Free Software

Popular mobile and browser-based image editor Polarr Photo Editor is now available in a desktop edition for Windows 7 and later.

A Free build offers only global adjustments (no selection tools), and drops custom filters and batch export.

Russian security vendor Kaspersky has released Kaspersky Cleaner, a free beta for Windows XP and later.

The program is designed to delete junk Windows and application files, check your system settings are giving you the best level of privacy, and restore broken settings which might be interfering with your PC’s operations.

Just about every firewall claims to protect your personal data by checking for illicit web connections -- but do they really work?

Atelier Web Firewall Tester (32-bit and 64-bit) is a once commercial, now free Windows product which tries to find out.

You need a Notepad replacement, but web searches only get you overcomplicated programmer's editors aimed at people who think in regular expressions and actually want to use line numbers.

CudaText offers another way. It’s a cross-platform coding editor -- and a good one -- but it's not just for developers, anyone can see its advantages right away.

Malware analysis normally starts with logging the executables launched on a system: opening this document, launches that application, fires up some scripting tool, which downloads and runs the actual threat (or something like that).

You could use something like Process Monitor to record what happens, but analyzing the logs will take time, and the malware might delete key files before you can inspect them.

If you regularly need to batch print folders of documents then you’ll know it’s a lengthy and tedious process: Ctrl+P+Enter+repeat until you die of boredom, essentially.

Print Conductor is a free-for-personal-use application which automatically lines up and dispatches your targets to their source programs for printing.

Freeware developer NirSoft has released BrowserAddonsView, a free tool which detects and displays all your installed Chrome, Firefox and IE extensions, in all user profile folders.

Every installed addon is displayed in the usual NirSoft table, with details including item ID, status (enabled/ disabled), browser, addon type (extension, plugin, browser helper, ActiveX, more), name, version, description, title and creator.

IObit has announced the release of IObit Malware Fighter 4, with what looks like some major improvements in protection.

A new IObit anti-malware engine and a 10x larger database aim to detect and remove even more threats.

CloudReady is a custom version of Chromium OS which can transform your old PC into a sort-of Chromebook.

You can run CloudReady standalone, dual boot with Windows in some situations, or use VirtualBox to run it in a window on your desktop.

Anti-tracking company Ghostery has updated its Firefox add-on to version 6.0 in what the developer is calling "the most significant upgrade to Ghostery since its inception".

The interface has been redesigned, with a new dashboard giving an immediate view of the trackers on a site, revamped menus and alerts, and assorted beginner-friendly usability tweaks ("Whitelist Site" is now "Trust Site").

Picosmos Tools is a versatile image management suite which includes a viewer, editor, batch processor, capture tool, simple publishing tools and more.

The program stands out immediately with its Windows Start Screen-type launcher, colorful "live tiles" giving you speedy access to each module.

Etwok LLC has launched NetSpot 1.0 on the Windows platform, joining the existing Mac tool. The initial release of the Windows version has been made free for both personal and commercial use, and contains a subset of the features found in the Mac build.

The tool is designed to help troubleshoot problematic Wi-Fi network connections by revealing overall reception strength, and includes a mapping tool to help identify 'dead' zones where reception is poor or non-existent.

Freeware developer The SZ has shipped a new version of PortScan, its one-stop network toolkit for Windows XP and later. We last checked out the program way back in 2012, so the new release seems like a good time to look at it again.

The download is a compact 387KB, and there’s no installation required. Just unzip the single program executable.

Open source Registry editor Registry Finder has added the ability to find Registry keys modified within a date range.

This has many computer forensic applications, such as seeing the keys modified when a program was installed, or getting clues about what another user did on your PC last Wednesday.

It’s been ten long years since the last major release, but open source Windows clone ReactOS is still very much alive, and the latest release shows just what’s been achieved since 2006.

There’s finally support for NTFS read and ext2 read/ write, out of the box.