes, that really is its name) does have one or two differences which help it stand out from the crowd.

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Cloud backup provider Dropbox has announced the final release of Dropbox 2.8, its latest major update for Windows, Linux and Mac.

The new release adds Windows and OS X auto sign-in support for easier installation. As long as you're logged into Dropbox already, the installer won’t ask for your credentials again. (This doesn’t work if you’re using two-step verification, or a Dropbox for Business account that uses single sign-on.)

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Migrating to a new PC can be a tedious, time-consuming business. There will be applications to reinstall, serial numbers to find, data to move, and that’s before you start reconfiguring everything to try and restore your old settings.

Alternatively, you could just use EaseUS Todo PCTrans to handle at least some of the work for you.

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Powerful open source screenshot tool ShareX has been updated to version 9.0 with some significant changes and additions.

Top of the list is new support for screen recording with audio. This makes use of FFmpeg to do the hard work, with ShareX downloading the program if you don’t have it already.

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Images2PDF is a simple tool for saving your chosen digital images to a PDF file. Yes, you’re right, there are plenty of ways to do this already, but the program has one or two touches which help it stand out from the crowd.

Images2PDF is a lightweight 1.66MB download, for instance, and there really isn’t anything more (this isn’t one of those tools which comes bundled with Ghostscript). It’s adware-free, too, always a plus with this type of application.

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Adobe Creative Cloud went down for 24 hours earlier, which means that creative brains around the world were desperately struggling to complete jobs that require the comprehensive suite of services.

The good news is that there are plenty of free alternatives professionals can use to get by and below is an extensive rundown of each product.

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Cost is often a powerful driver in the battle for market domination. Expensive products while, arguably, extremely capable for the money, may account for a smaller piece of the pie as opposed to free, powerful alternatives which often take the lion's share. For buyers, especially those with tight budgets, diminishing spendings to maximize profits comes naturally, so they tend to favor the latter. The way to go, to capture more market share, is not to compete on the same pricing level, but to make things cheaper so they appeal to more potential customers.

This is the path that Arizona-based software company Axosoft has taken with its bug tracker. Previously costing $70 per user per year, it can now be purchased for a mere $1 per year, no matter the number of users. It is basically free. "We know, it's pretty hard to believe, but we've decided to go after market share which is why we are doing this", says Axosoft CEO Hamid Shojaee.

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Spam rates may be high, at around 70 percent of all email traffic, but protecting yourself is easy -- at least, in theory. Just install an internet security suite and you’ll probably get a spam filter along with everything else.

The problem? While this sounds convenient, bundled antispam engines aren’t generally very accurate. If you really want your inbox to stay junk-free, then you should try a specialist filter like Cloudmark DesktopOne.

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The revelations made by Edward Snowden have irreversibly changed the face of the internet. There is now suspicions at every turn, every site and provider is the subject of questioning, and web users are warier than ever before. The use of encryption to hide the content and nature of online activity is nothing new, but it seems that it is very much on the increase. As reported by TorrentFreak, analysis from Sandvine shows that there has been a global increase in the use of encryption.

The figures have been reached by looking at the levels of SSL traffic over the past year, and these show that in North America, during peak hours, encrypted traffic just about doubled. In Europe the increase is even more marked, jumping fourfold so that it now accounts for over six percent of peak time traffic. Europe appears to have a greater interest in encryption than North America, with the latter's SSL traffic accounting for 3.8 percent of peak time traffic.

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Vinyl Software has announced the release of Winyl 3.0, an extremely major update to its popular music player. A new Radios menu gives easy access to nine internet radio stations, and you can add more as required.

Lyrics now appear automatically whenever you play a recognized song. Well, usually -- they’re not yet visible in all skins (try iTunes if you have problems).

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Removing the traditional Start button and menu from Windows 8 was a bold move for Microsoft. Unfortunately the tech giant underestimated just how attached to it users were. Rather than embracing the (slightly clumsy) full screen Modern UI, vast numbers of early adopters simply opted to install one of the many Start menus made available by third-party developers.

While most of these programs are straight copies of the Windows 7 Start menu, ReviverSoft has chosen to go down a different route with its product. Start Menu Reviver is a Modern-UI styled touchscreen-friendly Start menu that’s been designed to look as if it’s part of Microsoft’s OS. The recently released Start Menu Reviver 2 improves on the first edition by offering a sleeker design, greater customization, and a Windows 7 mode. I spoke to Davide De Vellis, co-founder of ReviverSoft, about Start Menu Reviver and what he thinks about Microsoft’s plans to introduce a Start menu of its own in a future Windows 8.x.update.

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BurnAware Technologies has released BurnAware 7.0 Free, BurnAware 7.0 Premium and BurnAware 7.0 Professional, the latest builds of its free and paid-for disc burning products for Windows.

Version 7 adds a new user interface to all of its tools, plus adds a multi-erase tool for wiping discs simultaneously. It also replaces the built-in file browser with an external file manager.

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Every time you use your PC, files are being created, modified or deleted in the background. For the most part you won’t care, but if you’re worried about malware, or wondering what someone else is doing on your system, then it might be interesting to find out exactly what’s being changed.

Enter Whirlpool File Checker, an open source file integrity checker which can scan a set of files and highlight any which are new, or have been changed.

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You’re busy on the PC when you need to make a note, manage a task, maybe save a link. You could open Notepad, enter the details, save the file, and hope you can find it again later. But it might be easier to use FreeText to manage the whole process for you.

At its simplest, the program works like a more convenient version of Notepad. Links you type are recognized and become clickable; its window will by default remain on top of others; it minimizes to the system tray, and FreeText automatically saves your current file at regular intervals.

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