Font Creator

Font design isn't easy, but FontCreator simplifies the process with an intuitive interface and tons of features. Its specialized drawing tools allow you to design glyphs one by one. If you're not patient enough to start from scratch, it's easy to import an existing TrueType font (TTF) and get started modifying the smallest of details. You also can convert images to glyphs, which allows you to turn a logo or your handwriting into a custom font. That said, it's the bonus utilities that elevate FontCreator to professional caliber. Glyph Transformer lets you instantly boldface, rotate, or alter every character in a font. You also can set kerning, change character-to-glyph mapping, and validate fonts to detect common problems. FontCreator's wealth of features and recently improved ease of use make it a great choice for type designers of all skill levels.

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Sticky Notes

Post-it Notes, those little yellow pads of sticky-backed paper, changed the world, or at least the way people who live in it leave reminders to themselves and others. When the layers of notes (now multicolor) start to resemble cedar shingles, it's time to clean your computer monitor. That brings up an important point: as big an improvement as sticky notes have been over the old paper napkin method, software versions like Sticky Notes may be better still. For one thing, Sticky Notes lets you organize, search, store, and back up your notes; set reminders, priorities, and alarms; and customize its look and behavior. Plus it'll never get lost in your desk drawer or behind your coffee mug. Sticky Notes is free to try, with a few features disabled, but at $4.99 the full version easily passes the Lunch Test, costing about what you'd pay for a sandwich and drink from the local carry-out.

Sticky Notes resides in the system tray; right-clicking its icon opens the program's main menu, where users create and manage Notes and the program's settings. However, you can also configure hot keys to make Sticky Notes even faster and easier to use by clicking Program Settings and selecting the Hotkeys tab (you can also set General Settings, configure Notes, and more). We clicked Create a New Note, and a new note popped up with the cursor ready. You don't have to click Save or do anything to slow you down; a few quick keystrokes and then click the red Exit button, and Sticky Notes automatically saves your note. When we'd saved a few Notes, we clicked the menu to view Recent Notes, Arrange Notes (cascade or tile) and Search them. Need help? Click Help: Help appears.

There's always room for improvement: for instance, automatic or scheduled backups would be nice to have, though we appreciate the simple but effective Backup and Restore feature that's already a part of Sticky Notes. And you'll still need paper sticky notes when you need to mark your lunch or leave a note on a colleague's door. Pretty much everything else? Sticky Notes has got that covered.

Editors' note: This is a review of the trial version of Sticky Notes 2.3.

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FreeRIP

A good ripper makes all the difference when transferring your CD tracks to MP3s. FreeRIP not only extracts and converts your audio tracks but also finds and downloads CD and track information and presents it in editable form right on the interface. It's easy to start right up with FreeRIP, but it includes a multi-language manual as well as tutorials and FAQs, if you should need them. FreeRIP supports the most common audio formats, not only MP3 but also FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, WMA, and WAV. It can also convert files between any two supported formats. Of course, FreeRIP can also play your files.
FreeRIP's nice-looking interface includes three tools: the Ripper, Converter, and Tagger. We loaded an audio CD in our burner's tray. FreeRIP scanned and displayed the contents, automatically retrieving the CD's meta tags and displaying them in the right-hand sidebar. The program's colorful toolbar accesses all necessary functions, including an Options Window, which is a compact pop-up for setting program preferences. FreeRIP offers many more data fields for both tracks and albums than most users will need, but those who do will appreciate not only the detailed tags but also how easy it is to enter and edit data. FreeRIP can rip your CD tracks and save them in the low-loss FLAC format, which preserves more of the original quality. You can play them on your PC in the high-quality format, and then convert them into MP3s for your portable player later on.
We pressed the Rip CD button when we were ready, and FreeRIP processed our CD quickly, ripping and converting the batch of tracks one by one, and tracking the progress of each in a pop-up. If you have lots of CDs to rip and little time to do it, there's a paid upgrade, FreeRIP Pro, optimized for multicore CPUs. It offers faster ripping and other options, such as prioritization. But we had no problem with waiting a little longer, and the quality is the same, so we were perfectly happy with the freeware version of FreeRIP and the files it creates.

 

Publisher's Description

From GreenTree Applications:

FreeRIP is an easy-to-use Windows application that can convert audio from CD to MP3, OGG, FLAC, WAV, and WMA. It is also an MP3 converter, so it can convert MP3 to WAV, OGG to MP3, WMA to MP3, and WAV to FLAC. FreeRIP also integrates an MP3 tag editor that can handle both ID3 v1 and v2 tags, supports CD-Text and online CD databases for automatic metadata downloading. FreeRIP can download track data from the famous freedb.org, but also offers its exclusive FreeRIP CD DB which is a user-maintained database that offers a number of additional fields like lyrics, band, lyricist, etc. FreeRIP also offers advanced features such as the ability to rip multiple CD tracks to a single MP3 file, and a search shortcut menu to help you find images, videos, information and lyrics.
Despite the huge number of functions it incorporates, FreeRIP has an intuitive user interface; a toolbar with big icons and a main window divided into two parts, the first of which lists the tracks and the second part gives specific information on each track. FreeRIP natively supports multiple languages such as English, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and French.

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Free 3GP Video Converter

The Free 3GP Video Converter is for converting your video files into other formats to view on supported devices.
The steps for this application are very simple. You simply click Add Files, select a video to convert, select the quality and format to convert it to and then select Convert. After that, all you have to do is be patient. You might be waiting a while. It took over 2 hours to convert a 15-minute video for the New iPad viewing format. The time will obviously vary, depending on the size, but that seemed like too long of a wait. If you're going to use this, you have to be willing and able to wait for a period of time. There aren't that many other features included. You can change the Output Name for the file, which is convenient, and you can also have your computer shut down after it's done converting by selecting that in Options. It would be very easy to just set this up to work and then walk away for the night without worrying about being there for the final step. There isn't a help page or any tutorials. It is very simple to use though, so it's not likely that you would need one.
It was easy to install. There were a few unwanted extra downloads that were almost overlooked, but if you look through the steps carefully you can avoid accidently getting those.


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GOM Media Player

    As various media players jockey for position to become your default setting for music and video streams, GOM Media Player's support for a wide range of file formats has helped it stand out as a firm favorite.
Supported formats include DAT, MPEG, DivX, XviD, WMV, ASF, AVI, and MOV, as are common codecs like FLV1, AC3, OGG, MP4, and H263. A pop-out playlist can save and organize your various media files, though the limited sort modes--two--hardly makes it a champ.
More impressive are the customizable settings on the control panel. Here you can adjust a video's image brightness, hue, and saturation. There's no preview window, and changes occur as the video runs, so unless you care for a rousing session of trial and error, be sure to tweak the settings after clicking "play." There's also a built-in screen-capture feature that includes zooming and panning, customizable themes, hot keys, and a host of preset and adjustable audio controls.
GOM is weakest when you're looking for help documentation and trying to tweak Save settings, but overall it's a very strong player worth at least a supporting role in your video-watching habits, if not the lead.
GOM Media Player:

 

Publisher's Description

From Gretech:

GOM Player is a free multimedia player with popular video and audio codecs built-in. GOM Player supports file formats such as AVI, DAT, MPEG, DivX, XviD, WMV, ASF. Users don't have to install codecs separately. GOM Player is capable of playing incomplete or damaged AVI files by skipping the damaged frames. It can also play locked or partially downloaded files. Its other features include drag-and-drop support, HTTP streaming, editable skins, subtitling, overlay mixer, key remapping, enhanced filter rendering, real-time index rebuilding for AVI files and unicode support among others.

What's new in this version: Changes in version 2.1.43.5119 include:

Improved AAC Audio Support

AVI Playback Issue Corrected

SRT Subtitle Display Issue Corrected

RTL Subtitle Support Added (beta)

Miscellaneous Fixes

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Virtual DJ

 Digital deejaying has skyrocketed in popularity over the past five years and it's no wonder why. Compared to a full vinyl setup with all the hardware and physical media it requires, an MP3-based mixing station is extremely simple and cheap. There's even free software to get you started, and one of the most popular programs available is Virtual DJ.
Virtual DJ is often packaged with USB-based hardware mixing consoles from the likes of Hercules and Numark, and, in fact, if you really want to delve into the full array of features, such devices are going to be a necessity--and they'll require a $99 license fee to upgrade to the Pro version of the software. That said, you can download the app for free by itself and make very basic mixes and playlists.
While the program isn't specifically geared at newbies, it is intuitive enough for a musically inclined individual to use right off the bat. Once installed, Virtual DJ automatically populates a folder tree in the bottom left corner where you can easily access your music collection. The bottom middle serves as a tabbed, multifunction area where you can browse tracks, sample music bites, add effects, and make recordings.
The top of the window is dominated by two digital turntables, which are distinguished by color: blue on the left and red on the right. Each one has the ability to cue, loop, adjust pitch, scratch, and shift (among other features). In the middle is the mixing console, where you can adjust the gain and master volume, as well as transition between the two tracks. Once the songs have been dragged and dropped into the console, a bar along the top displays the sound waves of each to help with visual mixing. There's also a video input option that lets you create montages to the music.
The stylish interface and high number of features score points, but learning how to use the program is a hit-or-miss proposition. To be perfectly honest, using it without mixing hardware (that is, just a mouse and keyboard) is a challenge, and not one we enjoyed, so we recommend hooking up a compatible USB controller. Also worth a look: the thorough online user guide.
Virtual DJ is free, fully featured, and well-laid-out. It's a useful option both for aspiring mixers and newbies.
VirtualDJ:

 

Publisher's Description

From Atomix Productions:

With more than a million new downloads every months, VirtualDJ is the most widely used DJ software, and the uncontested leader of non-timecode digital DJing. It has been used around the world for the past 10 years by bedroom DJs and professional superstars alike to rock millions of parties, and has been chosen by leading DJ brands such as Pioneer, Numark, Hercules, Denon, Gemini, or Vestax, to be included with most of their digital DJ controllers. With its cutting-edge beatlock engine, your songs will always stay on the beat, and you can work your mixes incredibly faster than any other DJ. The automatic seamless loop engine and synchronized sampler will let you perform astounding remixes on the fly. The video engine lets you mix and scratch music videos or karaoke as easily as audio. With NetSearch and MusicGroups, you will stay on the edge of the musical trends. And with the versatile VDJScript language and hundreds of downloadable skins, you can tailor your software to your exact needs. Whether you are a professional experienced DJ, or a music enthusiast, VirtualDJ is all you need to get the party started.

What's new in this version: Version 7.0.5 adds new controllers to the native list, and fixes some problems with video streams from the Internet.

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CCleaner

   The freeware CCleaner hasn't seen many major revisions since Piriform launched it in 2004, so when you do see a major update, you can be assured that it's going to come with impressive new tools. CCleaner 3 doesn't disappoint on that front, introducing two major new features that make it worth the upgrade.
One is a drive wiping tool that can wipe all the data from your hard drive, but can also scrub only the available free space. As with many of the tools in CCleaner, it's fairly nuanced and allows for a simple one-pass overwrite, a Department of Defense-level three-pass option, a National Security Administration-level seven-pass cleaning, and a 35-pass Gutmann-level deep scrub. The more passes you select, the slower the deletion process.

Nuanced drive wiper lands in CCleaner 3

Another key improvement to CCleaner 3 has been adding more options to pre-existing features. You can now select specific Internet cookies to keep, across all your browsers, while CCleaner deletes the rest in Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and Safari. The benefit of this is to keep cookies for specific sites that you know to be safe, such as webmail, while getting rid of the rest that you don't want tracking you. Note that your browser must be closed for the cookie-deleting feature to work.
Other changes in version 3 include improvements to the internal scanning tech that powers CCleaner, and the interface received some minor tweaks to make icons more visible. If you're familiar with previous versions of the program, though, you'll be hard-pressed to find any differences between older CCleaners and the new one. Additional minor changes include a new native installer for 64-bit computers, and environment variables have been added for %SystemDirectory%, %SystemDirectory32%, and %SystemDirectory64%.
Version 3 supports more Windows programs than before, including added support for Microsoft Silverlight Isolated Storage, AVG 2011, Audacity, LogMeIn Hamachi, BitTorrent, and Windows Game Explorer. Pre-existing support has been improved for Google Chrome, Internet Explorer 9 beta, and the torrent managing client Vuze.
For users who are new to the program, in addition to browser tracks cleaning it will clean tracks from other programs, empty your recycle bin, delete temporary files, and clean your Registry, quickly scanning for invalid entries before removing them. CCleaner will also back up your Registry before you hit delete, in case it accidentally removes a crucial component. There's also a basic, somewhat rudimentary uninstaller for removing any program on your machine. What Registry entries it doesn't catch, the main Registry checker will, but it's a two-step process that dedicated uninstallers handle nicely on their own.
In empirical testing, CCleaner 3 appeared to be marginally faster than previous versions. This is probably system dependent, so users with older computers could likely see significantly faster scan and cleaning times than in previous versions.
Problems with CCleaner are minor at best, and it remains a highly-recommended, must-have weapon against system slowdowns, tracking cookies, and the multitudinous debris that can clutter your computer.

 

Publisher's Description

From Piriform:

CCleaner is a freeware system optimization, privacy and cleaning tool. It removes unused files from your system allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space. It also cleans traces of your online activities such as your Internet history. Additionally it contains a fully featured registry cleaner.

What's new in this version: Version 3.22.1800 added full support for Windows 8, improved Startup Item tool compatibility, fixed support for Windows 2000, and contains minor GUI improvements.

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Free Audio Converter

    We've tried tons of freeware MP3 converters. They tend to fall somewhere in between Easy Enough for Beginners and Feature-Filled for Experts. DVDVideoSoft's Free Audio Converter definitely registers on the "Easy" end of the dial, but it offers enough options to enable you to encode your MP3s in several different formats, including three levels of LAME. A Preset Wizard makes it easy to save your settings for future use. It can access compatible audio files on your hard drive or stored on a CD, but it doesn't rip CD audio.
Free Audio Converter shares a basic interface style and background with DVDVideoSoft's other audio/video freeware, with a colorful abstract design and a minimum of controls. You can add files by clicking Add Files and browsing or by dragging and dropping files directly into Free Audio Converter's main window. A Save To field is easy enough to understand, as is the Quality button, which let us select the type of encoding we wanted, including AAC, APE, FLAC, WMA, WAV, and OGG (MP3, too!). A drop-down list offers further refinement, including not only three levels of LAME quality (Insane, Extreme, and Standard) but also Original Audio and even Audio Book, the CD audio standard. Free Audio Converter uses handy pop-ups to edit tags and file names. Clicking the Magic Wand icon opens the Preset Editor, a handy wizard for saving presets for a variety of different file types and situations. With it, you can create different profiles for your best tunes and your podcasts. Basic options include ATI-based acceleration, interface languages, and a selection of attractive themes that improve on the basic look.
We browsed to our music archive and selected some MP3s, which appeared in the main window in a list we could edit with Up/Down arrows. We made our selections and pressed Convert. Free Audio Converter did its thing quickly, and the finished tunes played normally in our usual player. Free Audio Converter can handle WAVs, which gives it an advantage over similar tools that require external help (such as Winamp) to encode and convert MP3s to WAVs for editing.

 

Publisher's Description

From DVDVideoSoft:

Free Audio Converter converts different audio file formats, including MP3, WAV, M4A, AAC, WMA, OGG, FLAC, and APE. Each format is provided with a corresponding profile kit and a preset editor in order to make a personalized preset. So you can create new presets, delete and edit the old ones (change the current parameters). Free Audio Converter goes with both a single and a batch mode support. Supports XP, Vista and Windows 7. Free Audio Converter contains no spyware or adware. It's clearly free and absolutely safe to install and run.

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Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2013

   The 2013 updates to the Kaspersky protection suites bring to consumers some of the most advanced security technology currently available. It involves introducing an exploit prevention engine as part of the security suite, but also a Safe Money banking protection tool that you can interact directly with. The suite's scans aren't the fastest, but it definitely will protect you.
Installation
5
Installing Kaspersky has been dramatically simplified over the past two years. Following on 2012's fuss-free install, the installer for 2013 will remove conflicting security programs and any detected malware automatically.
You're still on the hook for a reboot, but not when running only the trial. The install procedure was only three screens long, and it took under 2 minutes to complete. You can also register and purchase a license key from the program itself, no need to jump to your browser. Overall, this is one of the best installation processes for a security suite, if by best you mean, "short, fast, and painless."
Interface
4
Kaspersky's followed up last year's overhauled interface with only minor tweaks this year to accommodate new features. The number of windows you must go through to initiate a scan, or to solve a problem warning, has been reduced.
Based on a mobile app-drawer design, the interface presents your security status at the top and stashes the four major security features of scanning, updating, the new Safe Money, and parental controls, at the bottom. The app drawer layout puts key security status information up front, and keeps your tools organized yet easily accessible below. You can slide the features sideways to see more options, or click the arrow at the bottom to pull up, drawer-style, the full list of options. Settings and Reports live in the upper right corner, and both use terminology repeated throughout the interface. This creates a solid level of consistency, and ought to appeal to basic security consumers and power users alike.
A Cloud Protection button at the top of the interface opens a screen that explains Kaspersky's cloud technology that debuted in the 2012 version. Like its competitors that have already incorporated cloud-based detection, you can opt out of anonymously contributing your data without making yourself less safe.
Kaspersky's opt-out is a bit tricky to get to, though. Hit Settings, the annoyingly unlabeled Advanced Settings tab (hint: it's the cardboard box), Feedback, and then uncheck the box to opt out.
Unlike some competitors, which allow you to reorder the tool buttons so you can have the ones you use most often at the ready, Kaspersky's tool layout is locked down. This is one of the few drawbacks to the design. Another is that in the Settings window, the tabs on the left are unlabeled and their icons are not necessarily as obvious to understand as possible. In order, they are Protection Center, Scan, Update, and Advanced Settings.
Labeling aside, the settings themselves were remarkably easy to navigate and comprehend -- even the advanced ones. Meanwhile, jumping from feature to feature was a zippy experience, and we encountered absolutely no lag when skipping between screens.
Features and support
5
Kaspersky 2013's newest and best features come in the form of some very forward-thinking security improvements.
The most important of them is the exploit blocking engine called Automatic Exploit Prevention. It's a response to the increase in the number of phishing attacks and includes an antiphishing engine -- similar to the antivirus and anti-malware engines -- that updates daily.
It's hard to overstate how critical stopping exploits can be to stopping large-quantity cash thefts from online banks. Experts have estimated recent successful banking breaches at scoring from $3 million to more than $220 million, and Kaspersky says that the exploit prevention engine stops the vast majority of exploit kits.
A major component of the exploit prevention engine is Address Space Layout Randomization, or ASLR. It's a proven security technology, used in Apple OS X and iOS, in Google's Android, and by Microsoft in Windows 8. It's not foolproof, but it is one of the more effective security technologies currently available. The inclusion of ASLR in Kaspersky means that the technology will be available to Windows 7 and earlier versions, making Kaspersky unique in the security realm for that reason.
The suite now blocks Duqu and other malware specifically designed to surreptitiously install on your computer before the antivirus program loads during boot.
Safe Money revamps the Safe Run feature from previous years and is only in Kaspersky Internet Security 2013, not Kaspersky Anti-Virus. It basically streamlines the process of accessing banking sites securely. Simply go to your banking site, and as long as you have Kaspersky's browser add-ons installed, it will ask you if you want to open the site in a sandboxed mode, isolated from other browser and PC processes. You can also manually add other sites to Safe Money in Kaspersky's interface, but it's no longer a requirement because of Safe Money's new auto-detection. You can tell it's running because of a thin green line around your browser window.
We were skeptical about Safe Money working as advertised, but it really does detect banking Web sites as you visit them and reopen them in sandboxed browsers. It detected both major banks like Chase, and our own local credit union's site without fail.
Other changes have been made, as well. The secure keyboard for protecting personal data when entered by a physical keyboard works with more sites than before; there is expanded browser compatibility so it now works with Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Opera; and better battery management has been implemented for laptops. (We did not test the battery life, however, due to time constraints.)
There are older features worth calling out, too. One is the File Advisor, which is a Windows Explorer context menu option for checking out a file's reputation without having to go through the main Kaspersky program itself. It creates a pipeline from the Kaspersky Security Network, the Kaspersky cloud protection, to the files on your desktop. We found it to pull down reputation data quickly, although its speed also depends on your Internet connection.
The Roll Back feature can easily undo damage caused by any malware that does slip through, and the Network Monitor feature shows you real-time traffic to and from your computer. Among the better ancillary tools are an Internet Explorer security analyzer, which is a good idea if you're stuck on Windows XP with IE8 or earlier -- but it's weird that it doesn't support any other browsers.
The virtual keyboard, different from the physical keyboard protection, has been improved so that it's more responsive than previously. It's mostly an older feature to use if you're worried about keyloggers that Kaspersky keeps around for bragging rights. It's highly unlikely that you'd have Kaspersky running and be infected by a keylogger.
Unchanged from last year, online support is decent, with the standard offerings of forums, live chat, knowledge base articles, and telephone support. Live chat isn't as robust as with some competitors, only available from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Eastern time, Monday through Friday. The telephone support is similarly restricted from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., Eastern time, Monday through Friday. The tech-support number is buried fairly deep on the Kaspersky site, probably to discourage calls. They can be reached at 781-503-1820 or 1-866-525-9094.
Performance
4
Kaspersky Internet Security 2012 (KIS) shares the same detection engine as its less feature-laden sibling, Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2012 (KAV), so both are discussed here.
Kaspersky historically doesn't focus on speedy scans as much as its competitors. For most of the scan's duration on a real-world computer, it promised to complete in less than 3 minutes, when in reality it took an average of 8 minutes, 10 seconds to complete over three runs. Meanwhile, the Full scan tightened up and completed scanning in 1 hour, 32 minutes -- that's about average for Full scans. The Rootkit scan took an average of 8 minutes, 32 seconds.
CNET Labs' benchmarks bear out these findings. The in-lab scan time for KIS took 1,286 seconds (just under 22 minutes), faster than last year's 1,320 seconds and yet one of the slower scan we've seen this year. KAV took 1,227 seconds, also faster than last year's and still one of the slower scans this year.
The Lab found Kaspersky to nearly perfectly mirror last year's results. Boot-time impact was atrocious, with KIS slowing down boot by 47.3 seconds and KAV adding 68.3 seconds. Shutdown impact was much better, with KIS adding only 6.3 seconds and KAV adding a stunningly small 4.5 seconds. On MS Office, iTunes decoding, media multitasking tests, and Cinebench, the two suites were around average. However, Kaspersky feels light when in use, and it transitioned smoothly among its different features and when jumping to other programs.
We did notice some rare, temporary browser hangs, most likely because of the multiple Kaspersky add-ons.

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Download Accelerator Plus (DAP)

  Download Accelerator Plus (DAP) 10 is Speedbit's fastest and most comprehensive download accelerator to date. Redesigned and rebuilt from top to bottom, the new DAP 10 platform consists of the core DAP acceleration engine, now streamlined and optimized for powerful efficiency and ease of use. DAP is an essential tool, relying on its advanced patented technology, for fast performance and download acceleration. DAP 10 takes the core DAP acceleration technology to the next level, with a wide range of new and existing tools for downloads and videos. Most of the features are carried as add-ons, enabling users to customize their download experience by choosing only those that suit their online needs.

 

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Orbit Downloader

  Orbit Downloader is the download manager optimized for social music and video downloading. The program allows you to download videos and music from Youtube, Myspace, Pandora, Last.Fm, and Imeem and can accelerate downloading speed up to five times. With Orbit Downloader, you can manage downloads easier with tags, and you can update your PC software easier.

 

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YouTube Downloader

                                                            YTD Video Downloader allows you to download videos, including HD and HQ videos, from dozens of sites and convert them to other video formats. The program is easy to use--just specify the URL for the video you want to download and click the Download button. The program also allows you to convert downloaded videos for iPad, iPod, iPhone, PSP, Cell Phone, Windows Media, and XVid, or play video that you have previously downloaded or converted.
The YTD Video Downloader interface includes a tabbed format for easy downloading, converting, and playing, and a new Activity tab allows you to keep track of multiple downloads and conversions in real time. The program has the ability to download full playlists as opposed to just one video. YTD Video Downloader is available in English, Albanian, Arabic, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Chinese, Chinese Simplified, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Kurdish, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish.

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Internet Download Manager

Don't let the dull name fool you: Internet Download Manager is a full-featured package that handles downloading tasks with aplomb. It conveniently integrates into your browser, even if you use Mozilla or Opera.
It automatically sorts incoming files by file type and puts them in the appropriate folder. Most importantly, it supercharges download speeds (it doubled ours). Its windowed interface is clean and easy to understand. Power users can take advantage of the command line interface to resume file transfers, schedule downloads, connect through dial-up, or log on to password-protected sites. Experienced users also can limit the number of connections, the download speeds for specific sites, and even create an exception list to block specific, user-defined sites.
Other features include automatic virus checking and the ability to download all files linked to a page. The new version has a Web spider that can analyze a site and retrieve, for example, all the images on it.
Internet Download Manager strikes us as a natural choice for users in need of a trusty transfer tool. Version 5.11 build 5 added FLV grabber that can be used to download videos from YouTube, Google Video, MySpaceTV, and other popular sites.

Internet Download Manager is a tool for increasing download speeds by up to 5 times, and for resuming, scheduling, and organizing downloads. The program will resume unfinished downloads due to network problems, or unexpected power outages. The program features a full-fledged site grabber that downloads files that are specified with filters, for example, all pictures from a Web site, different parts of Web sites, or complete Web sites for offline browsing. The program supports HTTP, HTTPS, FTP and MMS protocols, and has an adaptive download accelerator for MP3 audio, FLV and MPEG video files. The program also features Download Video and Audio Panels for Internet Exporer, Chrome, Opera, Safari, Firefox and other Mozilla based browsers that appears on top of a web-player and can be used to download flash videos from sites like YouTube, MySpaceTV, Google Videos.

What's new in this version: Version 6.11 build 8 adds support for Firefox 15. This new version also fixes false interception of web ads, improves HTML5 video detection in IE 9 & 10 on youtube, improves youtube video downloading from Google Chrome, Firefox, and fixes bugs in IE intergration module.

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AVG Antivirus

CNET Editors' note: The Download Now link will download an installer file to your desktop. Remain online and double-click the installer to proceed with the actual download.
To learn more about AVG products and to ask questions and receive answers from AVG company representatives, please visit CNET's dedicated AVG Forum.

Publisher's Description

From AVG Technologies USA:

Antivirus protection that automatically updates to protect you from continually evolving threats. As hackers develop new techniques, AVG's research labs are constantly processing web data to provide new defenses to keep you automatically protected. Get on with your surfing and gaming without interference. Scans operate when you are away from your PC, and it also knows when you are gaming and ensures that the security operates in the background only, leaving you free to play.
Files are checked before you download them without you having to do a thing. AVG Anti-Virus will also protect you when exchanging files through popular instant messaging like MSN and Yahoo!. You want to search and surf, but you don't ever want to go to any infected websites. AVG helps you out by clearly alerting you to threats and keeping you clear of them.
With AVG protecting your system, you can chat and message your friends on Facebook and other social networks in the knowledge that each web page and link is checked for safety. You won't pick up a malicious link from your friends--and you won't send one either.

What's new in this version: Version 2012.0.2180 is a maintenance release.

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Picasa

Picasa Web Albums is Google's Web photo-hosting service. Users get 1GB of free hosting, and images can be uploaded and manipulated using Picasa, Google's free desktop photo management application. Users who want additional storage can shell out up to $500 a year to bump up the hosted space to 400 times the size of the free hosting service.
Much like everything else Google, Picasa is exceptionally straightforward to use, with a tabbed interface offering three options--My Photos, Favorites, and Explore--the last of which lets you browse the public photo library. Next to the tabs, you'll find a prominent Upload button for adding photos to your albums, which you can set to various levels of privacy. Within your albums, you have the option to view a slideshow, share via e-mail, make a collage or movie, order prints, and edit various aspects.
We really like the integration between the desktop and Web application. Similar to .Mac and iPhoto, Picasa makes it really simple to take photos from your desktop and publish them online for others to see. We're also fans of the built-in geotagging that lets you set where photos were taken either by single photo, or by entire albums. It's a great way to browse photos if you feel like exploring.
Picasa 3:

 

Publisher's Description

From Google:

Picasa can transfer, find, organize, edit, print, and share images, all with this easy-to-use product. Watch Picasa automatically organize all your pictures into elegant albums by date. Having all your photos in one place means no more time wasted searching for folders or files. The program works with JPEG, GIF, BMP, PSD, and movie files and is compatible with most digital cameras; it detects your USB driver and imports pictures into albums.
Editing tools include cropping (standard or custom), removal of red-eye, and enhancing--even switching from color to black and white. Create slide shows set to your MP3s. Integration with Picasa's free Hello instant picture-sharing software lets you share hundreds of photos in seconds and chat in real time. E-mail photos with Picasa's built-in client to take the guesswork out of compressing images, and order photo-lab quality prints or print at home with no mistakes. You can also make instant backups to CD (or to other hard drives) of your photo collections, to organize your photos using labels and stars (just like with Gmail), to write captions for all pictures, and to organize videos as well as pictures.


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Adobe Flash Player

There should be no doubt that Apple's decision to block Flash from iOS in favor of HTML5 has spurred Adobe to make sure that its media-rich content-building tool and player Flash remains competitive. Flash Player 11 brings hardware-accelerated graphics support to the platform.
According to Adobe, the new Stage3D technology in the new Flash Player brings combined 2D and 3D acceleration that is up to 1,000 times faster than the previous Flash iterations. While currently Stage3D is supported only for personal computers, it should make its way to mobile devices in future Flash releases. The advancements offered by Stage3D should bring far more complex graphics development for the player, and allow some developers to use it as a viable alternative for their projects, especially for cross-platform efforts.
In addition to accelerated graphics, Flash 11 now is natively in 64-bit code on all supported platforms, which will allow it to better integrate with browsers and plug-ins that are coded in 64-bit. This along with a slew of new enhancements for developers in terms of security improvements, media handling, and better JavaScript integration will enhance the player's use for future development. Flash also comes baked into Google Chrome, and therefore the Chrome OS that powers Google's Chromebooks.
Mac users take note: Flash requires OS X 10.6 or later running on an Intel platform since Adobe removed support for PowerPC Macs in Flash 10.
Although it's possible that HTML5 will at some point unseat Flash as the dominant code for media on the Web, that won't happen for a while yet since HTML5 standards haven't even been finalized. The Flash Player is a must if you want to experience the Web at its fullest, so users at any level of expertise should have no qualms about installing or upgrading.

Publisher's Description

From Adobe Systems:

Flash Player 11 is a lightweight, highly expressive client runtime that delivers powerful and consistent user experiences across major operating systems, browsers, mobile phones, and devices. Adobe Flash Player software is a cross-platform browser plug-in that delivers breakthrough web experiences and is installed on more than 98% of Internet-connected desktops. Adobe Flash Player 11 explores a new architecture for high-performance 2D/3D GPU hardware accelerated graphics rendering by Adobe, which provides low-level Stage3D APIs for advanced rendering in apps and gives framework developers classes of interactive experiences. Flash Player is optimized for high performance on mobile screens and designed to take advantage of native device capabilities, enabling richer and more immersive user experiences.
Adobe Flash Player is in the Other Browser Add-ons & Plug-ins category of the Browsers section.

What's new in this version: Version 11.3.300.262 fixed users experience crashes while viewing Flash content in Firefox on Windows and audio distortion issues when streaming Flash content.


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Mozilla Firefox

Beta or prerelease software is not intended for inexperienced users, as the software may contain bugs or may potentially damage your system. We strongly recommend that users exercise caution and save all mission-critical data before installing or using this software.

Publisher's Description

From Mozilla:

Firefox beta includes dozens of major features and improvements - by testing them early we'll be able to respond to your feedback for future versions of Firefox. Once you download Firefox, you're part of our beta program and will receive regular updates as more features launch.
Mozilla Firefox 14 beta is in the Web Browsers category of the Browsers section.


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Google Chrome

The bottom line: Competitiveness, thy name is Chrome. Google's browser is one of the fastest and most standards-compliant browsers available. It lacks some of the fine-tuning you'll find in Firefox, but from the minimalist interface to support for future-Web tech like Native Client and HTML5, the browser is a must.
Review:
Google Chrome has matured from a lightweight and fast browsing alternative into an innovative, standard-bearing browser that people love. It's powerful enough to drive its own operating system, Chrome OS. The browser that people can use today, Chrome 20, offers highly competitive features, including synchronization, autofill, and standards compliance, and maintains Google's reputation for building one of the fastest browsers available.
Chrome 20 represents a major milestone for the browser, but those expecting to see dramatic changes in major version-point updates will be disappointed. For a while now, Google has been pushing features over what it calls milestone numbers in a rapid-release cycle, which means that as soon as new features are usable in the beta version of Chrome, Google will likely push them to all users in the stable edition.

First Look: Chrome still shines, 10 versions later

Please note that there are at least four versions of Chrome available at the moment, and this review only addresses the "stable" branch, intended for general use. Chrome beta (Windows (download) | Mac (download)), Chrome dev (Windows (download) | Mac (download)), and Chrome Canary (Windows (download) | Mac (download)) are progressively less stable versions of the browser, and aimed at developers.
There's also Chrome for Android and Chrome for iOS. Installation
Chrome's installation process is simple and straightforward. If you download the browser from Google's Web site, it will ask you if you'd like to anonymously submit usage statistics to the company. This can be toggled even after the browser is installed by going to the wrench-icon Preferences menu and choosing Options, then Under the Hood, and checking or unchecking Help Make Chrome Better. Depending on your processor, the installation process should take less than 2 minutes.
Interface
Google's Chrome interface has changed remarkably little since its surprise debut in September 2008. Tabs are still on top, the location bar (aka Omnibox) dominates the minimalist design, and the browser has few visible control buttons besides Back, Forward, and a combined Stop/Reload button. Although some users may not like having the tabs on top, we find it to be aesthetically preferable because it leaves more room below for the Web site we're looking at.
One change has been to remove the secondary Page Options button and combine it with the Preferences wrench icon to create space for extension icons to the right of the location bar. As it currently stands, it could be better organized. Some controls, such as page zoom, are readily available. Others, such as the extension manager, are hidden away under a Tools submenu.
Chrome's extensions are fairly limited in how they can alter the browser's interface. Unlike Firefox, which gives add-on makers a lot of leeway in changing the browser's look, Chrome mandates that extensions appear only as icons to the right of the location bar. The benefit is that this maintains a uniform look to the browser, but it definitely limits how much the browser can be customized. Chrome doesn't support sidebars, either, although other Chromium-based browsers (such as Comodo Dragon) do offer the feature. There is an option in Chrome's about:flags, a series of experimental features, that lets you move the tabs to a sidebar.
Settings pages get their own tab, rather than a dialog box. If you sign in to more than one Google account, you'll see the profile icons in the upper left corner on the tab row.
Even with its limitations, the interface design has remained a contemporary exemplar of how to minimize a browser's screen footprint while keeping the browser easy to use and versatile.
Features and support
Chrome 20's features are accessible from the Preferences menu via the wrench icon on the right side of the navigation bar. It offers a complete range of modern browsing conveniences. The basics are well-represented, including tabbed browsing, new window creation, and a private browsing mode that Google calls Incognito, which disables cookie tracking, history recording, extension support, and other browsing breadcrumbs.
Chrome is based on WebKit, the same open-source engine that powers Apple Safari, Google's Android mobile platform, and several other desktop and mobile Web-browsing tools. However, Chrome runs on a different JavaScript engine than its WebKit cousins, and there are other changes as well.
Along with hardware-accelerated 3D CSS, there have been interesting security improvements. You can now delete Flash cookies from inside Chrome, which makes sense given that Chrome comes with Flash built in, and there's a new Safe Browsing protection against downloading malicious files. Chrome's Web app support now includes the ability to launch Web apps from the location bar. This gives keyboard jockeys a bit more power to avoid mousing around, more readily apparent in Chrome OS but nevertheless good to have in the regular old Chrome browser.
There's Native Client, too. Also known as NaCl, it's open-source technology that allows C and C++ code to be securely run in the browser. It basically lets software run within two protected sandboxes, which will theoretically cut down on browser-based threats dramatically. When completed, NaCl will enable Web apps to run as smoothly as programs that are hosted on your hard drive.
Besides allowing you to disable JavaScript, Chrome will automatically block Web sites that are known to promulgate phishing attacks and malware threats or be otherwise unsafe. The usefulness of this depends on Google's ability to flag Web sites as risky, though, and so it's recommended to use an add-on like the Web of Trust extension or a separate security program to block threats.
Chrome also offers a lot of privacy-tweaking settings. In the Options menu, go to the Under the Hood tab. From here, you can toggle and customize most of the browser's privacy and security settings. Cookies, image management, JavaScript, plug-ins, pop-ups, location information, and notifications can be adjusted from the Content Settings button. This includes toggling specific plug-ins, such as the built-in Adobe Flash plug-in or the Chrome PDF reader (which is deactivated by default).
Chrome offers malware scanning on Web pages to include downloads, and the precaching tool for loading sites in your search results early now works with the Omnibox location bar.
Print preview, formerly a small but glaring hole in Chrome's feature list, is now present in the Windows and Linux versions. Chrome stable for Mac still doesn't have the feature, which is powered by the PDF reader that comes built into Chrome.
Chrome's tabs remain one of the best things about the browser. The tabs are detachable: "tabs" and "windows" become interchangeable here. Detached tabs can be dragged and dropped into the browser, and tabs can be rearranged at any time by clicking, holding, dragging, and releasing. Not only can tabs be isolated, but each tab exists in its own task process. This means that when one tab crashes, the other tabs do not. Though memory leaks are a major concern in Chrome when you have dozens of tabs open, we found sluggish behavior and other impediments weren't noticeable until after there were more than 30 tabs open. That's not an immutable number, though, and different computers' hardware will alter browser performance.
You can sync tabs and their browsing histories to other computers and devices such as Android and iOS in Chrome 20.
Some of the basics in Chrome are handled extremely intuitively. In-page searching works smoothly. Using the Ctrl-F hot key or the menu option, searching for a word or phrase will open a text entry box on the top right of the browser. Chrome searches as you type, indicating the number of positive results and highlighting them on the page.
Account syncing is another area where Chrome does well. Using your Gmail account, Chrome will sync your themes, preferences, autofill entries, passwords, extensions, and bookmarks. You can toggle each of those categories, too. Extension syncing has been the roughest of the lot.
Chrome has multiple user account support. This means that you can now have multiple people, or at least multiple Gmail accounts, running in Chrome simultaneously. However, it's not "people-secure," meaning that although your data might be secured on Google servers, once an account is logged in to Chrome, you don't have to re-enter your account data. Anybody with access to Chrome on your computer can see your stuff.
The intuitive New Tab page allows you to create custom categories by dragging and dropping apps and bookmarks, and includes navigation arrows on the left and right edges of the page that become more visible on mouse-over.
Like Firefox, Chrome gives broad control over search engines and search customizations. Though this doesn't sound like much, not all browsers allow you to set keyword shortcuts for searching, and some even restrict which search engine you can set as your default. Chrome comes with three defaults to choose from: Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
The Chrome extension manager, bookmark manager, and download manager all open in new tabs. They allow you to search their contents and throw in some basic management options like deletion, but in general they don't feel as robust as their counterparts in competing browsers. For example, URLs in the bookmark manager are only revealed when you mouse over a bookmark, and you must click on one to get the URL to permanently appear. That's an extra click that other browsers don't require.
Two other low-profile but well-executed features in Chrome are auto-updating and translation. Chrome automatically updates when a new version comes out. This makes it harder to revert back to an older version, but it's highly unlikely that you'll want to downgrade this build of Chrome since this is the stable build and not the beta or developer's version. The second feature, automatic translation of Web pages, is available to other browsers as a Google add-on, but because it comes from Google, it's baked directly into Chrome.
Chrome is also a leader in HTML5 implementation, which is uneven because of the continuing development of HTML5 standards. This will become more important in the coming months and years, but right now it doesn't greatly affect interactions with Web sites.
Performance
Based on the open-source WebKit engine and Google's V8 JavaScript engine, Google Chrome debuted to much fanfare because of its rocketing rendering speeds. More than three years down the line, that hasn't changed, and the stable version of Chrome remains one of the fastest stable browsers available. The less stable versions, with their more recent improvements and bug fixes, are often faster.
You can see CNET's most recent benchmark tests that included Google Chrome; while that particular version of Chrome didn't do too well, the browser has seen a lot of changes since that test and you definitely should not discount it.
Note that to effectively use hardware acceleration, you must make sure that your graphics-card drivers are up-to-date. Nevertheless, Chrome remains one of the fastest browsers available, and its rapid version update rate ensures that it is consistently competitive. It finally has extended hardware accelerated graphics to older Windows and Macs courtesy improvements to WebGL support and changes to Canvas2D.
Conclusion
It's hard to tell which is faster, user adoption of Chrome or its development. Certainly the two are linked, and due in no small part to Google's ability to lay claim to the "fastest browser" title, even when it may not be strictly justified. The rest of Chrome's appeal lies in its clean, minimalist look, and competitive features that justify its still-increasing market share. Chrome is a serious option for anybody who wants a browser that gets out of the way of browsing the Web.

Internet Explorer 9

Welcome to a more beautiful web. Fast, fluid and safe.

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Publisher's Description

From Google:

Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the Web faster, safer, and easier. Use one box for everything--type in the address bar and get suggestions for both search and Web pages. Thumbnails of your top sites let you access your favorite pages instantly with lightning speed from any new tab. Desktop shortcuts allow you to launch your favorite Web apps straight from your desktop.
Google Chrome is in the Web Browsers category of the Browsers section.

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