Articles about Free Software

Is your desktop a cluttered mess of shortcuts, files and folders? If you can never quite find the time to clear it up, then you might appreciate AutoHideDesktopIcons, a free tool which hides any desktop icons until you need them.

The program is portable, no installation required; just run it, click "To-Tray", and wait. Within five seconds your desktop icons will vanish. When you need them, left click the desktop and they’ll return. Easy.

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If you’ve finally given up on Notepad and its extreme lack of features, then Googling for "Notepad replacement" will point you towards plenty of alternatives. But these can be very complex, packed with developer-oriented features, not so welcome if you’re mostly only interested in simple plain text editing.

Poet is a little different. While it can be used as a simple programmer’s editor (there’s customizable syntax highlighting, for instance), it doesn’t pile on the unnecessary extras. You can’t sort or split lines, there’s no column editing, no XML manager, no built-in telnet client. And although the program has some useful bonus tools of its own, they generally stay out of your way, only appearing when you need them.

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After an extended three years in beta, developer Richard Wang has released FluffyApp 2.0, a major new release of his freeware client for Windows users wishing to share files using the CloudApp file-sharing service.

Version 2.0 introduces a new flyout, Internet Explorer trigger plugin and adds various tweaks and improvements, such as using Windows’ own shortcut key mechanism for greater reliability.

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There’s not exactly a shortage of PC screen capture tools around, but Starpunch’s Chris Gingerich has just added another with ICUP (Image Capture and Upload Program). Is it worth your time? We took a look.

Setup is unusually flexible. Run ICUP.exe and it’ll offer to install itself locally; refuse and it’ll run as a portable version, with the option to install it fully later. Either way, there’s no adware or other marketing trickery here.

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Anyone who fancies the idea of building their own gaming box can head over to the Valve website can grab themselves a beta copy of SteamOS. The Linux-based operating system is available for anyone to download free of charge and coincides with the shipping of 300 prototypes of Valve's Steam Machine devices to specially selected testers. The OS and boxes have both been designed with pure gaming in mind -- but the system requirements are quite specific.

The download weighs in at 960MB, and there are reports that the servers are struggling as legions of eager gamers hit the link. But before you rush over to the site and start the download for yourself, take a moment to check whether your rig is up to the task. You'll need a 64-bit processor, but both Intel and AMD will do the job equally well, and 4GB of RAM is also required.

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Bartels Media has announced the availability of PhraseExpress 10, its powerful text expansion and auto completion tool. The company describes the release as a "cornerstone", and that’s not an overstatement: it’s absolutely packed with major new features.

These start with the ability to search within a popup for whatever phrase you need. Forget shortcuts and hotkeys, they’re no longer necessary; just trigger a popup, type a few characters, and matching phrases appear right away. Even if they’re in a subfolder.

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Christmas is coming. And soon! Okay, we don’t have time to prepare just yet, either, but there are quick and easy ways to get into the holiday mood. Just giving your PC a little desktop decoration can make a real difference, and there are plenty of fun options around.

Microsoft’s Snowy Night theme is a great place to start, thanks to 13 beautiful winter photos from around the world. (The theme only works on Windows 7/ 8, but 7-Zip will extract the wallpapers so that you can use them anywhere.)

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Czech security developer AVG has launched AVG AntiVirus for Mac Free Edition 14.0, its first major foray into the increasingly crowded Mac anti-malware market. The new release comes with the promise of "triple protection" against not just Mac malware, but Windows and Android malware too.

The release is a no-frills affair, with real-time protection, a simple on-demand file scanner and automatic updates the sum of the application’s whole.

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PNG is a great format for compressing images without any loss in quality, but its files are usually much larger than the equivalent JPEGs, and that can be a problem. Especially when you’re using them on a website.

There are tools which can help, though, by using various lossless compression techniques to slim down your graphics. Daanav Software’s Image Optimizer is the latest, and we downloaded a copy to run a few tests.

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Paragon Software Group has released Paragon Partition Manager 2014 Free, the cut-down, free-for-personal-use edition of its Hard Disk Manager 14 Suite. The big addition this time is complete support for Windows Storage Spaces, Windows 8 and 8.1.

The previous Express Mode launcher now has a Windows 8-style interface. It’s surprisingly realistic, too, right down to a "live tile" with an animated "Upgrade to Hard Disk Manager 14 Suite" ad. (If you’re not a Modern UI fan, the regular "full scale launcher" is still available, and looks much as it always did.)

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Support.com has announced the availability of SUPERAntiSpyware 5.7. The new release can now identify and remove "potentially unwanted programs": toolbars, browser extensions, and software which is commonly bundled with adware installers.

SUPERAntiSpyware’s various tools -- Repair, Scan Logs, Quarantine, Preferences and more -- are now all accessible from the "System Tools and Program Settings" dialog.

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Project management tools are generally aimed at large businesses, and perhaps as a result tend to be bulky, expensive, and difficult to use.

Fortunately, NCH’s Software’s Express Project is, well, different: a 209KB download (and that’s the whole program, not just an installer), entirely free (no adware), and so simple that anyone familiar with project management basics will have mastered it within minutes.

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If you’re currently using the Windows firewall then you’ll know the system can work well: it’s lightweight, configurable, and generally does a good job of blocking incoming attacks. But it’s not always easy to use, and deciding which programs can (or can’t) go online is a particularly tricky process.

Fortunately Tweaking.com’s latest tool, "Allow, Block or Remove", is on hand to help. There are no complex dialogs here, no lengthy lists of rules, protocols, ports or anything else. Instead, just find the executable you’d like to configure in Explorer, and you can block or allow it through the firewall in a couple of clicks.

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It’s easy to capture screens in Windows: just press PrtSc, Alt+PrtSc or Win+PrtSc (which saves a grab to disc in Windows 8). Unfortunately, the capture is just the beginning, and you’ll then have to spend quite some time editing, annotating, uploading, sharing and otherwise handling your image.

If you’re looking for an easier life, then, we would forget about the standard Windows tools, and install the open source ShareX, instead. Not only does it have many more features, but most of them can be entirely automated, so you can get your captures finished with no hassles at all.

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Mozilla has begun the rollout of Firefox 26 FINAL, the latest stable build of its open-source, cross-platform web browser. There are no surprises with this final release, the raft of new and changed features mirroring that previewed when version 26 entered beta at the end of October.

The most visible change sees all browser plug-ins -- with the notable exception of recent Flash plug-ins -- being set to "click to play".

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