Drag-and-drop file mamagement tool DropIt 7.0 has been released. The open-source tool, also available in portable form, includes a raft of improvements, new features and a handful of bug fixes.

DropIt, which sits as a floating icon on the desktop when installed, allows users to process folders and files quickly via drag-and-drop, with up to 15 different actions (including move, copy, send by mail and upload) supported.

LightShot is a simple free tool which makes it very easy to take, edit and share your screengrabs online.

The program doesn’t force you to learn new hotkeys, for instance. To launch it you’ll just press PrtSc, as usual.

Moving a few files around your system is simple, and you’ll probably just do it yourself: drag/ drop, copy/ paste, whatever it might be.

When you regularly need to process a lot of files, though, it might be quicker to automate the task with LimagitoX FileMover Lite.

Homedale is a straightforward portable tool which detects local wireless networks and tells you more about them: name, channel, MAC address, encryption type and so on. It’s great for troubleshooting various wireless conflicts, or just finding out more about what’s going on around you.

The Homedale interface is, well, basic -- just a single tabbed dialog box. Click "Access Points" first and you’ll see a table with details on all your network neighbors, including their name, MAC address, vendor, signal strength, encryption, country ID, mode, frequency, band, first and last seen times, supported bitrates, model and adapter.

Baidu PC Faster is a free suite of tools to clean, optimize and maintain your PC. Yes, we know: we’ve heard this before, too. But PC Faster could be different, not least because it comes from Baidu, the company behind China’s largest search engine. Will this extra corporate power ensure it really delivers? We took a look.

Setup was easy, a small downloader fetching and installing the rest of the program. It’s also a little more intrusive than most of the competition, though, leaving two new services and some extra processes running permanently in the background.

IObit Systems has released IObit PCtransfer 1.0, a freeware tool for migrating data and a limited selection of settings from one PC to another. The tool offers a simple, fuss-free user interface that will appeal to novices, but lacks advanced functionality, such as the ability to move entire programs or a more comprehensive array of supported program settings.

The program is packaged as a self-contained portable executable, so once launched, it’s a case of first selecting which items to include in the backup.

Downloading a file is usually very simple -- just point your browser at the appropriate URL, and wait -- so it’s hard to imagine why you might want to use a command line tool, instead.

Take a look at the open source aria2, though, and you might change your mind.

O&O Software has announced a major update for Syspectr, its remote PC monitoring and management service.

A new email notification system makes it much easier to define which events you’d like to track. A panel lists the event categories ("Security", "Updates", "Software", more), and you can choose whether you’d like to be informed of problems, warnings or "information" alerts with a click.

As you’ll guess from its name, Advanced IP Scanner is a network scanner for Windows, which checks your network for connected devices and tells you more about them.

That doesn’t sound particularly interesting, especially as there are already so many similar tools around. But wait -- Advanced IP Scanner does have some advantages which help it stand out from the crowd.

Utilities developer Tweaking.com has announced the availability of Hardware Identify, a tool which attempts to list the various devices on your PC -- even if Device Manager (or other system information tools) currently show them as "unknown".

Download, unzip and launch the program, and within a few seconds it displays a table listing all your hardware. Details include the device name, manufacturer, error code (if there’s currently a problem), class (USB, System, Port, Mouse and so on), driver version and hardware IDs. Clicking any column header sorts the list by that field.

Shunting music files between PC, Apple and Android is nothing new, but it can be a fiddly process if done manually, or expensive if you try to find a suitable third-party app to do the hard work for you. With the release of KiwiG PhonTunes 2.5, you can now enjoy quick and easy music transfer -- including directly between Android and Apple -- for free.

Version 2.5 has just been launched with a completely redesigned user interface, support for local music management and a built-in music player.

Anki’s developer describes the project as "a program which makes remembering things easy". That sounds a little vague, but it's also very accurate. Anki is a smart and versatile flashcard-based tool which really can help you remember just about anything.

The program allows you to create, download and edit flashcards. Each card has a question on one side, its answer on the other. This could be simple text -- a deck on capital cities might use "France", "Paris" -- but Anki also supports graphics, audio, video, even scientific markup (via LaTeX), so there's plenty of scope to be inventive.

Defenestrating? Pretentious? Moi?! How could you?!

Don't get me wrong, I love Windows. A fanboy I am not -- I'll quite happily pick holes in Microsoft's operating system -- but for the most part I do love it. While I have a great deal of time for Windows, it doesn’t mean there isn't room for improvement. By this I don’t mean that Microsoft needs to bring back the Start menu or start copying features from OS X or Linux, rather that it's time to have spring cleaning. In just over a week, Windows XP will be consigned to the OS graveyard, but what about Windows 8.1? The latest version of Windows doesn't need to be killed, but there are lots of features that need to be put out of their misery.

Opera has moved version 21 of its web browser for Windows and Mac from the Developer (alpha) stream to the Next (beta) stream with the release of Opera Next 21. Most of the changes are system ones, designed to improve performance, but some other interesting tweaks have been implemented.

The move to the Next stream is part of the browser’s rapid-release development cycle, which brought Opera into line with rival browsers Chrome and Firefox.

Most editors make it easy to replace text in the current document. Searching across multiple documents can be more challenging. And if you often need to replace text across a large number of files, perhaps of various formats, then it’s probably wise to call in some specialist help.

Multiple Search and Replace is a powerful free tool which can search multiple files -- plain text, PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, archives and more -- for the text you specify, then optionally replace it.