Full commercial application: Xara XS, worth £28
If you want to design a logo or a graphic for your website or other media, you might look at Photoshop or Illustrator and wonder where to start. One option is to pay a graphic designer to create you a logo, a cheaper and better long-term option would be to download a design tool such as our free full commercial download, Xara XS, worth £28.
Xara XS is the baby brother of the 5-star rated Xara Xtreme, which is a vector and graphics design tool. It will enable you to draft a vector diagram, edit your photos or touch up graphics for your website. If you want to go further, take a look at the brand new Xara Xtreme Pro, which will import Adobe Photoshop PSD images, amongst other new and improved features.
Download Xara XS and try the powerful and fast design tool for yourself. If you're impressed, we'd seriously recommend the discounted upgrade to Xtreme or Pro.
Distributing files for download across the Internet isn't always easy, especially if you're supplying them on a free-of-charge basis. Buying and using a professional-level installer development tool is probably overkill for what you're intending. You simply want to get your application or files, installed within the right place on the end-users machine.
When you're at work, you stumble across a website that you want to add to your bookmarks. Solution? You need to email the web link to your home email address. When at home, you find a web page for work and you then need to do the same thing and then remember to add the link to your bookmarks. Frustrating as we like to keep the same bookmarks on our different computers.
The average size of a hard disk these days is 250GB or higher. What do you do with 250GB of space? Surely you aren't going to use this as one large 250GB hard drive? One solution would be to split the drive in to multiple partitions, perhaps a partition that you use to store the music you downloaded from the Internet. Multiple smaller partitions make it easier to backup your data as you can simply backup that partition.
There are some tools that would be handy if they were built-in to Windows. One of these tools is a high-end screen grabbing tool that enables you take a grab of an active window, or a flash animation, rather than the standard 'print screen' screen dump.
There are generally two types of data backup: backing up your important individual files at the end of every working day, week or irregularly. The other option is to backup your entire drive or drive partition, so that if you suffer from a system crash, you can quickly restore the entire drive.
Installing and uninstalling software, over a period of time, will result in your Registry being clogged up with old remnants that aren't correctly uninstalled when you remove software from your system. A similar process can occur with your hard drive. When you install software, then uninstall or simply move files around your system, you might find that accessing files takes longer each time you attempt to launch an application.
You spend the whole week working on some code and then take the weekend off. Get in on Monday, compile, then realise that it's actually a bit of a mess. It's easier to go back to the previous code, from the start of the week, rather than debug. You'll need to go through the old (working) code and the new (buggy) code, side by side, to see the differences between the two.
What's easier, carrying around a heavy notebook everywhere you go, wondering if you'll be able to find a wireless network so you can download and reply to your emails or placing your email client and web browser on a portable USB stick and then using that stick within a computer, wherever it is located?
Whether you're in business or have a hectic social life, we all have various events, meetings, tasks and 'to do' requirements. Like most of us, you spend your day in front of a computer, so why don't you make use of this machine by tracking your daily and weekly schedule?
If only there was an application that enabled you to analyse the software and drivers installed on your PC, then check against a central database to determine whether there is a new version of your installed application. This would save all the time, hassle and guesswork needed when new drivers and software revisions are released. For instance, do you know what drivers you have on your system, never mind whether they need updating?
Most of us use similar passwords for different websites. Some of those passwords are generated for us and are very difficult to remember. However, it's not safe to write down your passwords, either on paper or within your computer. One safe way is to use a password manager to securely store your passwords and, with the use of a master password, you'll be able to login to your password manager when you need access to a password. As you only need to remember one login, you can choose a tricky code, so no-one will guess your password manager login.
Apple's iTV will soon be available - certainly before Spring 2007. This small hardware device will enable you to stream music and video, from your computer (PC or Mac) to the iTV box and view or hear the media through your hi-fi or TV. As hard drives are so large these days, you could use your computer as storage for your DVD collection. You could then play back your DVDs through the iTV box (or similar), without having to connect a DVD player to your TV. One less box, fewer wires.
WS_FTP LE used to be given away for free and was a very popular download. We've re-created the original promotion with an up-to-date version of WS_FTP, by offering the full commercial version of 
Home movie making isn't always about grabbing video, downloading it to your PC and then spending time touching up, adding effects and making sure it looks really professional. The best home movies are those taken at opportune moments and look rather raw when they are shown to friends and family. What you want to do is take your videos, choose the best video from a selection, then burn them to DVD for preview.
We're not really supposed to browse the Internet during working hours. It's pretty obvious you're browsing the Internet web you have a web browser open and are skimming from site to site, morning and afternoon. An alternative is to subscribe to the news feeds provided by your favourite websites and then use an application to read highlights of the daily news. If anything of particular interest, you can use the link provided to find out more information from the website that provided the news headline.
With the ability to shoot and grab video from a mobile phone, the latest craze is to take a video and then share it online, using technology provide by YouTube to host your videos (although YouTube host, you can still embed and view videos from your own homepage). However, there's no easy way to download videos from YouTube for viewing offline, on your computer.
Maybe you don't have the time to browse your favourite websites for the latest news and information, or perhaps you don't have Internet access at work. One way around this would be to download your favourite websites, overnight, on to a USB stick and then take the stick and view those pages on any computer at any location.
Computer hardware gets updated quickly. When you look at magazine advert and choose your PC, the configuration may have changed by the time you receive your new computer. In most situations, the hardware you receive betters the configuration of the PC you ordered. However, mistakes can happen - you might order the 500GB hard drive, but received a 300GB drive. You might think you have a 6x dual-layer DVD burner, when it's really only a standard DVD burner.
Business users often have a desktop computer and then use a laptop on the road or for accessing email at home. However, this often means you have two copies of Outlook, with two different databases. One option would be to keep the emails on the remote server, but with all the junk and spam email, your server might soon be full of email waiting to be deleted.
It's so easy to put off backing up your data on a regular basis. We all hate chores, and backing up our data seems like a chore. With PCs being so much more reliable these days, it's not the hardware that is likely to cause problems, it's the software you install on your computer. A system crash at an inopportune moment may result in your extensive 10,000 word proposal becoming corrupt.
One of the most frustrating part of being a Mac user is that the Mac versions of widely distributed Windows software, aren't always kept as up-to-date. Skype is a classic example. When Skype for Windows was at 2.0, the Mac version was still at v1.x. This means some of the key features, such as video conference calling, wouldn't work on the Mac version of Skype.
Despite fast broadband, there are still compelling reasons why you should use a download manager to manage how you obtain files from the Internet. For instance, the download manager will sometimes attempt to obtain from multiple locations or will split the download in to smaller parts, thus downloading those parts quickly than one large file. You can also resume files which you download from a manager, so if there are problems with your connection, you don't need to start again from scratch.
Up until recently I bought most of my music from the iTunes Music Store. This was up to the point where I realised that every time you re-install Windows or move across to another PC, you're effectively creating a 'new' PC, thus your 5-computer iTunes Music Store license expires, quickly. Now, why should someone tell me how I should manage the music I've purchased legitimately? I've now decided to purchase the CD option, putting myself in control over my music, and where it can be stored/played, even if it means the CD costs a couple of quid more than purchasing online.
Only a few short years ago, using WinZip was the norm on Windows and Stuffit was the standard archive management tool on the Mac. How times have changed. Recently, Apple moved to support ZIP files within the latest Mac OS X and dropped Stuffit. Nowadays, seriously, who chooses to buy and support WinZip? WinZip 10 was only released a short while ago and now we're up to version 11 - are the new features so compelling?
Getting your computing connected to the Internet is easy these days. Getting your computers connected to each other, isn't. It should be easy and they should all be able to talk to each other through your local wireless network. Due to the security we install to protect our system from outside Internet attack, these tools also prevent our systems from interacting, out of the box.
Managing your audio collection isn't always easy. Do you keep the same files across all your computers, including your laptop, or do you set up a nifty wireless network so you can stream your audio from one computer to others within your house?
It's easy to be put off video editing for life if you install and use an application such as Adobe Premiere or Final Cut Pro from Apple. These video-editing tools are so advanced it's difficult to know where to start. This is why Apple released Final Cut Express (and the more basic iMovie) and Adobe have released 
Font management is a task we easily overlook. For instance, everyone has their favourite fonts, but how many times have you moved to a new computer or re-installed Windows only to remember, at a later date, you forgot to backup and move across your font collection. Indeed, do you even know where your fonts are stored on your system?
It's recommended you install a software-based firewall, even if you use a router or broadband modem. 
From time to time, we all need to process and send documents to other computer users and expect them to be able to open and read that document. What format do you select to create your document? A Word document is an obvious choice, but if the end-user doesn't have the fonts that you have your system, an older version of Word may display your document incorrectly.
Whether we sign up to broadband or purchase a domain, we're often given some kind of homepage so we can create a basic website, blog or other web presence. However, few of us use this space. The time required to update a blog is lacking somewhat and we don't have the web skills to create a half-decent site.
Over the last few months we've been promoting and giving away approximately 1 full commercial application per week. However, it's sometimes difficult to track these promotions, so here's a quick roundup of full commercial apps from the last few weeks:
We're always seeking ways to become more productive. Working with files, within Windows Explorer, isn't always easy. For instance, if you have a number of files that need to be renamed, unless you go through them manually or know how to create your own script, it's not easy to process the files. If the files are located within different folders, it's even more tricky.
More of us are turning to online 'friends' rather than chatting with our neighbours. When we want advice, we turn to online forums for other users to make our decisions for us. With this in mind, 
The other day I was thinking about who were the most productive group of software developers. The clear conclusion was security developers. They're also becoming the richest collection of developers, too. How is this possible? Why do we need so much security software simply to browse the web or write a Word document? Which comes first - getting hold of the latest security tool to prevent attack or the malicious tool attempting to attack? I've got a headache trying to figure it all out.
Why do we rely on commercial office suites when the majority of only use these suites for simple tasks, involving writing formal business letters, invoices, basic stationary design and tracking finances through the spreadsheet? Not many of us really use the presentation or database tools either.
It's not particularly easy to draw using the mouse. That's a fine art in itself. Instead, if you're an illustrator, buy or borrow a drawing pad, connect it to your computer and use a pen to trace a drawing in to your system. From here, you can then naturally paint and improve your image so it appears that you've scanned in a hand-drawn illustration (that's an option too).
lazy when we use our computer. We plan on backing up our data, we plan on cleansing our system and we plan on making this all an automated process. We don't, our system slows and over time - particularly after installing and removing software - our system takes longer to boot, longer to access and load your software and drive access seems to occur far more frequently.
There's a security theme with some of the software made available today, 9th of November 2006. If you're an engineer or a serious user, you might want to run