Articles about Free Software

IObit Software makes a number of great PC applications, including Advanced SystemCare, Driver Booster, Malware Fighter, and IObit Uninstaller. The publisher offers free versions and paid for editions with additional features.

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, and because a lot of people are self-isolating and/or working from home these days, IObit has decided to giveaway PRO licenses for its software.

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We're constantly reminded of the importance of backing up data. "Do it now, or you'll regret it later", and phrases of that ilk, are frequently bandied around, but many of us are guilty of ignoring the advice and flying by the seat of our pants. Which is all well and good until something goes wrong. A hard drive fails, documents get corrupted, someone else deletes things from your computer: that's when you may -- after you've finished crying -- turn  to data recovery software.

EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard is an example of such a tool, and it's available in free and paid-for versions. Depending on how much data you have to retrieve, you may well find that the free version is all that you need, but there is a Pro version available if your requirements are greater.

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Last week we reported that Zoho was making its Remotely suite free until July to help people and businesses cope with the current COVID-19 unpleasantness.

Since then many other companies have announced similar schemes to make their products available free to help businesses and individuals with isolation and home working.

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With employees being encouraged to work from home, smaller businesses can face a problem due to the cost of additional licenses needed to make this happen.

Cloud business suite Zoho has stepped up to the plate by making its Remotely suite available free of charge until July 1st.

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Under Avast’s ownership, popular system cleaning tool CCleaner has suffered more than its fair share of issues.

If you’ve stuck with the software, then the good news is today sees the launch of a new 'Health Check' feature which aims to make it easier to keep your PC running faster and smoother.

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Bandisoft has unveiled Bandizip 7.0 and Bandizip 7.0 Portable, a major new update of its Windows archiving tool.

The headline change is that Bandzip 7.0 now offers two paid-for versions (Professional and Enterprise) with extra features including password manager and recovery tools plus a zip repair tool. The Standard version doesn’t lose any existing functionality but is now ad-supported.

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Opera Software has released Opera 67.0 (also known as Opera R2020), the latest major update to its Chromium-based web browser for Windows, Mac, Linux and Android. The new release focuses on improving user experience.

The headline feature is the introduction of workspaces to help users keep their browser tidy and organized. This is accompanied by the addition of a new Sidebar Setup panel, plus two new tab management tools.

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The Windows 10 Start menu gives you easy access to all of your programs and important settings, and -- for now at least -- optional Live Tiles. The search box makes it easy to find what you’re looking for too... when it works.

But if you hanker for the days when Start menus were simpler, you might want to consider adding a Windows XP style menu to Windows 10.

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Open-source video editor OpenShot 2.5.0 has been released, dubbed "our largest release yet" by project creator Jonathan Thomas. Headline new features, which should significantly improve the application’s performance when fully implemented, include experimental support for hardware acceleration alongside a major overhaul of the keyframe system.

Future development should also be simpler now all features and support have been aligned across all platforms: Windows, Linux and macOS.

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The Document Foundation has unveiled LibreOffice 6.4 64-bit and LibreOffice 6.4 32-bit, its popular open-source office suite for Windows, Mac and Linux.

LibreOffice 6.4 is a major point release -- the last in the 6.x product line -- and comes with the promise of improved performance along with several new universal features and the usual mix of minor changes and improvements to individual applications within the suite.

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Less than a month after unveiling MBAM 4.0, Malwarebytes has released Malwarebytes AdwCleaner 8.0, a major new version of its standalone adware-cleaning tool.

AdwCleaner 8.0 updates its optional in-app installer to ensure the latest version of Malwarebytes is installed going forward, plus drops support for Windows XP and Vista. Its UI has also been refreshed to chime with MBAM 4.0’s.

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TeamViewer GmbH has released TeamViewer 15.0, its remote access tool for Windows, Linux and Mac computers, plus iOS and Android mobiles.

The new release adds very little to the user experience on the major desktop platforms -- better audio transmission quality on TeamViewer-based chats is the main improvement, but Windows users will need to upgrade to maintain full compatibility with the recently released November 2019 release. Once updated on Windows, other platforms must follow suit for compatibility reasons.

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Microsoft published an updated version of the company's .NET Framework Repair Tool this week; the new version supports newer versions of the Microsoft .NET Framework, in particular versions 4.6.2, 4.7, 4.7.1, 4.7.2 and 4.8, which older versions did not support.

Administrators may download the latest version of the application from the Microsoft website. The list of supported .Net Framework versions is available on the same page and links are provided to download these to the local system (which is useful when the program is run in offline mode).

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Malwarebytes has released a major new version of its eponymous anti-malware tool: Malwarebytes 4.0 is available now as a free and premium version for both Windows and Mac.

The new version unveils a major redesign with a look towards the minimalist. This reflects the promise of a much smaller footprint -- 50 percent less impact on the CPU during scans -- and associated performance gains. Malwarebytes 4.0 also unveils a brand new detection engine.

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Crystal Dew World has released CrystalDiskMark 7.0 and CrystalDiskMark Portable 7.0, major new versions of its hard drive benchmarking tool for Windows.

Version 7 debuts a rebuilt user interface using GDI rather than HTML, plus adds a new performance profile and mixed test while tweaking two existing tests. Support for ARM64 processors has also been added.

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