However professional you believe photos appear to other users, there's always room for improvement. For instance, did you use professional lighting to make your object appear as it should, in the correct lighting conditions? I bet your camera saved your photos as compressed JPGs, which means that they already suffer from noise, however many pixels your camera supports. You need to work with RAW or uncompressed TIF images, if you want professional-level photos.

ACDSee Pro 2 is a beta preview of the forthcoming professional-level photo management and editing software from ACD Systems. This has been made available completely free of charge until 30th of September 2007, so there's no reason why you shouldn't download and see what it's like for yourself.

There are times when you might be inspired by a particular website and want to take a grab of that site. Either that or you try and print the page and find that it simply doesn't print properly. That's often due to the dynamic content on a site. Sometimes these aren't processed properly by the printer drivers, and you'll find that the web page looks really poor on paper.

WebShot 1.39 is a tool designed specifically for one purpose - to take a grab of a website and then export as an image. You can then manipulate this image, print as an image or store it for future reference. The basic free version has a limited feature-set. There's a Professional version which has an extensive command line interface.

If you're seeking an integrated email, PIM and calendar, you probably would think of Microsoft Outlook. Indeed, it's popular as you can schedule meetings, invite other users, track their interest through email and even use it to manage your contacts. It's a a PIM and email client in one application and works effectively. However, it's also rather expensive and can be very slow in downloading and processing your email. There are free alternatives.

Mozilla Lightning 0.5 for Thunderbird is a calendar add-on that enables you to track your meetings, diary and other events, through Thunderbird. It doesn't quite give you the complete PIM functionality of Outlook, but you can use the calendar to track events and then synchronise this with your mobile phone and other portable device.

There are times when you can apply some of your business skills to your personal life, particular when it applies to managing the kids, making sure you pick them up from school, organise when engineers visit your home and more. For most people, this is like juggling various balls and could be aligned to managing a home-based project. You could use some personal management software to sort out your diary, tasks and other events.

Total Organizer 2.1 is is personal information manager that enables you to manage your personal life as a set of projects. You can then see what you've got to do, when it has to be done and how far you've progressed. It's very different from something like EssentialPIM 2.0, which was recently released. That is more of a personal information manager, suitable for work and home use.

There are various chores you need to do with your computer in order to make sure you don't lose your important work, data and important information. Part of this is installing the latest security software, the other is regularly backing up your data so you don't lose your important files and other work. It's best to make this an automated procedure, so that you do not forget to regularly run your backup.

Backup4All 3.9.265 is a backup tool that you can use to backup or restore individual files, folders and other data. It's not a drive backup tool, but an application you can use to select the files you want to backup and the location where they should be stored. You could use free webspace for this, a location on your network or the traditional method of backing up to removable storage.

If you want to get the most from your digital photos, forget the free software that shipped with your digital camera. Indeed, go beyond the usual freeware and other cheap commercial alternatives. You're best sticking with professional-level software that will enable you to organise and tweak just about every aspect of your collection.

Adobe Project Lightroom 1.1 is the latest version of the professional photography software from Adobe, designed to compete against Aperture from Apple (which is Mac OS X only). The interface is very different from your normal Windows application, designed to stop distraction when editing your photos. It's designed for digital photographers, although anyone with any serious interest in getting the most from their images, should consider Lightroom.

There are plenty of media players on the market, from the Windows Media Player through to RealPlayer, that's been around for ages and supports both its own format as well as many additional media formats, for playing back audio and video content. It's generally a cross-platform media player, although this beta of the latest version is a Windows-only preview.

RealPlayer 11 beta is a preview of the forthcoming major update to the media player. This version will enable you to download video content for playback on your PC, along with other updated features, such as an improved user interface. There is little other information on the RealPlayer website. Some of the features are also only available in the Plus edition, which costs £19.99, probably as the codecs you require to burn video to DVD cannot be given away with the free version.

Some users believe that the more security software they install on their machine the more 'effective' it will be keeping out virus, trojan and other attacks. However, sometimes multiple security applications can do more harm than good as they work against each other, rather than with each other. Our system can quickly become a mess over time, the apps become difficult to uninstall, our Registry is cluttered and drives become fragmented.

System Mechanic 7.1.10 is a complete system maintenance and security suite that enables you to install one application do every you need to maintain, repair and security protect your PC from outside attack. It will fix and cleanse your Registry, defragment your hard drive, smooth over cracks in your system, delete unnecessary files, as well as securing you from attack.

When you install Windows XP or Vista, you're supplied with the same interface, desktop backgrounds and colour schemes that millions of other users have installed. Indeed, look at your fellow work colleagues, and they'll have hardly changed anything at all. Perhaps the desktop background, but that's about it. There's little individualisation. However, just about every aspect of the Windows interface can be altered, changed and improved.

WindowBlinds 5.51 is a customisation tool that's been around for ages. It enables you to have complete control over your Windows interface. You can create your own skin or download from one of the hundreds of pre-designed skins, from the Internet. You can then add your own further changes if you want to customise further. WindowBlinds 5.51 is now Windows Vista compatible.

Portable applications are becoming more popular. Laptops can only become so small and lightweight and, once you've factored in the charger and laptop bag, most people won't want to be taking their laptop on holiday or having to drag it around town unnecessarily. A better option is to grab a portable hard drive and install various portable applications. Connect this hard drive to any host computer and all your information is stored on the drive. You can take your work, email and web browser with you, on the road.

Portable Thunderbird 2.0.0.4 and EssentialPIM Free 2.0 have recently been released.  Portable Thunderbird will enable you to take your Thunderbird-based email on the road. Well, you could simply use this email app to access any POP3 email and, if you turn off the feature to delete the email on the your POP3 server, it's an ideal on-the-road email client. EssentialPIM Free 2.0 is the latest version of the superb diary and contact manager, in a portable edition.

When you upgrade your PC, you probably won't want to migrate your entire drive across to the new machine. This might be impractical when the new PC has Vista and the old PC contains Windows XP. However, you'll want to migrate across old files and important data. An ideal tool would be a synchronisation application, where you could locate the destination and the source, check the files between the two machines, then allow the tool to synchronise the files it requires between both machines.

Easy2Sync for Files 1.23 is a free version of the tool that you can use to synchronise your files. It's ideal if you have a laptop and a PC. You could take your files with you on the road and then connect the two machines when you're back in the office and any files you've updated will be synchronised back to your work based PC.

There are times where Notepad can be useful. For instance, stripping text styles from documents you might want to post to a website. However, Notepad is rather limited and is only good for drafting basic text. You wouldn't want to use it seriously. Rather than moving across to a word processor, such as Microsoft Word, a better option would be something between the two, such as a more advanced text editor.

EditPad Lite 6.3 is the free version of the text and basic word processor, that supports a number of features such as tabbed editing, so you can open and manage multiple documents. There is multiple undo and redo, so you can quickly make changes to text you've created. If you're often working with text documents, you can minimise EditPad to your system tray, so you have quick-access to the editor.

You don't always need to stick with the brand names in order to use the latest security applications on your PC. Indeed, some of the free anti-spyware and anti-virus applications are often the most regularly updated. If you look around, there are loads of free personal firewalls, anti-spyware, anti-virus and anti-malware applications. Two of those have been updated recently.

AVG Anti-Virus 7.5 is a popular free anti-virus tool that uses the minimum of system resources to protect your computer from virus attack. It's one of the most downloaded applications through vnunet.com. SUPER AntiSpyware 3.9.1 is a standalone free anti-spyware application that will reside alongside your anti-virus application. Note that some of the free technology can be limited. You might have to manually download the latest anti-virus definitions or run a schedule manually.

There are a few key applications that everyone should have installed on their computer. Some ship with your operating system, such as a web browser and an email client. Others you'll need to download. One of these applications should be an FTP client, which will enable you to upload and download files from the Internet. You'll also be able to log in to FTP servers and download large files, resuming these files if you find that you need to close or reboot your computer.

SmartFTP 2.5.1006.5 is a free (for personal use) FTP client that's not lacking in features. It enables you to administer your remote homepage, so you can upload the files you need to make your website go live. You can also download files from an FTP site, move files between your network and much more. It's one of the best FTP clients around, so download SmartFTP 2.5.1006.5.

Whenever you use your drive, files are stored in different locations, written to and from each partition and files become fragmented and stored on your drive in no particular order. This means that your computer takes longer to find and load the files you need, when you boot your computer and start applications. You'll soon find your system seems to be running even slower than before. One solution is to defragment your drive, which means that the files are stored in an ordered manner, meaning they are located more quickly.

O&O Defrag Pro 10.0.1634 is a commercial disk defragmentation tool that's been around for a while and recently updated to support Windows Vista. It will reside in the background, defragmenting your drive as you use your computer, but without affecting your work. Other rival products include Paragon Total Defrag 2007, which was recently updated.

You could quite easily backup individual files, folders and data on each partition. This will take ages and you'll soon forget which files you've recently backed up. Another option is to setup an automatic backup procedure which will take selected files and folders and then back them up at a specific point each day, week or month. A better option might be back backup your entire drive or drive partition. Once you've made the initial backup, if you have problems in the future you can restore the entire drive, boot and you'll be back up and running.

O&O DiskImage 2.0.11.26 is a drive backup and restore tool. Once you've made the initial backup, you can easily create an incremental backup, which means that you only backup files you've amended since the last time you ran your backup.

The Windows Registry is a huge database of information regarding the software installed on your PC. When you install new software, further information is stored on the Registry. More often than not, this information stays within the Registry when you uninstall or remove the files from your system. This means that your Registry is unnessary larger than it should be, contains information that is irrelevant to your system and can cause your PC to boot more slowly, perform erratically and more.

Auslogics Registry Defrag 4.0.4 is a tool that you can use to compant your Registry, which means access should be quicker and your computer might become more responsive. It's an incredibly easy to use tool, so it can be used by novice users.

From time to time, we'll invest in a new PC. We look at the specification and choose the PC relevant to our requirements. We place the order and wait for delivery. On delivery, do we bother to check whether we've received what we've ordered? Apart from the obvious aspects, such as the LCD, style of case and so on, there's little clue to what we've received is the correctly specified computer.

Auslogics System Information 1.0.4 is a tool that you can use to check the contents of your new PC and check them against what you've ordered. It will detail the components inside your PC. This includes your memory configuration, graphics card, hard drive size and much more. You can then print off a technical report, along with various graphics and other information.

If you own more than one computer, getting files from one machine to the other isn't always easy. How do you tell which files have been updated on the remote system, since you last copies across your work? If someone else is working on this machine, it makes it even more complicated. Ideally you need a file manager that will synchronise files across various computers. Windows doesn't do this, but Directory Opus 9 and xplorer both support this feature.

Synchredible Standard 2.1 is an alternative. This is a tool designed simply to synchronise your work and files between computers, across your network. It works both ways, so if you have multiple people working on same files, Synchredible will synchronise the updated files back across to the local or remote destination.

We talk about using a USB stick or other external drive, to store our portable applications, important data and to take our work on the road. However, what happens if we use this USB stick in a Cybercafe or similar location and leave the drive behind? In a worse case scenario, someone would have access to your licensed software, important data and personal information.

Folder Lock 5.7.5 is a tool that will enable you to safeguard a folder or area on any drive, including a portable hard drive. This would further protect your content. If you accidentally left behind your portable drive, no-one would be able to read the content unless they had your password.

There are so many cool free applications on the Mac that there's even a website set up by users called coolmacapps.com. Although Cyberduck is no way near the top of this list, it's still an excellent and visually well-designed tool for uploading and managing your remote website, server or homepage. Simply enter the credentials of the site (username, password) and you're connected. You can then upload and download files as required.

Cyberduck 2.7.3 is more than just a tool to administer a remote website, however. You can use it to download from any FTP site and also manage your downloads. As you're downloading from an FTP site, you can resume a previous download at any time.

There are times where you simply can't protect your personal information, particular if you're using a computer that has shared account access. This particularly applies to students, who rely on computers where personal information isn't stored overnight and work has to be carried around on a USB stick or burned on to a CD.

CryptoExpert 2007 Lite 7.05 is encryption software that will enable you to protect an area of your computer or portable USB stick, so that only people who know the password can read/write to this safeguarded area of your drive. You can turn this protected area in to a drive and even allocate a drive letter. You can then read/write to this area as if it's a self-contained drive.

Up until fairly recently, we had to put up with Microsoft's Virtual PC for Mac which ran like a dog, even on the fastest PowerPC-based Apple Mac. You could only really do the basics with this virtualisation software and most Mac users never thought they'd see a native Windows on their Mac. This all changed when Apple moved over to Intel processors, which has lead to an explosion in virtualisation software for the Intel Mac market.

VMware Fusion 4.1 beta is the latest virtualisation technology and now enables you to run Windows Vista or XP on your Mac. New features such as Unity will enable you to open and view a Windows application on your OS X desktop. The latest 4.1 ships with support for the forthcoming Leopard update, as well as drivers for the Santa Rosa-based MacBook Pro.

These days there's a fine line between shareware and commercial software. What defines commercial software if you can purchase both on the Internet? The clear difference between the two is that commercial software often ships in a box and is available through retail. However, shareware authors can give the impression that their software is available commercially by designing a box image.

True BoxShot 1.7 is a tool that will enable you to create your own 3D box image from either a plain 2D image or from a collection of images, logos and other graphics. It's that easy. If you have your own logo and a stock photo, you're more than half way to creating your own box. This 5-star rated product is worth the small investment if you're going to create one or more box images.

When you access your computer remotely, the connection is often too slow to do any productive work. Even logging in to your remote PC to check, download and read your email is tricky. Doing any work is almost out of the question. The other option is to automate a number of tasks. For instance, why not set up an automated routine that will start an application, run a procedure, close and then log you off? The ideal situation would be a routine that you could save as an executable, so it can be double-clicked on your desktop.

VistaTask 6.5 is a tool that enables you to automate the use of your PC. Better still, you can then export your automated task as a self-running exe file, which you can use to run the task. You wouldn't need VistaTask to run through your script. Despite the name, VistaTask 6.5 isn't just for Windows Vista.

We have security applications to protect us against spyware, virus attack, system intrusion and even malicious software. However, we often forget about rootkit technology, which can affect the usage of our system. For instance, rootkit technology can disrupt how our system operates when you place an audio CD in your computer. Instead of using your chosen media player, you are forced to use the media player that shipped with the audio CD. The same rootkit technology prevents you from copying the disc contents. There are many other examples of what rootkit can do to your PC.

Microsoft Rootkit Revealer 1.71 is a tool that will enable you to find and reveal rootkit installed on your PC. However, it doesn't do a great deal more than find rootkit, but at least you know it's on your system and can find an alternative tool, such as the Sophos Anti-Rootkit, to remove.

It was only last Monday when Apple announced Safari for Windows 3 (and there's a Mac OS X version, too). In the last week or so, two updates have been made available, fixing various bugs and issues involving Windows compatibility.

Safari for Windows 3.02 beta is now available and this fixes even more bugs and enhances text support for non-English systems. There's a Mac OS X 3.02 update available, too. Note that this comes with an updated version of the WebKit technology which also drives and powers other Mac OS X products, such as Dashboard, iTunes and more. Some users have reported problems with the installation of the new WebKit (that ships with the Mac OS X version of Safari 3 beta) with third-party software that uses this WebKit.

And I thought security software was the most regularly updated software in the industry? Download managers are close behind. In the recent week at least four popular download managers have been updated. Why would you need a download manager? There are a number of reasons. They integrate within your web browser, so handle every download, including enabling you to extract video and other media from a website. You can resume downloads, schedule large downloads and go back and source downloads from multiple locations, which means they should download more quickly.

In the last week, we've seen updates to Orbit Downloader 2, ReGet Deluxe 5.1, GetRight 6.3, FlashGet 1.8.8 and Internet Download Manager 5.11. Some are freeware, others are shareware. However, you can choose the download manager that suits your requirements.

You may or may not be a fan of Internet Explorer 7, but one thing is for sure, it's not as pro-actively developed as Firefox or Opera. These two browsers are often being updated and the preview of Firefox 3 is already available in early alpha form. It won't be long before the first stable beta is available for testing. Internet Explorer 8 is way off on the horizon at the moment, although Microsoft are welcoming ideas and input from web users.

Avant Browser 11.5 is an Internet Explorer-based web browser that uses the IE engine within a different user interface. You get all the benefits of Internet Exporer, along with support for ActiveX, but with a host of additional features. For instance, you can backup your profile online, then import this back in to another version of Avant, so you can take your bookmarks and other information on the road.

We're always looking for ways to improve the way we work. Ideally, if we could turn everything in to a shortcut, our work would consist of assigning tasks and macros to keyboard commands. This is possible. You can create a macro to automate a task. For instance, if you have to manually process a number of files, every day, you could create macro that automates this procedure. The result is, the next time you want to process the files, you run the macro or a keyboard shortcut.

AutoHotKey 1.0.47 is a tool that will enable you to assign commands, macros and tasks to various keyboard shortcuts. You can also improve your work by writing abbreviated words, which AutoHotKey will automatically expand. For instance, 'BTW' could automatically become 'by the way', so you're email doesn't appear that's written in such a casually manner.

If, for whatever reason, you're not happy with Firefox or Opera, there's now another alternative web browser for you to try on your PC. Apple recently released Safari for Windows 3.0, which was quickly updated to 3.01 within 48 hours. We've not discussed this browser before, for a very good reason: I can't get it to work under Windows Vista. The browser starts, but the menus and other components are missing. This applies to the latest Safari for Windows 3.01 and under the latest version of QuickTime. Makes no sense.

Other people have got the browser to work successfully, so it's still worth a look. Visually it looks like it's a Mac web browser on your PC, as the user interface is taken from Mac OS X - the scrollbars are aqua in design, for example. It's a fast browser and contains a number of interesting features. If you're a Safari user on the Mac, you might be so used to this browser, you might find that Safari for Windows 3.01 is the ideal browser of choice, as you already understand the custom key shortcuts.

Burning simple audio or data CDs requires you to use a 'media suite', whereas you might just want to burn a quick CD to play in your car or on the road. Burning suites have become more complex, over the top and laden with features that most of us do not need. When a burning suite ships on a DVD, you know that it's time to look at alternatives. Some of these alternatives may include freeware burning tools which enable you to basic burning.

Final Burner Free 1.17 is a free disc burning suite. It has been designed to enable you to burn your discs, quickly. There are the minimum of menus, options and layers to wade through. It supports the latest discs, so you can quickly burn a dual-layer DVD, ideal for backing up your movies. If you need to ship a disc to another person, you can choose to export your disc as an ISO image, which you could place on your homepage for download.

Back in the 80s business people carried around a Filefox which contained their diary, calendar and contact information. Indeed, the bigger and more worn the Filefox, the more 'important' you were viewed to your collegues. You could impress at a business meeting by showing how many business cards you had collected at the back of the Filofax. This soon wore off as a novelty and it's extremely rare to see anyone show off their collected business cards or even their contact list. However, we all need this information or we'd soon forget what we've got to do in the future.

EssentialPIM Free 2.0 RC3 is the latest version of the personal information manager. You can use this tool to manage your contacts, to do list, tasks and meeting schedule. There's also a portable version which you can take on the road.

Even if you have the fastest Internet connection, your downloads can be managed more effectively. For instance, if you download from a standard web server, through a HTTP link, and your download stops halfway through, a standard browser will only enable you to start the download from scratch. A download manager will enable you to resume the download. Download managers can speed up a download by enabling you to source from multiple locations.

Internet Download Manager 5.11 is one of the more popular download management tools that will also combine with your web browser and take over all downloads. If you're planning a couple of heavy-weight downloads and do not want to saturate your bandwidth, you can schedule Internet Download Manager 5.11 to download overnight.

When you install Windows on your system, many of us stick with the 'working' drives that shipped with the operating system. As long as our system boots and doesn't give us too many problems, we don't think about updating our drivers. However, like any software, hardware manufacturers often find bugs in their drivers and release updates. By installing the latest drivers, you may find that your system starts more efficiently and your hardware works without complaint. This is particularly important for Vista users.

RadarSync 2007 is a tool that enables you to constantly check your installed drivers (and other software) for updated technology. It works on a subscription basis, much like an anti-virus client, so you can pay for a years worth of new software updates. It means that RadarSync 2007 does all the hard work for you, so you do not have to manually check for your own driver updates. Driver Genius Pro 7 is a very similar tool.

You've probably installed an anti-virus client to protect yourself from virus attack and trojans. An anti-spyware tool can prevent keyloggers and other applications from recording our key strokes and sending personal information to a remote location. A firewall is useful if you have a broadband connection and often leave your computer connected to the Internet. However, many of us forget about malicious software that can be installed on our computer and can often make our system erratic or prevent Windows from starting, the next time you boot your PC.

Comodo BO Clean 4.24 is a free anti-malware tool that will protect your computer against malicious software. Malicious software can often be installed by mistake, when you install legitimate software. Sometimes it may stay resident on your PC for weeks, before it starts to affect your machine. Download BO Clean 4.24 which you can use alongside your existing anti-virus client.

One of the most frustrating elements of the ongoing Media Player v RealPlayer v QuickTime battle is that they all attempt to override each others media format. If you have an MPG video file on your computer, install RealPlayer and it will attempt to open it, whereas you might prefer QuickTime. Worse still, each media player only supports a limited number of video codecs, so what might play on one operating system and in one particular media player, may not play on another.

VLC Media Player 0.8.6c is a cross-platform multi-format video player that will enable you to play the same track on a Windows, Mac or Linux computer. You only need to install the one media player and you'll find tht it can handle most video formats that you throw at it (apart from Microsoft coded WMV which requires special authorisation that only Windows Media Player can support).

You've gone out and spent £10 on a CD and the last thing you want to worry about is whether you need to adhere to DRM (luckily most audio CDs do not have copy protection, so you can now backup your CD or extract the tracks to your computer) or whether you'll be able to play your tracks on your favourite MP3 player. You might want as much control as possible over your audio, where you want to play the tracks and which tracks are transferred across to your portable player.

Easy CD-DA Extractor 10.2.1 is an application that's been around for ages. It's main role is to extract audio from your CDs. However, it isn't limited to MP3, you can rip and store your tracks in just about any audio format and you have control over the compression used, naming of your tracks and more. You might not feel you need to purchase an audio ripping tool, but if you do, Easy CD-DA Extractor 10.2.1 is worth investigating.

Windows Vista ships with a slightly improved version of Windows Explorer, but it hasn't changed dramatically since Windows 95, and that was released over 10 years ago. Surely if innovation was needed, it should be the Explorer interface. For instance, why can't you double-click on the desktop to open an Explorer window, which Directory Opus 9 can manage? Once you've used a Windows Explorer replacement such as Directory Opus, it's really hard to use a computer that relies on the basic Explorer.

freeCommander 2007.05a is a freeware Windows Explorer replacement and it's pretty decent. You can quickly open a dual-pane Explorer window, which will enable you to copy and move files from one area of your hard drive to another. You can handle archives from within Explorer, synchronise files and much more. It's Vista-compatible, so you can use this instead of the standard Explorer lister window.

Up until recently Ad-Aware was the anti-spyware tool of choice and recommended by many in the industry. It didn't lose it's way, but rival products were simply more aggressive in terms of promotion, marketing and market penetration. However, there was always a free version of Ad-Aware, which made it a popular choice for many.

Ad-Aware 2007 was recently released and it's been a long time in development. The new version sports a brand new and updated interface, support for finding and eliminating all sorts of malicious software, track sweep support for eliminating your tracks when you surf the Internet and support for multiple browers. The Free edition doesn't enable real-time scanning, so you'll have to manually search for spyware if you want to check your computer.

Most of us are looking forward to our summer holiday and we'll be bringing our digital camera along with us. However, we get home and realise that, when we show family and friends the holiday experience, it's difficult to portray the landscape using standard 6 x 4 inch photos. You could get a special widescreen camera and print widescreen photos, but that costs money. The alternative is to take multiple photos and then stitch them together using a panorama tool.

WPanorama 8.1.1 is a panoramic digital photo editing tool that enables you to grab multiple photos, stitch them together and then produce a panoramic image. You need to do your homework first though, as you'll need to take multiple photos of the same object to get the best results.

Last week we saw two major virtualisation releases from Apple and Parallels. After the launch of the updaed MacBook Pro, we saw Bootcamp 1.3 beta which now enables you to use the backlight function on your MacBook Pro keyboard, along with other updates. Parallels released Desktop v3 which is their major new virtualisation update, with support for 3D graphics and DirectX on your Mac.

VMware Fusion beta 4 was released at the end of last week and is currently free during beta-testing. This virtualisation tool, like Parallels Desktop 3, enables you to use your Bootcamp Windows installation (so saving you from having to install Windows, twice), ships with Unity which will launch and use Windows applications on your Mac desktop, in addition to experimental support for Windows Vista.

With updated Apple hardware recently made available, it was only time before Apple released a new version of the Bootcamp software, along with new drivers. Bootcamp 1.3 has just been made available and includes support for the MacBook Pro backlit keyboard, so you can now use this feature when using Windows through Bootcamp 1.3. Other features included updated drivers for the latest NVidia cards found in the MacBook Pro.

More interesting is the release of Parallels Desktop 3 for the Mac, which enables you to host Windows (or another OS) virtually, on top of Mac OS X. Better still, you can use your Bootcamp partition, which means you do not need to install Windows twice. The latest Parallels Desktop 3 contains new features such as 3D support, DirectX support and more.

Who understands the thoughts behind web browser development? There are three key web browsers and all compete to make their browser the best on the market, providing it free of charge to any user, irrespective of home or commercial use. So, how do they justify the development, resources and costs involved? Either way, the latest web browsers are certainly improving. More secure, quicker downloading of web pages and new technologies.

Mozilla Firefox 3 is the forthcoming major release and this is the fifth preview. It's still an early alpha, so shouldn't be used instead of your current browser. New features include a central password manager, an early version of the 'Places' bookmarks and an updated version of the Gecko rendering engine.

As we all use the same operating system, some of us do not want to conform to uniformity. We want to tweak our OS so it appears different from other computers and it reflects our personality. Windows Vista already enables you to change your desktop background, the colour of your Explorer user-interface and more. However, most aspects of Windows Vista are customisable, whether that's altering the Start Menu or changing the logon screen.

StartDock LogonStudio 1.0 is a free tool that you can use to create your own custom Windows Vista logon screen. It's easy to do and only involved importing one of your favourite images. Of course, you can also import a logon screen from one of the many created by other users, too.

Computer work can be very routine. Tasks are the same every single day and it's easy to get slower, even though you're following the same process on your machine. There must be easier ways to automate tasks, so that you can get on with the real work. Better still, if you automate these tasks, when you attempt to access your computer remotely, it's much easier to run a macro on the remote system, rather than having to use your slow network connection to run through the task manually.

xStarter 1.8.8 is a tool that you can use to automate some of the work you do on a daily basis. You can then create a macro and save it as an executable task. When you need to run through that task again, simply run that macro. You can even schedule these macros so that they run at a particular time during the day - such as outside office hours.

Getting your favourite files and digital photos to your friends and family isn't too easy. You could place them on your homepage, enabling other users to download from the server or through a page on the site. Another option is to archive and email them as an attachment, but you'll struggle with outgoing email filesize limitations. You could use Messenger or a chat client, but they'll have to be online to accept the transfer.

AllPeers 0.6 is an extension for Firefox that has received a varied reception, so far. It uses the peer-to-peer network to enable you to share your files between users you add to AllPeers. You can invite friends and family and then provide them with the files or family photos. If you add a few people to your closed network, there's nearly always someone online, so there's a strong chance you'll be able to download the files from another location.

If you look around the many online software stores, you can buy an OEM version of Windows Vista for well under £100, which makes the new OS a worthy upgrade. Once you've bought and installed Vista, you may find that it takes up vital hard drive space and you could do with upgrading your drive. This is simple. Most PCs will allow you to connect another drive as a slave, within your system. You merely need to choose the drive relevant for your system, install and then migrate the data from your old drive. However, you can't do this by simply copying files, you need a migration tool.

HDClone Free 3.2.8 is a tool that will enable you to migrate the entire contents from an old drive to a larger new drive. You can then remove the old drive, connect the new drive as your 'master' and reboot. The only real downside of the free version is that it is limited to a copying speed of 300MB/minute, which means it might take some time to migrate the contents of a large drive.

After months or years of writing files to your hard drive, your drive can easily become fragmented. Files are stored all over your drive and not in a continuous block, which means that it takes far longer for your drive to search for and find the files it requires to boot your computer and load applications. Result is that hard drive access seems to occur continuously and your computer operates more slowly. One solution is to backup your important files and re-install Windows. The other solution is to defragment your drive.

Auslogics Disk Defrag 1.1.5 is a free defragmentation tool that is faster than the tool built in to Windows XP. It will rearrange the files on your drive and place them in a continuous block, where possible, speeding up access to your data. However, if you have a rather large hard drive, you might find that you need to leave it running overnight as it will take time to finish defragmenting your drive.

Does anyone remember the big browser battle between Microsoft and Netscape in the late 90s through in to 2000? Seems like a long time ago now and most people won't even realise that Netscape were the biggest web browser developer only a few years ago. They lost their way somewhat (in the browser market) and asked a third-party developer team to work on Netscape 8. It was ok, but was never going to rival Firefox, Opera or Internet Explorer 7.

Netscape Navigator 9 is the first public preview of the forthcoming web browser, based around Mozilla Firefox. It does have a few features of it's own, such as URL correction, so it's worth checking out. As it's based on Firefox, it will enable you to use your favourite extensions, add-ons and more.

Up until very recently Mac OS X users have had to make do with the X11 version of OpenOffice, which does not run natively on the operating system. Not the ideal choice for professionals seeking an alternative office suite for their Mac-based work. This was the case until Sun decided to step in and help with an native Aqua version of OpenOffice for Mac OS X users. Now we have the first preview of the forthcoming Aqua edition.

Note that this version is still an early preview. If you look at the issues of concern, the software won't even enable you to print from the applications and will crash when you attempt to quit the application. This means that preferences and other settings may not be stored. Still, it's exciting times for Mac users as it gives Microsoft Office for Mac some additional competition and we're all looking forward to Office 2008.

Up until Windows Vista, the Explorer hadn't changed considerably. Indeed, I can't understand how anyone puts up with Windows Explorer when they have tools such as Directory Opus 9 available as a professional-level replacement? These tools offer far more flexibility. For instance, Opus 9 will enable to configure your own lister window and then double-click anywhere on your desktop to open a new Explorer window, immediately. Just this basic flexibility makes me really frustrated when I have to go back to the standard Windows Explorer.

Xplorer² 1.6.5.12 is another Windows Explorer replacement tools that offers additional flexibility. For instance, you can quickly compare and synchronise files between different sources (for instance, the files on your hard drive, compared to your remote server), find and remove duplicate files, customise your lister windows and much more.

Say you've moved in to a shared house with an expensive colour inkjet or laser printer. Other people will be envious and keep asking you if they can print their project work on your printer. The snag is, it costs you money. You're paying for the ink, paper and the hassle of having to let them use your printer. If this printer is on a network (wireless or wired), why not enable other users to access this printer, but limit their rights using some quota-based software?

PaperCut Quota 6.3 is a tool that you can use within a shared house, family or a very small business - completely free of charge (for up to 5 users) - and enable them to access and print from your printer. You can restrict the amount of printing and allocate a cost to prints. If they want to produce a full-colour A3 cover for their project work, you can allocate a price to this print. Unless it is paid, you can reduce access to the printer.

One problem with video-editing software is that they are based around their own licensed codecs. If someone gives you some video for editing, you might not be able to open the video to make the changes. There are so many codecs and different formats that most consumer video editors stick with their own codec and expect you to import the raw video from your camcorder, not import from a local source, such as your hard drive.

VirtualDub 1.6.19 is a freeware video editing tool that's been around for a long while. It's different from other video editors in that it relies on the codecs that you have on your system to open and edit video. If you have something like the K-Lite Codec Pack installed on your system, you'll probably find that you can open and edit most sources of video. However, the video editing tools are rather basic and it will only export as an AVI format, which isn't too good for burning to DVD (however, there does seem to be a third-party MPEG2 module available).

You might not want to lose your favourite Windows-based applictions, but may be sick of using Windows itself. You might thinks it's time to try another operating system, but don't really have the time to spend migrating your data to a new word processor, email client and web browser. It's easier to stick with what you know, primarily for workflow reasons.

Wine 0.9.38 is a toolkit that will enable you to run a small number of Windows applications on another Unix-based operating system. Only a particular number of key Windows applications will work under Wine, but this does list a small number of older games, as well as productivity software.

Portability is increasing in popularity. Large capacity USB sticks are now reasonable value and you don't need to install an operating system on a USB stick to take your applications on the road. You simply need to format, then install the relevant portable applications, such as Mozilla Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice and more. Take your USB stick, run the apps and nothing will be written to the host computer. This enables you to ditch your laptop and take your USB stick on holiday or visiting your relatives.

PStart 2.10 is a portable application launch tool that will reside on your USB stick and launch portable applications that you have on your stick. Although nothing is written back to the host PC, you can choose to install PStart on the host PC to launch your applications more effectively. No personal info is stored on the computer, however.

We like to give the boring and repetitive tasks to other people, but often the work they return to us isn't quite what we expected. They've worked through the files you've given them and made the necessary changes, but the files are named incorrectly. It's going to take ages to go through them all manually and make the changes yourself and you can't ask the other person as you forgot to tell them how to name the files in the first place.

PFrank 1.98 is a batch rename tool that will take your existing documents and files and enable you to process them so the end up with a consecutive name (ie 'img_xx.jpg' or similar). You don't need to change filenames either. PFrank 1.98 can be used to batch convert a number of files so they contain the same meta information - such as your copyright information.

If you are a programmer working long in to the night, you might end up forgetting the changes you've made to your latest code, when you've been debugging your source. It's easily done. The snag is, you then have to go through and try and examine the changes you've made compared to your previous work. This can take longer than starting the debugging process again, from scratch. What would be easier would be to use a document merging tool to compare your previous and current work and see the changes side-by-side.

WinMerge 2.6.6 is a document merging and comparison tool that will enable you to load two documents and compare them side-by-side. These documents do not need to be programming code, although it's a useful tool for developers to examine changed code. If you're a writer and you've forgotten the changes you've made to your previous work, simply load up and compare the two documents. When you've finished and are happy, you can merge the new work with the old document, if necessary.

Day after day you perform the same old tasks. Some would say that you become used to a particular way of productivity, others would say that these tasks waste time. For instance, batch processing a number of files, moving files from one area of your drive to another, erasing files from a particular area on your drive and much more. These are common tasks, repeated. Surely there must be a tool or a method to automate this process?

Macro Express 3.7 is a tool that you can use to create your own task workflow, based around computer activity. You can use the wizard-driven interface to create your macro or simply create a macro based around the keys you press or the buttons you press with your mouse. Once you've finished, stop recording and when you play back your new macro, the task you've just recorded will be repeated, automatically.

There are a few programs that you use on a daily basis. These apps you spend time with, customise, set the preferences to your requirements and you feel lost when you use a vanilla version of this application on another computer. Your web browser is one of these apps and you'll have your bookmarks, preferences, browsing history and more. If you spend time on the road, you'll want to take these elements with you. It's possible as you can now share your bookmarks between editions of Firefox using the Google Browser Sync for Firefox.

Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.4 Portable Edition is the free portable version of the web browser. Install this on your USB key and then use the Google Browser Sync for Firefox extension to sync your bookmarks, preferences and history. When you take your USB key with you, you'll be able to access you edition of Firefox without leaving behind a trail of personal history.