P2PTurbo is an innovative freeware application to optimize and accelerate your P2P speed. P2PTurbo will thoroughly examine your system and your P2P network environment, accurately detecting the bottlenecks slowing down your downloading.
It will also actively search peers and seeds in more networks, automatically find the best settings for optimizing your P2P client to the hilt, and dramatically boost P2P connection speed by up to 600%.
All in just 1 click.

Languages:

English

OS requirements for P2PTurbo

• OS: Win2000/XP/Vista

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If you don't have time to type a document, why not scan it and turn it into text instantly? Softi FreeOCR is a program that serves to interpret scanned documents and to turn them to editable text on your PC. If you have a lot of documents that you need to transfer to editable text, then this could save you hours of time.
Note that this program only detects English text. Softi FreeOCR, or rather Tesseract - the OCR motor that the program uses - only recognises English. However, you can add other languages by uploading them from the developer website and extracting the files to “the tessdata” folder which can be found within the program folder.
This is a decent attempt at a text reading program but unfortunately, it doesn't always read documents correctly and has trouble with small text. Nevertheless, it can capture the majority of a document which will save you time.

Languages:

English

OS requirements for Softi FreeOCR:

• OS: Win2000/XP

Pros

• Saves time by turning scans into text
• Very quick and easy to use
• Reads many text types

Cons

• Doesn't always read text correctly
• Limited language range

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Skype is probably the most popular VoIP client nowadays, and with this Portable version it only got easier to use! Just like its desktop counterpart, Skype Portable lets you have voice chats on your computer – just like telephone, only for free – and video chats as well, provided you have a webcam. Skype Portable also includes the standard IM functionalities (written conversations, emoticons, user avatars and so on).
Video calls are the main focus on Skype Portable. The program's interface has been clearly designed with video conferences on mind: it's been made wider so that video fits in perfectly with your written chat, your contact list and a toolbar to manage conversation.
The sound quality during our testing was perfect: loud and clear. Video quality was also impressive, all vivid and lag-free. There was also one nice detail, and that's the ability to see your own video image built-in on your contact's video, and you can also take a snapshot of your own image.
Other features in Skype Portable are a call quality feedback indicator, the ability to turn alerts off, the possibility to group contacts and a new feature called Video in mood, which lets you embed online videos from Metacafe and Dailymotion in your status message.
Skype Portable is just like the desktop version: clear interface design with main focus on video; crisp, clear video image and sound; easy to set up and use; and no installation required!

Languages:

English, Spanish, German, French, Catalan, Chinese Simp, Chinese Trad, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Euskera, Finnish, Gallego, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Portuguese BR, Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Portuguese PT

OS requirements for Skype Portable:

• OS: Win2000/XP/Vista/7 

Minimum requirements:

• Processor: 400 MHz
• Memory: 128 MB
• Free space: 15 MB
• Sound card, speakers and microphone
• Modem connection

Recommended requirements:

• Processor: 1,0 GHz
• Memory: 256 MB
• Free space: 30 MB
• Full-duplex sound card and headset
• Cable, DSL or equivalent broadband connection for video transmission 

Download 

Google Chrome Portable 3.0.195.27 Rv2

It hasn't taken long for Google Chrome to be converted into a portable app so now you can execute it straight from a USB stick or portable drive with Google Chrome Portable (AKA Chromium).
Google Chrome Portable is still in beta version so bear in mind that you may experience some glitches and bugs although it seems pretty stable. Google Chrome Portable fits easily on a USB stick so you can take it anywhere. It features all the benefits of the main browser such one box for everything, thumbnails of your top sites and shortcuts for your apps.
When you type in the address bar you get suggestions for web pages and you can access your favorite pages very quickly from any tab via the top thumbnails feature. And like the main version, if one tab crashes, the browser still keeps going because each one works independently - a great little feature that's typically Google and should be taken up by all browsers as standard. In addition, Google Chrome Portable gives you plenty of options for shortcuts to your favorite web apps such as Google Reader to speed up your surfing.
If you've been blown away by Google Chrome and don't want to leave home without it, put Google Chrome Portable on your memory stick now.

Languages:

Spanish

Recent changes in Google Chrome Portable

• New V8 engine, which improves browser speed

OS requirements for Google Chrome Portable

• OS: WinXP/Vista

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WinUHA 2.0 RC1

File sizes have been a big issue in the world of computing since day one, and despite the fact that our hard drives are bigger than ever, large files are still a source of irritation for many. How many times, for instance, have you tried to send a movie clip to a friend only for the email to bounce back due to size restrictions imposed by the service provider? Usually in this case we turn to our old friends WinZip or WinRAR, but believe it or not, there is another compression format that produces smaller file sizes than these popular tools.
WinUHA provides a graphical interface for UHARC, a command-line application, which is proven to have the best compression ratio around, achieving rates of 10-20 percent better than RAR or ZIP. The original version is very slow and has no graphical interface, which prompted this developer to open up the format to the public at large.
The program doesn’t do a bad job either, operating in a very similar way to WinZip and, aside from an annoying donation screen, allows you to get down to business pretty quickly, adding files to the archive with a single click or by dragging them into the clearly laid-out directory window.
Once you’ve clicked to compress the selected files you start to realize the power of the UHARC format. We were very impressed that the program managed to shrink down files of 11.1Mb down to 7.1Mb, compared to 9Mb when we performed the same operation in WinZip. However, this high compression ratio comes at a cost – the speed. There’s no doubt that compressing with WinUHA is significantly slower than its major rivals, and unlike WinZip, you don’t get the option of tweaking the compression ratio to speed things up.
There’s not much else more to the program than the simple process of compressing and decompressing files and you won’t find many other options, other than basic settings for changing the interface. The high compression ratios should come in handy for sending email attachments, and as the size of the files you archive increases, you'll start to notice the its real benefit.

Languages:

English

OS requirements for WinUHA:

• OS: Win98/98SE/Me/2000/XP

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Paltalk 9.7

Paltalk isn't just the latest, greatest messenger or the most diverse and vibrant chat room community - it's the ultimate online communications tool, period. Paltalk enhances the traditional instant messaging and chat room functionality you know and love with state-of-the-art voice and video that you'll enjoy with all your senses. That's why Paltalk is the world's most popular voice and video chat service.
Whether you want to chat with friends or meet new ones, Paltalk is your one portal to all things talkative. Paltalk is compatible with MSN, AOL, Yahoo! and ICQ messengers, and connects you to a world of buddies. With Paltalk's easily-navigable, voice and video enabled chat room community, the world wide web feels more like a network of close friends. And now cyberspace really can be a good place to meet someone with PalPersonals, the best way to add more of those "special" Paltalk buddies to your list. So download Paltalk now for free to see, hear and be there with Paltalk.

Languages:

English

Notes:

Free but displays banners

OS requirements for Paltalk: 

OS: Win95/98/98SE/2000/XP

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AnalogX Proxy 4.15

Do you have several machines on a network, but only one connection to the internet? Wish you could browse the net from the other machines, just like you can from the machine that's connected?AnalogX can solve these problems.
AnalogX Proxy is a small and simple server that allows any other machine on your local network to route it's requests through a central machine. It supports many protocols like HTTP (web), HTTPS (secure web), POP3 (receive mail), SMTP (send mail), NNTP (newsgroups), FTP (file transfer), and Socks4/4a and partial Socks5 (no UDP). AnanlogX also works great with Internet Explorer, Netscape, AOL, AOL Instant Messenger, Microsoft Messenger, and many more.

Languages:

English

Recent changes in AnalogX Proxy

• Rebuilt and fixed Vista issues

OS requirements for AnalogX Proxy

• OS: Win95/98/98SE/Me/2000/NT/XP/Vista/7 

 Download

A-Patch 1.40 RC2 For Windows Live Messenger 8.5

With a new (beta) version of Windows Live Messenger (8.5) comes a new and improved A-Patch. If you've had problems running Messenger Plus! with the new version, then A-Patch is probably what you need.
It makes patching Messenger easier than ever before. Not only are there tonnes of options to choose from, but now there's a (rough) Preview which lets you see the changes as you select them.

Languages:

English

OS requirements for A-Patch

• OS: WinXP/Vista

Minimum requirements

• Windows Live Messenger 8.5.1235.0517 

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Alternative MSN

aMSN is an alternative to the classic MSN Messenger, with more features yet a much weaker interface. The chat client looks very similar to Microsoft's product yet differs on a number of points. aMSN developers have delved into the preferences menu, adding extra little features like event alerts and sounds, conferencing support or autoaway messages. Like with MSN Messenger you'll be able to transfer files and organize all your contacts into groups.
Audio/Video support is the number one function that users look for in IM clients nowadays, yet an area which aMSN doesn't particularly focus on. Webcam support is fairly weak and unstable, and instead of integrating into your chat window will open up in a new Quicktime window.
One of the biggest pet peeves of users with aMSN is the interface. It simply doesn't compare with more sleeker, more recent IM clients. To the developer's defense though you can download all sorts of skins from the program's website. Similarly it offers up a range of plugins, to customize your client to your liking. Chat addicts will also appreciate the animated emoticons on hand.
In terms of performance, you have to keep in mind that aMSN is still a Beta product, so still liable to some crashes and bugs. We did have some trouble when opening up new chat window and noticed that the client tended to use a lot of CPU.
In a few words, aMSN is a good alternative to MSN for users looking to add more plugins, skins and delve into the preferences menu.

Languages:

English

Notes:

This version of aMSN includes the option to install the Softonic Toolbar. If you wish to download the original version without the toolbar click this link. Also, you can access aMSN's original source code via this link.

The Softonic Toolbar included with this version of aMSN is a standalone application and is completely independent from aMSN and does not affect the behavior or performance of the original aMSN program. Any errors you get while running aMSN are by no means related to the Softonic Toolbar.

Recent changes in aMSN

• This version fixes, along with some other bugs, the bug you could have experienced when sending OIMs.

OS requirements for aMSN

• OS: Win95/98/98SE/Me/2000/NT/XP

Download

Animations for your messenger

Bandoo adds new emotions, more technically ‘emot-icons’, to your Yahoo! and MSN messenger. They are well designed, with a cartoon style and lovely pastel shades. They are also animated, and some are really sweet, like the little angel with shining nimbus that at times flutters its wings, or the shy character with glinting eyes and red cheeks.
The program adds a bar on your messenger, just above where you write your text. There are five menus to choose from, one to add emoticons, the next to add animated text, then Winks, Nudges and User pictures at the end. Each category contains dozens of new animations divided into categories, although, as you might guess, the emoticons selection is far wider.
Unfortunately, each menu takes some time to load all the items it contains and even when you select one, the program has to download it, which again takes few seconds. Although this could mean that you might have new animations every now and again, you will have to pay a price in patience.
Bored with the standard Yahoo! and MSN messenger emoticons? Bring new life to your IM with hundreds of free cartoon style, beautifully coloured animations. The only downside is that the program takes a while to load and then download the emoticons into your chat.

Languages:

English

OS requirements for Bandoo:

• OS: Win98SE/Me/2000/XP/Vista 

 Download

Lyrics Plugin for Windows Media Player 0.3

If you're someone who listens to your music collection in Windows Media Player then now, thanks to Lyrics Plugin for Windows Media Player you can enjoy the words to your songs within the player as you listen to them. As long as you're connected to the Net the program will automatically search for the lyrics and display them in real time.
Unfortunately, probably due to my rather eclectic taste in music, the application failed to provide the words to many of my tracks. However, there is a neat facility for quickly adding lyrics to a particular song so over time more songs will have lyrics attached to them as people continue to upload them. Of course, mistakes may creep in but you can always correct these yourself.

Languages:

English

OS requirements for Lyrics Plugin for Windows Media Player:

• OS: Win2000/XP/Vista

Minimum requirements:

• Windows Media Player 9 and above
• Internet connection

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Mame32 0.133

Mame32 is the Win32 user interface version of MAME (M.ultiple A.rcade M.achine E.mulator), a program that emulates classic games. What it does is let you relive the experience of antique consoles or computers so as to play and emjoy the games that may otherwise fall from our collective memory.

Languages:

English

OS requirements for Mame32:

OS: Win95/98/98SE/Me/2000/NT/XP/Vista/7

Download 

Koyote Free Video Converter 2.3

Koyote Free Video Converter can help you handle this issue in a very simple way. Far from complicated, bloated converting tools, this easy app lets you convert videos in a snap. You can choose between a wide range of formats, including those which are used in all popular portable devices. Available formats are presented as profiles with set preferences, but you can easily tweak them to suit your preferences.
Koyote Free Video Converter includes a small video window, but sadly it's only intended to watch video frames as the conversion process is working. It would have been nice to be able to use it also as video player to preview the contents of the movie before converting it.
With Koyote Free Video Converter you can easily convert videos to a variety of formats, including those suitable for portable devices.

Languages:

English, Spanish, German, French, Catalan, Chinese Simp, Czech, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese BR, Swedish, Turkish

Koyote Free Video Converter supports the following formats:

Import: AVI, DIVX, MOV, MP4, FLV, 3GP, WMV, ASF, MKV, VOB, MPEG, MPG, M1V
Export: 3G2, 3GP, ASF, MP3, AVI, DVD, FLV, MP4 (iPod, iPhone, PSP, Zune), MPEG1, MPEG2, WMV

Notes:

The installation process includes the Dealio Toolbar, which you can choose NOT to install.

OS requirements for Koyote Free Video Converter:

OS: Win2000/XP/Vista/7

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AMCap 9.20

One of them is capturing video right to your computer, something you can easily do with AMCap. This simple tool grabs the video signal coming from your webcam and records it straight away to your hard drive, in MPEG2 or AVI format, provided you have the necessary codecs. It features some other interesting options, such as the possibility to take screenshots or adding special effects to the image (graphic overlay, alpha-blending, transparency, etc.).
That said, I must confess I found AMCap a bit deceiving. Maybe I expected something else: a webcam monitoring tool or something similar. But I honestly don't find this program that useful. It doesn't even let you take screenshots automatically according to a certain lapse of time. Also, video files take a lot of room, so you better have a large hard drive ready for them.
AMCap is a simple tool that lets you capture video from your webcam for whatever purpose you may have. If you're searching for a webcam monitoring app, you'll need to look somewhere else.

Languages:

English

OS requirements for AMCap:

• OS: Win95/98/98SE/Me/2000/NT/XP 

Download 

VDownloader 1.12

VDownloader is a lightweight tool to help you download videos from a large selection of video sharing sites. The main interface features three tabs - Downloads, Search and Browser. The download section allows you to download media by entering the relevant URL address into the search bar. It downloads the video in question in the format of your choice, displaying its progress as it goes.
VDownloader's Search function allows you to search YouTube, Daily Motion, Google and Yahoo! Video for videos. Once you have found the video you want, you can either download it or watch it, both without leaving the program interface. The Browser provides you with a mini-tool to browse a variety of video sharing websites in the same way as you would the regular Internet. The address bar is equipped with a direct download link, although I did find that this feature was more effective on some sites than on others.
VDownloader also boasts a handy video format converter and a batch feature for downloading long lists of videos at once. It is also able to handle a huge number of file formats and language settings, but other than that, its configuration options are limited. Add that to the lack of a help file and it is obvious that VDownloader still has some work to do in future versions. That said, the program has come a long way, and is still a great option for fuss-free downloading.
VDownloader provides simple video downloads teamed with a variety of search functions and other features.

Languages:

English, Spanish, German, French, Czech, Dutch, Finnish, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese BR, Turkish

VDownloader supports the following formats:

VDownloader can save videos in many formats, including AVI, MPG, iPOD/iPHONE, PSP, 3GP, NOKIA N8x0, VCD, SVCD, DVD, FLV and MP3 (audio only).

Notes:

Vdownloader can download and convert videos from the following sites:
Youtube (in HD if available)
Google Video
DailyMotion
MySpace
Veoh
GoFish
Netlog
Blip TV
MyVideo.de
Porkolt
Metacafe
Break.com
123 Video
Bolt
Vreel (Beta)
Clevver
Tudou
ESPN
VSocial
Lulu TV
Guba
HideBehind
Dale al Play
Yahoo! Video
Tu.tv Hispavista

Vimeo VDownloader can also download RTMP streams from the following sites:
MTV.com
CBS (US only)
RTVE

OS requirements for VDownloader:

OS: Win95/98/98SE/Me/2000/NT/XP/2003/Vista/7

Download 

Video calls

If you regularly conduct video calls or video conferencing with more than one person, then ooVoo is an elegant and powerful video conferencing and IM client that combines elegance with functionality.
With ooVoo you can talk face-to-face with up to six people, add an ooVoo link to your blog or online profiles (so others can instantly add you to their contacts), send and receive video messages and best of all, it's completely free. To get started, you need to create an ooVoo ID which is fairly painless although a bit annoying as all registration forms can be. Once you've started the setup process, you'll be asked to create an ooVoo username and password. You'll also be asked to add a few friends and contacts to your ooVoo account although if like me, you don't know anyone using ooVoo, you can simply elect to send invites. Unlike some video conferencing applications, it's very easy to get up and running with your webcam and it can handle very high quality cameras of up to 2 megapixels depending on the speed of your connection. During chats and video calls, you can add effects to video such as sepia, blurring and morphing although it seems to take some time in applying these successfully. ooVoo also serves as a VoIP app although unfortunately, it only serves mobiles and landlines in the USA and Canada at the moment. What's really nice about ooVoo though is the ability to place your contacts, and their video images, down the side of your screen in a sidebar simultaneously. This way, you can chat away to all of them at the same time and see them at once. This does hog quite a bit of your RAM though if you're not working on with at least 1GB of RAM or more.
An impressive video conferencing and chat IM although it would be interesting to see how it performs when a maximum of 6 people are trying to conduct a video conference at the same time.

Languages:

English

OS requirements for ooVoo:

• OS: Win2000/XP/Vista

Minimum requirements:

• Processor: 1 GHz
• Memory: 256 MB

Download 

MKV Player

The Matroska video container, MKV for short, has become an increasingly popular video format in recent years. Seen by many as a 'DivX killer', Matroska supports high definition content, surround sound, subtitles and more - all in the one file.
MKV Player, as the name suggests, is a free application that's designed to let you watch MKV files on your computer. And if that's all you're looking to do, MKV Player may suffice. Possibly. The truth is that MKV Player is not a very well designed piece of software. Testing our default .MKV file, it threw up numerous problems (including the classic 'Could not open file' error, which displayed as the file played).
MKV Player's user interface is entirely non-standard, consisting of two overlay menus that appear on top of your video if your mouse goes over their location. There is nothing in the program to suggest that any menu or button is available, until you blindly stumble upon it. The controls themselves are very basic: a stop button, a pause button which is named 'Play' just to confuse; and a seek bar that throws up another error message. Double-clicking the video window enables full-screen mode. There are no help options provided.
This is a program which just about manages to perform its most basic function. As long as you don't want to skip forward or back in a video, or make use of the advanced features that Matroska is famous for, you could foreseeably be only slightly disappointed with it.
While the Matroska Multimedia Container is a powerful and popular format, MKV Player simply doesn't do it justice. Softonic does not recommend it. Our strong advice is that you download VLC Player or KMPlayer instead.

Languages:

English

MKV Player supports the following formats:

MKV

OS requirements for MKV Player:

• OS: Windows XP 

Download 

Microsoft Office Word Viewer 2007 1.2

There are many reasons you might want to use the free Microsoft Office Word Viewer 2007: perhaps you need to check a document on a public computer or maybe you've been sent a Word document but don't have time to install Microsoft Office in its entirety. Whatever your reason, if you need to view or print any Microsoft Word document quickly, this tool could prove to be a real lifesaver.
After a simple install process, run the app and you're presented with an Open File dialog window. Remember: you can't create, change or save any document in Word Viewer. Select your chosen file (the viewer supports .docx files via a converter, as well as older .doc and other formats).
Upon opening your document, you'll see that it displays just as it would in Microsoft Word, only without any of the editing tools. This means that you can see editorial notes and changes, if they have been tracked on the document. Additionally, you may access the file's properties window which will display statistics and authorship information, along with other details.
While you cannot export or save any document from Word Viewer, you do have two options for obtaining a copy of the text. You may either print the document (which works just as well as printing from the full version of Word), and you're also allowed to copy the text and paste it into another application.
In all, Microsoft Office Word Viewer is a small and useful application. While it has no editing functions, it lets you read documents from any version of Microsoft Word with ease.

Languages:

English, Spanish

Notes:

Compatible with documents created in Microsoft Office Word 2207, Microsoft Word 2003, Microsoft Word 2002, Microsoft Word 2000, Microsoft Word 97

OS requirements for Microsoft Office Word Viewer 2007:

• OS: Win95/98/98SE/Me/2000/NT/XP 

Download 

NovaPDF

novaPDF is a PDF creator for Windows that allows you to easily create high-quality searchable PDF files.

With novaPDF, everyone from novice users to professionals can create professional quality documents in industry-standard PDF format, by simply selecting the "Print" command from virtually any application.

novaPDF gives you the ability to make use of all its advanced features: PDF bookmarks, PDF links, shared network PDF printing, public and private profiles, PDF watermarks, PDF compression, PDF security and more.

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SUPER v2010 build 37

SUPER is an easy-to-use Multimedia Encoder and Player, requiring only one simple click.
If you need a simple, yet very efficient tool to convert or play any Multimedia file, without reading manuals or spending long hours training, then SUPER is all you need.
SUPER supports any Multimedia file format. SUPER plays files that cannot be played with WMP or even other libavcodec-based players like MPC and VLC. SUPER also plays and saves Internet Media Streams of different protocols (mms://, rtsp://, and http://).
SUPER is the fastest and simplest tool to encode full-length movies to any other format without any time or function limitation. It does NOT require any additional external codecs. They're all built in!

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