Free Software

There are endless graphical Ping tools for Windows, and we’ve probably tried more than our share -- but could Ping GUI win us over, anyway?

The program offers plenty of plus points. It’s portable, open-source, and the creation of Peter Verbeek, the developer behind the popular Peace Equalizer.

Laptop speakers can often be underpowered, and if you’re on the move it might not always be convenient to connect external speakers, or headphones. Another option is to install specialist audio processing software to amplify your system volume beyond the usual maximum.

How well this works depends on the individual device. Your usual volume limit isn’t some definitive physical barrier, and it’s likely you’ll be able to go a little further without any issues, but taking it too far will trash your audio quality.

If you’re looking to revisit a website later then the obvious solution is to bookmark it. That’s easy, but won’t help much if you forget about the link, or where you saved it.

Open Me Later! is a free Chrome extension which enables scheduling a page to open automatically, as the date and time you specify.

Desktop recorders are common on the PC and we’ve regularly covered them here, but does Icecream Screen Recorder have enough to stand out from the crowd?

A handy set of capture types doesn’t stop with full screen, window and freehand rectangles. The program can also capture a fixed-size rectangle around your mouse cursor, very useful when you need to focus on a particular area of the screen.

Dalenryder Password Generator is an interesting collection of simple security tools, nicely presented in a big-buttoned, touch-friendly interface.

Tap "Quick Password" and the program generates and displays a strong 12-character long password. You can optionally include symbols or change the password length to anything from 4 to 30 characters, then generate a password and copy it to the clipboard in a couple of clicks.

Zive, Inc has released Kiwi for Gmail 2.0 for PC users, migrating its popular Mac tool of the same name to the Windows platform.

Kiwi for Gmail will appeal to those Google aficionados who are currently accessing Google services -- primarily Gmail (including mail, calendar and contacts), but also Google’s G-Suite office apps -- through their web browser.

Email This is a free Chrome extension and web service which sending web pages to your inbox for later reading.

If you’ve found a great article but there’s no time to read it now, tapping the "et" button on your Chrome address bar sends the trimmed-down ad-free essentials of the page to your registered email address.

Security vendor NoVirusThanks has released Process Lister, a sort-of task manager which displays running processes, their key data, and provides various ways to manipulate them.

The program opens with a familiar list of processes and their details: PID, name, session, command line, 32/ 64-bit, parent PID/ process/ command line, description, company, signer, user/ domain and more.

Etcher is an open-source cross-platform tool for burning images to SD cards, USB drives and other removable devices.

The program keeps operations to the bare minimum, all of them clearly displayed on a simple interface. Choose your image, then your drive, and finally click the "Flash!" button.

AstroGif is an open-source menu bar app which allows you to search for animated GIFs and copy their URL, or the markdown equivalent, to the clipboard.

The program runs in the background on your PC. It can be launched by clicking its system tray icon, or pressing its (customizable) hotkey, Ctrl+Alt+Space.

Windows makes it easy to place shortcuts in any folder, except of course system folders like Control Panel or My Computer (aka This PC), where for some reason none of the usual rules apply.

My Computer Manager is a free portable tool which helps out by displaying details of your existing Control Panel applets and enables adding custom items of your own.

ImageDownloader is a portable open-source tool which can batch download images from your favorite subreddit, or Imgur album.

The program arrives as a very compact 396KB download, so it’s no surprise that the interface is basic, just a few tabs and settings for each download task.

Mozilla has released Firefox 53.0 for Windows, Mac and Linux, with Firefox for Android 53.0 due imminently.

Firefox 53 unveils a number of design tweaks, starting with two new -- and built-in -- compact themes, which users can access via about:addons > Appearance. There’s also enhanced graphics stability for Windows users while Mac users can enjoy smaller update files going forward.

Omnicode Snatch is a free tool for capturing video and audio of what’s happening on your desktop.

The program interface is, well, a surprise. There are no menus, toolbars or panels, no flashy graphics, hi-res icons or even any touches of color -- it’s just a mess of buttons, boxes and lists.

Russian software developer Unigine Corp has shipped a new graphics benchmark based on the Unigine 2 engine.

Unigine Superposition Benchmark can use DirectX or OpenGL to stress-test your GPU, and offers support for resolutions from 720p up to 8K.