Free Software

Next Tuesday is World Backup Day and to mark the event AOMEI is offering a 12 month free subscription to its Backupper Professional product. The offer is available from now until April 2nd.

With more people working at home on their own machines due to the Coronavirus, security and protection of data is more important than ever.

There are a lot of VPN services to choose from these days, and a lot of reasons for wanting to use one. But there is the matter of money to consider. Whether you're strapped for cash, or just want to give a VPN a serious test drive before committing to it, the more generous the free data allowance the better.

hide.me is one of many VPNs that offers a free package, and it has just announced that the data allowance for people on this tier has increased fivefold. The increase to 10GB per month is generous, but the way the free tier works means that you actually get an unlimited amount of VPN traffic for free.

Károly Pados has released TinyWall 3.0 for 64-bit versions of Windows 7 or later. The big change is that TinyWall is now its own independent, standalone firewall. Previously it was a companion app for controlling the main Windows Firewall.

The switch to a separate app is accompanied by numerous improvements -- previous annoyances have been resolved, plus the app is able to increase user security with new features like boot-time filtering.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.