Welcome to the new PC Plus Super Disc section of our website! You can access all the usual great content and software you’re used to receiving on disc and we’ve gathered it all together on this page so you can quickly and easily find what you’re after.
Wherever possible we have included a direct download link that you can download the software straight from this webpage. If it’s not possible, we’ll link to a webpage where you can select the appropriate download.
Web Pack Index
Web Pack 1 Smart TV tools
Web Pack 2 Networking Tools
Web Pack Essential Collection: Digital Media
Web Pack Essential Collection: Hacks
Web Pack Essential Collection: Online
Web Pack Essential Collection: Productivity
Web Pack Essential Collection: Utilities
Web Pack Essential Collection: Linux
Web Pack 1 Smart TV tools
To accompany this issue’s feature on SmartTV/NetTV we’ve decided to pick some of the most useful programs we’ve encountered recently in the television and media-playing arena. Read on and you’ll find some of the best tools for enjoying and getting the most from your stored media. That’s music, TV, video and even the odd Windows Media Center plugin.
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AirPlay for Windows Media Center
Make your Windows PC play nicely with Apple’s AirPlay technology. Simply download and install the Window Media Center plug-in from the link below.
Boxee
A great HTPC (Home Theatre PC) alternative to the Windows route.
Filmotech is a very adept movie collection management program. Importing movies and their accompanying data can all be done automatically.
MediaKeys
You can configure specific keys on your run of the mill keyboard that are able to control your media player globally.
Miro
This latest release brings about support for iTunes libraries as well as the ability to sync with Android devices.
Mobile Media Converter
Want to add your favourite YouTube movie or song to your media centre computer? Then you’ll defintely want to install Mobile Media Converter.
Plex
With Plex you can stream audio and video from your computer to a mobile device.
WinGrooves
WinGrooves provides you with a decent desktop alternative to Grooveshark
TVRigger
Once you’ve installed this freeware application you’ll never miss your favourite television show again.
XBMC
Originally conceived as a media centre application for the first-generation Xbox, XBMC is now a fully fledged free and open source cross-platform digital media hub cum HTPC.
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Web Pack 2 Networking Tools
When pumping media around the house you are going to need a very capable network. Whether it’s wired or wireless, one thing’s for sure is that all the bandwidth available will have to be allocated to the task of streaming your favourite movies or audio between the different rooms in your home. So keeping an eye on your network for problems will be a priority. Anybody can do this with the aid of these ten free home neworking tools.
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Compass Free
If you like WireShark, you’ll love this. It provides anybody who has a keen interest in their network activity with a platform to delve deeper into its usage.
IPvFox
Use this Firefox extension to keep an eye on all your connections and whether there’s any unauthorised connections from browser-installed spyware.
LAN Speed Test
Double check that your wireless or wired networks are yielding the transfer speeds they’re supposed to be.
NetBalancer Free
NetBalancer can tweak download and upload rates for any applications. The best thing being that an application with a low priority won’t be limited if an application with a higher priority isn’t in use.
Network Scanner
Network Scanner is a multi-threaded IP, NetBIOS and SNMP-capable scanner.
NetworkTrafficView
NetworkTrafficView captures the packets passing through your computer’s network adapter and then displays general statistics about the data bouncing around your LAN.
Download from here (32-bit version)
Download from here (64-bit version)
NetWorx
With NetWorx you can configure alerts that inform you when a connection goes down or when there’s some suspicious activity like some unusually heavy data flow on your copper cables or microwaves.
SmartSniff
A more advanced packet sniffer than NetworkTrafficView, SmartSniff dissects captured packets and views them as a conversation between clients and servers.
Wireless Network Watcher
Wireless Network Watcher displays each computer or device on the same wireless network, with IP address, device name, MAC address, and network adapter manufacturer.
Wireless Wizard
Should you find that your any of your WiFi, LTE, WiMAX, 3G, or 2G wireless networks aren’t performing as they should you can use this program to increase reliability.
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Web Pack Essential Collection: Digital Media
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Free Opener
Free Opener contains the most useful functions for basic photo manipulation including resize, rotate, flip, change format, add watermark texts and the ability to sort or rename your images.
Freesizer
When you’re managing a website and uploading images it’s best not to rely on your CMS to do the processing legwork. The results can often be found lagging behind the output of a more offline solution like Freesizer.
Helium Audio Converter
Save time by converting your music to a more widely recognisable format using the incredibly lightweight Helium Audio Converter.
Google Music Player
One of the annoying things about Google Music is that you need to keep the tab open whenever you’re listening to your favourite tracks. Solve this by installing Google Music Player where you can enjoy a separate app that minimises to the system tray and supports your keyboards media keys.
JPEGmini
With JPEGmini it’s possible to significantly reduce the size of your favourite photographs in preparation for uploading them to the website with no noticable degradation in quality.
PhotoFilmStrip
We like a bit of stop motion like the next person. Simply select your photos, customise the motion path and then hit Render. You can then output your creation to VCD, SVCD, DVD and even HD.
RIOT
RIOT, also known as Radical Image Optimization Tool has the power to let you let you to visually adjust compression parameters while abiding by a minimum filesize.
Screen2Avi
Screen2Avi is a great screen capture tool with the capability of producing some fine screencasts and screenshots from your desktop.
Free Audio Converter
With this program you can convert audio between a number of different formats such as MP3, WMA, WAV, FLAC, AAC, M4A, OGG with support for MP3 players, iPods, iPhones, iPads and PSPs. It’s also possible to extract audio from video and join audio files.
ffDiaporama
Love to snap a few photos? Find that you have an overwhelming number of images to keep tabs on? Then you’ll want to add ffDiaporama to your workflow.
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Web Pack Essential Collection: Hacks
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Ghostwin
Ghostwin makes any application window slightly or completely transparent. It can also automatically adjust the opacity level of windows that are being moved or resized allowing you to see underneath.
FastPreview
Not everything can be accessed in Windows explorer, meaining you might want to employ the help of a third party solution such as FastPreview. Use it for all this and to add an image preview support to the context menu.
Download from here (32-bit version)
Download from here (64-bit version)
CianoDock
Add a slice of style to Windows with a circular dock launcher. CianoDock sits in the background until you call on it using a pre-defined keyboard shortcut.
Gizmo Toolbar
If the standard Windows Start Menu doesn’t hack it you know it’s time to look at an alternative. Install Gizmo Toolbar and you’ll instantly be able to use a number of desktop-based docking toolbar launchers.
MediaTab
MediaTab saves you time by adding a bucket load of extra technical information to a new tab in Properties in Windows Explorer
System Folders Customizer
By adding custom folder to the My Computer display in Windows 7 you have more of your PC’s content instantly accessible saving time in the long run.
TheAeroClock
TheAeroClock is a quaint-looking analogue timepiece for Windows. Make sure you click on the Lng button to change the software’s language to English before doing anything else, though.
SageThumbs
Thumb previews in Windows are useful, but for some reason Microsoft only saw fit to support a small number of file formats. If you don’t find yourself frequently working with the more popular formats you’ll want to install SageThumbs.
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Web Pack Essential Collection: Online
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µTorrent
uTorrent packs in a vast plethora of features, but manages to do so with little noticeable system slowdown. All good reasons why it’s considered to be the de facto BitTorrent client for Windows.
Reduce the chances of hackers successfully penetrating your computer by checking for open TCP and UDP ports.
This app is a browser-based video library for your home network that will let you share your TV and movie files across the LAN.
Do you use Outlook for sending emails and organising dates on multiple computers? Then you’ll want to install Outlook Sync. It synchronises your calendar and contacts on two machines without the need for Microsoft’s expensive Exchange server system. You can also synchronise different versions of Outlook, from the 2003 edition and later to be exact.
Save yourself some time by turning a far away computer on without being there personally. This can be done easily with the help of WakeMeOnLan.
Opera
The folk at Opera have developed Opera Turbo, a feature for those not blessed with the fastest of connections. It compresses pages via Opera’s servers creating quicker download times
Pogoplug
Share your entire media collection with your mobile phone or tablet by using Pogoplug to create your own personal cloud network.
With fTalk you’ll be able stay connected to Facebook chat without the distraction of all the social networking’s sites other status-related features.
One great free alternative to email powerhouse Microsoft Outlook is Thunderbird.
Minus
While there are many simply file sharing utilities out there, very few of these offer support for Windows, Mac and Linux along with iOS, Android and Windows Mobile. Minus however, does.
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Web Pack Essential Collection: Productivity
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Papercrop
Forego the eye strain that’s a frequent result of viewing PDF files on your mobile phone by doing a little processing beforehand with Papercrop.
Concenturio
Setting alarms and reminders in your operating system is probably a daily occurrence. If it’s not you may want to install Concenturio then configure Single Task for alarms that are needed once or Task list for those that are recurring.
Freeplane
If you need help with idea generation then the chances are you’ve heard of mind maps. Hand drawing them can be a pain, which is where Freeplane can help.
CSV File Editor
This software offers up a huge number of additional features that just aren’t available in text editors including column edit, random number generation and row numbers.
Nemo Documents
Nemo Documents inspects documents, images and other files. It then displays them in a calendar-like view. This more visual way of showing the organised files means that they’re far easier to browse through and located than regular folder lists.
Nitro PDF Reader
Nitro PDF can fill out and save PDF forms, stamp your signature on to documents and it looks very similar to Microsoft Office. Plus there’s browser integration for opening and saving PDFs in Internet Explorer and Firefox.
Hexonic PDF Split and Merge
Perform simple PDF-editing tasks without the need to crank up an unwieldy desktop publishing suite.
Breaker
Breaker helps by reminding you of when you to take a breather. The software has a number of different options including the Pomodoro style, where you work for 25 minutes and take a five minute break.
Wieldy
Manage all your tasks with the help of this to-do list manager.
Doxillion Document Converter
It’s especially annoying when somebody sends you Word document that’s been exported in the docx format if you’ve yet to upgrade to the latest edition Office. Fortunately help is at hand with Doxillion Document Converter.
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Web Pack Essential Collection: Utilities
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SlimComputer
Wondering why you’re not reaping performance benefits you’d hope from your new PC? The chances are it’s because your computer is being weighed down by whole load of promotional programs, toolbars, links to advertising or trial offers. Clean this all up in one fell swoop using SlimComputer to asses all the installed data then decide what to remove.
Zip2Fix
Use Zip2Fix to extract any undamaged files from a corrupted archive.
BenchTown
With BenchTown you can compare your PC performance with other overclockers and underclockers.
CaSIR
Common and Stubborn Infections Remover, Casir for short is able to kill illegitamite services, remove nasty scripts, clean your registry of foreign contaminates and more.
DiskMark
Regularly benchmarking your hard disks using DiskMark means that you’re constantly monitoring performance.
Duplicati
Based on the Duplicity backup system, Duplicati commands an uncomplicated setup, good local and remote backup options and automation features that will run frequent backup routines.
nSpaces
nSpaces installs with the default four virtual desktops where apps can be assigned. Hotkeys can then be configured for quick switching.
Winflushprintjobs
Printer jams are a fact of life. Use Winflushprintjobs to purge all jobs from the queue. It’s best to run this from the command line if you’re after confirmation.
RAMMap
The current goings on of your computer’s random access memory can often be a mystery. But with RAMMap it’s possible to see which files are currently being stored in your RAM chips.
SSD Boost Manager
With SSD Boost Manager you can swiftly move programs and data between your SSD and regular hard disk with a click or two.
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Web Pack Essential Collection: Linux
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etm
etm, or Event and Task Manager, is a Linux-based personal assistant. It processes text files to store events and tasks, which can be viewed in a command line interface.
Monitorix
With Monitorix you’re able to see data including the CPU load, CPU temperature and users currently on the system. Most aspects are displayed in a simple graph making it easy to compare trends.
ImageMagick
With ImageMagick you can create, edit, compose, or convert bitmap images. There’s also read/write support for over 100 other formats including DPX, EXR, GIF, JPEG, JPEG-2000, PDF, PhotoCD, PNG, SVG, and TIFF.
Calibre
With Calibre you can sort ebooks using title, author, date added, date published, size, rating and series. Then there’s the search mechanism, which makes pinpointing a particular book a piece of cake.
KMediaFactory
Making DVDs is becoming increasingly more easier in no small part thanks to tools like KMediaFactory. You can create some plush menu systems for your movies by importing image files as slideshows.
p7zip
Many of you may not be aware of p7zip, but it’s actually a port of 7za.exe, which itself is a command line version of the very popular file archive application 7-zip.
CherryTree
Taking down notes is not really a task that requires a full-blown word processing package. CherryTree treats text input with a hierarchical approach and offers rich text and syntax highlighting functionality.
PhotoFiltre LX
A clone of the previously windows-only image editor.
TrueCrypt
Quite possibly the ultimate encryption utility. We’ve yet to encounter anything that surpasses its breadth of functionality.
Giada
Giada bills itself as a hardcore loop machine. There’s the option to load up to 32 samples and select whether to play them in single mode as a drum machine or utilise them more as a sequencer in loop mode.
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All these great tools are part of issue 314 of PC Plus, on the shelves on 18th October 2011. Subscribe today to the paper edition and you can get it up to a week early! Subscribe to PC Plus.
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