It is undeniable that when it comes to browser choice among Internet users, it is a battle between the top 3 of the most common web browsers available in the market today; Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and the latest Google Chrome. Well, for those who are looking an alternative for these three powerhouses in web browsing, there is a good web browser that has been in the industry for almost 15 years, leading a majority of the innovations in browser technology that are visible on the top 3 browsers, it just didn’t have the break the software really needed for many years now.

The Opera web browser has been in the market for many years now, providing top services to users even better than those most popular ones mentioned. Well for those who’ve been using Opera since it was introduced in the market. There are a lot of new features and improvements added to the latest release of Opera web browser; But for those neophytes looking for a fresh browser, there are a lot of good things you will experience from using this web browser that you haven’t tried before using those top three.

First thing that will amaze you upon using this latest version of Opera is its user interface. The interface is very clean on its white colored interface, you can hide and unhide the menu bar, and some of its menus like bookmarks and downloads can also be hidden and viewed anytime you wanted. Overall, a very cool user interface.

Next is the speed dial. With speed dial, you can view a thumbnail of some of your favorite websites ready to browse. Using this feature will save you the time from typing the URL of the site you want to visit. Google Chrome also has this feature. (more…)

Most photo and image editing software available today offers incredible tools for enhancing your photo quality; from simple editing of the brightness and color and cropping the image, to more complex tasks like combining multiple images through layers and applying gradients to improve color quality. Often this kind of software comes with endless features you’ll never need to use. If you only need the basics for editing your photos, you don’t need to purchase such expensive tools; ImageEnhancer offers the basic photo editing tools without any costs on your part.

This program provides you the basic tools you need to edit your photos and other images. As a matter of fact, ImageEnhancer only features basic photo editing tools and nothing else. Basic tools mentioned here include brightness, color and contrast adjustments, adding blur in your photos, crop image to change its dimension, image rotation, and reduce the noise content of your photo. Aside from these tools, it supports a variety of image file formats like JPEG, GIF, BMP and many more. You can also set your output to any of those mentioned file formats. Other features like photo slideshow, interactive multi-threading for image slideshows, and removal of red eye can also be utilized using this program.

First of its cons is its user interface, specifically the display of the photo being edited. it only provides a small view of the picture (about 1/8 of the whole window), icons being used were dubious, and the overall design of its user interface is poor. However you are allowed to view edited photo full screen. Other bad thing is that it would take about 3 to 5 seconds before you can see the result of your edit (after to click the preview button). It may take a bit of time before you can get used to the interface but there’s no problem as far as performance is concerned.

All in all, ImageEnhancer is a good image editing software for those users who only needs simple editing of photos. You’ll get used to the user interface after using it a few times. Let’s just hope that the next version will focus on user interface improvements.

More information and the download available at the official homepage

As its name suggests, YouTube Downloader is a download manager for videos. But before you jump to the conclusion that the program only downloads videos from YouTube.com, let me tell you that this program also allows you to grab videos from other video streaming sites.

YouTube Downloader has a very simple user interface. So simple where you only see a text box where you put the link of the video you wish to grab, and an option to convert downloaded files and the buttons for download or cancel. To begin download, all you have to do is to play the video file, copy the URL of video into the textbox, then click OK to download, no other applications needed! To put it simply, YouTube Downloader’s interface is very simple and lightweight.

Next feature that’s unique is its ability to convert recently downloaded files to another file format of your choice. This feature is not visible in other download video managers, as far as I’m aware, at least not for free anyway.

There are other new features that are not included in the previous releases of YouTube Downloader. It now supports MP4 as the default video format instead of the previous FLV. This latest release is very convenient to download, install and use making YouTube Downloader a good choice for downloading videos very easily. Surprisingly, It also includes a basic video cropping feature for cutting and editing.

Its freeware and worth checking out if you’re someone who likes the idea of saving videos from online onto your hard drive for fast and permanent access.

Check it out at the homepage here.

GOM Player is a free and open source video and audio player.

There are lots of features that can be utilized from GOM Player. Though some of its features can be found in other media players, like support for multiple video and audio formats, it plays video and audio as good as other quality players.

The user interface is cool, starting with its image icon. When you have GOM Player installed in your computer, all the file formats GOM Player supported will appear with an image icon; their difference are distinguished by its color. Display screen for video is customizable with how you want it to look like; half screen, normal view or full screen. Menus are also easy to locate and access.

It supports a wide variety of video files like MPG, AVI, and MPEG. Also the current version allows you to watch DVD videos through its 5.1 channel audio output. Another amazing feature worth mentioning is its support for multiple codecs. Supported codecs include and are not limited to Xvid, DivX, MP4 and many more. Just in case you’re playing video which is not supported, GOM Player will search the right codec for your video through the Internet (assuming you an Internet connection). The latest feature that is not available in its predecessor is the ability to play AVI files that are broken. Broken means those files that are downloaded but are not finished. Other features that are common but are still worth mentioning are its playlist and also support for subtitles.

GOM Player is a good program for advanced users exploring different codecs available, and also for standard users wanting to watch their favorite movies with a quality free player.

Check it out at Gomlab

Here’s a scenario, you’re watching a movie on your computer, and then after hearing its soundtrack you like it very much. So you look for the song and eventually find it on YouTube. Unfortunately, you don’t have the power to grab the song. Probably a frustrating scenario? Then you might ask these questions “Is there a way to have that song?” or “What will I do to get that song?” Well I’ve got news for you, there’s a program that allows you to extract MP3 files out of the video or movie.

Free YouTube to MP3 Converter is an audio utility program that allows you to extract the audio file from a video and movie.

The program supports multiple video file formats that are available today like .mp4, .wmv, .avi, .mpeg, .flv and many more. Also, Free YouTube to MP3 Converter 3.3 provides an option whether to convert video online or offline. If your video is available online, just provide the URL of the video, if it is offline, just search for the video within your computer but just make sure that the video format is supported. The output format of the program is only .mp3 but you have an option of the output quality; high, standard and economy. When used to extract videos online, the program has the capability to download either one video file, or batch of video files providing great flexibility to users.

So far, there’s no negatives about Free YouTube to MP3 Converter 3.3 except for the fact that it only supports MP3 format as its output. If it could support more file formats, then the program could be more robust and could provide users more choices. Nonetheless, performance, speed and flexibility wise, Free YouTube to MP3 Converter 3.3 is a good audio utility.

The program is freeware and available from DVDVideoSoft.com

Portable document format (pdf) is the most common file format available today both on the Internet and offline because it’s very portable and easy to read. But in order to open and view a pdf file, you need software capable of opening a pdf file format. Adobe Acrobat Reader, the most popular free pdf reader has been in the market for many years now and is still providing quality service for viewing pdf files. The problem of Adobe Acrobat Reader is its file size and resource usage (it needs at least 200 MB free hard drive). So why need that much resources when there is another free pdf reader that doesn’t need that much?

Sumatra PDF Reader is just another pdf reader that does the same thing as the popular Adobe Reader, but does not require that much hard drive space. It’s more like a portable installer because when you install it, the program won’t write anything on your computer registry or on your hard drive’s program files, it will directly open the user environment where you can view your pdf files. It offers what you need and want from your pdf reader; open pdf files, scroll down every page, zoom viewing percentage, and copy texts and images to clipboard.

The program even provides great flexibility on how you view your pdf file either single page or continuous, and even allow you to rotate your pdf files. The program even allows you to open pdf files to Adobe Reader to show its compatibility with with it. This software runs smoothly on your computer in fact, you don’t even notice that you’ve opened it because it does not affect your computer performance or hog system resources. It’s a Windows program and runs only on Windows 2000 and its later versions.

Sumatra PDF Reader is perfect for users who only need the basic tasks for accessing their pdf files and don’t want to be using unnecessary computer resources or memory hogs. Sumatra PDF Reader comes in handy with its file size and ease of installation.

Available as freeware from its official homepage here SumatraPDF

Searching for duplicate files one by one is a troublesome thing to do and a waste of your time. How are you going to search for duplicate contents if you don’t exactly know which files have duplicates? Well, you need not worry on how you are going to clean your disk as AllDup will do the job for you.

AllDup is a utility program that can be used to clean your hard drive and external storage devices from duplicate contents. It works by scanning specified hard drives or external storage to find files with duplicate contents, displaying files in a grid, then you have the option whether to delete those files or not.

It gives you a variety of criteria on how will you can search for duplicate files; either by name, by extension, by size, or by attributes. You can select any or all of these criteria for better search results. AllDup supports a variety of file extensions so the program is able to find duplicates for multiple types of files. You also have the option to select which storage device you want to search; either all in one scan or scan for specific storage device. The searching functions are very flexible as it provides a wide variety of search options, you can even filter your search condition to limit the files being displayed. The display of search results is well organized as they are displayed in a table for easy tracking of files including its name, size and file location.

The user interface of AllDup is outstanding. The main window provides a concise environment with icon images reflects its function. A log file is also available to view the last process being performed, search criteria are also organized of easy searching, and updates are also accessible. You can even shift language from English to German. The display window is well organized in a grid displaying file names, number of duplicates, the file size and the date created and last modified. The display window provides user with rich menus and functions for a more flexible display and deletion of duplicate files. It is suggested that you read the help file first to have a better understanding on each function within the display window.

So far, there’s nothing negative found on AllDup as far as the performance, speed, accuracy, and user interface are concerned. It scans drives faster without compromising the overall performance of your computer. However, when deleting duplicate contents, always be careful not to delete something you need to keep!

It’s Freeware and available from www.alldup.de/en_index.htm

K-Lite Codec is a utility program that contains compilation of codecs and other tools like audio and video player. It supports almost all of the codecs of common audio and video files. In fact it supports a lot of file formats where many of them you don’t encounter yet, making this program solves common problems which many multimedia players failed to do. Below is a review of this useful program based on the following criteria: installation and interface, features and tools, and performance.

Installation is very easy, all you have to do is click on the installer is just follow the instructions on the installation wizard. During the installation process, you have the option whether to install all of the supported codecs or install only those components that you need, making the installation process highly customizable. You can add to the supported codecs after the installation if there’s other codec so want to include.

User-interface is very simple; it looks like the windows media player with some added features. Menus are organized according to its function for easy location of features. You can even drag and drop the file you want to play directly to the media player.

It supports codecs of the popular audio file formats available such as mp3, wav, wma, ogg, aac and many more. Aside from the popular ones, It also supports other audio files that are not that widely used like FLAC and Monkeys audio file formats. Name the audio files you have and K-Lite will play it for you.

When it comes to videos, this software also supports wide range of video and movie file formats. In fact it supports more than 95% of the movies and videos we can download from the web. Among the video files it supports the best are mp4, mpeg1 and mpeg2, DivX and XviD codecs and many more. Name the video files you have and K-Lite will play it for you.

Other features include DVD and MPEG-2 decoder for Cyberlink and MPEG-1/2 decoder for Nero. There are still more formats supported that you can use after installing it. The media player that’s included in the program plays high quality video and audio output better than the popular media players like Windows Media Player and VLC.

When it comes to performance, running this does not hog system resources, nor cause your computer to slow down. It is compatible with almost other drivers that are already installed on your computer, and does not contain any conflicting codecs. The software only requires minimal hardware specifications and third party software but just make sure that the correct audio driver for your motherboard was installed.

K-Lite Codec is the solution for incompatibility in codecs that frequently happens in majority of media players. The program offers rich support for codecs that are being used by majority of audio and video files today. The installation is flexible, the interface is user-friendly and the codecs are updated. This is perfect not only for advanced users who have advanced knowledge in coding and decoding, but also for beginners who only wants to play their favorite music and movies. K-Lite codec is a highly recommended utility program for those who love to listen to music and watch movies on their computer.

You can download this K-Lite Codec Pack here.

Looking for CD burning software won’t be that easy especially if you want it without incurring any cost. Many of the leading CD burning tools in the market specifically the commercial ones have integrated couple of new features in their products making it an all in one “multimedia suite”. Well, it’s good for those who want something more than just burning their favorite music on CDs or DVDs, but for those who just want the basic features of burning files to compact disc; however, these extras would just be a waste of money and resources. If you only need the basic tools, there’s no need to purchase expensive commercial multimedia suites as CDBurnerXP gives you what you need without you spending a cent for a license.

This program is a basic but very effective disc burning freeware that offers basic tools for burning and copying files to and from CD’s and DVDs. This freeware was developed by Canneverbe Limited and is available for free download (latest version is CDBurnerXP 4.3.2) with a file size of 6.30 MB. It offers very simple and limited functionalities dedicated only to burning files and nothing else. The user interface of the application is simple but comprehensive as icons and brief explanations are provided for easy identification of each task. It allows you to burn files to any compact discs and DVDs (even Blu-Ray) as long as you have the hardware to support such formats. Not only can it burn audio and data CDs flawlessly, it also burns ISO files without any errors. When burning files either data, audio or image, you don’t need to transfer from one window to another as this software provides a well organized interface for burning; lists of folders can be viewed on the left portion of the screen. The content of each folder or hard drive can be viewed on the upper portion, the lists of files ready to be burned is located at the bottom of the screen. It doesn’t hog memory resources and demand sophisticated hardware specifications. CDBurnerXP is compatible with Windows 2000 and later versions (Windows Vista (32 bit), Windows 7(32 bit)).

CDBurnerXP is the perfect CD burning software for those users who needs only simple tasks and have no intentions of spending money for expensive “multimedia suite” that does the same thing as CDBurnerXP as far as burning is concerned.

Its available for free download from CDburnerxp

Compressing and archiving files is common nowadays because it allows users to shrink large files and store them as a single file for future use. There is a lot of software available for compressing and archiving files some of them are commercial while other are for free. There are also a variety of compressed file formats but the more popular among them is the zip file. Though zip files allows you to store files for longer times, but unlike plain files, once zip files are damaged, accessing it can be very difficult, or worse impossible to retrieve.

Object Fix Zip is a utility program developed to cater to the need of reconstructing damaged zip files. Damage here include all the possible errors that might be encountered when dealing with zip files; corrupt zip files, broken zip files, or files that are downloaded partially. Object Fix Zip recovers such files by creating a new zip file when the program is attempting to retrieve the content of your damaged zip file. If your zip file happens to have a password, all you have to do is supply the password while the program attempts to recover the damaged file. However, it is important to take note that not all damaged zip files can be recovered so if it happens that your damaged zip file fails to be recovered after using Object Fix Zip, then most likely your file is now impossible to recover and a its a lesser possibility that the program performance is at fault.

Now going back, Object Fix Zip’s user interface looks like an installation wizard, with explanations regarding the function of the window are embedded within the window itself. You just need to press the next button to transfer to the next window and so on. Object Fix Zip works on multiple zip files all at once to save time when testing multiple files. Aside from testing damaged zip files and recover content of damaged zip files, the program can also perform task of extracting the content of any zip file. You’ve got an all-in-one package here.

This could be the software to try if you need to recover damaged zip files that contained important data. It runs only on Windows 32 bit platform (from Windows 95 and later) and available as freeware from Essentialdatatools.com