The claim that everyone has a song in them, which is great news. However, as most of us can't play the guitar, piano or other musical instrument, turning our song idea in to a project isn't always so feasible. You could try something like Microsoft Songsmith, although this is a really simplistic way of getting a song idea in to your computer. The wisest idea would be to source some music composition software that's designed for novice users. We're thinking software that you can use to drop loops, samples and other instruments on to a score.

With Computeractive magazine, issue 289 on-sale right now, you can get the full version of Magic Music Maker 15 Silver, which will enable you to start creating your first music track. Simply drop in the samples, instruments and loops on to the musical score, manipulate, add a few effects and then export and give to your mates.

Computeractive magazine.

From the launch of Mac OS X, PDF technology was built directly in to the operating system, under license from Adobe. This meant you could double-click on a PDF on your desktop and open within Preview. It also meant you could create commercial-quality PDF documents from just about any Mac application. This is essential for the Mac as PDF documents are the pre-requisite for sending to a printer for duplication. Problem is that we have to rely on third-party software to create PDF documents on a Windows PC.

With the April 2009 issue of PCW, on-sale right now, you can get the full current version of novaPDF 6 Lite, worth £15. This tool is the 'professional' version of the free doPDF from a company that has had years of experience creating PDF technology. It will enable you to produce a PDF document in a format ready for web download or required for commercial printing.

PCW April 2009 link.

The problem with your home family computer is that it tends to be used between multiple users, from your living room. This is fine for most families as they trust each other with their personal information. Problem is that it's too easy for your daughter's boyfriend to use your home computer to check the latest football scores, to quickly realise there's all sorts of personal info left on the machine. The solution is to install cleansing software that can go through your computer and clean it from all the temporary files, trash, personal info and other files you want to remove.

Webroot Window Washer 6.5 is one of the better system cleansing and optimisation tools are we're giving you the full current version with the latest Computeractive magazine, issue 288, on-sale right now.

Computeractive issue 288 link.

It's essential you get in to the routine of backing up your drive or a drive partition. Now we spend our time storing our audio files on our hard drive, rather than CD, it's way too easy to lose this data and, it's not possible to go back to iTunes and requested tracks you've previously purchased and downloaded. You need to purchase and download again. Therefore it's imperative you keep this partition and data backed up.

With issue 286 of Computeractive magazine, on-sale right now, we're giving you the full version of Acronis True Image 10 Personal, which is designed to backup your drive or individual partions. You can back them up to an external drive, a blank disc or other locations. You can schedule a backup, so it's performed weekly.

Note that this promotion is only for the magazine readers and is not a free public promotion for all Internet users.

Computeractive 286 link.

Go out and purchase Windows Vista, install, and you'll find that it's designed as a vanilla operating system that will operate across every computer, without causing installation or usability issues. For this reason, many of the secret functions are hidden deep in the operating system and aren't easily accessible. You can change the visual aspects of your user-interface, how Windows Media Player will interact with audio and video on your computer and so much more. There are many tools that will enable you to tweak these functions, but you'll want a tool that can do this more: defragment your drive, optimise your Registry, undelete files, monitor startup applications.

Ashampoo WinOptimizer 5 is regarded as one of the best system tweaking and optimisation tools and we're giving the full current version, worth £25, with issue 284 of Computeractive, on-sale right now.

Computeractive magazine link.

Hardly anyone bothers to set up one desktop computer with a multi-user configuration for every family member. What's the point? You'll want the same software accessible for every user and most kids tend to use a web browser to access email, contact their friends or simply to surf the web. Problem is that we often forget that we might not want other users to see the websites we've been visiting, the images we've viewed on the computer or the temporary files stored on the PC. Not necessarily as we're doing something wrong, but we might be using the computer to search for a surprise holiday for the wife's birthday.

With the March 2009 edition of PCW magazine, on-sale right now, we're giving you the full current version of Webroot Window Washer 6.5, worth £20. This tool will enable you to cleanse your PC from unwanted personal information that resides on your computer. It can cleanse temporary files, browsing history, delete cookies, shred files and eradicate all traces of many third-party applications.

PCW magazine link.

Some of you may have upgraded your computer this Christmas. Either a larger hard drive or a new machine. The first thing you'll notice is that everything boots and launches, immediately. This is due to your fresh drive, slim Registry and organised hard drive. Start installing software, remove applications and, after a few months, your computer will be back to taking a while to boot and applications will take far longer to launch. This is due to drive fragmentation where files are stored on your drive in no logical manner, meaning your drive head takes far longer to locate and load the data.

With the February 2009 issue of PCW magazine, on-sale right now, you can get the full current version of Uniblue DiskRescue 2009, worth £20. This tool is designed to examine your hard drive and defragment; which means the contents are re-organised in a logical manner so they can be located and loaded more swiftly.

PCW February 2009 link.

Some of our better audio tracks are those that were remixed by other producers. However, you might feel that you could do something better or more suited to your taste. If you feel a track is slower than you'd like or feel it could be enhanced by a loop from another track, there's no reason why you couldn't remix the track yourself and then save it as a new track. As long as you don't make it available commercially or spread to other users without permission, you can do what you like with your own audio (DRM free) audio tracks.

With Computeractive 281 magazine, on-sale now, we're giving you the full version of MixVibes Home v6 which will enable you to mix together two different audio tracks and then output the result as a new track.

Computeractive 281 link.

Only yesterday we were busy telling you that Paragon had released Partition Manager 9 Express, which was a basic version of their partitioning software that enabled you to create, delete or resize a partition. It has all the basic tools required to manage your partitioning tasks. It's completely free for personal-use, too.

With the latest Computeractive magazine, issue 280, on-sale right now, we're giving you the full commercial version of Paragon Partition Manager 9 SE, which is based on the Personal edition and worth £21. The Personal edition will enable you to do more than just basic partitioning found in the Express edition. You can merge two existing partitions and make a backup of a partition, as well as cloning a partition or drive, so you can quickly move data to a new PC or larger drive.

Computeractive magazine, issue 280, link.

By now, I'm sure you're sick of us going on about how, after a period of time, your Registry will be cluttered with irrelevant information after using your PC to test and the uninstall new software. The problem is that the supplied uninstallers do not always remove all the file associations left behind by unwanted software. The result is that your PC can take far longer to boot than necessary. With the latest issue of Computeractive magazine, on-sale right now, you can get the full version of PC Tools Registry Mechanic 7, worth £30.

PC Tools Registry Mechanic 7 will examine your Registry and check for information that it thinks is safe to remove. In theory, this should speed up your PC with a more streamlined Registry. You can backup your current Registry so if you do experience problems, you can quickly restore your old database.

Computeractive issue 279 link.