Your digital photo collection is a mess? You could install a free photo manager to help you out, but don’t expect too much: they’re often just identikit "me too" apps which provide little more than you’ll get with Explorer.

There are occasional exceptions, though, and Helicon Photo Safe is a great example, with a host of genuinely useful functions and features helping it stand out from the crowd.

Is your PC up to playing the latest games? It’s not always easy to tell, but if you’re looking to find out then the Catzilla benchmark could give you some useful information.

Launch the program and it runs some in-depth OpenGL and DirectX tests, directly assessing your CPU and GPU speeds. That’s not quite as it dull as it sounds, though, because Catzilla does this by rendering real-time battle scenes of giant cats causing havoc across a city. (No, we’re not making this up.)

iolo has released a major update to its family of System Mechanic tools with the release of iolo System Mechanic 12.5. Also available as a cut-down free version as well as a more fully featured Professional version, System Mechanic 12.5 adds a number of significant new features.

Chief among these is LiveBoost Technology, a real-time responsiveness tuner that utilizes three different tools to ensure the user’s computer is always running smoothly. This feature is restricted to the paid-for versions only.

Take a picture with a digital camera and your JPEG will usually have plenty of metadata attached: camera name, model, date taken, flash mode, ISO speed and more. You might then add a title, author, comments maybe, and this can be a great way to ensure you can find particular photos later.

Share the image later, though, and the metadata goes with it, potentially revealing all kinds of personal data (even your home address, if the picture is geo-tagged). Unless, that is, you use BatchPurifier LITE to remove any tags first.

PDFs are great for distributing information, but not so convenient when you need to reuse their content elsewhere. Fortunately there’s now a host of free tools able to convert PDFs into other formats, and the latest is the entirely free 4dots Software’s PDF to JPEG Expert.

The program is simple to use. At a minimum you might import one document or an entire folder; choose your preferred image dimensions and resolution, then click Convert and wait for the results.

The PC world has plenty of hex editors; does it really need another? Our first thought was probably not, but that was before we’d spent a little time with the fast, feature-packed and extremely capable wxHexEditor.

Some hex editors have annoying limits on file sizes, for instance. But not this one. WxHexEditor can handle files up to 2^64 in size, that’s 16 billion gigabytes, which will probably be enough for the foreseeable future.

When you need to install several programs, perhaps because you’re configuring a new PC, then the obvious approach is just to run one setup program after another. It’s simple, straightforward, and will work. But it also takes a while, as you’re forced to repeat more or less the same tedious procedure each time: look at the splash screen, choose an installation folder, agree to the license, and so on.

Silent Install Helper can make this very much easier, by running any supported installers silently. Point the program at 1, 10 or a hundred setup programs, it’s not a problem -- they can all then be installed automatically, no user interaction required, the applications will just appear on your hard drive with their default settings.

Remote access tool TeamViewer has left beta and been officially upgraded to version 9 with a host of time-saving tweaks and tools.

The new release makes it much easier to start work. A Wake-on-LAN feature allows you to wake up computers remotely; desktop shortcuts for any computer can get you connected with a double-click; and you can carry out simple file transfers without having to first establish a connection.

Tiny, yet powerful audio editor Wavosaur has been updated to version 1.1.0.0.

This release introduces a native 64-bit edition, which allows the program to access all your RAM, and load 64-bit VST plugins. A bug fix with the 1.0.9.0 VST host means Izotope and similar plugins should now work properly.

If you’d like to preserve your online privacy then it can be a good idea to clear your Firefox cookies, but there’s usually a price to pay. Even if you’re careful, the chances are you’ll delete genuinely useful cookies, and be forced to manually log in when you revisit some of your favorite sites.

Install the Firefox add-on Biscuit, though, and cookie management becomes much easier. It allows you to mark particular items for preservation, which means you’re then able to delete just the unwanted cookies while keeping everything else.

Popular open-source image-editing tool GIMP 2.8.10 FINAL has been released by the GIMP Development Team. The latest version of the cross-platform image editor includes a key fix that restores compatibility in OS X Mavericks, plus tweaks the Save/Export code to simplify both operations.

The new release is accompanied by the release of version 2.8.1 of the GIMP Manual, an online version of which can be accessed here.

VPN software can be great for browsing anonymously, bypassing trackers, perhaps avoiding some web censorship. But it can also be awkward to set up, tricky to use, with all kinds of potential pitfalls and issues to consider.

TunnelBear is, fortunately, a little different. It’s a solid and reliable VPN service with all the functionality you need (and more, probably), but smart design means it also keeps any of the usual hassles to an absolute minimum.

SmartSystemMenu is a small, open-source tool which adds five useful functions to your application window system menu.

"Information" displays various details about the window and its process. Most are aimed at developers (Handle, Class, Style), but the Process tab presents the full path of its executable, handy when you need to know where it’s stored.

NirSoft has released WebCacheImageInfo, a computer forensics tool which scans your browser caches (Chrome, Firefox or Internet Explorer) and displays details on any JPEGs which contain interesting metadata.

The information available can (but won’t necessarily) include the camera used to take the photo; the dates when it was taken, generated, modified or viewed in the browser; and the name of whatever editor was last used to process the image.

Helsinki-based security company F-Secure has released Key, a password manager for iOS, Android, Windows and Mac.

The program has similar features to many competitors. You can enter your login details for multiple URLs; a secure password generator helps you generate new credentials, and your AES-encrypted database is protected by a single master password.