Emsisoft has announced the availability of Emsisoft Online Armor 7.0, the latest edition of its versatile firewall. The update doesn’t bring any new features, and instead optimizes the program’s existing features for enhanced usability, protection and performance.

New support for asynchronous connection handling means existing connections will no longer be blocked if you have a pending firewall alert, for example.

OS X Mavericks is coming -- we’re still not exactly sure when, but probably October 22 -- and if you want to create a backup install USB stick for when things go wrong, you’ll want to take a look at Lion DiskMaker 3.0 beta 2.

Lion DiskMaker is designed to create bootable rescue disks from your OS X installation files (from 10.7 Lion onwards). Version 3.0 beta 2 adds support for the forthcoming OS X Mavericks release.

If you’ve identified a malicious process running on your PC then you’ll probably want to close it down, and in theory this seems easy enough (right-click in Task Manager, select End Task). Malware can apply several tricks to escape, though, and one of the easiest is to assign its process the "critical" flag, normally reserved for key Windows processes. Try to close a critical process, and your PC will immediately crash.

Windows provides no standard way to get around this, probably because tinkering with the critical flag can be dangerous. But if you’re an experienced PC user and willing to take the risk, then the open source ProcessCritical should be able to help.

Popular desktop customization tool Rainmeter has today been updated to version 3.0.

The big story comes in the new build’s use of the Direct2D rendering engine when available, which means anyone using Rainmeter on Windows 8 (or a fully updated Windows 7 system) should see much improved text quality.

It’s nearly here: dotPDN LLC has released the first alpha of Paint.NET 4.0, a major update and rewrite of its popular freeware image-editing tool for Windows. Featuring a rebuilt rendering engine, improvements to various tools and a tweaked user interface, the new release has finally reached the stage where daring members of the public can test it for the first time.

The new build does come with some restrictions -- as telegraphed at the beginning of its development, Paint.NET 4.0 will only run on Windows 7 or later.

If Windows Notepad is too underpowered for your plain text editing needs, then the open source FXiTe could be an interesting alternative. It’s targeted at developers, but don’t let that put you off: there’s plenty here for regular users, too.

This starts with its extreme ease of use. The program is compact (a 1.29MB download), and portable, you can just unzip and go. The interface looks a little odd -- the toolbar has colored buttons, rather than icons -- but there’s nothing too complicated, and you’ll be creating and editing plain text files without any problems at all.

Online storage services are a great way to make your most important files available everywhere, but they can be expensive. Those monthly fees soon mount up, particularly if you need a high capacity account.

If you’re looking for low prices, though, hubiC will appeal right away. You get 25GB for free; 100GB is around $18 a year, 500GB is about $82, and 1TB is an annual $136 (all prices plus tax). You can even expand this to 100TB, if you really must. Not bad at all.

When Windows 8 advertisements first started airing on TV, Fresh Paint was often shown as a way to highlight the touch capabilities. Not only is the app a good demo, it is also fun and functional. From amateurs to professionals, anyone can easily use the app to create art and use their imaginations. However, Microsoft is not resting on its laurels and announces a new version is coming this month.

"Today I'm excited to announce that the new Fresh Paint will launch in tandem with Windows 8.1 on October 18 and that we'll also have new features coming to the Windows Phone version on October 14. Best of all, Fresh Paint will continue to be free, and everyone who updates to Windows 8.1 will get the improved experience", says Brandon LeBlanc of Microsoft.

MiTeC’s free and feature-packed desktop accessory MiTeC InfoBar has been updated to version 1.8.0. As usual, there are some bug fixes, but the main news in this release is the addition of a basic spreadsheet.

The new tool can be launched from the regular InfoBar menu (the star icon, top-left) or a hotkey (Ctrl+Alt+S), and presents a grid in the usual spreadsheet style. It’s extremely limited -- you can’t open existing spreadsheets, there are no graphs or other extras -- but you can still start entering data right away.

If you run into problems with your PC network then Windows provides a surprising number of tools to help. You’ll have to find them first, of course, and then master their various command line switches. But if that doesn’t appeal, there’s always Axence NetTools, which just might provide everything you need in one straightforward tool.

The program organizes its functions into twelve sections, each represented by a toolbar button. On first launch, say, you might click "Local info", which displays an enormous amount of information on your current network status: IP addresses, network adapters and interfaces, currently open network connections, ARP and routing data, TCP/IP statistics and more.

Nero has rebranded and re-launched its free media management tool with the release of Nero MediaHome Free 15.0. Formerly known as Nero KwikMedia, MediaHome debuted last month as part of Nero 2014 media suite.

The application, available as a free cut-down version, is much quicker to load than previous versions, and bundles a built-in media server for streaming music, photos and videos to other DLNA-compatible devices.

Opera Software has announced the release of Opera 17.0 FINAL, an interesting build which includes several small but worthwhile new features. Top of the list is a new "pinned" tab option.

If you have a few tabs which you need to stay open, just right-click them and select "Pin tab". The tabs will be reduced to the size of the page icon (handy if you are running short on space), and you will not be able to close them accidentally.

The Windows event logs can be an excellent troubleshooting resource, as they record all kinds of system and application alerts which you just won’t find anywhere else. Windows doesn’t exactly make it easy to work with the logs, unfortunately, but that doesn’t have to be a problem: just installing the free (for non-commercial use) EventLog Inspector could give you everything you need.

The program is small, installs easily and without hassle. It’s also very unobtrusive, doesn’t add an icon to your system tray or anything similar. In fact, you have to fire it up manually by launching EventLog Inspector and clicking "Start Service".

Great news: Downloadcrew Giveaway is back! We’re providing a number of free serial codes for the latest software -- all you have to do is enter and you might win one! Winners are picked at random by the system after the giveaway promotion expires. Closer to Christmas we also hope to offer a number of full, unrestricted downloads too.

The current offer is Kaspersky Internet Security 2014, worth $59.95. We have 10 licenses to give away. Hurry as this offer ends midday (GMT) Wednesday.

If you’re always being asked to troubleshoot other people’s PCs then you’ll know that it can be, well, a very lengthy process. Just browsing various Control Panel and other applets to identify the problem can take quite some time, and that’s before you begin downloading your favorite tools to try and deal with it.

There is an easier way, though, and it’s called d7. The program doesn’t claim to troubleshoot problems itself -- you’ll still need plenty of Windows knowledge and experience -- but it does provide an array of powerful tools which will make your life considerably easier.