Computeractive! Latest downloads

Fast Duplicate File Finder 1.1

Tim Smith — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:43:54 GMT

Tim Smith, Computeractive, Thursday 2 July 2009 at 10:44:00

Save hard-disk space without deleting important files

Duplicate files can be a big problem. They take up space that could be used for something else, and there can be confusion if one copy is edited and the others aren't.

Fast Duplicate File Finder is a utility that will scan a disk, folder or collection of the two to look for duplicate files.

The interface is well designed and the installer automatically opens a web page with instructions for getting started, a nice touch that helps the first-time user.

The time needed to scan depends on the size of the folders but there are progress indicators.

Once the duplicates have been found, they are shown in the main window. They are selected ready for removal, leaving one copy behind.

One sensible default option is to send the duplicates to the Recycle Bin rather than a real delete. This offers an escape route if a mistake is made.

A frustration was that there was no way to mark certain folders as the one that should remain. If the best folder is not selected, it can mean a lot of work to select the right folder for all the duplicates.

Fast Duplicate File Finder

Tim Smith — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 09:59:47 GMT

Tim Smith, Computeractive, Thursday 2 July 2009 at 10:44:00

Save hard-disk space without deleting important files

Duplicate files can be a big problem. They take up space that could be used for something else, and there can be confusion if one copy is edited and the others aren't.

Fast Duplicate File Finder is a utility that will scan a disk, folder or collection of the two to look for duplicate files.

The interface is well designed and the installer automatically opens a web page with instructions for getting started, a nice touch that helps the first-time user.

The time needed to scan depends on the size of the folders but there are progress indicators.

Once the duplicates have been found, they are shown in the main window. They are selected ready for removal, leaving one copy behind.

One sensible default option is to send the duplicates to the Recycle Bin rather than a real delete. This offers an escape route if a mistake is made.

Timy for Basecamp

Chris Wiles — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 09:28:26 GMT

Chris Wiles, vnunet.com, Thursday 2 July 2009 at 10:10:00

Create your own Basecamp timesheet

Project management tools are an excellent way of keeping track of your team goals, schedules and timespan. Problem is that this information is generally for the project leader and traditional tools enable you to create a Gantt chart and perhaps print that for others to follow (assuming they even understand how to follow the chart).

More powerful project management tools are available online, and Basecamp is one of them. This is project management and sharing technology will enable you to bring a few people together within a team and share project information, files and a shared ‘to do’ list. If someone manages to finish a part of the project, they can cross off that section in the notes. The only problem with Basecamp is that it’s online-only, so you need access to a web browser to make these changes.

There are specific tools for your smartphone that enable you to access your Basecamp project information. Timy is an Adobe Air tool that will enable you to see an outline of your projects, through any operating system that supports Air. It doesn’t do a great deal apart from enable you to monitor your open projects, add information about how long you’ve spent working on each project. Could be useful if you wanted to bill someone for your time and, as you are working on different projects with different costs, you could use Mimy to show how you’ve allocated this time.

Driver Genius Pro 9

Chris Wiles — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 09:12:31 GMT

Chris Wiles, Computeractive, Thursday 2 July 2009 at 00:00:00

Find & download the latest drivers

Re-installing Windows is actually an easy process. Although it can take time to get Windows back on your system, once it is installed you’re ready to go. However, once you’ve installed Windows, most of the installed drivers are the files that shipped with the original operating system. Surely you’d be better using the most modern and up-to-date drivers?

Driver Genius enables you to do two key functions: it will establish the hardware installed on your computer and will search the Internet for the most recent drivers, download and will install on your machine. The second key function is to backup your existing drivers. This means that if you need to re-install Windows in the future, re-install Driver Genius, find the backed up driver files, install and then boot your computer.

Driver Genius will also automatically check for new drivers. Simply subscribe to the online service and you’ll be presented with information when a new driver is released for your hardware. You can then choose to install or ignore.

This is the latest v9 which ships with Windows 7 support.

UpdateStar 4.5.950

Chris Wiles — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:57:03 GMT

Chris Wiles, vnunet.com, Thursday 2 July 2009 at 00:00:00

Auto-update installed applications

Once you’ve installed an application on your system, unless it was supplied with an automatic update tool, you’ll probably forget to check to see if a new version has been released. With some freeware and shareware titles, new updates can be made available on a weekly basis. Many of the new releases may not contain new features, but they may contain bug fixes that might make the software perform more securely or efficiently on your system.

One option is to scour Download sites such as www.vnunet.com/downloads. Another option is to use a tool that will search through your installed applications and then find updates, if an update exists.

UpdateStar is such an application. It’s well designed and borrows the ribbon interface from Office 2007. You can set up an automatic update check and even purchase software installed, such as trial software.

This software shows potential. Whether it will support all your applications is another matter, although on our test system it did seem to find and check for updates for around half of our installed applications, although some of those 'upgrades' were earlier versions of installed software.

SyncBack SE 5.6.0.32

Chris Wiles — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:41:49 GMT

Chris Wiles, vnunet.com, Thursday 2 July 2009 at 00:00:00

Backup your files and important data

We are often told that backing up our information is just as important as concerning ourselves with online security.

Until something happens to our computer, such as our hard drive failing or, worse, the computer is stolen, we don't realise how important our personal information or work files are.

There's an easy solution which will allow us to avoid this problem: back up our important personal information and data at regular intervals.

Most of us were given a homepage as part of our broadband connection, but many of us do not use this storage to store our homepage. Why don't you make use of the space and utilise it for backing up your important files?

Better still, by utilising online storage you can retrieve this information from any location in the world, so you can quickly access your backup data from your laptop when you're on the road.

SyncBack SE is a simple backup tool that will enable you to backup your files to either a blank CD-R, a compact Flash drive, across your network or to an FTP site.

Eusing Free Registry Cleaner 2.5.1

Chris Wiles — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:41:49 GMT

Chris Wiles, vnunet.com, Thursday 2 July 2009 at 00:00:00

Clean up and optimise your registry

This is the software publisher's description.

Eusing Free Registry Cleaner is registry repair software that enables you to safely clean and repair registry problems with a few simple mouse clicks.

Problems with the Windows Registry are a common cause of Windows crashes and error messages. Registry problems can occur for many reasons, including references left behind after uninstalling software, incorrect removal of software, missing or corrupt hardware drivers or orphaned start-up programs.

This will significantly increase the Registry size and slow down your computer, because Windows will need more time to load, search and read data from the Registry.

Eusing Free Registry Cleaner will scan your Windows registry for invalid or obsolete information and provide a list of the errors found. After fixing the invalid entries, your system will be more stable and run faster.

For maximum safety, Eusing Free Registry Cleaner will make a backup of the repaired entries. You will be able to restore any changes made using the software by choosing Restore registry backup.

BitTorrent 6.2

Chris Wiles — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:41:49 GMT

Chris Wiles, vnunet.com, Thursday 2 July 2009 at 00:00:00

Popular P2P network for sharing files

This is the software publisher's description.

BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer protocol designed to transfer files. Users connect directly to send and receive portions of a file, while a central tracker co-ordinates the action of all peers and manages connections without knowledge of the contents of the files being distributed.

With BitTorrent, users upload at the same time they download, so network bandwidth is managed as efficiently as possible.

BitTorrent is designed to work better than other file-transfer protocols as the number of people interested in a certain file increases.

Mac OS X and Linux versions also available from the BitTorrent download page.

Messenger Plus! Live 4.82.368

Chris Wiles — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:25:46 GMT

Chris Wiles, vnunet.com, Thursday 2 July 2009 at 00:00:00

Add features to Messenger Live

This is the software publisher’s description.

Messenger Plus! Live is an add-on for Windows Live Messenger from Microsoft. Messenger Plus! adds numerous features to Messenger to make it more enjoyable. Features include the ability to have a multi-chat within one window, by making use of tabs to control your chat – much like the tab function you’ll see in Mozilla Firefox. No need to open a new chat window.

If you a heavy-duty Messenger user, you can setup quick access texts so that you can create message shortcuts and the entire word is automatically extended by Messenger Plus. Messenger Plus is very customisable, so you can include your own sounds, images and colours for your setup.

Thought out end-to-end to improve and enhance your instant messaging without getting in your way, Plus! adds lots of capabilities to Windows Live Messenger. It lets you use them at your will from the simple Plus! menu that gets added to every Messenger window and a couple of new buttons you'll find within the Messenger interface.

Fresh UI 8.35

Chris Wiles — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:25:46 GMT

Chris Wiles, vnunet.com, Thursday 2 July 2009 at 00:00:00

Optimise and tweak Windows

There are many options in Windows that are hidden and unavailable to the average user. Unless you know what you're doing, and are prepared to manually edit your Registry (not advised!), you'll never find the majority of these options.

Tweak UI is a simple application designed to get the most from Windows. The majority of the hidden options are included, along with many of the 'hard to find' options, such as the facility to turn off internal disc burning within Windows, or the autoplay option so CDs do not autoplay when you insert them in your computer.

This tool has been around for a long time so is tried and tested and safe to install, although it requires free registration.

Autoruns 9.51

Chris Wiles — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:25:46 GMT

Chris Wiles, vnunet.com, Thursday 2 July 2009 at 00:00:00

Disable those problematic 'start up' apps

When you install software on to your computer, data is submitted to your Registry and you might find that applications automatically start when you boot your computer.

The more software you install, the more likely it is that applications will delay the launch of Windows when you start your machine.

However, finding and removing these start up items is a challenging task. Even if you uninstall the original software, you might find that items remain within your Registry and that you still suffer from a machine that's taking far longer than necessary to boot.

Autoruns is a fantastic tool that will show a comprehensive list of every item that launches when you boot your computer.

It will display the origin of the items, the order in which they launch and which items start every time or occasionally, such as an antivirus application that systematically checks for new updates.

This application goes much further than the standard MSConfig utility in that you can temporarily disable start-up items and locate deep and hidden files that are only associated with installed applications.

DropBox for Mac 0.6.507

Chris Wiles — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:16:38 GMT

Chris Wiles, vnunet.com, Wednesday 1 July 2009 at 15:52:00

Backup, synchronise & share important files

Modern technology enables a team to operate in different locations across your company and the world. If you’re a software developer, there’s no reason why you couldn’t pick the best programmers based in Germany, document writers from the UK, whilst your graphic artists could be based in the States.

The problem is bringing these people together. You need a system where your team or teams can share files and information, make sure that no-one overwrites someone else’s work and keep a collection of previously updated files, so you can quickly reverse back to a previous revision, if necessary. Doing this on your website requires you have the relevant versioning technology and that it will work across various operating systems. A versioning tool that works fine on Windows may not be suitable for OS X.

DropBox is an online sharing tool that enables you to select the files you want to share and synchronise with other users, then simply upload them to the remote site. That bit is done automatically, so you don’t need to worry about having to upload the files manually. You can share folders and collaborate with other users on the files within these folders. Versioning will stop work being overwritten.

You can just use DropBox on a personal level, too. If you own a desktop computer at home, use another at work and a laptop when you’re away from the office, simply use DropBox to synchronise your important files across each machine. You can also access your DropBox files from the web, if you need access from a temporary host PC.

It’s not quite as effective as, say, SugarSync, which will attempt to synchronise documents from your Windows ‘My Documents’ folder to the relevant Documents folder on your Mac, and vice-versa.

DropBox will limit you to 2GB of free online storage (and you can purchase more, if required) and is available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Songbird for Mac 1.2

Lee Collins — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:16:38 GMT

Lee Collins, vnunet.com, Wednesday 1 July 2009 at 16:09:00

Play & manage web-based audio

Songbird is developed by a band of experienced, dedicated software developers and designers called the ‘Pioneers of the Inevitable’. Previous software includes Winamp and the Yahoo! Music Engine.

The mission of Songbird is to become the first complete web player, to play back audio and video content made available by different medial players across the Internet. You can play back any audio from MP3, AAC, OGG, FLAC, WMA formats.

It doesn’t just support online music. You can manage your offline (audio ripped from your audio CDs), too. It enables you to search and import your audio and then, once imported, you can mix and create new tracks.

Songbird is highly customisable, shipping with two themes. You can download or create your own extensions and, as it is cross-platform compatible, you can use the same application on Windows, Mac OS or Linux operating systems. Our download here is for Windows users.

TuneUp 1.5.5

Lee Collins — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:45:17 GMT

Lee Collins, vnunet.com, Wednesday 1 July 2009 at 16:48:00

Cleanse & organise your iTunes library

As we migrate to larger capacity hard drives, we are now using our computer to store our music collection. Although we still have our CD collection, with the flexibility of having our entire music database at our fingertips, it’s not all-too-easy simply to play our music via our PC.

The trouble with storing all your audio files on your computer is keeping the collection organised. With all those files in one place, it inevitable there will be issues, especially as many users often download audio from different sources, will extract their music from a CD or even from old LPs and tapes. Downloaded audio can contain misspelt tiles or missing artwork and it’s these small discrepancies that contribute to a disorganised music library.

TuneUp is a useful plug-in for iTunes that helps you to maintain an organised audio library. Use it to identify and correct any incorrect track spelling using the Gracenote database, as well as search for any missing artwork. It can do this in batches, instead of you manually correcting individual files.

The application resides on the right-hand side of the standard iTunes interface, so it’s easy to access. Although it’s reasonably small application, it does help to keep your music library organised and it’s especially useful if you have a large collection of music.

Note that this will only work with the PC version of iTunes.

VirtualBox for Mac 3.0

Lee Collins — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 11:19:00 GMT

Lee Collins, vnunet.com, Wednesday 1 July 2009 at 12:00:00

Host a virtual operating system

This is the software publisher's description.

Powerful x86 virtualization products for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). See "About VirtualBox" for an introduction; see "innotek" for more about our company.

Presently, VirtualBox runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh and OpenSolaris hosts and supports a large number of guest operating systems including but not limited to Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4 and 2.6), and OpenBSD.

VirtualBox is being actively developed with frequent releases and has an ever growing list of features, supported guest operating systems and platforms it runs on. VirtualBox is a community effort backed by a dedicated company: everyone is encouraged to contribute while innotek ensures the product always meets professional quality criteria.

On the VirtualBox site, you can find sources, binaries, documentation and other resources for VirtualBox.

Version 3.0 ships with major enhancements such as support for up to 32 CPUs per virtual guest OS, the ability to use DirectX 9 within a Windows guest, support for Windows 7 and much more.

Postbox for Windows 1.0b13

Chris Wiles — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 10:46:37 GMT

Chris Wiles, vnunet.com, Wednesday 1 July 2009 at 10:56:00

Try this brand new free email client

We often complain that too many business users automatically switch to Microsoft Office, rather than their free equivalents. Partly as they don’t have time to worry about compatibility issues, but another reason could be Microsoft Outlook. For business users, there are few better alternatives on the Windows platform. Even email clients such as Mozilla Thunderbird, ideal for the home user, were never taken up en masse for office use.

Microsoft Outlook has some clear advantages: use an Exchange server and you can synchronise calendar and ‘to do’ tasks between employees, even if they are situated in different offices. It’s well-designed, too, making the process of writing and sending emails, a breeze. Quite frankly, if you have to answer as many emails as we do, during the day, you want the minimum of fuss with your email client.

Problem is, it’s slow as a dog. If you start your Windows-based computer and open Microsoft Outlook, you often have to hang around with a fairly unresponsive computer for 15 or so minutes whilst Outlook downloads and processes your incoming email. Factor in a security tool for checking and sorting email for security hazards and it can take way too long to process your data.

How many legitimate alternatives are there to Microsoft Outlook? Few. However, the brand new Postbox cross-platform email client is a free alternative that might, finally, give Outlook some competition.

It’s difficult to describe, but Postbox has some genuinely new and unique functionality. For example, you can preview and double-click to open an email message, but also open within a new tab, much like a web browser. This means you can keep important emails open within a tab, reminding yourself to answer them later in the day, when you have more time.

You can add topics to your email (such as ‘important’), then quickly locate all emails you’ve previously flagged with this topic. Open an email and you can see a list of the contacts in the email, web links and images that are assoc iated with the message. You can view messages in the standard (list) format or group by conversations, which some people prefer.

We’ve tried the Mac and Windows version of this email client. The Mac version is more polished and looks like it will replace our default ‘Mail’ client. However, the Windows version does still need some work – for example, HTML-based emails wouldn’t render until we went out of the email message and then back again.

Postbox is still in public preview and this is for the Windows download.

Mozilla Firefox Portable 3.5

Lee Collins — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 10:46:36 GMT

Lee Collins, vnunet.com, Wednesday 1 July 2009 at 11:20:00

Portable version of the popular web browser

Some users were disappointed with the release of Mozilla Firefox 2.0. After months of betas, release candidates and previews, the new features weren’t as spectacular as people expected. However, there is only so much you can do to improve a web browser.

With the release of Mozilla Firefox 3, Mozilla decided to work hard on speeding up the rendering engine, so the web graphics has received a completely new upgrade. Dubbed ‘ Cairo’, the new graphics rendering engine should improve the output across different platforms, as it’s being developed as an open-standard.

With other improvements in the way that pages are ‘painted’ on screen, improved SVG support and CSS enhancements, the general improvements for Firefox 3.0 are based around the way it will render web pages through the browser. The new browser also ships with a new user-interface, improved bookmarks and many other new features.

This is the portable version of the long-awaited v3.5 release with features such as private web browsing, speed improvements and much more.

Postbox for Mac 1.0b13

Chris Wiles — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 09:25:29 GMT

Chris Wiles, vnunet.com, Wednesday 1 July 2009 at 11:02:00

Try this brand new free email client

Postbox is still in public preview and this is the Mac download.

Ashampoo Burning Studio 6.76

Chris Wiles — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 09:09:17 GMT

Chris Wiles, vnunet.com, Wednesday 1 July 2009 at 00:00:00

Complete & free disc burning suite

Browse what's on offer in the latest disc mastering tools and it's easy to get lost. Internet telephony, desktop publishing, music creation and video editing are all very useful in themselves, but can get in the way if all you want to do is burn a simple audio CD. But now there's a better way. Ashampoo Burning Studio 6 strips out all the non-essential extras, so that only the pure disc authoring tools are left, letting you create data, music or even some video CDs with the minimum of hassle.

Don't assume this "back to basics" approach means the program is lacking in features, though. The audio CD module supports all the main file formats, for instance (MP3, WMA, OGG, WAV and FLAC). It can create MP3 or WMA CDs, too, and rips CDs to WMA with adjustable quality settings.

It's just as easy to build data CDs, by dragging and dropping the files you want to save onto Burning Studio 6. And the program goes beyond that with a built-in backup tool, letting you create password-protected compressed backup files of your data, which it then saves to external or network drives, as well as CDs, DVDs or even Blu-ray discs.

You also get a movie burning module, ready to create VCD and SVCD discs from scratch, or regular video DVDs if you have a prepared folder with the necessary VOB, IFO and BUP files. And the package is completed with a set of useful image-handling features that let your burn or create ISO, CUE/BIN or ASHDISC files, and a few other miscellaneous tools (copy discs, erase RW discs and so on). You've got plenty of features, then, but the best part is they're all free of complex settings or obscure options, letting you get on with burning quality discs quickly, easily, and with the minimum of effort.

OpenedFilesView 1.40

Chris Wiles — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 09:09:17 GMT

Chris Wiles, vnunet.com, Wednesday 1 July 2009 at 00:00:00

Locate and close open files

A frustrating element of using any operating system is the fact that you can't stop software from crashing on your machine. Within Windows, we have the Task Manager where we're able to close down problematic software that's failing to respond.

However, this is often a simplistic way of stopping an application; often you have to shutdown the entire application even though it is merely a thread that is causing the problem.

Worse, if you find that an application is preventing you from deleting or overwriting a file, you can't easily free up this file without quitting the problematic application.

OpenedFilesView is a simple tool that enables you to quickly view applications currently running on your system and, more importantly, the files that are being accessed and whether they are 'in use' (locked) or not.

You can use this tool to close one or more of these open files, so that they are made accessible by other applications on your system.

RasterVect 14.9

Lee Collins — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 09:09:17 GMT

Lee Collins, vnunet.com, Wednesday 1 July 2009 at 00:00:00

Transform your images into popular vector formats

This is a software publisher's description.

RasterVect can transform any raster image into a vector format. Raster drawings (BMP, TIFF, JPEG, PCX) can be imported by scanning original paper drawings from any scanner with Twain or WIA support.

The target vector formats (DXF, WMF, EMF, EPS, and AI) are supported by most CAD applications that use vector graphics, such as AutoCAD and CorelDraw.

Viewing tools include zooming, scrolling, and colour selection. The program has four conversion methods (including outline and centreline), keeps the scale of an initial drawing, can correct a turn angle of an initial raster drawing, has various raster filters (despeckle, smoothing, median, hole removing), and has vector- and raster-editing capabilities.

Pidgin Portable 2.5.8

Lee Collins — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 09:09:17 GMT

Lee Collins, vnunet.com, Wednesday 1 July 2009 at 15:32:00

Portable multi-platform IM client

Multi-platform instant messaging program. You can talk to your friends using AIM, ICQ, Jabber/XMPP, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, IRC, Novell GroupWise Messenger, QQ, Lotus Sametime, SILC, SIMPLE, and Zephyr.

Pidgin can log in to multiple accounts on multiple IM networks simultaneously. This means that you can be chatting with friends on AIM, talking to a friend on Yahoo Messenger, and sitting in an IRC channel all at the same time.

Pidgin supports many features of the various networks, such as file transfer, away messages, and typing notification. It also goes beyond that and provides many unique features. A few popular features are Buddy Pounces, which give the ability to notify you, send a message, play a sound, or run a program when a specific buddy goes away, signs online, or returns from idle; and plugins, consisting of text replacement, a buddy ticker, extended message notification, iconify on away, spell checking, tabbed conversations, and more.

This is the Windows download. You can download other versions for other platforms, from the Pidgin website.

Note that this is the portable version of Pidgin IM.

Skype 4.1.0.136

Chris Wiles — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 08:53:21 GMT

Chris Wiles, vnunet.com, Wednesday 1 July 2009 at 00:00:00

Brand new major update to the popular chat & VOIP client

When it comes to making free calls across the internet using Voice over IP technology, Skype is certainly leading the pack. With almost 26 million people having downloaded the software, Skype is the most used free internet application.

Developed by the people behind the file-sharing service Kazaa, Skype offers free internet telephony with another PC user as long as both have the Skype software.

Of course, you're not limited to making calls, either. If you can see another Skype user online, you can request a text-based chat, in the same manner as you would through Windows Live Messenger or similar applications. If they're not at their desk, they will see your message as soon as they return.

This is the official release of Skype 4. New features include a brand new user-interface, improved alerts, better audio clarity, an improved method of managing multiple chats and much more.

Advanced SystemCare Free 3.3.4

Lee Collins — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 08:53:21 GMT

Lee Collins, vnunet.com, Wednesday 1 July 2009 at 00:00:00

Maintain and tweak your PC

Maintaining a consistently, smooth running computer isn’t as easy as you would imagine, there are so many issues that could affect the day-to-day use of your PC, which results in difficulties when identifying problems with your system. Another reason could be that it could be a number of different factors rather than one particular problem.

Advanced SystemCare Free is a comprehensive PC utility suite that will help you optimise and tweak your PC, then repair and protect it. This free utility is equipped with all the features needed to maintain a smooth running, error free PC with relative ease.

Everything you need is contained within the software, a spyware scanning tool, adware blocker, privacy tools and a variety of system scanners that enable you to find and fix invalid registry entries and clear temporary files. Another useful tool is the system restore that works in conjunction with XP’s own system restore utility.

The useful thing with this software is that you can provide your PC with all it needs from a maintenance perspective, and you don’t need to be overly computer literate to make use of it.

AVG Anti-Virus Free 8.5.386

Chris Wiles/Tim Smith — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 19:34:18 GMT

Chris Wiles/Tim Smith, vnunet.com, Tuesday 30 June 2009 at 00:00:00

Impressive and free antivirus package

AVG continues to be one of the most popular free antivirus programs available on the internet and it maintains this position with a combination of effective protection and an easy to use interface.

AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition 8 improves on both areas, and is an essential upgrade, as updates will be stopped for the previous version 7.5. If you already have AVG installed it is best to click on the upgrade option when it is offered. If you have never installed it before, this is the download to use. We would recommend disconnecting from the internet during installation as there will a period where there is no protection.

As noted the interface of AVG Free has been improved and it is easier to see what protection AVG is providing and what needs attention via icons in the main part of the screen. Tabs along the left hand side give quick access to important information on updates and ongoing scans.

In addition to traditional antivirus protection, AVG Free now offers protection from Spyware without installing extra software.

An extra feature added with AVG 8 is the LinkScanner. Also available as a standalone download, LinkScanner works with Internet Explorer and Firefox to check links found in Google, Yahoo and MSN searches to make sure that there is no risk to clicking on the links. There is a slight delay as the pages are checked but it is worth the short wait in exchange for avoiding malicious (or hacked) sites.