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Light Downloader is a free download manager that claims to speed up downloads by 600 percent or more by splitting target files into several parts that it downloads separately and simultaneously. It can schedule downloads, automatically resume interrupted downloads, support proxy connections, and do the things similar free tools can do. What sets it apart is its easy drag-and-drop capability.

Light Downloader's three-panel interface has a familiar view, with a left-hand navigation panel and a main view divided horizontally into a listing of downloads above a log display. The tabbed navigation panel accesses Downloads, which is the primary view, … Read more

WW Points Calculator from Scandinaviansoft Cookbook sounds a bit like something for pro wrestling fans, but in fact it's for those wrestling with their weight: it's a free tool for calculating Weight Watchers food points.

The program's zipped download includes both 32-bit and 64-bit versions; we tried both. The installer automatically distinguished between our Windows XP and Windows 7 machines and installed the right version on each. WW Points Calculator's interface is a small, simple dialog with an attractive nature scene as a background. Aside from a compact box containing the calculator, the only controls are … Read more

Collages are a fun way to combine multiple images into one, and they have many potential uses, from greeting cards and scrapbooks to social networking profiles. CollageIt enables you to create good-looking collages without a lot of hassle.

The program's interface can be a little confusing at first glance--there are multiple menus and sliders--but if you focus on the Getting Started pane in the middle, you'll be fine. To create a collage, you simply select the images you want to use, adjust the settings, generate a preview, and save the collage when it's done. The program automatically … Read more

A well-done screensaver can have a surprisingly big impact, letting you imagine--however briefly--that you're not actually stuck in a cubicle, but are in a relaxing, bucolic setting. 3 Free Dancing Fountains Screen Saver seeks to transport viewers by superimposing digitally created fountains on three attractive still images. The effect is not entirely realistic, but the screensaver isn't a bad choice for fountain fans.

Once installed, the program appears in the Windows Display Properties menu with all of the other screensavers. We thought that the screensaver might have some settings--perhaps to adjust the speed or pattern of the fountains--but … Read more

Practically everyone's got a digital camera or a cell phone cam, and hard drives everywhere are filling up with unsorted megabyte-size snapshots. Fortunately, there's no shortage of free photo tools, either. PixelApp Studio's Free Photo Converter is an example. It's a compact, easy-to-use application that you can use to resize photos and convert their formats, singly or in batches.

Free Photo Converter's colorful interface is very easy to understand and use; while there's no built-in Help file, just a link to the product's Web site, one is hardly needed. The right-hand control panel … Read more

PortableApps offers fully functional, fully portable versions of popular open source software. Its Sumatra PDF Portable is a lightweight version of the PDF file viewer. It's small enough to fit on just about any mobile device or storage medium, giving you the option of viewing PDF files on the go. As a portable application, it will run on any compatible Windows machine without installation and without leaving behind any personal information or changes to the registry.

The Sumatra PDF Portable "installer" copies the program's executable to a destination of your choice; the default destination is a … Read more

Microsoft Word has long been the standard word-processing software, but it's undergone many changes and upgrades in its many years of service. Those still using older versions of Word often can't open newer Word documents in the .docx format, but what if you don't have Word at all? Anyone who needs to open .dockx files created in Word 2007 or 2010 can download DocX Viewer. It's a free utility for opening and viewing newer Word documents, even if you don't have Word or a Word-compatible word processor. You can open and view Word documents in … Read more

Free PDF Creator from GIRDAC InfoTechnologies is a free application that can create PDF documents from hundreds of Windows applications without requiring any Adobe software. It can create a PDF document from the Print properties of any printable file. It can handle multiple users on one system and save each user's settings for regular operation, and it displays a Conversion Report when it's done.

Free PDF Creator is essentially a printer driver that lets you save or print documents in the PDF format from the Print properties dialog of any file. However, it also has a setup interface, … Read more

Windows PC owners who use Internet Explorer can give their systems a boost with TVcleaner from LT-Box. It's a small, simple, free tool that does one thing: it deletes temporary files held by Windows and IE that are supposed to speed up your system but can actually slow things down when they pile up. It's much quicker to use than running the Windows disk cleanup tool or manually deleting temporary files. TVcleaner runs in most versions of Windows up to Vista and 7, but only 32-bit editions.

TVcleaner has the sort of ultrabasic interface that makes for quick … Read more