It used to be that creating PDF files required expensive software, but this is no longer the case. Things have changed so much that even Windows 10 includes the option to turn documents into PDFs and there are numerous other more feature-packed PDF printers out there as well.

One such free tool is Bullzip PDF Printer which is free for not only personal use, but also in commercial operations with up to 10 users. The newly released version 12 of the software now includes support for multiple printer ports, meaning concurrent printing of multiple documents is possible.

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Popular ebook management (and creation) tool Calibre 5.1.0 has been released, just one week after version 5.0 made its debut. The open-source tool, which is available on Windows, Mac, and Linux, fixes several bugs while adding a couple of minor new features.

The main highlight is the ability to use templates in search expressions, while a new checkbox gives users the ability to disable automatic update of lookups when text changes in the Viewer lookup panel. The Viewer also now supports the skipping of a confirmation when the remove highlight button has been used in the popup bar.

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Keeping drives up to date is an important part of system maintenance and optimization, and a recent update to Windows 10 removed a useful driver updating option. The newly released Driver Booster 8 is here to help, making it easy to keep all of your drivers up to date, even when you do not have an internet connection available.

The driver database has been massively expanded, and IObit says that the software now provides access to more than 4.5 million drivers and game components. The updated version of the software also gives two possible routes for updating drivers depending on whether you like to live life on the cutting edge or not.

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Ransomware is a persistent problem, with cybercriminals always looking for new ways to evade detection and infect systems. Attacks have increased 20 percent in the first half of this year.

Endpoint detection and response company Nyotron is launching a new, free online tool called Ransomwiz that allows allows security professionals to check their defenses by generating actual ransomware samples using a variety of real-world attack techniques.

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VMware has released major updates to its virtualization software products in the form of VM Workstation 16.0 for Windows and Linux, plus VM Fusion Player 12.0 for Mac.

Mac users gain a free 'player' version of VMware Fusion for personal use, while both products gain support for Kubernetes clusters, allowing users to run multiple app containers at once in specialized 'nodes'. Support for Windows DirectX 11 apps and games has also been added to virtual machines.

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Uniquely customizable browser Vivaldi gets another major update with the release of Vivaldi 3.3 for Windows, Mac, and Linux. The new release adds a major new Break Mode feature to encourage regular screen breaks.

The new release also offers users the ability to create and apply custom themes to their Private Windows sessions -- a first among web browsers -- as well as several improvements to the Address Bar to improve security and navigation. Full-Page blocking is now supported in the Tracker and Ad Blocker tools, while users can now drag and drop Speed Dials to folders on the Vivaldi 'desktop' on the user’s home page.

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Google has released Google Web Designer 9.0, the third major update of its HTML-5 content-producing tool for Windows, Mac, and Linux in just over a year. The tool is particularly popular among web advertisers thanks to its user-friendly WYSIWYG user interface and time-saving tools such as syntax highlighting and code auto-completion.

Version 9.0 introduces a host of useful new tools, including an eyedropper for easy color picking, several image-processing tools, support for masking, and the ability to set up custom keyboard shortcuts.

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IObit has released IObit Uninstaller 10, major new update of its uninstall tool for Windows. IObit Uninstaller aims to clean programs (including Microsoft Store apps) more thoroughly from your PC than the apps' own uninstallers by detecting leftover files and Registry entries.

Version 10 promises vastly improved uninstall speeds and better leftover detection, plus improvements to its Install Monitor component. In addition, Pro users gain better bundleware detection, and newly added support for removing over 40 stubborn programs.

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Sony has released a new app which makes it possible to use your regular digital camera as a webcam. The app is called Image Edge Webcam and it is only available for Windows 10 -- it's not clear if Sony intends to release a macOS or Linux version as well.

Sony is not the first company to have released software that transforms digital cameras into webcams recently. It is thought that the move is likely a response to the number of people currently working from home, and the shortage of webcams that this has led to.

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One week after launching Vivaldi 3.2 for desktop, Vivaldi Technologies has released Vivaldi 3.2 for Android and Chromebooks.

The new Android build adds several improvements to its built-in tracker and ad-blocking tools, plus makes even more use of the bottom of the user interface. It follows on from last week’s desktop release, which improved the browser’s pop-out video feature with the addition of a mute button.

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The twin dilemma: how to create strong, secure passwords without forgetting them? The solution is obvious: make use of a password manager. They’re common as muck these days, but our favorite by far is the brilliant Bitwarden.

A quick precis of why we love Bitwarden: it has all the features you’d expect in a good password manager -- easy and convenient to use, while locking your sensitive data away in a watertight vault using end-to-end 256-bit AES encryption that ensures it remains private. There’s 2FA support for extra security, and it works across all your devices: desktop, mobile and browser.

It’s also open source, so completely transparent (and if you don’t want to trust your passwords to its ultra-secure servers, you can even set it up as a self-hosted server as we’ve done). It’s also completely free to use -- no key features are locked away behind a paywall, although affordable premium tiers exist -- just $10/year -- if you want to take advantage of extras like a password vault health check or TOTP generator and storage, or just want to support it financially.

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Microsoft has released a key update to its Remote Desktop app for Android. The app, which allows for the remote use of computers running Windows 10 Pro and Enterprise, Windows 8.1 and 8 Enterprise and Pro, Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate, and Windows Server versions newer, now features full support for Virtual Desktops.

The update also brings the Android app in line with the iOS and macOS version, so all three versions of the app now use the underlying RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) core engine. The latest version of the app also brings support for Android TV devices, but there's even more to look forward to.

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How many boot discs or flash drives do you own? It’s possible to build up quite a collection, from Linux live CDs and antivirus rescue discs to boot media for apps as diverse as drive imaging to data recovery.

Thanks to Ventoy 1.0.15, you can now consolidate all your boot media: instead of five, six or however many boot discs you need, everything is stored on a single flash drive. The larger the flash drive, the more boot media you can install on it.

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Mozilla has released Thunderbird 78.0 for Windows, Mac and Linux. It’s the first major update of the popular open-source email client since August 2019, and is only available as a direct download -- existing users of the Thunderbird 68.x series are advised to wait for a future release that will provide an upgrade path.

A host of new and changed features have been implemented, although the long-heralded built-in support for OpenPGP encryption has been disabled by default for now due to some outstanding issues.

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German software developer Ashampoo has unveiled Photo Optimizer 8.0, a major new release of its Windows photo-editing tool. The first major update since June 2018, version 8 builds further on the 1-click optimization tool introduced in version 7, plus offers additional manual fine-tuning tools alongside a new perspective correction feature.

Photo Optimizer 8 opens with what Ashampoo admits is a 'significantly improved' 1-click correction tool, designed to detect potential weaknesses in the original photo and provide improvements with no user involvement required. The improved algorithm has undergone two years of development and trial runs, with many thousands of setting combinations tested to help lift photos suffering from dull colors, poor lighting and a lack of contrast.

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