Free Software

Opera Software has unveiled Opera 35 FINAL, a major new release of its desktop web browser for Windows, Mac and Linux PCs.

There are four new features of note in this release: first, a button for muting audio on specific tabs, followed by a refreshed downloads interface. There’s also the addition of a Basic section in Opera’s options page for faster access to key customization settings, plus a new advanced setting that allows users to search using a standalone Search bar.

If you’ve been managing computers for a few years then you’ve probably build up a library of supporting discs or USB keys. OS installers, antivirus rescue discs, backup tools, partition repair, hardware checkers, and the list goes on.

These aren’t just a hassle to build. You’ll also need to keep them up-to-date, and make sure they’re around and working whenever you need them.

After three years without a major update we thought AnVir Task Manager Free was dead, but no: the developer released a beta 8.0 version late last month.

What’s new? Unfortunately AnVir forgot to tell us, but we grabbed a copy anyway for a closer look.

Your PC is misbehaving, and there’s no obvious cause? Then it’s usually time to start working through the generic "fixes": run an antivirus scan, clear your temporary folders, enter "sfc /scannow" and more.

But if you’ve tried everything you know, without success -- or you don’t have hours to spend in front of the keyboard -- then maybe it’s time to call in some heavy-duty support.

Carifred has updated its malware hunter Ultra Virus Killer with integrated VirusTotal support.

No need to manually launch checks on individual files any more: just open the Process, Autorun, Service or Modules lists and a new column displays the VirusTotal score for every file.

BahraniApps has released VClip 1.0, a freeware tool for recording video and audio of your desktop.

The program has a strong emphasis on simplicity. Which means: it’s basic. Very basic. There’s no option to capture the full screen, for example, or a specific window -- you can record a freehand rectangle only.

ByteScout’s do-everything freeware PDF Multitool has been updated to 6.20 with new options for extracting embedded audio and video from PDFs.

Smarter text extraction means the program does a better job of auto-detecting document tables and saving their data to CSV or XML.

Music discovery website Soundcloud has some great mobile apps, but desktop users aren’t so lucky: it’s the browser, or nothing at all.

Fortunately there’s now an unofficial alternative in Soundnode, an open-source Soundcloud client for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Malwarebytes has released the first public beta of Malwarebytes Anti-Ransomware, a stand-alone ransomware blocker for Windows XP or later.

The application is lightweight, and designed to run alongside other security products without conflict, looking out for ransomware-like behaviour and blocking the process before it can encrypt your files.

Storage space may be cheap these days, but wasting it is still a bad idea: the more you fill a drive, the longer file searches, antivirus scans and other system-wide operations will take.

TreeMapFs is a Windows application which provides various ways to analyze drive space usage, highlight resource hogs, and generally help keep your system running efficiently.

Softland has shipped FBackup 6.0, a major update of its freeware file backup tool for Windows.

The new release finally brings support for cloud backups, with an option to save your data to Google Drive.

If you like Chrome, but aren’t so keen on Google’s tracking code and other extras, then you could switch to Chromium, its open-source browser engine.

Sure, you’d lose the integrated PDF viewer, various codecs, the Flash player (actually, that might be a good thing).

It wasn’t easy to work up much enthusiasm for fHash, at least initially. It's only an MD5, SHA1, SHA256 and CRC32 hash calculator, after all -- how interesting can it be?

But then we tried it, and… Okay, fHash is "only" a file hash calculator, but nicely implemented, with a lightweight, easy-to-use interface that makes it well worth a few minutes of your time.

O&O Software has shipped O&O RegEditor, a powerful freeware Registry editor for Windows Vista and later.

The package extends RegEdit with enhanced search tools, full copy and paste support, improved editing and more.

IObit has released a minor, but significant update to its driver update tool, Driver Booster 3.2 FREE. The new release, also available as a performance-enhanced Pro version, adds a new driver fix-it tool.

The update also includes various optimizations to improve user experience, performance and stability, plus widens the tool’s driver database engine to the latest updates.