With Microsoft attempting to compete with Apple with Zune from November, Windows Media Player 11 has been released to coincide with the forthcoming launch of their hardware audio player. This is the software player, an updated version of the media player that's built-in to Windows XP and will ship as part of Windows Vista, in January. Indeed, the new Windows Media Player 11 looks like a preview version of the new Vista user-interface.

What's new in the latest Windows Media Player 11? Apart from a visual re-design, it works with the Microsoft Urge service so that you'll be able to download tracks from the Internet (but not play on your iPod). Whether content downloaded via Urge and through Media Player 11 will play on Zune is another matter as that's going to use it's own proprietary system.

If you're a big fan of Windows Media Player or simply want to see the new version for yourself, download from here.

When Microsoft supply Windows XP to PC manufacturers, it's designed to be highly customisable. For instance, it can be supplied pre-configured for a particular system, territory and even include the serial code so the end-user barely has to do a thing. Ideal for re-installing your system as quickly as possible.

However, we can use the same customisation techniques for our copy of Windows XP. For instance, you can manually insert the latest service pack, drivers for your hardware (particularly serial-ATA drivers) and enter your serial code and other components. How do you do this? Through software such as nLite which is designed for this purpose.

If you have a copy of Windows XP and want to make your own customised boot CD, download nLite immediately as it's a superb tool.

You know you're tempted. We are. The latest Intel Core 2 Duo Macs are both stylish, powerful and reasonable value. Buy from the Apple Refurbished store and you can get a 17" Core 2 Duo for £699. We're tempted simply as you can run Windows on your Mac, using Apple's Bootcamp software, which has just been updated for the new Macs.

It works seamlessly. All you need is Windows XP SP2 and you can either choose to install Windows on a partition or a separate internal drive. Once installed, you have the optio n to boot in to Windows or Mac OS X and you can automate the boot process so it automatically boots in to your preferred OS.

The latest Bootcamp 1.1.2 does more than support the latest Macs. It contains the latest Windows drivers and additional support for non-US based Macs. Grab it now.

Windows ships with a number of little tools that enable you to manage your hard drive. You can partition a drive, but there's only a certain amount of flexibility. Windows doesn't easily enable you to change the partition of your existing drive. What happens if you want to add a new partition? The tools for partitioning your drive are also rather hidden within Windows, so accessing these features isn't designed for beginners.

Our full commercial download this week, worth £35, is Paragon Partition Manager 2005, which will enable you to fully manage your existing partitions or enable you to add/remove others. For instance, when you purchase your new PC, you might find that you have a 300GB drive partitioned as one drive. Use Paragon Partition Manager 2005 to change this single partition in to multiple partitions.

It's always worth having partitioning software installed on your computer, so download now whilst this offer is still available.

Only a few years ago (or so it seems) I was one of those people wrapped up in the many superb Amiga games which all seemed so addictive - the gameplay was paramount. SuperCars was one of these games and we could spend hours racing against other drivers with this top-down approach to racing. It was far more addictive than the usual racing simulators.

Now, over 14 years later and we've found a much more modern and up-to-date version of the old SuperCars: Mini Racing Online. It uses the old top-down approach and enables you to race against other online drivers. As it doesn't require much bandwidth, you only need a basic Internet connection to play online.

It's an addictive game and also enables you to get involved and create your own tracks, then challenge other drivers to race against you, on your track. Download Mini Racing Online and see for yourself.

You arrive in a foreign city, with a basic map and the understanding that you'll be able to get around your destination, without too much hassle. You then spend an hour trying to find your destination, leaving you completely lost. How do you find out where you are, so you can find a way to your destination?

Easy. Most of us have our laptop or portable media device with a copy of Firefox or Internet Explorer, so why not use our electronic device to find our current location? You can then quickly location a route through your destination from the map provided. This is exactly what Loki for Firefox will do. It's an extension for Firefox that enables you locate your current location and also find important and useful points of interest around your current location.

Note that this is currently suitable for users based in the US or intending to visit a US city. European and UK coverage will begin at the end of 2006. Don't let this stop you downloading an excellent Firefox add-in though.

There are a range of DOS commands that aren't quickly available within Windows. Windows supplies no 'quick and easy' user-interface for some of the old (and still current) usable DOS functions. For instance, subst is a command that enables you to turn a folder in to a virtual drive. This is excellent for software that needs to situated within the root folder within a drive or for testing a game, if you're a developer.

However, unless you know how to use the subst command, the best alternative is to use a tool such as Visual Subst 1.03 that will quickly create a virtual drive from a specific folder. Once you've finished with the drive, you can remove it from your system. You can also automate the process so that when you next boot your computer the virtual drive is setup automatically.

Visual Subst is an excellent little tool that may come in useful, so worth downloading.

Some of the latest Firefox extensions are fantastic. As mentioned on this blog, we're keen fans of IE Tab, which enables you to view web pages either using the Firefox or Internet Explorer rendering engine. You can load a web page and then change rendering engine on the fly (and back).

Firefox Showcase enables you to preview open tabs within a thumbnail format. One of the problems with the tab structure along the top of any web browser is that they are text based and can quickly get congested if you have too many open tabs. It's sometimes difficult to know which tabs are open and the pages they refer to.

We gave Firefox Showcase a 5-star rating. It's still in beta so can only get better. It might not be your preferred choice for viewing tabs, but give it a try as you can always uninstall later.

Some regard spyware as more of a problem than any other form of Internet-based attack. It generally doesn't wreck your system and will sit dormant on your computer and only report back when you perform certain actions on your computer. You probably won't know spyware is on your machine, until you check your PC with an anti-spyware tool.

Microsoft Windows Defender has been in development through 2006 after Microsoft purchased the technology from the GIANT Company. Previously know as Windows AntiSpyware, the new Defender has been released for Windows XP users and will be incorporated within Windows Vista.

It's completely free, so worth downloading. However, there are other free anti-spyware applications worth trying such as the 5-star rated Spyware Terminator or SUPERAntiSpyware, both recently updated.

It's here, Mozilla Firefox 2.0 has officially been released. With both Internet Explorer 7 available and Opera 9.10 due soon, the browser market has suddenly become interesting again. Indeed, as they're all free, there's no reason why you can't install and use them all simultaneously.

So, what's new about Firefox 2.0? It has a brand new theme (although whether you prefer this theme is a different matter) and tabs that can be quickly closed by clicking on a cross within each tab. The same tabs can be moved around in order of preference, if required. The latest release also ships with beefed up security, including anti-phishing/fraud support so you don't give away your personal info on a fake website.

If you're a Firefox 1.x user, it's definitely worth upgrading, although many of your existing themes may not work in the new version. Download for yourself and let us know what you think.

With the latest release of Internet Explorer 7 with anti-phishing support (a tool to prevent you from giving away your personal data on fake/fraudulent websites), it was only going to be time before the other two big web browsers also add this feature. Firefox 2.0 will include anti-phishing support when it is released this week.

If you're a fan of Opera, you might be interested to know that the first beta build of Opera 9.10 has been publicly released. The term 'beta' may be the wrong description as it's more like an alpha of the browser. It's still an early version of the anti-phishing tool, so probably not a wise idea to use it as your favourite web browser. Which is why we'll wait to include it on vnunet.com.

Anyway, download and evaluate if you want to see the new features within Opera 9.10.

WinZip has to be one of the oldest archive management tools. It was one of the apps that pioneered the ZIP compression routine as the default compression of choice for Windows and, more recently, the Mac platform (Mac OS recently moved from using .sit to .zip archives as the OS default). At one stage, the software was provided free of charge, so just about every Windows user selected the software as their favourite compression manager. It's now available as commercial trial and as a Standard and Professional edition.

Here we are in 2006 and a beta version of WinZip 11 has been released. It looks the same as the current WinZip 10, although it has a few new features such as selecting the compression routine based on the files you want to archive.

There are tons of rival products, many of them completely free. ZipGenius is one, 7-ZIP is another. There's also Stuffit and WinRAR. Download WinZip 11 beta and see the new features for yourself.

AVG Anti-Virus is our (vnunet.com/downloads) current top downloaded product, and for good reason. It's a comprehensive anti-virus client, updated often, backed by reputable developers and, best of all, completely free.

AVG Anti-Virus has recently received an upgrade and is now at v7.5. This new release contains a few new features, such as improved performance and support for Windows Vista, if you're using the current Release Candidate. There are other minor improvments. It also supports more advanced anti-virus scanning using improved heuristics to locate and find infected files.

With the free version, you don't get any technical support and it's purely for home/personal use. However, if you fit that category, try the new version yourself.

Drivers can be such a pain, for numerous reasons. If a driver becomes corrupt, it can cause serious problems to your Windows infrastructure, to the point where Windows may refuse to boot at all. Also, how do you know what revision of drivers do you have installed? What drivers control which devices on your system?

Driver Genius Professional 2005 v5.3 is our current full download, worth £17. It's a superb driver management and backup tool that will enable you to quickly view the installed drivers and devices on your system. You can then make a backup of your drivers, so that if they ever cause problems, become corrupt or need re-installing when you install newer buggy drivers, you can then quickly revert back to the previous drivers. It's all so simple and works really well.

Better still, Driver Genius Pro 2005 v5.3 will automatically (or manually) locate and update drivers for your current hardware, making it a true driver management toolkit. We're really pleased to be able to offer this as a full download, worth £17, so grab it now before the download offer expires late November 2006!

If you're constantly saving and accessing files on your computer, over time your hard drive will become fragmented. If you leave this fragmentation, your drive simply takes longer and longer to search, find or load files. When you have a huge fragmented drive, you might even find that your system often appears to be accessing your hard drive.

This is another key reason why when you re-install Windows, your system runs smoothly and applications launch quickly. It's a freshly formatted hard drive, without fragmentation. Your drive can locate the files you want to start, immediately.

Disk defragmentation tools enable you to optimise your drive and rearrange the content to minimise fragmentation. Diskeeper 2007 is one of the best around and the new version will defragment in the background. Other defragmentation tools are available, such as O&O Defrag 8.5 and Auslogic Disk Defrag.

Not many people realise, but Acronis True Image has been around for a long while. It's tried and tested technology and a key competitor to Norton Ghost (or is that the other way around!), enabling users to backup and restore an entire drive or drive partition. It's all done incrementally, too, so you don't need to backup your entire drive at the end of every working day. Simply backup files you've changed on your drive, since the last backup.

The reason for this blog post is that Acronis have just released True Image 10 Home, with support for backing up individual files/folders, rather than your entire drive. Of course, there are many more new features, such as direct backup support for Outlook and Outlook Express and backup protection, so if anyone steals your laptop, they can't restore your backed up information.

It's fantastic stuff and works well. Currently 5-star rated by ourselves and vnunet.com users, it's definitely worth downloading the trial version. Alternatively, Paragon's Exact Image 7 is another competitor and also might be worth a look.

We've been talking about it for months, or even years. It's finally available - Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP (with Service Pack 2) users.

This is a fairly big upgrade with a special emphasis on security features. Indeed, perhaps too much emphasis. We've found one of the biggest problems with users attempting to download software from Internet Explorer, is the number of preventative methods used to protect against malicious download. Fine, but those methods also prevent legitimate downloads, too! Anyway, Internet Explorer 7 ships with a brand new tabbed-based interface, loads of security features as mentioned and much more.

Grab Internet Explorer 7 and see how it compares to the forthcoming Firefox 2.0 and the current Opera 9.02 release.

Installing and removing applications from your computer results in a sluggish computer as all sorts of remanents remain in your Registry, temp folder, System folder and other locations. Apart from not installing any software on your computer, there's little else you can do.

Or is there? Another option is to install and use a sandbox as a closed and safe environment for installing and testing software. The obvious choice is virtual technology such as Microsoft's Virtual PC 2004 or VMWare's Workstation/Server. However, you need to install the virtual technology, create a virtual environment and then install another operating system.

The other alternative is the 5-star user rated Sandboxie 2.64 which is a self-contained environment. Ideal for installing and testing game demos before you decide on whether to purchase. You can remove the environment from your system and no remnants remain on your computer. Download now and see for yourself.

Another week and another release candidate build of Firefox 2.0. The final release must be any day now - it's rare to see a fourth release candidate for any new software. With Internet Explorer 7 due next week, we guess that Firefox 2.0 will be released, finally, before the end of October. Next week looks like the long-awaited second round of the 'battle of the browsers'.

Firefox 2.0 Release Candidate 3 is more than usable. It's fast, solid and the supplied user-interface (theme) is pleasing and will appeal to many, without having to rely on a new theme. Talking of new themes, although many of your existing extensions should work with Firefox 2.0 RC3, many of your favourite themes are unlike to work - none of my five themes work in the new build.

We recommend this browser. Download and see for yourself. Whilst you're at it, consider Opera 9.02 which was recently updated and Internet Explorer Release Candidate 1. Worth trying is IE Tab which will incorporate Internet Explorer within Firefox 2.0. Currently a fave extension of ours.

Our full commercial download of Registry Mechanic 5.0, worth £20, has been our most popular offer so far, with over 10,000 downloads. However, the download offer is about to expire and will be taken down at the end of this week - 21st of October 2006.

Registry Mechanic 5.0 will enable you to optimise and remove many of the redundant entries that are remain within your Registry after you install and uninstall software from your computer. The more of these redundant entries that incorporate in to your Registry, the longer your computer will take to boot. Your system generally will appear slower, too. Note that when you use Registry Mechanic, we suggest you make a backup of your Registry before you cleanse.

Download the full Registry Mechanic 5.0 before the end of the week.

We all have larger hard drives these days and they contain thousands of files. Indeed, I have two internal drives and an permanent external drive. Often I'll include a portable USB drive in to that mix, too. Finding and searching for files through Windows can be a cumbersome experience. It can take time to skim through a drive looking for a particular file.

Copernic Desktop 2.0 takes a different approach to searching for your files. When you install the software it will scan your computer in the background, creating a database of current files and folders. Every time you add or remove new files, Copernic will store the information. When you want to perform a search, simply enter the name (or part of) and results should appear instantaneously.

There are other similar technologies from Google and MSN, although Copernic Desktop 2.0 is one of the best available. Download and see for yourself.

It's very easy for us to get excited about some of the applications we're making available for download to users of vnunet.com. At the moment we're offering one full commercial application per week, and the latest release is one of the best we've made available, so far!

Paragon's Drive Copy 8 Personal SE, a full commercial download worth £13, enables you to copy data from an existing partition/drive to another. It's a simple as that, but a vital tool if you purchase a new hard drive or upgrade to a new computer. You want to move your existing drive content to your new drive, as quickly as possible. Paragon Drive Copy will make a 1:1 copy of all your existing content, so you don't need to spend time manually moving across your information.

Currently 5-star rated by vnunet.com users, it's worth a look. As with all our full downloads, the Paragon Drive Copy 8 Personal is only available to download for a short period of time, so download it as soon as possible.

Although it's too early to release alpha downloads on vnunet.com, one of the biggest free applications has recently moved to alpha 1 stage. An alpha release is pre-beta and only really for die-hard users who want to preview forthcoming software technology, early. Very early. An early alpha is often months before the planned final release.

Paint.net started as a replacement for the Microsoft Paint application that ships as part of Windows. It's moved on somewhat since the original release. The forthcoming Paint.net 3.0 key features include support for multi-document editing, a more powerful toolbar for image editing, a user-definable colour palette and much more.

Grab the Paint.net 3.0 alpha 1 download, and let us know what you think.

Ok, so OpenOffice 2 has been out for a while, but whereas some commercial developers (you know who you are) rarely release 1.x upgrades to their software, the launch of OpenOffice 2.04 is still big news. It means that the opensource developers are pro-actively developing our free Microsoft Office compatible office suite.

So what's new in OpenOffice 2.04? Improved PDF management and an enhanced extensions architecture, to encourage third-party developers to write extensions for OpenOffice. In addition to new features, there are a whole host of minor improvements and bug fixes.

If you're a current OpenOffice user, we suggest you upgrade to v2.04 so you can make the most of the new extension architecture.

Windows XP ships with basic support for handling ZIP files, but it is rather limited. To utilise an existing archive, add/remove files or create a self-extracting ZIP file (which can automatically extract files to a location on a hard drive and then execute a command), you'll need an archive manager. Lukcily there are quite a few free tools around that will enable you to create and manage your archived files.

7-ZIP has been around for a while and, as well as handling existing ZIP archives, it even supports its own 7z compression format. ZipGenius is another popular archive tool and is regularly updated. The developer is planning a big v7 launch in the near-future. TUGZip is worth trying, but hasn't been updated for a while.

There are shareware/commercial tools too, including WinZIP, Stuffit and WinRAR (which enables you to create/open RAR archives) are three of the more popular tools.

There's not a huge amount wrong with the web core (HTML engine) that drives Internet Explorer. That's also going to be improved with the official release of Internet Explorer 7, at the end of October. However, it's Internet Explorer itself that's a problem. It's not been updated properly for years, lacks some of the basic features found within Firefox 2.0 or Opera 9 and to many people, it is a security hazard.

What many people do not realise is that there are many IE-based alternative web browsers that use the same IE web core, but wrap this around a different and much-improved interface. For instance, Avant is now up to revision 11, and is updated weekly, whilst Maxthon is another popular IE-based web browser. Both support all the modern features you'd expect, including tabbed browsing. Deepnet Explorer is another worth a look.

Following on from a previous Download Junkie post, I'm loving IE Tab for Firefox. You can quickly and easily view IE content within the Firefox browser. Give that a try, too.

With the new Mac Pro - currently the fastest Mac available - running Vista through emulation is now possible with the latest version of Parallels Desktop for Mac. A trial version has been released with experimental support for Windows Vista, so you can run Vista in a window, on your Mac OS X desktop. If you use a virtual desktop and another monitor, you could run Vista on the other monitor and Mac OS X on your main screen.

It's worth noting that running Vista or Windows XP through Parallels Desktop for Mac isn't anything like the old Virtual PC which was so dog-slow it was unusable. With the use of the Intel chipset, Vista and Windows XP flies on the Mac OS X desktop - well, it's certainly fast enough to use most apps on a day to day basis. You can also run other operating systems through Parallels Desktop for Mac, such as a Linux distro or OpenBSD.

A lot of people complain about Internet Explorer - that it hasn't been updated for a while, that it's a security hazard and so on. However, many people do not realise that Internet Explorer is simply a wrapper for the web core engine that's built in to Windows. Sure, that web core engine is updated when you install a new version of Internet Explorer, but other apps use the same engine to display HTML content within their interface.

There are still plenty of web pages designed around Internet Explorer. Although you might like browsing the web with Mozilla Firefox, occasionally you may need to start Internet Explorer to view specific pages.

IE Tab is an ingenious solution that enables you to use the Internet Explorer web core engine within a Firefox tab. No need to start or use Internet Explorer, simply view the pages directly within Firefox. Ideal for web designers who need to see how a page appears within both Firefox and IE.

Download this 5-star rated product and let us know what you think.

One of the best elements of Mac OS X is the supplied iCal software, which enables you to add calendar events and 'to do' items, so you can track meetings, allocate your time and more. The Microsoft Outlook calendar is useful for the same reason.

However, there are few well-designed standalone calendars for Windows. That's about to change with the release of Mozilla Sunbird, which is shortly about to receive a 0.3 release. It's not yet up on vnunet.com for one good reason: it's only at an early 0.3 release and often in beta form. For instance, it's currently at Release Candidate 2 stage. Take a look at the project for more info.

Mozilla Lightning is the Thunderbird integrated version of the Sunbird calendar. Sun are so impressed with Lightning that they are contributing to future releases and will probably integrate within future versions of OpenOffice.

Actinic e-commerce software has been around for many years now and for a very good reason. It's generally regarded as the best e-commerce application available. It's flexible, too, so a business who has absolutely no idea how to design their own e-commerce store, can customise one of the many supplied templates. Web developers can fully customise Actinic based around their own design and simply slot in the components that make up your e-store.

It's more than a tool that enables you to design and produce an e-store. You can use the software to track your stock levels, web and offline orders, sort out your tax and VAT calculations and generally run the majority of your business.

Now up to v8, the latest version enables you to customise every aspect of your e-store and ships with an extensive range of additional features. We've got the trial for you, so download and let us know if it meets your expectations.

Not sure if anyone has noticed, but Ashampoo gave us permission to replace the older Burning Studio 2005 with the more recent Burning Studio 5, which contains wider support for more recent disc burners, including Blu-ray burners.

Ashampoo Burning Studio 5, a full commercial download worth £20, is a tool that will enable you to produce your own DVD/CDs. It's powerful, with a wide range of features, but wrapped up in a simple-to-use interface, so is ideal for anyone who wants to burn their discs quickly and without hassle. It's currently 5-star rated by vnunet.com users, so download yourself and see what you think.

Over the past few weeks we've given away, on average, one full commercial application to download, free of charge, every week. Each download offer is available for approximately a month from publication. However, it's easy to lose track of previous full apps, so here's a roundup of the commercial free apps that are still available to download.

Serif DrawPlus 5, worth £53 and and a download offer due to expire on 13th of October 2006, enables you to produce powerful vector based diagrams. Registry Mechanic 5.0 is a superb tool that will enable you to speed up your computer by cleansing your Registry, worth £20 and a download offer due to expire 16th of October 2006. Ashampoo Burning Studio 2005, worth £20, will enable you to burn DVD/CDs and that offer expires this week. Paragon Exact Image 7 SE, worth £29 and a download offer due to expire 2nd of November 2006, will enable you to backup and restore an entire drive . Ashampoo WinOptimizer Platinum Suite 2, worth £25 will optimise your PC and that download offer expires 21st of October. Ashampoo Photo Commander 3.5, worth £25, will manage your digital photos, with the download offer expiring 8th of November 2006.

As stated previously, a Release Candidate is pretty much 'feature complete', which means that subsequent releases build on the features of the previous version and fix show-stopping bugs before it is declared gold and is ready to go to press. Although Microsoft Office 2007 is rumoured to have reached gold release (so the beta test download offer will expire soon - download from here), Microsoft have released what's thought to be the final test release of Vista, Release Candidate 2.

There are few major changes between RC1 and RC2 and visual screengrabs show almost no major visual changes, apart from a few interface tweaks. What you've see in RC2 will almost certainly be what you see in the final release, which is supposed to be in January 2007.

Download Release Candidate 2 now before the offer is taken offline, soon!

There has been quite a gap between the official Firefox 1.5 release (November 2005) and the forthcoming Firefox 2.0 release, also due in November. However, this means that the Mozilla developers have been busy with new features for this big release.

As soon as you install Firefox 2.0 Release Candidate 2 - and this is the first version I've installed and used and not reverted back to 1.5.x - you'll notice that the user interface has received a minor overhaul. For instance, you have the facility to close tabs by clicking a small 'x' on each tab. Sure, that's not an innovation, but it improves your browsing experience. There are plenty of new features too, such as anti-phishing support.

Download Firefox 2.0 Release Candidate 2.0 and let us know what you think.

Whilst we'd always recommend a hardware-based firewall (which can be built-in to your router and configures your broadband connection for your PC and any other PC connected to your network), some of us only have a basic broadband modem, supplied by our ISP. The next best alternative is to install a strong software-based firewall such as Jetico Personal Firewall 2.0, which is currently available as a public beta.

There's no stopping you installing both a hardware and software firewall on the same network. Indeed, you might find that you use one basic PC as a 'download box' and you need various P2P ports open on your hardware firewall so you can download files. However, on your work PC you might want to prevent unauthorised external access through any of your ports. In this instance, you'd use your software firewall to close all incoming ports on your work PC.

Whatever your scenario, we provide the options and we're sure you'll decide what's best for your network. Take a look at Jetico Personal Firewall 2.0 and that should give you all you need for a free software firewall.

Back in the late 90s, getting connected to the Internet wasn't easy. You had to have a basic knowledge of how to configure a modem and Windows TCP/IP settings to make sure you could connect to your ISP. ISPs generally provided a connection and nothing more. There were some ISPs, such as Demon, who created their own 'complete Internet suite' and they faired a little better as they provided you with a floppy or CD pre-configured for their service.

AOL were another. They provided you with everything you needed to connect to their service. Now getting connected is the easy part (in most instances, you simply need your login and password), AOL have made their latest Internet suite available to all Internet users. Dubbed 'OpenRide', this suite will give you a browser, email, chat software and much more.

Download AOL OpenRide and see how it compares to your regular email client and web browser.

Although spam is a major nuisance, it's relatively easy to avoid receiving a virus or Trojan from your email. Most modern email clients will filter the most obvious spam and, as long as you don't try and open an attachment, you shouldn't have too many problems.

However, spyware and Trojan attack through files downloaded from the Internet, software you install on your computer or given to yo u by a friend is another matter. If you install this software and it contains spyware technology, you probably won't even notice. The spyware will reside in the background and won't slow your computer, cause your system to crash or doing anything to draw your attention.

Spyware Terminator is a free anti-spyware tool that is updated regularly. That's important as you know the developers are working to prevent attack from up-and-coming spyware technology. It's 5-star rated both by us and vnunet.com users, so download and see for yourself.

If you asked around, most people would think that you need to have a web page if you want to register a domain. Sure, that's an option. However, you could simply use your domain for email access at a basic level. Alternatively, have you considered using your domain, plus a hosting service, to run your own FTP server?

Running your own server enables other users - your friends, family or work colleagues - to upload files which you can download, securely, at a later date. Of course, an FTP server will enable you to distribute files, either publicly or privately, where each user has their own login and password.

zFTPServer Suite 2.0 is one of the best around and visually enables you to see who is connected, what they're trying to download and the progress of each download. Download and let us know if you know of any better free FTP servers.

Apple was one of the first to pioneer online storage. With your Mac (and PC through the Windows iDisk Utility) you can choose the files you want to backup and then back these on your .Mac online storage space. Mac OS X makes this easy for you and you can restore your bookmarks, address book contacts and more, if you lose these in the future.

Whilst we wait for Google's rumoured GDrive service, other service providers are catching on that with the rise of very fast broadband, we can store our data online and retrieve it either from another PC, securely, or restore it back on our host system if we experience data loss.

One of these services is Mozy Remote Backup, who provide you with 2GB of storage space, free of charge. If you refer new users, you're given additional space free of charge. You can also purchase additional space a nominal cost. Anyway, check it out and let us know what you think.