Free Software

Analyzing malicious scripts requires skill, experience, background knowledge. But it also helps if you’re able to view them, first, which can be a problem if they’ve been obfuscated or encoded in some way.

Converter is a tiny free tool which is designed to help by converting text or binary values into something you might be able to read.

MediBang Paint Pro markets itself as "the world’s best free comic creation tool", which is a big claim, and -- if you're not interested in comics -- might put you off trying it at all.

Look past the headlines, though, and you’ll find a very capable free digital painting and illustration app. It has a lot of comic-friendly features -- templates, backgrounds, fonts, even speech-to-text for adding dialog -- but there’s plenty to like for the rest of us, too.

Cent Browser is a free Chromium-based browser for Windows with a solid range of extras and enhancements.

A Firefox-like tab bar enables you to set the minimum width of a tab, then scroll the tab bar using the mouse wheel to find whatever you need.

Microsoft has announced its presentation building app, Sway, is now out of preview and available to anyone with a Microsoft account via Sway.com.

The company has also unveiled Sway for Windows 10 PCs and tablets, with a Windows Phone version apparently due in the "coming months".

Opera Software has unveiled Opera 31 FINAL, a new stable release of its desktop browser for Windows, Mac and Linux.

After the excitement of three major new features in version 30, Opera 31 is a bit of a damp squib. Only two relatively minor new features make their bow in this latest release: a redesigned Discover feature and improved sync capabilities.

One of the core elements that Microsoft dropped from the latest version of its operating system was Windows Media Center. The software giant softened the blow at the time by stating that it would be releasing a DVD Player as an add-on. Hardly a like-for-like swap, but better than nothing.

True to its word, Microsoft has now made the Windows DVD Player available for all, but while some Windows 10 upgraders will get it for free, others will have to pay $14.99 for the same piece of software. Which camp do you fall into?

Scheduling the shutdown of your PC can save energy, money, maybe improve your security, and you don’t need to install any extra software to make this happen. A few minutes spent with Task Scheduler and reminding yourself of shutdown.exe’s command line switches will point you in the right direction.

Choosing the right shutdown scheduler can give you much more flexibility, though. DShutdown has been around for so long that it still supports Windows 9x, but it’s still being developed, with the latest release giving you even more PC management power.

The Document Foundation has released LibreOffice 5.0 64-bit and LibreOffice 5.0 32-bit. This is a major new release that will form the cornerstone of future development on mobile platforms as well as the upcoming LibreOffice cloud version.

Version 5.0′s highlights include a brand new 64-bit Windows build to accompany existing Mac and Linux releases, plus compatibility with Windows 10, a user interface facelift, better interoperability with major office suites and a number of new features across its component parts, particularly Writer and Calc.

You’re browsing online, and find a quote you’d like to keep or share with others. Should be easy, but instead you’re copying and pasting the quote, maybe editing it for Twitter, adding a link, perhaps a bookmark. Although even then, any URLs point at the page, not the content you’re after.

Pullquote is a free Chrome extension which changes all this by providing a simple, unified way to tweet and save quotes, images and more.

Some Windows applications are keyboard-oriented, others built for touch, but the vast majority are still designed to be controlled by a mouse. And that’s a problem if you don’t have reliable control of a hand.

Camera Mouse is a free tool for Windows XP+ which allows users to control their mouse with head movements, instead. It’s been around for years, but developer Boston College has recently released an update with a couple of new features.

Aaron Stebner’s .NET Framework Setup Verification Utility and .NET Framework Cleanup Tool have been updated to support .NET 4.6 and Windows 10.

The programs still support every release of .NET from 1.0 upwards, and although they’re mostly targeted at expert users, there’s something here for everyone.

Popular freeware image editor Paint.NET has hit version 4.06 with new support for installing custom shapes.

As well as the arrows, callouts, and other basic shapes, you can now equip the program with 3D objects, vehicles, company logos or anything else you can find, then scale, rotate or fill them in the usual way.

SterJo Software has released SterJo Mail Password, a free Windows tool which recovers and displays webmail account details for Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, GMX, Zoho and one or two more.

There’s no hacking or brute forcing involved. The program simply checks the credentials stored by your Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Opera setups, so if these aren’t saved locally then it won’t show anything at all.

IObit has released the first public beta of IObit Advanced SystemCare 9, its flagship all-in-one PC cleanup, maintenance and security suite.

Improvements include a new "Speed Up" module, which checks your system for surplus startup programs, unwanted apps, dubious Windows settings, and anything else which might be slowing you down.

Windows Search has plenty of power these days, and there’s a whole library of capable freeware if you need more, so is there really any reason why you should bother with the free-for-personal-use VX Search?

We took the latest version for a test run to find out.