Taking advantage in a quiet time of the year, Paragon have announced a short-term 30%-off discount deal on any of their software titles. The pick has to be Paragon Hard Disk Suite 2008 which is a complete suite of tools you'll require to manage your drive and drive partitions. Better still, it ships with a 3-PC license, so you can install and use on your home PC and laptop. With the 30% discount, you can buy Paragon Hard Disk Suite 2008 for only £18.16 ($34.96) until 31st of December 2007 - that's next Monday! To buy, click on the Paragon Hard Disk Suite 2008 link.

Whilst we are here, don't forget that you can also buy Acronis True Image 11 Home for only £19.81 ($40) and get Acronis Disk Director 10 for free, rather than the usual price of $79.99! Hurry as this is a Xmas promo and will also end 31st of December 2007. Click on the Acronis True Image 11 link for more info.

Paragon Hard Disk Suite 2008 and Acronis True Image 11 links.

Like many people, you'll choose your favourite browser, at home and at work, then spend time seeking and storing your favourite bookmarks. The snag is, if you need to take a laptop on the road, you'll install Firefox but not have access to your bookmarks. You can get around this by installing the fantastic Google Browser Sync that will synchronise your bookmarks across your Firefox-based web browser. However, there isn't a version available for Firefox 3.

Mozilla Weave is an add-on that will enable you to sync your bookmarks across your Firefox 3-based web browser. It will support any Firefox browser, irrespective of the platform or location. You simply create an online account, login and then it will synchronise. Well, that's if you can get it to work. We simply didn't receive our login details, so we couldn't set up our account.

Mozilla Weave link.

As both as a Mac and Windows user, I've experienced both Firefox 2 and the latest beta preview of Firefox 3, across both operating systems. Before you ask, why not Safari? The problem we have is that our internal CMS works with IE or Firefox. Forget Opera, Safari or anything else. This means that - despite wanting to use Opera and store my bookmarks on the browser - it's rather pointless if the majority of your work can not be achieved using the browser. As Firefox 2 can become rather unstable on a Mac, I've moved across to the latest Firefox 3, despite the beta status.

Mozilla Firefox 3 beta 2 was released shortly before Christmas and, as you can imagine, ships with a host of improvements and fixes as a result of the beta 1 public testing. In addition, there are some new features. For instance, start typing a URL you might want to visit and Firefox 3 will offer you a list of URL options, saving you from having to type the remaining part of the URL. Very Opera-esque, I might add.

We've mentioned that software isn't generally the first thing on most people's minds and this time of the year, which is why various developers are giving discounts to encourage you to buy. This means if you are seeking software, it's actually a very good time to buy. So much so, we've noticed something rather bizarre. It seems that you might be able to get Acronis Disk Director Suite 10 for free (gratis!) and a massive discount from the price of Acronis True Image 11.

How? Click on this Acropack 2008 link (Acronis True Image 11 and Disk Director Suite 10 bundle) within Firefox (and only Firefox) and click on orange 'Buy Now' link which states $79.99. Next, enter the coupon code ATI11Xmas and the price should reduce. Try and close the tab and you'll be offered a further 10% discount, which means you get Acronis True Image 11 for £19.81 ($40) rather than £42 ($79.99) and you get Disk Director Suite 10 for free. Of course, let us know if and when this offer goes down, as it's clearly a mistake.

Acropack 2008 link.

Although most of us still use an offline client to access our email, one key reason for this is that we often have multiple accounts and archived email, contact information and more. If you've not heard from someone for a while, quickly search for their last email and drop them a quick note. It's all very easy to do this from within your existing email client. However, now Gmail offers over 5GB worth of storage for hosting your email, there's no reason why you couldn't migrate some of your Outlook-based email across to your online account.

To do this, you'll need to make sure you strip away some of the largest email. You could temporarily store these in a separate folder (away from your inbox) so they are not copied across. Turn on IMAP support within Gmail and then follow these instructions.

Move Outlook email to Gmail instructions.

We've spent months talking about portability, with the facility to take portable apps on the road and keep your private data stored on a portable USB stick. However, one site has gone much further than this and has decided to create a complete personal desktop that you can log in and access, from any computer and any location. Jooce is a portable personal desktop designed around keeping in contact and chatting with your online friends. In the same way you'd log in to your web-based email, you can log in to your own desktop and use this desktop to store your music, photos and chat online.

Jooce isn't the fastest operating system in the world and it's not Windows-based, but it contains all the tools you might require to keep in contact, chat and store media files. In future, you'll probably see it moving forward as a fully-fledged desktop.

Jooce link.

Everyone should own a disk management suite. Whether it's installed on your machine or not, there will be a time in the future when you either need to partition (add, delete, merge, clone), restore data or may want to salvage data in the future. The snag is, when your system is down, that's not the time when you'll want to be hunting around for Internet access so you can try and purchase a disk tool, online. Luckily for you, Acronis are offering up to 25% discount on both Acronis Disk Director Suite 10 and Acronis True Image 11 as  special Xmas promotion.

Acronis Disk Director Suite 10 is a suite of Vista-compatible disk management tools that will enable you to partition, restore, salvage data and also create a boot management sequence so you can boot in to different installed operating systems. As mentioned, Acronis Disk Director Suite 10 can be purchased with a 25% discount by following the link on this page, whereas Acronis True Image 11 can be bought with a staggering 30% Xmas discount. Both offers expire 31st of December 2007.

Acronis Disk Director Suite 10 link and Acronis True Image 11 link.

Windows Vista was far more than a superficial update to the interface visuals. Behind the scenes there have been updates to the kernel, the way that it handles security, the user accounts and more. However, this has caused a fair few issues with existing software, most of which has had to receive a major update. Mostly these updates worked fine, some didn't. Well respected apps such as System Mechanic 7 received a lot of negative press and didn't work too well under Vista. This was primarily due to the nature of the application - System Mechanic digs deep in to the operating system to make optimisations and enhancements.

System Mechanic 7.5 has just been released and attempts to stabilise and enhance the product, particularly for Vista users. If you're an existing user, grab the latest version. If you tried the original demo and were not impressed, it might be worth trying the latest revision?

System Mechanic 7.5 link.

We've been securing a number of special Christmas discount promotions for you to take advantage of during the festive period. In some cases, you can find up to 30% off the standard retail price. Here's a roundup of the offers. Click on the product names for each link/offer.

Acronis True Image 11 can be bought for £18.47 ($35.99), 30% off the retail price. PC Tools Registry Mechanic 7 is available for £20.96, 30% off the retail price. Same with PC Tools Spyware Doctor 5, again at £20.96 at 30% off. Directory Opus 9.1 can be purchased with a 25% discount, making it available for around £29. Ashampoo are offering 25% off all their software. You could buy the brand new Ashampoo PowerUp 3 for only £26.24. The best promotion of all is Webroot Spy Sweeper 5.5, which is available for only $19.95 (approx £11) over the Xmas period.

There are plenty of basic photo manipulation and photo viewing tools, many of which are available for free. Most offer simple functionality for image viewing and management, but few offer anything more than a basic editing toolkit. There are times you’ll want to import your favourite photos and add a few effects, touch-up blemishes and then export for the Internet.

Paint.NET 3.2 is a fairly powerful and popular freeware photo editing tool. Initially designed as a more advanced replacement for the paint tool that ships with Windows, but has lately transformed in to a more advanced app with an extensive feature-set.

Every so often we receive a file by email or download data that can’t be read or opened. Try and open the file and you might find it is corrupt and can’t be read nor converted. The difficulty with converting files is that most conversion tools are aimed at specific file types, ie one image format to another or a video format from one standard to another. Rather than having a tool for each particular type of file, it would be far easier to use an all-in-one conversion tool.

Konvertor 3.61 is a simple but very effective tool that enables the conversion of around 1000 different file types including image, audio, video, and text format documents. You can also use it as a browser/organiser to add individual descriptions to desired files.

However long you've owned your computer, you'll have installed software with a End User License Agreement (EULA). How many of you have read through this EULA for license information that may restrict usage of the software or, worse, offer personal information back to the software supplier. By agreeing to th EULA, you're also agreeing to the terms and effectively signing a contract that adheres you to the contents.

EULAlyzer 1.2 is a tool that you can use to skim through a typical EULA and find any keywords or information that might hold you to account if you agree to the terms. You can also store the EULA offline, away from the software, and refer back if necessary. The only thing is, EULAlyzer contains a EULA, so perhaps we need an analyser to check this, before we can install?

We spend months taking photos and storing them on our computer. The snag is, how do you get your photos across to your friends and family? You might want to share the 40 photos you took when you were on your visit to Dublin, but can't print them off nor can you justify trying to send them by email. They're simply too large. The best alternative is to upload them to a photo-sharing website and then enable your friends to have access. Flickr is one of the best around and, if you have a large number of photos, you'll need a tool to get them online, quickly.

Flickr Uploadr 3 is a the latest version of the official photo uploader that will enable you to select the photos you want to put on your Flickr account, select whether you want to make them available to the public or private use, then upload to a new or existing set on your account.

Flickr Uploadr 3 link.

We bet you bought a DTP with the sole purpose of using it to create an invite, whether this was a wedding, birthday or one-off party. Once you get designing your invite, you'll quickly realise that it's much harder than you expected, especially when you try and find graphics to make up your document. It would be far easier if you could do the whole thing over the Internet as most of your friends and family have an Internet connection.

Evite is a cool web-based invite and greeting card system that will enable you to take a pre-designed card template, add your details, party invite and attendees and then simply email address to the recipient. They'll see a professional animated graphic, along with the invite. The only snag is, it didn't seem to work properly with the latest version of Firefox and assumes you're based in the States, although it should work for different territories.

Evite link.

The Task Manager is fantastic for closing unresponsive applications. It happens often. You have a few applications and one of them is performing erratically, but won't close. You start up Task Manager, find the software and force it to close manually. You'll then be able to start it again without problems. The snag is, what happens if you have a scenario where CPU usage is so high that you can't even start Task Manager. You could force a reboot, but you'll almost certainly lose your opened documents.

AntiFreeze is a last-resort tool that will reside in your system tray and prevent almost instant access if you can't, for whatever reason, open Task Manager. It's a nice idea, but fairly impractical. You can always make Task Manager reside in your system tray, if necessary and you still have to use a key combination to start AntiFreeze.

Test and download AntiFreeze.

Watching TV online is becoming increasingly popular as our broadband connection offers more flexibility and, as more of us tune in, a wider selection of online channels are being made available. Popular channels such as  MTV, with their large audience, have made it possible to make the transition from terrestrial to online and, as result, the list of media platforms using the Internet to broadcast TV is on the rise.

Joost 1.0.3 is an application brought to you from the developers of both Skype and Kazaa and enables users to watch television online, with thousands of available channels. With its inevitable increase in popularity, it’s becoming an easy way to watch whatever you like online.

When using Windows, most users are unaware that there is a wide selection of tools, languages, add-ons, modules and more that are superfluous. They take up vital space on your drive and result in a longwinded installation. The problem is that the setup application will only enable you to reduce a small set of these components and you’ll need to resort to third-party configuration tools. Customising Windows has always been an issue, but using a component removal tool and thus, being able to a create pre-installation setup, enables you to customise the operating system before installation.

nLite 1.4.1 is a useful tool that enables you to create a Windows installation without any unwanted components along with other useful tweaks. You can remove language packs and other unwanted junk easily, helping you to create a more slimmed down operating system.

Although the Internet is a worldwide phenomenon, there are some unique, well-designed and useful sites that are only available within a particular territory. One of these is the superb Mint online money management website. Think Microsoft Money online and you'll get an idea of what Mint is all about. You can import and link to your online back - US banks only for now - and then refer to your credit card online, track your bills, payments and more. It's an ideal way of tracking and managing your personal finances.

The snag is, I wonder if they realise that there is a Mint credit card in the UK, which may prove to be a problem bringing the brand over here. Our banking system is far more traditional, too. However, it's certainly a web tool we'd like to see over this side of the pond.

Mint link.

Only yesterday did we mention that you could edit and work with an online version of OpenOffice. This would enable you to store your documents, spreadsheets and database online and then edit them through the web version of OpenOffice, rather than trying to drag your office suite on the road. With more apps going online, and with fast broadband becoming the norm, there's no reason why you can't drop your install CDs, grab a laptop and then work with your apps through your browser, without having to install to your PC. In the near future you won't need to install a thing, apart from the OS, and everything will load from a ultra-fast flash drive, rather than hard drive.

Zoho Show is an online tool that brings you the facility to write and edit documents, produce a presentation and manage your meetings, amongst other tools. It supports the Microsoft Office formats, so you an import your existing documents, spreadsheets and other files.

Zoho Show link.

There are a few applications that, once you've used them for a while, you realise that using the original version offers you an inferior experience. Windows Explorer, although a usable application for managing your files, certainly couldn't be described as a power tool. There are a number of Windows Explorer replacements and the best alternative has to be Directory Opus 9.1, which was recently updated to support Vista 64-bit and ships with a number of minor enhancements and fixes. However, we've got you a special Xmas discount offer, especially for vnunet.com users.

Directory Opus 9.1 is available at 25% off the retail price until end of January 2008. To take advantage of this promotion, head to the Directory Opus 9.1 page on vnunet.com and then to the GP Software website, then enter coupon code VNUXMAS0108. If there's one promotion you should take advantage of, it's this discounted promo.

Directory Opus 9.1 link.

Instant messaging is a useful tool for staying in regular contact with friends and family. However, one of the most frustrating elements of instant messaging is choosing the network you require as, unlike using a mobile phone, you might not be able to access your MSN contacts from your Yahoo account. There are ways around this though and one of the best alternatives is to us a multi-platform IM client that will enable you to access your contacts, irrespective of network.

Pidgin 2.3.1 is an intelligent multi-platform tool that enables you to chat to your friends or family on multiple IM networks simultaneously. Simply download this free application and your set to chat with anyone on almost any network.

With employees having to attend meetings outside the office, work across different buildings and even the odd day from home, we're having to move around our data, bookmarks, document templates and other tools. We could use the Internet to back up and store our data and then install various applications on a USB stick and then take that with us on the road. However, there are other options. For instance, Ulteo have introduced a system so you can use OpenOffice from the Internet, rather than having to install this on a portable device.

The new system ships with 1GB of storage space and full access to the OpenOffice applications. You can open and save documents, edit Excel files and more. The only snag is, it's a bit slow, but that's partly due to the publicity that the new service has received.

Ulteo OpenOffice online link.

Novice users may not be aware, but Windows ships with a range of functions and tools that are not so accessible from the regular interface. Microsoft’s thinking is that if novice users start adjusting and fiddling with these functions, they may not really know what they are altering. Like XP and other previous versions of the Windows operating system, Vista has various elements that can be both optimised, tweaked and re-configured. 

TweakVIBasic 1.0.1075 is a free application that enables you to optimise and tweak Windows Vista. It will enable you to create a RAM drive so that you can access its contents instantaneously. You can also configure Windows to run in a way that is right for the person using the OS.

You could quite easily be using your computer, writing up documents, surfing the web and sending emails, without ever knowing that you’re infected. Computers will often appear to function normally as malicious software and Trojans are designed to lay low, often for weeks or months. The only way to be sure is to keep your security software as up-to-date as possible and to run a check or even removal tool to keep your PC clear from any malicious software.

Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool 1.36 will remove prevalent malicious software from an infected system. As this is a Microsoft product it is updated frequently to protect you from both current and the latest malicious

If you want to download a large file, one option is to obtain via a torrent file which you can obtain from various sources. Up until recently, the only choice was BitTorrent. Although BitTorrent is a fairly basic tool it’s still a widely used way of downloading and sharing files. However, there are better tools available that will enable the experience of obtaining your software through torrent, a more professional experience. One of these tools is the powerful BitComet.

BitComet 0.97 is a free file sharing tool that is BitTorrent compatible, enabled with the ability to pause, resume and queue downloads as well as set speed limit for fully optimised downloads.

Whilst we wait for Windows XP Service Pack 3 and are able to download the first release candidate of Vista Service Pack 1, there are many organisations who are happy with the stability of their operating system installation and/or have software installed that may be incompatible with the forthcoming service pack. For this reason, they'd be keen to implement a system that prevents the service pack from being automatically installed on a workstation.

Microsoft Windows Service Pack Blocker Tool Kit is a free and official tool designed to stop a service pack from automatically installing on your computer or a workstation on your network.

Service Pack Blocker Tool Kit download link.

Looking back, Vista has been available for 18 months if you take in to account the original public beta release back in Summer 2006. However, it hasn't been as popular as Microsoft anticipated. Why not? The problem is that the majority of software has to be upgraded, which means that corporates will need multi-workstation licenses, which results in huge expense. Also, Vista isn't particularly fast compared to XP, which means that if you have an old PC, you might see a performance hit.

So, Microsoft have been busy working on the first Service Pack and the release candidate has been made available as a public download. Although officially it won't be available until early 2008, you can get the benefits of a new release - including some new features - right now.

Windows Vista SP1 RC download link.

In an exclusive promotion with vnunet.com, you can get 25%-off any Ashampoo software until 6th of January 2008. For instance, why not treat yourself to the rather superb Ashampoo PowerUp 3, the recently released version of the system tweaking and optimisation tool for Windows XP and Vista. There's also the highly-rated Ashampoo Burning Studio 7 which makes disc burning simple.

There are plenty of other highlights. To take advantage of the 25%-off promotion, head to www.vnunet.com/downloads and search for your favourite Ashampoo software. Click the 'Buy Now' link on each page and then, at checkout, enter the coupon code: ZBV-98S-D54

Go to www.vnunet.com/downloads or click here for a direct Ashampoo search.

You know the score, you buy your software and then receive a serial code by email. Two years later, you want to reinstall this software and can't find the original email. Worse, you can't find the order number so you can't login to the original site to find your code. Software suppliers might help - as they don't want a disgruntled customer - but in most instances their orders are accepted by a specialist online e-commerce company such as Digital River.

Keyfiler is an online-only system that will enable you to store your software serial codes online, in a unique database designed for this purpose. You can also store your web usernames, passwords and other information. You can then export the data to your computer if you lose it in future. However, you need to ask whether you can trust a third-party site to securely store and manage your personal software serial codes?

Keyfiler online link.

At this time of year, software isn't a priority for many and software developers realise this and offer various promotions. Although DivX have previously offered the Pro edition - which normally retails for $20 - for free, they are offering the promotion again for a limited period, over the Christmas holidays.

The main difference between the free version and the Pro version is the ability to convert between formats and prepare your video for the Internet (or other formats). However, it appears the MPEG-2/DVD codec isn't included with this free version of the Pro edition, so it's not quite a $20 valued product for free. Still, we all like freebies, so we advise you download this version before the free offer expires.

DivX Pro download link.

When de-cluttering our PCs it’s easy to become over zealous, and drag files to the recycle bin that you didn’t really intend. Luckily anything dragged into the recycle bin is simply moved to a location for deleting at a later date. The files are still on our system, even when the bin is emptied, although you won’t necessarily see the files listed in their usual location. Eventually, new file information will overwrite older data, but until this point the files do remain on your system.

Recuva 1.09 is a free file recovery tool from the developers behind CCleaner. This application will enable files that have accidentally been sent to your recycle bin, and then emptied. Most files can be easily recovered although there are applications such as File Shredder which will permanently erase files.

Only this week we put Microsoft Windows Server 2008 online and stated that you could install this on an old PC and use this as a server. The only snag is that the FTP server part of Windows Server is tricky to set up, understand, visually, not the most well designed application. For most end users, they want a simple tool that enables you to set up a group, the users with access to that group and they keep an eye out on who is connected to the server.

zFTPServer Suite 3 is a free FTP server that has been designed for home and commercial use. You can quickly set up accounts, bar users, limit the number of people connected to the server and see who is connected and what they are downloading. It's a really well-designed tool and recommended.

zFTPServer Suite 3 link.

Sometimes you can be using your PC, browsing the Internet, and your computers fans can be whirring away, CPU usage high and it seems for no apparent reason. This can make it difficult to identify what’s happening to your PC. If you are running certain widgets or sidebars, could be where your system resources are being used. Ideally you could use a system monitoring tool to help identify what applications are consuming your systems memory. Evaluate the problem and quickly realise the cause.

CoolMon 2 is the latest version of its system monitoring tool. This system monitor will enable you to perform in depth monitoring of your PC, you can also use it to check processes and threads and to monitor hard drive usage.

Our PC is like an open secret. If you share your home computer with your family, then they have access to your web browser, Internet browsing history, the applications you've installed on your PC and the games you've been playing whilst your family are out of the house. The snag is, the history, info, preferences and other details are all stored on your computer. The answer is to launch applications within a virtual environment, so that the info does not remain on your machine.

Sandboxie 3.21 enables you to launch applications within a sandboxed environment, where the information is retained within the sandbox and not stored on your drive. This means your game playing history, files required to launch the game and more are stored in a virtual box. This also safeguards your PC from malicious software.

After a special occasion such as a wedding or birthday celebration, there will have been a large number photos taken from a number of different people. The trouble is, if we would like copies of these photos, getting hold of them can often prove difficult. Emailing high-quality photos individually can be a time consuming process, but is often the only way of sending and receiving photos to our friends and family.

Batch Picture Resizer 1.9 will enable user to convert and resize images so that large numbers of images can be emailed in one go. Whole photo albums can be shared far more easily, the images will retain their quality but can be converted to all of the major image formats.

Has anyone noticed how bloated modern software applications have become in recent years. Our operating system, office suite and burning toolkit now ship on a DVD. Even our security suites are nearly 100MB and require extensive system resources just to protect your system. The thing is, we're crying out for lightweight tools that reside in the background and do their job, with the minimum of fuss. We don't want to have to wade through menus and options just to burn an audio CD.

BurnAware 0.9.9.1 is a promising free disc production tool. Yes, it's free. It's basic, but in a good way. If you want to burn data to a disc, you can do this with the minimum of fuss. If you want to create an audio CD, you can do this swiftly. It supports Blu-ray, too, so you could even backup an entire drive to a Blu-ray disc, if you have a recorder.

BurnAware link.

Buy a copy of Windows Vista and install it on your system and the installer won't spend ages tweaking and optimising the operating system specifically for your PC. It will install the most relevant drivers, but often these were the drivers that shipped with the original disc, rather than the most modern drivers available. Vista is installed as a vanilla operating system. If you look deeply, there are many hidden options that you can turn on (or off), tweak as required and optimise for your PC.

Ashampoo PowerUp 3 is the latest version of their popular system-tweaking tool, designed to get the most from your Vista installation. You don't really need to worry about being an advanced user to get the most from the software. Indeed, most of the tweaks and system enhancements are designed as one-click functions, so you can get going quickly. Ashampoo PowerUp 3 will also optimise and tweak Windows XP.

We'd all like our own homepage on the Internet. You can use this for writing your own personal blog, displaying your latest holiday photos or making files available to download to your friends and family. You can even hide areas on your site so only certain people have access. The snag is, how do you get this website online? You may need hosting, you may have free web space. You'll also need some basic web design and image editing skills. One option is to use a tool such as the superb Rapidweaver. The other option is to get someone to do the site for you.

Doodlekit is a free online web building kit that ships with the templates you require to create your pages, with free hosting. You can make minor changes to the style and colours of your site, but Doodlekit will display ads on your site where they will make revenue (when someone clicks on the ads). You can choose to upgrade to a paid-for monthly subscription, however.

Although it's probably not going to go up on our vnunet.com downloads for a while, Yahoo have released the first preview of their Messenger for Vista. Visually this is very different from the current version. In fact, it looks likely something designed for OS X, rather than Windows. That can only be a good thing, in our opinion.

The interface has received an overhaul, but you can now use your own interface skin to make it differ from that used by your friends. On Vista, you can add a widget to the Sidebar, so you can quickly see the status of your connected friends. If you're like most people, you'll want to chat to more than one person at one time. Instead of opening up multiple windows, Yahoo Messenger for Vista supports tabbed-based chatting.

Yahoo Messenger for Vista link.

Although many of us are moving across to a faster broadband connection, what do we really use this additional speed for, exactly? Sure, we can download files slightly faster than before and we can play an online game with reduced latency. The thing is, the fastest connections also have a fairly decent upload speed, meaning that you could offer files to other users and a fairly respectable speed. To do this, you need your own server. There's no reason why you couldn't make use of an an old (even three year old PCs will be fine, with a memory upgra