Articles about Free Software

Windows services can safely be ignored most of the time, but sometimes you might have to monitor them or take more control.

You could do this from the regular Control Panel app (Win+R > Services.msc), but it’s slow, and you might have to scroll through hundreds of cryptically-named services to find the one you need.

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A well-designed responsive website should adapt its display to work properly on phones, tablets and desktops, but testing this on every possible device might take a while. Emmet Re:view is a free Chrome extension which displays responsive websites in various-sized views, side-by-side, enabling you to see how they work at a glance.

Visit the test website, click Emmet Re:view, and a tab opens with resizable views for each CSS media query breakpoint of your page.

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AOMEI has released Backupper Standard 3.5, a major new version of its freeware Windows backup, imaging and cloning tool.

Version 3.5 introduces event-triggered scheduling of backups, support for mapped network drives as backup destinations and various other improvements and optimizations, including a fix that prevents the computer from going to sleep during the backup process.

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Bluelight Filter is a free Android app which aims to reduce the harmful effects of the blue light emitted by smartphones and tablets.

This could reduce eye strain, help you sleep better, and generally make the screen easier to read.

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NirSoft has released ShadowCopyView and PreviousFilesRecovery, free tools designed to help you browse Windows’ volume shadow copies and restore whatever files you need.

ShadowCopyView lists all volume shadow copies on your PC, the hard drive snapshots created by Windows Vista and later.

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Oracle has released VirtualBox 5.1, a major new point release of its open-source virtual machine tool for Windows, Mac and Linux. The software enables users to run virtual PCs within a software environment.

Version 5.1 comes with the promise of improved performance, improved bug reporting and logging, wider support for different USB devices, multi-channel audio, flash storage emulation and better integration into Linux.

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Choosing the right font for a document or graphic project can make a huge difference to the results, but the poor viewers in Windows and many applications make it difficult to find the font you need.

PrintMyFonts can help by displaying any or all of your fonts, enabling at-a-glance comparisons, and exporting the results as images or documents.

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We’ve revisited a few veteran applications recently, but nothing that quite competes with Euler Math Toolbox, which began life in 1988 as a program for the Atari ST. These days, and still being regularly updated, the package has become a versatile suite of tools for exploring real and complex numbers, vectors, matrices and symbolic algebra.

This is all powered from a Matlab-like matrix language, and can integrate with Povray, LaTEx, even custom Python and C code for the most efficient scripts.

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Just about every memory optimizer around claims that freeing up RAM will speed up your PC, but this isn't necessarily true. It all depends on how your RAM is currently being used.

Memory History Tool logs the processes using your RAM and maintains a history of the main memory hogs, helping you understand where your resources are going.

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Windows 10 is currently available as a free upgrade if you are coming from Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, but this offer will not last for long. Just like everyone else, you will have to pay to get Microsoft's latest operating system after July 29. Question is, how does the free upgrade deadline impact Windows 10 Mobile?

While Windows 10 and Windows 10 Mobile did not launch at the same time, Microsoft positions the two operating systems as sister products. They have a shared core, many features in common, similar UI components, and even the build numbers are now the same as you probably know if you follow Windows Insider builds. So, understandably, there is some confusion over whether would-be Windows 10 Mobile users will have to pay for an upgrade after the Windows 10 deadline passes.

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Microsoft has launched Skype Meetings, a new and free version of its popular video and audio conferencing software designed with small businesses in mind.

The company’s latest release will feel quite similar for users already familiar with its Skype for Business solution, albeit stripped down. Whereas Skype for Business allows for meetings with up to 250 people, Skype Meetings limits the maximum participants to 10 people. However after the initial two months of using the product, that number drops down to three people.

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All Browsers Memory Zip is a free memory optimizer designed to cut your browser’s RAM usage. The program doesn’t just work with Chrome, IE or Firefox -- it recognizes and supports almost 40 browsers, out of the box.

Once installed, All Browsers Memory Zip monitors your running processes, looking out for supported browsers and checking their RAM usage.

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If you’re looking for a free image editor then you’ll probably start with the big names, the latest updates, whatever’s made the headlines recently. But there’s also a whole world of mature software out there which doesn’t make the news, and isn’t updated often, yet could still deliver everything you need.

LightZone started life more than 10 years ago as a commercial RAW and JPEG processor, for example, but since going open source in 2013 the project has very quiet. There is some activity, though -- the last release was at the end of June, more on the way -- and there’s plenty of functionality to explore.

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Core Temp is a powerful CPU temperature monitor which has been helping users watch their hardware since 2006.

The project seemed to have faded away in the past few years, but a series of updates in recent months has seen it roar back to life.

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Icaros is a free FFmpeg-powered tool which extends Windows Explorer’s thumbnail support to just about any video format. The package can produce cover art thumbnails for Mkv, Flac, Ape, and Mpc files, and provides extended Windows Explorer properties for Mkv, Flv, Ogm, Ogv, Ogg, Flac, Ape, and Mpc.

Icaros was updated last month with the addition of its own cache, speeding up thumbnail display and ensuring you won’t be affected if Explorer deletes its own cache.

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