Mailwasher 2.0.40

Operating system: Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP
Licence: Freeware
Minimum system requirements:
Web: http://www.mailwasher.net/

Mailwasher stops spam and viruses because they never reach your computer. The program displays your email on your ISP's server, and you can delete, blacklist, or bounce it back to the sender. You can choose just to see the message headers, or preview each message. If a message contains a large attachment, you don't need to download it. As you work with your messages, you can add names and email addresses to a Friends and Blacklist file. Once you've added an email address to your Blacklist, you can choose never to receive another message from that address.

Eudora 6.0.3

Operating system: Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP
Licence: Free in Light mode, free Sponsored Mode has ads, Paid mode (all advanced features, no ads) $US39.95.
Minimum system requirements:
Web: http://www.eudora.com/email/index.html

The Internet's oldest email program, clever and consistently-popular Eudora, began as a free program, and is still free in Light mode. Eudora has all the powerful email features you'd expect, as well as some unique ones, like a Qualcomm PureVoice add-in for voice messages. This upgrade helps users to fight spam, with SpamWatch, which filters messages automatically, after initial training. The program also helps with filing the messages you want to keep. When you use Contextual Filing, you can click on a word, and Eudora automatically creates a mailbox titled with that word.

Mozilla Firefox 0.8

Operating system: Windows 98/Me/NT/2000/XP
Licence: Freeware
Minimum system requirements:
Web: http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

Mozilla Firefox is a new free, super-fast, highly-customisable tabbed browser for power users. The extra tabbed windows download page-links while you're reading the current tab. This version includes more pop-up controls to eliminate advertising, and a new download manager so that you can download several programs at once. Firefox saves visited pages to disk, so you can read previously-visited pages when you're offline. If you enjoy customising your browsing experience, Firefox offers many extensions to improve searching on Google and eBay, and lets you change the look of the program with a variety of themes. Important installation note: this software release is a beta version, meaning that it is still in its testing stages and is not a stable release of the software.Install Mozilla Firefox only if you have backed up all your important files and you are confident of repairing your system if damage occurs. as a result of using Mozilla Firefox. Neither NetGuide nor Mozilla supports this software release.

Internet Download Manager 3.18

Operating system: Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP
Licence: Free trial for 60 days, then US$24.95
Minimum system requirements:
Web: http://www.internetdownloadmanager.com

Internet Download Manager ends download frustration. It offers blazingly-fast, threaded downloads, doubling and even tripling download speeds. You can also schedule, resume and organize downloads. The program creates a set of new folders in your chosen download folder, for: programs, compressed archives, music and video, and offers to open a downloaded file as soon as the download is complete. This is useful when you want to read a document, or use a downloaded file immediately, because you don't have search for the file. The program features integration into popular browsers, including Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape, and Opera.

Jarte 2.0

Operating system: Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP
Licence: Freeware
Minimum system requirements:
Web: http://www.jarte.com

You don't need to spend hundreds of dollars for a word processor. Jarte is an attractive, powerful text editor with all the word processing capabilities you need. The program's multi-tabs feature lets you open several documents at once and click between them. The program also offers spell checking in several languages, a reference bar for online lookups, a format brush tool, a clipboard manager, and a document word count feature. You can save your documents in text, Rich Text Format, or in Microsoft Word 95 format, which means that you can exchange documents with Microsoft Word users.

Site Publisher 2.3.55

Operating system: Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP
Licence: Free for 100 uses; then US$24.95
Minimum system requirements:
Web: http://www.sitepublisher.net/

Making changes to your Web site can be a real pain. You've got to change the page on your computer, find the right directory on your host, upload the page via FTP, and then make sure it all still works. Site Publisher simplifies site management. It's an intelligent FTP client, which mirrors Web sites directly from your computer to the Web. You can manage multiple sites, and update all your sites at a click. The program automatically creates and deletes online directories, and sets a queue of tasks, with a resume function. There's a good Help system for novices.

Zanami Time Tracker 1.7

Operating system: Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP
Licence: Freeware
Minimum system requirements:
Web: http://zanami.com/TimeTracker/index.html

Zanami Time Tracker helps you to keep track of the time you spend on tasks. It's useful if you want to check how much time you're spending online each day, or if you need to keep count of the hours you spend working on a project, if you're paid by the hour. The program couldn't be simpler to use. Click the Activity icon, and enter a name for your project. You can pause and restart the project clocks, and the program keeps details of when you've started and stopped each project.

Backup to CD-RW 5.1.57

Operating system: Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP
Licence: Shareware (30-day trial), then US$39
Minimum system requirements:
Web: http://www.willowsoft.com/backup/index.html

You know you should create backups, but it's a real nuisance. Backup to CD-RW relieves backup drama, and backs up to any media, including CD-R/ RWs, a network, hard drives, or Zip disks. The program does the backup preparation for you, and will even run your backups at night, unattended. If you're a computer novice, the program has wizards to walk you through backing up your entire computer, or just selected files and folders. You decide on what you want to backup, or use the included backup plans, for backing up Outlook email, Microsoft Word documents, or photos.

PictoWin 2.0.1a

Operating system: Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP
Licence: Free trial for 30 days, then US$19.95
Minimum system requirements:
Web: http://www.cyhproject.com/

Everyone has a set of tasks they perform on their computer. Yours may include surfing the Web, chatting, and playing games. PictoWin lets you set up virtual desktops for all your tasks. You can create up to 60 virtual desktops: plenty for you and for the rest of the family as well. Each desktop can have its own icons, wallpaper, and shortcuts. Navigate between desktops at a click, and drag icons from one desktop to another. If you always have your email program running, you can make it "sticky" so that it appears on every desktop.

DirKey 2.0a

Operating system: Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP
Licence: Freeware
Minimum system requirements:
Web: http://www.protonfx.com/dirkey/mainpage.php

DirKey is a small utility which lets you navigate your PC effortlessly. You can access your folders at a click, or via a hotkey. The program is small and unobtrusive, loads with Windows, and is available from your System Tray or Quick Launch Bar. Setting folder bookmarks is straightforward --- just press Ctrl+Alt, and any number from 0 to 9 in any Windows Open/ Save dialogue box. Once a bookmark is set, you just press the Ctrl key plus the number key in a dialogue box to access it. You can also open DirKey and click on a bookmarked folder to open it.

Video Librarian Plus 5.0

Operating system: Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP
Licence: 30 days trial, then US$30
Minimum system requirements:
Web: http://www.turbosystems.com/vlman.htm

The biggest benefit of this program is that you can catalogue your entire movie collection without hard work. You just enter the name of the movie, and the program gets the relevant information, such as the cast, date filmed, movie category, and a film review from Allmovies.com. Your collection can be on any media: VHS or DVD, and you can print VHS labels. You can also catalogue movies and tapes that you record-- home and business videos, sports videos, and TV shows. The program is customisable: create your own databases, with fields that you define, for the data you want to track.

Audiograbber 1.83 new

Operating system: Windows 98/Me/2000/XP
Licence: Freeware
Minimum system requirements:
Web: http://www.audiograbber.com-us.net/

Audiograbber is now freeware. It's a must-have if you enjoy listening to music as you work. The program grabs digital audio from CDs, and because it copies the music digitally, rather than through your sound card, you get brilliant quality, because it's an exact copy of the original. The program has lots of features, including a normaliser, and can also copy music from tapes and vinyl records. It's is very easy to use. The only difference between the free and chargeable versions is that the free version will only copy half the tracks on a CD before you need to restart the program.

CD Speed 3.3

Operating system: Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP
Licence: Free trial; then US$14.95
Minimum system requirements:
Web: http://www.tonec.com/cds/

If you have problems with your CD drive, or with reading data from CDs, the problem may be the speed of the drive. New CD drives are very fast. While this means that you get improved data transfer rates, this fast transfer can however cause problems when you want to listen to music, or play a game from a CD, because the speed is too high. CD Speed lets you set the speed rate, which will improve playing movies and music, and will make for more reliable backups. The program has a simple interface, with a slider so you can experiment with the speed setting.

Distant Suns - Grand Tour 3D Screensaver 1.2

Operating system: Windows Me/2000/XP
Licence: Free basic screensaver version; controllable version US$39.95
Minimum system requirements: Minimum 32MB vRAM for Windows ME
Web: http://www.distantsuns.com/

You'll be mesmerized by the beauty of the images in the Distant Suns screensaver. Your voyage begins at planet Earth, zooms to the moon, and then begins an exploration of the planets. If you're interested in astronomy, you'll find that the distances of the planets and their rotations, are accurate; so your screensaver is a clock. As the hours pass, your views of the planets are constantly changing as the planets rotate, and move in their orbits around the sun. The screensaver is free; the paid version is a full-fledged astronomy program, with a database of sixteen million stars.

TimeStripe 2.4

Operating system: Windows 98/Me/NT/2000/XP
Licence: Free feature-limited version; US$30 complete program.
Minimum system requirements:
Web: http://www.timestripe.com/

TimeStripe creates clever, automatic visual timelines, from any text which includes dates and times. You can use TimeStripe to create timelines to trace your family tree and to create gifts. Students will find it useful for school projects, and for studying, because a timeline with images makes it easy to remember dates, people and events. You can even use the program in business, to track projects. The program is easy to use. If you visit the Web site, you can view timelines which other people have created. Timelines can be saved in several popular image formats.

for Windows 98/Me/NT/2000

for Windows XP