The featured game demo’s this month are Sleeping Dogs, Kung Fu Strike: The Warrior’s Rise, Unmechanical, Skyjacker, Project Giana, and A Virus Named TOM.

Follow these links for our other ‘issue 271 web packs:
Digitise and organise your music!
Protect your PC from Internet threats!
The unsung freeware Heros!
Issue 271 game demo roundup!

Sleeping Dogs

I can only figure that the Square Enix board of directors must have thought something along the lines of “Hey guys that GTA game makes oodles of cash, how about we make one too”. And they did, and it’s a corker. It’s got everything you ask for in a game following the action packed existence of an ass kicking undercover cop taking down the criminal underworld from the inside. Guns, cars, and impressive martial arts combat moves. All stitched together with a strong narrative.

Download from here (Steam required)

Kung Fu Strike: The Warrior’s Rise

Here’s a fairly entertaining retro-chic button bashing fighting game for penny under 8 quid. It features local co-op and versus modes if you have any chums you can convince to huddle around your around PC.

Download from here (Steam required)

Unmechanical

A charming indie physics-based puzzler staring a cutesy robot bearing a propeller to help him travel the obstacle ridden caverns that make up the game area. You can fly around at will and use his tractor beam to lift and move objects to clear a path, and activate switches to open doors.

Download from here

Skyjacker

There isn’t anything unique on offer in this free roaming space combat game, not to say it’s pants or anything. But I was more interested in it’s copious bundle options on the store page. Fifteen in all, starting at just $15 for the digital download edition. But if you want more you can get the boxed edition, artwork, t-shirts and other gubbins. A nice touch indeed, but if you’re in actual fact Scrooge McDuck sitting on vault of gold coins, you may like to stump up for the $10,000 edition. Besides getting the first born child of the developers, they’ll also immortalise in the game. Thats got to be worth selling a kidney for!

Download from here

Project Giana

A work in progress crowd funded game to bring back this retro platformer classic (or Mario rip off) to modern systems. As the final release is some way off from completion this beta demo is a good impression of what to expect later on. I can’t really say it really resembles the original, nevertheless, it’s shaping up rather nicely!

Download from here

A Virus Named TOM

Don’t worry, installing this won’t turn your computer into a virus infected zombie system. In the game you play the part of the virus, intent on causing destruction on behalf a slightly bonkers ex-employee in series of increasingly more challenging levels. To successfully infect each system you must form an unbroken circuit by rotating  the broken sections while doing you best to avoid the nasties hampering your time limited efforts.

Download from here (Steam required)

With our usual subject-focused Web Packs we certainly miss out on some of the other interesting freeware around, so we figured why not have a special one just for some of the other interesting  software I’ve stumbled across but never found a suitable home in our web packs. There is no particular order or subject here, just 25 random picks I think are genuinely useful and unique.

Follow these links for our other ‘issue 271 web packs:
Digitise and organise your music!
Protect your PC from Internet threats!
The unsung freeware Heros!
Issue 271 game demo roundup!

Attribute Changer

Each individual file has its own set of attributes and metadata. Within Windows Explorer there are many different locations to access and change these attributes. With Attribute Changer you can adjust so many options from one location such as; dates and time for photos, files and folders. You can also change permissions for files and folders, so you don’t have to navigate the vast properties menu.

Website

Right Click Cascading Menu Creator

RBSOft’s range of enhancements and tweaks are well worth checking out, but for now let’s focus on the Right Click Cascading Menu Creator. No prizes for guessing what it does but you may not realise just how useful it could be for you – right-clicking is the most convenient way to simplify and optimise navigation and browsing and having the option to create and customise files and folders within a right-click menu will save you a lot of time. The interface is simple to use and you can even attach your choice of icon to your items.

Website

iPrint

There’s often a lot of paper wasted when printing emails and web pages, when what you only want is on one page, you end up with two or three other pages that go straight in the bin. It’s such a common compliant that some bright sparks came up with a solution. iPrint installs as a virtual printer driver making it universally compatible with any software with a print function. Send your pages to iPrint first and through it’s preview you can selectable delete pages from the print job. What’s more, up to four pages can be shrunk and printed on a single side of A4.

Website

Belvedere

Keeping all of your files and folders in check can be tricky business. Some people save everything to the Desktop, leaving it cluttered an unusable. The same goes for the Documents folder and with external storage becoming ever more reliant, most people will need help in this department. Step in Belvedere, which as an automated file manager that will enable you to clean up your act with ease.

Website

ArsClip

The humble Windows Clipboard has been a steady companion to us for some time now and yet it has never been given the wings it deserves to expand and become more. Well not by Microsoft anyway. ArsClip has been developed over the years into what is now a very useful program. With the swift press of a hotkey of your choice you can open the program and start pasting all manner of files, not just text.

Website

SageThumbs

Thumb previews in Windows are useful, but for some reason Microsoft only saw fit to support a small number of file formats. If you don’t find yourself frequently working with the more popular formats you’ll want to install SageThumbs. We can’t even begin to list the files supported simply because there are 162 of them, that’s 224 extensions in total.

Website

wikidPad

Jotting down some notes in Notepad or Sticky Notes is quite a static affair; you make your note, you save the note and then you refer to the note when needed. Pretty simple stuff really, but if you have multiple notes and ideas things can get a little confusing. With wikidPad you can do a lot more. This program is effectively a live wiki. You create the note and within the note you create a WikiWord that can be called up between notes. Your information can be cross-linked and your ideas may become reality all the more quickly.

Website

Favekeeper

Having favourite sites saved in your browser is great, but when you are using multiple computers and different browsers, it gets a little more complicated. Favekeeper changes all that by allowing all of favourites to the cloud where they can be picked by on any machine. You can sync your favourites and bookmarks over different browsers too.

Website

GMail Drive Shell Extension

Webmail is all well and good for numerous reasons, but what if you could utilise the storage that it has to offer. Gmail Drive Shell Extension holds one solution. It can turn your Gmail account into a virtual drive that can be accessed straight from Windows. Each file uploaded appears in your Gmail inbox as an email with an attachment containing the file.

Website

Pocket

Now I know this happens to everyone. You are browsing the web and you notice something that you want to look at, but you put it off till later. How many times have you forgotten what it was that caught your eye in the first place? Pocket is simple, you see something you like then you save it for later. It could be anything from articles to videos leaving you to access it anytime, anywhere on any device.

Website

Gamma Control

Although the contrast between dark and light certainly adds drama to many games, there are times when you need to see the darker areas of your screen. In single player this can be a cumbersome enough process, having to back-up to the main menu, then the options screen… hardly conducive to the atmosphere. In multiplayer games, you’ll be dead by the time you’ve made your adjustments. Gamma Control gives you control over the levels with semi-custom hotkeys, allowing you to increase, decrease, reset to default and last used settings by pushing a couple of keys.

Website

FontViewOK

We’ve all been there – you recognise a font and you want to use it, but you simply can’t remember what it’s called and therefore you’re stuck. It would take an awfully long time to click through every typeface you have, and you’d probably get fed up before you’re even halfway through. FontViewOK displays custom text in every font you have installed along with it’s name and allows options for colour, size and style, enabling you to scan through and find the typeface you need.

Website

Writemonkey

If you’ve ever had to write anything and keep to a deadline, you’ll know that procrastination is the mother of failure. And who is procrastination’s mother? That’s right – distraction. Writemonkey is designed to eliminate distractions and allow you to focus on writing what you need to write. By stripping away the visual elements of things like Word and OpenOffice, yet retaining the powerful features and functions, Writemonkey leaves your creative mind free to create, safe in the knowledge that everything can be taken care of later on.

Website

Patch My PC

Over the years of using your PC, there may be many programs and plugins that are not getting updated regularly. This can cause all sorts of problems down the line and you may end up spending a long time looking for the out-of-date objects, then a long time finding the updates, downloading them etc… It’s a good job, then, that the free tool Patch My PC  is here. This portable application will check what’s on your PC against its list of common third-party applications, then flag it green if it’s up-to-date, red if it’s out-of-date and black if it isn’t installed. It also provides tools to uninstall multiple programs and manage startup applications.

Website

Neembuu Uploader

One of the most infuriating things when transferring a large file from your computer to a server online is if your browser crashers. Avoid this painful experience by using this app, which features automatic download URL generation, (and deletion URLs if the filehost supports it) login support for filehosts where you have accounts, upload histories.

Website

iMetaSearch

The internet is perhaps most valuable as an instant research tool, collating a gigantic wealth of information and study for anyone to access. However, the big search engines will often return multiple results of a similar nature and ranked results appear in the same order every time. This can make it tough to find which results are pertinent. iMetaSearch uses Latent Search Algorithms to group results into interest groups, making it easy for you to sift through and ignore links that are irrelevant to what you need.

Website

FolderIco Free

It can be argued that are some handy features in Mac OSX, such as the ability to change the colour of folders. It might sound simple, but it can be a great way to improve productivity. FolderIco Free enables you to choose from a wide variety of colours (far more than in OSX) and you also have the option to attach icons to folders too.

Website

TapinRadio

It only seems like yesterday that we were all going out and buying blank tapes to record our favourite radio programs. Well, those times are upon us once again. TapinRadio is a very simple program that can locate radio stations and record them at the press of a button. This program can be very useful for the visually impaired with the inclusion of a screen reader.

Website

Balabolka

The Text-To-Speech system within Windows can be very handy for the blind or poor sighted, but you are tied to your PC. Bablabolka is an app that allows you to save the text as a multitude of audio formats. It also allows the TTS system to read more than just system commands and text files. It can also read other popular file types such as DOC, EPUB, HTML and PDF.

Website

KidLogger

The internet is a great place to be educated, watch our favourite movies and film clips, listen to music and keep in touch with friends. It is no wonder that our children use the internet a great deal too, but do you know what your children are doing on the web when you are not there? KidLogger is a program that collects a journal of activity on computers and mobile phones, so you can keep an eye on what the kids a re doing online.

Website

Open Freely

If you have a file of which the format is unfamiliar and unable to open; whether it’s an graphic, document, media file, or archive! Open Freely deal will handle it with ease. This application supports over 100 file types, as it’s soul purpose in life is opening the files you can’t.

Website

WizMouse

It can be quite frustrating to scroll content in multiple programs and windows, as you need to activate the window first. With WizMouse you eliminate the need to have the window active as it will allow you to scroll whatever window your mouse is over. It can also enable mouse wheel functionality in applications that do not support mouse wheels.

Website

Yammm

Yet Another Media Meta Manager runs in the background to populate your stored movies and TV shows with accurate and relevant information, making it easier and more rewarding to browse in a media centre/HTPC environment. Monitoring folders for new media it will hunt down artwork along with metadata (information about the meida, such as director’s name, year of release, a brief synopsis etc) and can save automatically save playlists for playing back multiple file movies and TV series.

Website

Texter

If you’re used to texting on your mobile phone, you’ve probably grown to love (or hate) predictive text input. Texter is a lightweight background application for Windows that brings predictive text input to your word processing, email writing and note-taking. It is customisable with your own Hotstrings, so you can set up what your quick keystrokes are and what they should be replaced by. Once you have it configured how you like it, it will save you a lot of time and stave off the tedium of typing out recurrent phrases in full.

Website

Dropboxifier

Designed to work with DropBox, this is a powerful mod that will allow multiple clients PCs to read and write the same shared data simultaneously. Invaluable when you need several machines to access up-to-date data at once. Kind of like Steam Cloud for your desktop.

Website

These days, it doesn’t have to cost you an arm and a leg to ensure your online security. The following list is a complete solution to keeping your PC and the data on it safe from harm. We’ve tried to pick out the best options in each area, so hopefully you’ll find something that works for you and at the very least you may consider a new approach to maintaining your web safety.

Follow these links for our other ‘issue 271 web packs:
Digitise and organise your music!
Protect your PC from Internet threats!
The unsung freeware Heros!
Issue 271 game demo roundup!

avast! Free Antivirus (rates as the best free virus protection)

Microsoft’s own virus protection (Microsoft Security Essentials) is perfectly capable and system resource friendly. Ideal for protecting low end budget systems, but your main multi-core rig packed with excess RAM is better off going down the third-party route for catching threats. Any additional system overhead will not be noticeable. As well as being sensible with what you click, it’s a no-brainer to install one of the myriad free antivirus solutions around. With a little research we’ve discovered that Avast Free Antivirus is currently the most potent free solution available, closely followed by stalwarts AVG Free AntiVirus and Avira AntiVir Personal. It’s your call which you prefer though…

Website

BufferZone Pro (virtual sandbox protection)

As the name suggests, BufferZone Pro can give you a buffer zone against online threats. Anti-virus, firewall and anti-spam are all form of security that are the norm, but even they can sometimes miss certain attacks. BufferZone allows you to chat with IM, do your online banking without being exposed and potentially unprotected. Used with basic Anti-virus and Firewall software, Bufferzone can offer total protection.

Website

MailWasher Free (intercept virus infected spam)

If you have any type of desktop email service then you are at a greater risk of receiving spam. Compared to web-based mail services, such programs don’t usually have any effective spam filtering. Enter MailWasher Free. This app integrates with any email program, so after installation you know you will be spam-free, providing yet another level of protection from web-bourne threats.

Website

Comodo Firewall (rock solid connection security)

This is a light-weight and intuitive firewall from web security giants Comodo that gets to work quickly, downlaoding and installing in a matter of a few minutes. It runs without draining your resources and quickly learns what your system wants to allow and deny, and although some people may find the notifications a little intrusive they can be customised not to appear. But after all, you want to know what you’re being protected from, right?

Website

AVG Secure Search (prevents access to phishing sites)

Not everyone is able to tell when a search result is fake, dangerous or even illegal – the snippets of what you see when using a search through Google, for instance, can be massaged to like like the real deal, you click it thinking it’s fine then BOOM! You’ve put your PC at risk from bad internet men. AVG Secure Search is a cross-browser add-on that rates your search results and alerts you to potential threats, unwanted behaviour and other security risk-factors.

Website

LastPass (safely store your sensitive passwords)

Think of LastPass as a kind of benevolent hacker, that roots around in your Windows system and finds potentially ‘at-risk’ passwords then makes them safe. The browser add-on will encrypts locally (i.e. on your machine as opposed to over the network) meaning your information is completely secure from anyone or program eavesdropping on your network traffic. The usual form-filling and AES-256 encryption are present here, but with many more intricate features to ensure you are safe at all times.

Website

Google Chrome (currently the World’s most secure browser)

The best place to start when looking to sure-up your online security is the very portal through which you access the web – your browser. Although there are now add-ons and plugins available for pretty much any browser that will give you added protection in some way or another, Google’s own Chrome is now widely accepted to be the safest browser for general use. It even includes it’s own sandbox (the feature that maintains separation between the browser and the OS, preventing attacks from hitting your system) which is seen as the most effective and consistently applied of any browser that contains such a feature. No wonder it’s so popular.

Website

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Free (stop Spyware in its tracks)

According to Malwarebytes, 97% of all online threats are attributable to so-called malware – this term encompasses almost anything that performs undesired actions on your computer. Fortunately, their Anti-Malware software is a powerful tool designed to prevent the infection of your machine in real-time. If you have already fallen foul of some dodgy warez, Malwarebytes is able to remove such undesirable and malicious objects. It is incredibly simple to use and very effective, using chameleon technology to, quarantine,  infiltrate and rid infected systems of trojans, worms, rootkits, spyware and more.

Website

Get a handle on malware before it can do any harm

KeyScrambler Personal (protect against keyloggers)

One particularly sneaky way fraudsters steal your details is by deploying keyloggers. As the name suggests, they log your keystrokes during a web session, for instance, and record the results for Mr Big to use at his leisure. KeyScrambler, as the name suggests, scrambles your keystrokes at the keyboard driver and unscrambles them at the browser, keeping your details safe from view.

Website

Spotflux (hide your identity and cloud threat protection)

Spotflux serves up free internet encrypted anonymity for all! Once installed you simply click ‘Enable’ and few seconds later all your web traffic is directed through their servers. This is more than just a simple proxy to hide your identity though, SpotFlux intercepts malware and tracking cookies through cloud protection adding another important layer of protection. The trade off  here is a slower internet. A quick test reduced our 28Mbps connection to just over 2Mbps. General web browsing isn’t terribly hit, but downloads and media streaming are slowed to a crawl.

Website

In this Web Pack we’re complimenting our tutorial in the magazine all about digitising your music and turning your dusty old records and cassettes into newfangled MP3′s. Chances are, that collection of retro tunes you’ve got packed in bin liners now living in the dark reaches of your loft along with the spiders hasn’t succumbed to degradation, so dust them off, read our tutorial and use the freely available tools below we’ve selected here, to digitise, organise and playback all those old favourites from your youth. Lets face it, music was better then, it’s all just shouting these days. Stupid kids. Must dash, I think I can here the meals on wheels van arriving and I haven’t put my teeth in!

Follow these links for our other ‘issue 271 web packs:
Digitise and organise your music!
Protect your PC from Internet threats!
The unsung freeware Heros!
Issue 271 game demo roundup!

Audacity

Audacity is a mature Open Source music recording and editing suite, offering simple tools for quick editing tasks, plus a host of sophisticated tools for  multi-track mixing. It’s perfect for converting your old audio tapes or vinyl into digital files; enabling you to record, edit, clean, and finally exporting them to MP3 files.

Website

MusicBee

Where Windows Media Player is limited to basic playlists and funky visualization effects, for more functionality you should seek out a dedicated music manager like this prime example! Regardless of whether your music collection is split over different folders, local drives, or a network. Once you’ve added your tunes to MusicBee, your collection will become instantly accessible. The application offers some clever features such as playing similar music from your library, and even finding new artists that you may like.

Website

MediaMonkey Standard

MediaMonkey is a more serious media manager than its name suggests, handling both music and movie collections with equal efficiency. Impressively, MediaMonkey can automatically find and add tags to media, or fix files with incomplete metadata. The complete feature list is impressive and extensive, including CD ripping, disc burning, media playback, playlists, and syncing with portable media players.

Website

Helium Music Manager

Adding more choice to your music manager options is this rather interesting  offering. Helium Music Manager has a similar set of functions to MediaMonkey, but with the addition of a separate mobile app for controlling your PC  Helium Music Manager with your iOS device. This includes piping your music from your PC through to the device over the internet.

Website

Jaangle

If you find other music managers too overly specced  or complex, than Jaangle maybe just right for you, balancing easy-of-use and essential functions for managing music collections. While a tune is playing, Jaangle will dynamically download and display a short artist/band biography and image.

Website

MP3 Quality Modifier

Just like video conversion and optimisation, audio files can be adjusted to in the same fashion to help reduce file size and maintain acceptable quality. Dropping the bitrate marginally will reduce quality by imperceptible levels, but spread this across many audio files, the size reduction will be significant. MP3 Quality Modifier takes into account the possibility of handling multiple files at once so batch file and folder processing is included.

Website

Audio Extractor for Free

This utility makes short work of extracting and saving audio from videos. We experienced problems it recognising MOVs, but all other formats worked with no issues, including FLVs. The program supports batch processing, so queuing up multiple jobs is no problem for the software. Pinned to the bottom of the interface is a visual timeline for scanning and audio playback. Using markers, just the portion of audio you need saved out can be highlighted.

Website

mp3DirectCut

mp3DirectCut  gives you the virtual scissors to apply trimming, and copy and paste editing to MP3 audio files. It’s completely non-destructive, so saved edits retain the original quality. The software includes audio recording and a handful of useful filters to clean up the audio you’ve imported.

Website

Mp3Tag

The embedded meta data contained in audio files aids the crucial management of large collections. Jukebox software and portable players all rely on this information to group songs and relate them to artists and albums. Using Mp3Tag it’s made much easier to add and edit this meta data on multiple files at once.

Website

Another batch of the latest games demos try your hand at! Enjoy Orcs Must Die! 2, Quantum Conundrum, E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy, Big Bang Racing, Pro Evolution Soccer 2013, and Deponia.

Follow these links for our other ‘issue 270 web packs:
Cooler Stress Testing!
The Best Desktop Enhancements!
Photo Editing and Correction!
Issue 270 game demo roundup!

Orcs Must Die! 2

Orcs Must Die! 2 is more of the same Orc bashing action we loved before. As ever, its a finely balanced melange of third-person shooting and tower defense elements, requiring both strategy and a fast trigger finger. One without the other won’t do, you’ll be kept on your toes throughout each hectic level right to the very end. The game remains familiar in mechanics and visuals, plus some welcome new enemy types and many new traps, amulets and other upgrades. Skulls can now be refunded so you can buy and spend this limited currency on different builds to help tackle specific levels. Coop multiplayer is also a new feature here, so now you can team up with friends with half a chance to beat the game on Nightmare.

Download from here (Steam required)

Quantum Conundrum

Quantum Conundrum is a physics puzzler where the player can hop between dimensions to completely alter the physical properties of the environment. The fluffy dimension makes everything light as a feather. The heavy dimension does the opposite, and then there’s the slow, and finally the reverse gravity dimension.  They all seem obvious enough from these labels, and progress is made by using your newly found powers in various combinations to manipulate objects to help you on your merry way. The brains behind the game is an ex-Valve employee who worked on Portal, so not only have you learnt about this game you have some trivia to tell your grandchildren too. Or not!

Download from here

E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy

Check out the trailer and you’ll see some rather neat concepts, sadly it’s a bit let down in actual execution. E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy is rather over complex in many ways, as you soon discover when attempting to decipher the user interface. Its steep learning curve in what should be some basic controls is a sure fire turn off, and a big shame. Putting that bit aside, the gameplay itself is produced to an average level so Deux Ex beater it is not. With more investment and talent backing the production and it could have been something quite special.

Download from here (Steam required)

Big Bang Racing

Console-land is Big Bang Racing’s natural environment, where you’ll find it  strutting its feathers on your Xbox or PS3 as a digital download purchase. I can’t really throw any negative points in this games general direction as a PC title either, its rather enjoyable bombing around in the cartoon cars and twisty tracks. There’s only a single track in this demo, but that should be enough to decide either way.

Download from here (Steam required)

Pro Evolution Soccer 2013

Needing no introduction, the institution that is PES returns once again with its annual refresh. Last year (’round’) was won by FIFA, so consider this Konami’s reply to reclaim the footy sim crown! Interestingly this demo comes to us well in advance of the retail release which is some weeks off. PES is hoping the newly tweaked controls, and updated visuals will appeal to the masses.

Download from here

Deponia

Point-and-click adventures don’t come around often so it’s always good to see a new one visit once in a while. What’s more. Deponia is a very solid game with crisp visuals with well written and professionally voiced acting throughout. Elsewhere, the game is packed with lovable characters, comedy moments and plenty of puzzles to keep you entertained as you wander your way through the charming story.

Download from here

The Web Pack this week has us taking a good look at the top photo editing solutions you can get your mitts on for absolutely free.  There’s some seriously good software to be had that doesn’t compromise on features you’d expect to see in paid software. So if you’re in the market for a photo editing application, save your spends and try some for these for size first!

Follow these links for our other ‘issue 270 web packs:
Cooler Stress Testing!
The Best Desktop Enhancements!
Photo Editing and Correction!
Issue 270 game demo roundup!

GIMP

For free, nothing really comes close to superior power of GIMP. It’s often referred too as the free version of Photoshop. It not a bad comparison but rather closer to the pre-CS evolution of the product. GIMP offers the tools for very complex editing jobs which go far beyond the realms of simple photo enhancement. There’s the Clone and Heal tools for correcting image perfections, layers with masking support, and the Paths tool for precisely tracing objects. It’s a been a while since I’ve tried GIMP, and I’m ultimately impressed with the upgraded features and intuitive functionality.

Website

Paint.NET

Paint.NET is an excellent lightweight all-rounder for image editing jobs. Its not focused towards photo specific editing so you won’t find a clone tool or auto red eye correction, but does host all the common filter effects and essential adjustment tools you’ll need. The big win is its intuitive interface layout and tools. If you’ve used any other image editor, you’ll feel completely at home with Paint.NET.

Website

Hornil StylePix

After a bit of fiddling Honril StylePix proves to be a great little photo editing application for   simple jobs and provides sliders for configuring individual tools to precise pixel measures. All edits are recorded in an Action List so you can reverse any changes rapidly making it a joy to experiment with the assortment of filters. StylePix packs a lot of function into small package, making it ideal for for desktop and netbooks alike.

Website

Photo Pos Pro

What was once a great value paid-for photo-editing and image creation program is now freeware. The range of actions and abilities available in Photo Pos Pro rivals some of the most popular software in this category, allowing you to easily edit and enhance your photgraphs using layers, create graphics from scratch and manipulate images with selection tools, filters masks and more. Website

PhotoFiltre

As the name would suggest, the main focus of this neat image retouching software is filters.  PhotoFiltre  contains over 100 different filter effects, ranging from very basic things like brightness adjustment to some more creative and complex artistic effects, like pastel and charcoal drawing. Alongside these are the obligatory photo enhancement tools and batch processing. Website

Photoscape

Photoscape puts the emphasis on fun, whilst still maintaining a good range of useful enhancement and editing functions. It features many creative filters and tools, from graphic borders to shaped cropping, stylised effects and photo merging/combining for fun results that are great to share with family and friends. It also contains the option to print predetermined settings, like calendar pages and lined paper, allowing you to create customised stationery. It is a nice way to casually edit pictures, and ideal for those who get put off by the intensity of more serious image manipulation suites. Website

FastStone Image Viewer

The sheer number of different image file types can be very confusing, even for experienced users.  Luckily, FastStone Image Viewer is an intuitive and powerful tool for not just viewing many different file types but also converting them to different formats. Add to this a range of fundamental editing and enhancement tools, EXIF information and JPEG comment handling and even dual-monitor support and you’ll find that FastStone proves to be an invaluable tool for organising your photographs. Website

Retouch Pilot Lite

Retouch Pilot Lite is more stand alone plug-in than fully-fledged photo editor. The software enables you to correct ugly image artefacts like scratches and dust, or completely remove objects from complex backgrounds. Detailed walkthrough tutorials for fixing different imperfections are included and show you just how quick and easy it is to manage effective results.

Website

Hugin

Hugin is a powerful tool for creating and editing scenic panoramas from your photographs. The creative scope of the program is quite staggering for what seems like a pretty straightforward task.  From ‘stitching’ together two photos to create a traditional panoramic shot, to combining multiple photographs for amazing composite images, everything is covered. If you’re not sure why you’d want to use the program, check out the gallery link on the Hugin website to see just what can be done with it!

Website

Lightbox

ALthough Lightbox is no longer updated, it is a fantastically useful enhancement tool for photographs. It has been written from scratch by a photo editing enthusiast/expert and features many of the more useful tools you would expect to see in something like Photoshop. Lightbox is focused mainly on simple yet effective enhancement of photos, as opposed to the complicated and challenging manipulation possible with other software. That said, it does feature some of the more creative tools such as a clone brush and filters.

Website

Window’s 8 will be knocking on our doors very soon, and personally I’m finding it difficult to justify the upgrade from the rock solid foundations Window 7. Even if the upgrade price is as low as they’re promising us! I’m yet to be convinced it’s not much more than a dressed up edition of 7. So why bother? And if you want to sex up your operating system for either looks or function then we have selected some prime free software to you give your desktop some visual upgrades.

Follow these links for our other ‘issue 270 web packs:
Cooler Stress Testing!
The Best Desktop Enhancements!
Photo Editing and Correction!
Issue 270 game demo roundup!

LiteStep

Not for the faint-hearted, LiteStep essentially enables users to build their own Windows desktop. Using your own custom recipe of scripts, modules and themes it’s possible to implement some,  none or all the functions and elements of the standard desktop as you prefer. If you are lees inclined to go about designing your own but are curious to see what LiteStep can do, there are plenty of community-developed interfaces ready to go, so you can just download and try them out.

Website

Real Desktop Standard

Here is a different, but largely useless desktop UI replacement. Real Desktop is a 3D desktop where icons can be arranged within virtual 3D space. It’s an interesting curiosity to behold but fails to improve upon the normal Windows environment. Your taskbar and all other folder/file operations are left alone so other than the transformed desktop, things remain the same.

Website

Fences

The desktop can easily become a cluttered graveyard for shortcuts and documents. This problem is instantly transformed with Fences. It’s an incredibly simple idea but utterly effective. With Fences you create  desktop windows to drop and organise your desktop icons/documents into. These windows can be named, sized, moved and scrolled. The previously messy arrangement of desktop icons becomes a neat and properly useful workspace for shortcuts and documents.

Website

Windows 8 Transformation Pack

If you just desire the shiny appearance of Windows 8 then just  fake it with Windows 8 Transformation Pack. It’s not the complete replica quite yet so keep checking for updates as development progresses. The general appearance is achieved by applying a custom Windows Theme and loading RocketDock to emulate the Windows 8 sidebar, but currently lacks a Metro UI clone. The headline image at top of this page shows Windows 8 Transformation Pack in action.

Website

SharpEnviro

SharpEnviro resembles a slicker Windows desktop UI so it’s all instantly familiar and accessible with some added extras. The most obvious makeover is the addition of a top configurable taskbar sporting an assortment of gauges, media playback buttons and shortcuts  to common applications. The bottom taskbar remains, but in a new form. The Start icon is gone (access your programs with a right-click), and includes buttons extending your workspace to 4 virtual desktops. Any regular Windows Sidebar gadgets remain unaffected, plus SharpEnviro includes bunch of it’s own you can add and configure with themes such as the lovely analogue desktop clock as modelled in our screenshot.

Website

Winstep Nexus Dock

Windows aside, Apple have got a few things right with their OSX family of operating systems, one of which is the Dock system. It is the natural evolution of the task bar, allowing quick and easy launching of programs, folders, documents etc from one easy-on-the-eye location. Winstep’s Nexus dock is by far the best free Windows based version of the dock system, and with the premium features in their Ultimate version they have arguably evolved the dock system beyond even Apple’s current level. It’s like using a whole new operating system!

Website

Handy Start Menu

If, like me, you hate the programs menu in Windows 7 because it’s cumbersome, messy and unintuitive then fear not. Handy Start Menu replaces the regular Programs menu with an easier to navigate variation on the theme. Programs are automatically grouped into categories so your games, utilities, and applications are no longer just mashed together in a big, unintuitive list.

Website

Launchy

If re-organising your start menu programs isn’t enough, why not cut the whole menu-navigation element out of your PC use? Launchy indexes your start menu programs, images, documents and just about anything else you need and allows you to quickly open any of them simply by typing the first few letters. There are plugins available to add extra functionality, such as switching between open windows and running tasks.

Website

XWidget

Desktops are boring – it’s as simple as that. You can try to liven it up with fancy wallpapers but essentially, it’s just a flat grid of icons to double-click. XWidget provides a slick, simple and attractive interface for shortcuts, and also includes a powerful visual editor for you to create your own animated widgets – surely that’s enough to hold your interest in 7 and delay your foray into the shiny new world of Metro UI?

Website

Emerge Desktop

If you like an uncluttered interface, try Emerge Desktop. Install it as the default shell and you’ll have no taskbar, Start button or menu: nothing but a single box at the top of the screen to hold your system tray icons. To launch programs, right-click the desktop for quick access to the old Start menu and Quick Launch toolbar. It’s easy to add new items to the menu, or create hotkeys to launch the tools that you need.

Website

Like all utilities designed to stress test your components, they push things to their limits for sustained periods. Limits that you’re unlikely experience in normal usage. Yet if your rig can cope with these torture tests then you’ll at least have the measured knowledge that your cooling set up is adequately covered with some headroom for some potential overclocking fun?

Follow these links for our other ‘issue 270 web packs:
Cooler Stress Testing!
The Best Desktop Enhancements!
Photo Editing and Correction!
Issue 270 game demo roundup!

FurMark

FurMark will send your stock GPU cooler into a veritable frenzy, and a good 10-15+ degrees more toasty than normal gaming conditions.  It’s the perfect test after making clock frequency adjustments to check stability. FurMark records temps throughout so you can watch in horror as the temps soar with your bog standard stock cooler!

Website

GPU-Z

GPU-Z monitors GPU specs, clock speed and temps. While running it registers minimum, average and maximum readings. In a practical setting have GPU-Z going while playing games to keep an eye on temps.

Website

Heaven Benchmark

Besides being a commonly used standard for comparing GPU performance in reviews, Heaven is a useful test for cooler capability, and overclocking stability. The benchmark renders  a series of short complex scenes that only top-end graphics cards have a chance of smooth performance. Any visual glitches may indicate heat problems or clock frequencies set above their tolerance.

Website

HeavyLoad

HeavyLoad is a reliable all-round torture test for your CPU, GPU, RAM and main OS drive. Just select the component combination and hit the play button. HeavyLoad charts the activity through a visual graph for reference.

Website

HWMonitor

This is neatly presented hardware monitoring solution. HWMonitor reads and relays the data from all hardware sensors it can find. CPU, GPU, fans, and storage. Hardware is presented in a collapsible treeview so you can focus on just what you want too.

Website

IntelBurnTest

The deceptive title doesn’t refer to the processor support type, but rather the origin of the algorithms adopted in the software. IntelBurnTest is based on the same library used to benchmark super computers. And on paper makes this the ultimate CPU cooler test, with a plain warning that IntelBurnTest can make your CPU run up to 22 degrees hotter than Prime95.

Website

Open Hardware Monitor

Open Hardware Monitor is HWMonitor with a few more hardware readouts for you review including current component clock speeds, plus RAM usage and remaining storage space.

Website

Prime95

A popular stress testing utility among overclockers which features a special ‘Torture Test’ mode developed to push the CPU to it’s limit. It claims if you can run Prime95 for 24 hours without any errors, then you’ve got a stable rig. Though it’s not something we’d recommend running for such a sustained length of time. Stress testing your CPU is like flooring the accerarotor on your car. And in the same fashion adds wear and tear to the hardware while wasting quite a few watts in the proccess.

Website

System Stability Tester

System Stability Tester utilises the tried and tested method of making your PC calculate Pi in order max out your CPU cores and send those temps soaring. Any errors picked up during the test are recorded providing a guide on system stability.

Website

Video Card Stability Test

This a less sophisticated alternative to FurMark. Video Card Stability Test will happily send your GPU to 100% activity and includes it’s own benchmark, though it doesn’t monitor temps.

Website

The featured game demo’s this month are Spec Ops: The Line, Magic: The Gathering – Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013, Risen 2: Dark Waters, Sid Meier’s Civilization V: Gods and Kings Warlock: Master of the Arcane, and LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes.

Follow these links for our other ‘issue 269 web packs:
Laptop security
The gamers toolbox
Essential free home office alternatives
Issue 269 game demo roundup!

Spec Ops: The Line

Spec Ops: The Line is a mechanically stock third-person cover and fire game with that ‘console’ feel, making the movement a little more clunky than a mouse and keyboard game should be. That aside, there is a decent story within presenting players with a few moral dilemmas along the way. You’ll still be letting the lead fly, but you might feel a bit more emotion after a head shot!

Download from here (Steam required)

Magic: The Gathering – Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013

Trading card games have a big whiff of nerd attached. Transformed it into a computer game and the whole idea becomes a bit more palatable. As do some of the more complex interactions between cards that are now dealt with automatically. Just like the physical edition, virtual  Magic: The Gathering is a game of decks, where each one hosts a unique set of creatures and spells. Decks unlock as you become more experienced opening possibilities of  building your own mixed decks to suit different opponents.

Download from here (Steam required)

Risen 2: Dark Waters

Risen 2 takes an ambitious departure from its first outing and takes to high seas in a very pirate-inspired RPG.  What remains are the familiar game mechanics and vast world to explore. The timeline is set several years after your adventures in Risen, and latest threat is a race of gigantic titans that threaten to destroy humanity. So off go, setting sail on your epic task to find a way to stop them, stumbling across themed islands, watery dangers and the odd titan boss fight to keep you on your adventuring toes.

Download from here (Steam required)

Meier’s Civilization V: Gods and Kings

Gods and Kings is the first fully loaded expansion pack for the 2010 release of Civ 5. I double-checked to make sure it simply wasn’t a stand-alone game because of it’s premium price. And yes, you will need Civ 5 to play the retail release. But for this demo at least you don’t need anything else. Gods and Kings throws nine new races into the mix, religion and espionage, plus improved artificial intelligence.

Download from here (Steam required)

Warlock: Master of the Arcane

The £15 price tag is a fair asking price for this fantasy 4X strategy title. Don’t expect an epic Civilization experience; which isn’t necessarily a bad thing! Master of Arcane suits the more casual strategist, with enough depth to keep things interesting  as you strive to advance your empire though expansion and invention, but no overly complex micromanagement systems to confuse.

Download from here (Steam required)

LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes

Made for kids, but this utterly charming action platformer will appeal to all comers. You’d think we’d all get a bit bored of the similar visuals and gameplay elements of this LEGO franchise, but no we haven’t! Loads of fun to play by yourself or with friends, humorous, and packed with clever little touches. It’s Batman too, making it that bit much cooler.

Download from here

As much as we would LOVE to present an alternative to Theresa May and her cronies (the monkey enclosure at the zoo perhaps), this web pack is focusing on home office SOFTWARE. Perhaps you used to work for a big company, with access to all the top corporate software packages, but now you’re going alone and need to be able do the same work without the budget. Or maybe you just intensely dislike forking out for software when there are perfectly good free alternatives. Either way, have a gander at these…

Follow these links for our other ‘issue 268 web packs:
Laptop security
The gamers toolbox
Essential free home office alternatives
Issue 269 game demo roundup!

7-Zip (WinZip alternative)

Believe it or not, some people still struggle with the concept of zip folders. They’ve been around for as long as dinosaurs (maybe) and they provide a fast and convenient way to magically make files smaller, perfect for sending via the internet or storing in the dark recesses of a backup drive. 7-Zip is a particularly useful and powerful zip tool, allowing navigation through the file structure of many a compressed archive as well as the creation of all manner of compression standards. The .7z compression method yields a greater level of compression than most other compression tools too.

Website

CDBurnerXP (Nero alternative)

You may think that optical media is old-hat, but even old-hats can look cool. Despite featuring two archaic references within its title, CDBurnerXP is a powerful disc authoring and image management utility that will handle all kinds of discs, from CD to Blu-ray. It allows you to copy disc-to-disc, or create images that you can then transfer, burn later or keep as a backup. Various burning options as well as file verification after burning, and the ability to save sessions for later editing and use make this as fully featured as any paid-for suite.

Website

ManicTime (alternative to procrastination)

So you sit down at your desk, determined to get your work done. Before you know it, three hours have passed and you’ve barely started – yet you have no idea exactly what you’ve been doing that’s taken so long. ManicTime is a powerful yet simple way to track your computing activity and better organise your time. It runs unobtrusively while you work, logging your actions which are displayed in easy-to-read timelines. Detailed analysis is presented in a simple way and you can see just what is taking up your time – although you’ll have to rely on your willpower to change your habits!

Website

Nitro PDF Reader (Acrobat X alternative)

PDFs may not be the most exciting topic of conversation but they are definitely important  – even essential – when it comes to presenting documents. Most people will be aware of, if not familiar with, Adobe Acrobat Reader but Nitro does more from the get-go than any other PDF tool available. Viewing, editing, creating, extracting content from and just about anything else you’d want to do with a PDF is made easy, and the program has a look and feel of a Microsoft Office application making it intuitive to use for most people.

Website

OxygenOffice Professional (Microsoft Office alternative)

OpenOffice has, for a long time, been the superlative open-source MS Office-beating software. OxygenOffice Professional is essentially the same software, complete with Word processor, Spreadsheet, Database, Presentation creator and other tools – where OOP differs is that it includes as standard fonts, templates, clipart and support for Visual Basic for Applications. These subtle additions bring the suite up to the same level as paid for software, all for free.

Website

Scribus (QuarkXPress alternative)

The world of desktop publishing is usually an expensive one in which to start out – and the software required to make professional-looking pages is a massive part of that expense. Fortunately, Scribus provides all the tools you’ll need to create everything from project cover pages to flyers to magazines and even books.  ICC colour managemnt, and CMYK and Spot colour profiles are supported and the built-in PDF creation options are not only plentiful, they are also heavily tested and supported.

Website

Stickies (alternative to the ‘real thing’)

I’m not sure what the rules are here, so I’m going to try to avoid using brand names… Most of us will have scribbled an important note onto a square of yellow paper and stuck it to the monitor in an effort to be reminded next time we use the PC. Stickies is a program that lets you place virtual sticky yellow notes on your PC desktop, to save the clutter of posted-notes. The ‘stickies’ themselves are able to act as timed reminders, recurring events and basically act like a calendar if you want them to. The typeface and colour is customisable a notes will remain on your screen until you remove them.

Website

ToDoList (alternative to disorganised chaos)

This follows on from the above entry, only in a more hardcore organisational fashion. ToDoList really lets you to get back on top of your workload, be it PC specific work or more general life tasks. What is so useful about TDL is the ability to divide tasks into multiple sub-tasks, in order to make them easier to manage. Despite the potential of multiple levels of tasks, the user interface remains clean and easy to read, and intuitive to use. The tasklists are stored as XML allowing for advanced formatting and printing options.

Website

TurboCASH (alternative to Sage)

Professional accounting software is rarely cheap but for small and medium enterprises it is usually necessary in order to keep track of cashflow. For businesses on a tight startup budget, TurboCASH includes many essential functions such as debtors, creditors, general ledger, full stock control, VAT accounting, invoicing, bank reconciliation, trial balance, balance sheet and income statements, full reporting and analysis and even mutli-company and multi-user capabilities.

Website

Zimbra Desktop (alternative to Outlook)

Zimbra Desktop is one of those programs about which you could be forgiven for thinking “Why do I need it?”. Once you have used it and set up all of your webmail and email accounts, social networks, calendar events, contacts and offline syncing services in one intuitive, easy-to-use package, you could be forgiven for thinking “Where has this been all my life?” All in all this is one of the most complete ways to access those services that you take for granted and it will really improve your ‘office life’ almost instantly. It’s just a shame there aren’t similar programs for your social life or sex life.

Website