Version 8.0 also debuts an all-new interface, while those who pay for the full version will get a complimentary copy of SkinStudio, Stardock’s skin-editing app, for free.

The most notable change in version 8.0 is the brand new user interface, which has been streamlined and simplified. Users now simply pick a skin from the left-hand side, then use the four tabs – Style, Colour, Texture and Background – on the right-hand side to reveal additional settings on the right, with the preview window updating as tweaks are applied.

WindowBlinds 8.0 unveils a new user interface and Windows 8 support.

Once the user is satisfied with their changes, clicking Apply Style reveals the new desktop skin in action. Nine skins are provided with the trial version of the program, but a link provides access to thousands more online.

In addition to debuting a revamped interface, Stardock has decided to bundle its skin-editing application – SkinStudio – free with this release. Users can then simply edit an existing skin further by clicking the menu button and choosing Edit in SkinStudio to switch to the application. Note that SkinStudio is not included in the trial version.

There’s little doubt the new version is far simpler to navigate and use – and Windows 8 users may be attracted by the program’s ability to make windows transparent (accessible from the Colour tab), but there’s a price to be paid in terms of compatibility, with support for XP and Vista dropped in this new build.

WindowBlinds 8.0 is a free, trial download for PCs running Windows 7 or 8. The full version can be purchased for $9.99.

If you need real privacy, then, you might want to consider encrypting files before they’re uploaded. This adds a useful extra layer of protection which makes it far more difficult for an attacker to view your files. And it doesn’t have to involve any real extra work, either – the open source CryptSync makes the process almost automatic.

The program works by setting up pairs of folders. Just create a new source folder to hold your local, unencrypted copies of any files. Point CryptSync at this, providing your cloud storage folder as the destination, and that’s essentially it: anything copied or saved to the source folder gets encrypted by 7-Zip, synced to the destination, then uploaded to the web.

All the key encryption and syncing details are set up in a single simple dialog box

The synchronisation works both ways, too. If a file is changed in the encrypted folder then CryptSync will detect this and update the decrypted version. (Or that’s the default setting, anyway – you also have the option to turn this off and simply mirror the contents of one folder to the other.)

There are some obvious complications. In particular, if your cloud files are encrypted then you can no longer immediately access them from any device or browser; you’ll always need a decryption tool to hand.

Still, using CryptSync doesn’t mean you have to encrypt all your online files. You might use the program to protect a few personal documents, while leaving media files as they were before. At least that way you’ll still be able to stream music, say, even if accessing other files is a little more complicated.

On balance, then, CryptSync does provide a convenient and largely automatic extra layer of protection for your cloud storage files, and if you’re concerned about their security then it may be worth a look.

The release comes as TDF announces plans to step up its road-testing of LibreOffice 4.1, which is scheduled to appear at the end of July. Version 4.1 will include many new features and improvements, some of which are detailed below.

Version 4.0.4 contains almost 100 bug fixes in all, including resolutions that make animations inside the SmartArt tool work, plus a correction that led to tables within documents saved in the Microsoft Word format being placed inside frames.

LibreOffice 4.0.4 squashes nearly 100 bugs, but includes no new functionality.

The final release is identical to the Release Candidate 2 build shipped recently, so users already running this version do not need to update to this stable version.

TDF has also taken the opportunity to announce that version 4.0.4 is the last minor release in the 4.0.x branch before the expected arrival of LibreOffice 4.1 – as is common with LibreOffice releases, two more minor releases in the 4.0.x branch – 4.0.5 in August, and 4.0.6 in October – will appear alongside version 4.1 for those users reluctant to upgrade until further testing and maintenance releases have been made to the newer branch.

Version 4.1 – which is due to go to Release Candidate stage imminently – contains a large number of new features. Support for embedding fonts into documents is implemented, for example, alongside a number of application-specific improvements, such as being able to rotate images by 90-degree increments  more easily in Writer, for example. Impress users gain a new Photo Album feature when creating picture slideshows, and Base users will be able to limit the number of results returned by a query.

LibreOffice 4.0.4 is available now as a free, open-source download for Windows, Mac and Linux. Windows users should also shortly be able to download LibreOffice Portable 4.0.4 for running directly from an external drive.

Speccy 1.22 – also available as a standalone portable build – opens with support for adding the temperature sensor output to the program’s Taskbar Notification Area icon.

Users switch this feature on by choosing View > Options > Advanced tab and ticking Minimize to tray and Display metrics in tray. Once enabled, users have a choice of which temperature sensor to display from a choice of CPU, motherboard, graphics card or hard drive. Once set, the temperature monitor can be switched from the program’s Taskbar Notification area icon, simply by right-clicking and choosing Tray metrics to select an alternative sensor.

Monitor system temperatures from the System Tray with the latest release of Speccy.

The new build also adds Read and Write Capabilities to the Optical Drives section of the program, allowing users to see what types of disc are supported. Also added to the Graphics section is the graphics card’s manufacturer and model information, plus each network adapter’s MAC address to the Network section.

Speccy 1.22 also adds support for the latest Intel and AMD processors, improves the Computer Type detection for virtual machines and promises better usage of CPU and memory for slightly improved performance. The update is rounded off with the usual collection of unspecified minor bug fixes and GUI improvements.

Speccy 1.22.535 and Speccy Portable 1.22.535 are both available as free-for-personal-use downloads for PCs running Windows XP or later. Commercial licenses are available, with prices starting from $19.95 for the Professional version.

One visible change for users who also have Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Free installed as additional protection is a fix that prevents Norton from blocking or flagging up MBAM as incompatible.

The latest update also resolves an issue where the Safe Web annotations for checking search results for safety and privacy were not appearing in the US version of Google.com. Also corrected is an issue whereby Intrusion Prevention was incorrectly flagged as switched off when Norton AntiSpam was being opened from Microsoft Outlook.

A new Backup widget replaces the Web Safe panel in the latest build of Norton’s security products.

English users will find a new widget – Backup – has been added to the main product page, while the Norton Safe Web widget has been removed, although it continues to function and appear within all compatible web browsers. The Backup widget refers to Symantec’s cloud backup, sync and sharing solution, currently called Norton Zone.

Two other fixes include making buttons in high-contrast mode more visible and ensuring the Scan Items tab scroll bar always appears.

Norton Antivirus 2013 v20.4.0, Norton Internet Security 2013 v20.4.0 and Norton 360 v20.4.0 are all available now as free trial downloads for PCs running Windows XP or later. Users can purchase a variety of licenses for each product from the Downloadcrew Software Store, with prices starting from as little as $19.99 and savings of over 50 per cent available on the MSRP. These licenses last for 365 days after activation, and will entitle you to download and install Norton 2014 products when they become available as part of your subscription.

Binary values can be rather more cryptic, though. Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Migration, for instance, and you’ll see a REG_BINARY value “IE Installed Date”, which on our test PC was 86cde7a6cf66ce01. Uh, right. If you want to decode that, you’ll need help from a tool like Data Converter.

This tiny program (a 34.4 KB download) looks more or less like any other unit conversion tool. There’s a list of “Convert from” formats, plenty of “Convert to” options, a “Convert” button, and not really anything else. Most of the supported conversions are technical and computer-related, too (there’s no “metric to imperial” option here), but don’t let that put you off. The program can still be useful.

Run all kinds of useful unit conversions from a single, simple interface

When you need to understand something like our hexadecimal time, for instance, first select “FileTime [Hexadecimal QWord (Intel)]” in the “From” box, then choose “Date & time” as your “To” option.

Now enter your value in the “Input” box, click “Convert”, and that REG_BINARY nonsense should instantly be converted into something you can actually read (in our case, 86cde7a6cf66ce01 actually represented 18:15:28 on June 11th 2013).

If this doesn’t work for you, it could be that the program is using a different date/ time format. Check the length, for instance – if it’s only 8 hex characters then it might be worth trying “DOS time and date” or “DOS date and time” as the “From” format (and there are other options in the list).

This isn’t just about dates and times, though. There are many other conversions on offer here: IP addresses, IP addresses ranges, IDN-encoded domain names, hex DWORDS and QWORDs, often with Intel or Motorola variants. If you’re not the technical type then it’s easy to get lost.

Don’t let that put you off, though. If you ever need to check Registry settings then Data Converter‘s ability to run these simple date conversions is enough on its own to justify the download. Go grab a copy for your troubleshooting toolkit.

The most immediately obvious change is a new focus on ease of use. EMET still isn’t for PC novices, but a new Configuration Wizard does help to get the program set up quickly, while an extended interface gives speedy access to the program’s various features.

Core new features include the option to validate SSL/TLS certificates while browsing with Internet Explorer. EMET’s various mitigations have been strengthened; an “Early Warning Program” can optionally report exploitation attempts to Microsoft, helping the company to more quickly learn of new attacks; and there’s enhanced compatibility with several applications.

A revamped interface makes EMET 4.0 easier to use

EMET 4.0 also includes many smaller, but still welcome tweaks. Wildcard support can speed up the process of choosing applications to be protected, for instance. The RopCheck mitigation has been optimized for significantly better performance, and processes can now be protected even if they don’t have the EXE extension.

Better still, EMET is no longer just some little-known geeks-only app. This release sees it become an official Microsoft tool, with support available for business customers (or anyone with a Premier contract), welcome reassurance that the program really is ready for prime time.

There’s still the potential for running into problems with incompatible software, of course, so it’s wise to download and read the latest user guide, just to make sure you understand the issues.

For the most part, though, EMET 4.0 is an excellent tool which significantly improves your PC’s security, and it’s available for download now.

Version 2.2 comes with a new notifications badge, a refactored core sync engine, improved memory usage, start-up performance improvements and Finder icon overlay enhancements.

Although this is the first significant update to Dropbox since version 2.0 was released in March, version 2.2 doesn’t produce much in the way of visible new features. The new badge appears over the Notification area or menu bar icon when a notification has been received, while Mac users should also notice that the Finder icon overlay used to signify if files within the Dropbox folder are in sync or have been updated has also been improved.

Dropbox 2.2.4 unveils minor tweaks and changes, plus under-the-hood improvements.

Other changes are beneath the hood – the core sync engine has been streamlined without affecting its functionality, while the latest build also comes with the promise of faster start-up times and overall performance improvements.

The stable build comes two weeks after a more radical beta build – Dropbox Experimental Edition v2.3.14 – was unveiled, showing off features designed to simplify and streamline the importing of images and photos into the user’s Dropbox folder.

Dropbox 2.2.4 FINAL is available now as a freeware download for Windows, Mac and Linux, as are Dropbox for iOS 2.2.2, Dropbox for Android 2.3.8 and Dropbox for Windows 8.

Sandboxie 4.02

The new build enhances security by dropping the use of unofficial kernel hooks. Programs running under Sandboxie now have no permissions and can’t access or manipulate any objects out of their own memory space.

Sandboxie 4.02 also natively offers full protection for 64-bit, as well as 32-bit Windows, and as a result the old Experimental Protection feature (which used to provide 64-bit protection) has now been dropped.

The latest build improves compatibility with Windows 8, Office 2013 and more

The official change log says the latest version improves compatibility with a host of major packages: avast!, Driver Verifier, EMET, F-Secure, KeyScrambler, Lingoes, Listary, Norton Internet Security, Office 2013, PGP, Proxifier, ProxyCap, Solid Converter PDF and Windows 8.

Perhaps the only small problem for some, is that the new build now uses kernel features which are only available in Windows XP or later. Windows 2000 support has been dropped as a result, and Sandboxie 4.02 now officially supports Windows XP SP 3, Windows Vista with Service Pack 2, Windows 7 with Service Pack 1, and Windows 8. (Apparently other variants “may or may not work”, though, so if this is a problem for you then there may still be hope. Just don’t complain if the program fails to work quite as you expect.)

The tool, which costs $45, aims to make web design easier by providing a desktop-publishing style approach to building web pages. In all, over 150 new features have been added to this release.

The highlight of the new release is a new ribbon-based interface, which works in a similar way to the ribbon in other applications, with both permanent tabs and context-sensitive tabs appearing as a way of making tools more accessible. Users can customise controls and create their own tabs, plus switch back to the old classic menu-based interface if they prefer.

WYSIWYG Web Builder 9 adds over 150 new features, including a new ribbon-based UI.

The new release also adds support for Google Web Fonts and other non-safe web fonts with support for @font-face. Users can now set up timers to show and hide content at specific intervals while the built-in slideshow/carousel tool benefits from a number of new animations and additional options.

Navigation object tools benefit from new options – by way of example CSS Menus now support sub-menus, images for different states and the ability to set the background colour for main and sub-menus.

Support for CSS3 Animations and Transitions has been added to images, drawing tools, form elements, marquee, text and layers. Users can quickly and easily define animations using the new Animation Manager dialog box.

WYSIWYG Web Builder 9 also adds additional plug-ins for its Content Management System (CMS), including support for comments, photo albums and a FAQ. Also added are a number of new JQuery UI Widgets, improved layer options – including floating, anchored and modal layer support.

Other new featyres include a new HTML “beautifier” option for formatting HTML for readability, plus a number of new social-friendly buttons, including Pinterest, Google Translate, and support for adding Google Analytics code to the <head> section of the page.

WYWIWYG Web Builder 9 is available now as a 30-day trial download for PCs running Windows XP or later. The full version can be purchased for $44.95 – existing version 8 users can get a time-limited 33 per cent discount on upgrading, while anyone who purchased version 8 after April 15 are entitled to a free upgrade.

Macrium Reflect Free allows users to create, restore and browse disk images of entire partitions or disk drives. Thanks to recently added support for Windows PE, users can also easily use the program outside of Windows, enabling them to recover images even when their computer won’t boot.

The major highlight in version 5.2 is better integration with the Windows Explorer shell. Users gain a context-sensitive menu that appears when right-clicking .mrmig and .mrbak files, with options for exploring or restoring the disk image directly from within Explorer itself.

Better integration with Windows Explorer is the key new feature in Macrium Reflect 5.2.

Users can also unmount images from within Explorer too, by right-clicking and choosing Macrium Reflect > Unmount Macrium Image, plus create drive images directly from within Windows by right-clicking a drive and choosing Macrium Reflect > Create a Macrium Image of this partition… Users can also create images by right-clicking any XML definition files created in the program.

Macrium Reflect 5.2 also adds two new columns in Explorer for disk images, showing both backup method and any backup comments made by the user to help identify individual backups. The columns are accessible by right-clicking the column heading in an Explorer window and choosing More.

Right-clicking images and choosing Properties also reveals a new Macrium Reflect tab with more detailed information about the backup in question. Some of this information – backup type, compression and password-protected status – is also displayed as tooltips within Windows Explorer.

The update also optimises the Windows PE rescue disc tool, basing it on the latest implementation (Windows PE 4.0) for XP, Vista and 7 as well as Windows 8 while also reducing the download size from several gigabytes to just a few hundred megabytes – files are now automatically obtained when accessing the Rescue Media Build Wizard. In addition, the rescue DVD now supports dual-boot for both UEFI(GPT) and MBR on Windows 7/8/Server systems.

Paid-for versions of Macrium Reflect 5.2 also radically improve support for backing up large individual files – up to 1.6TB per file is now supported over the previous limit of 400GB. At the same time, Macrium promises that file and folder backups are more memory efficient and faster for large backup sets.

The uninstaller now offers to delete all user settings and files when evoked, and the update is rounded off by numerous bug fixes, including fixes for Windows PE 4.0 USB 3.0 detection, a “broken pipe” error when cloning disks and a crash that could occur when attempting to pause backups.

Macrium Reflect Free 5.2 build 6249 is available now as a free download for PCs running Windows XP SP3 or later. Various paid-for versions for both home and commercial users offering additional features such as incremental backups, is also available.

The program is exceptionally easy to use. There’s no complex interface to figure out, no settings to consider, almost nothing to do at all: just launch Security Score, it scans your PC, and returns with the details in just a few seconds.

The final report is almost as simple. You’ll get an overall score out of 100, as well as seeing individual scores for seven key areas: Antivirus, Antiphishing, Backup, Patch Management, Encryption, Firewall and File Sharing.

A simple report quickly highlights any security issues

Our test PC scored 88/100, for instance: not bad. But if you’d like to know how to improve things still further, then clicking an area where you haven’t scored full marks will explain the program’s reasons, and offer some advice.

We only scored 3/5 for “Public File Sharing”, for example: why? A click told us that OPSWAT Security Score had detected a uTorrent installation, file sharing increased the risk of malware infections, and so the program was recommending we remove this. (Although whether you do so is your call, of course.)

We scored a miserable 0/10 for “Hard Disk Encryption”, too, which turned out to be because we weren’t using BitLocker or anything similar.

OPSWAT Security Score isn’t doing anything too special or smart, then. Experienced users will probably find the program doesn’t tell them anything they don’t know already. And PC novices might wish it told them more (BitLocker isn’t the only way to encrypt a hard drive, for instance, but the program won’t point you at any alternatives).

Still, the program does provide a simple way to check other people’s systems – making sure that a laptop used by your kids is properly configured, for instance – and that’s probably enough to justify the download.

Could this be a problem for you? The open source Caesium provides an easy way to find out. Point the program at a selection of images (PNG, BMP and WMF are supported, as well as JPG) or an entire folder, and it can quickly recompress them all with a lower quality setting, before reporting on any savings it’s achieved.

This is generally fairly easy to set up. Images can be imported with a click or two; a slider allows you to set a new compression level, and you can opt to save the recompressed images into the same folder or a new one.

A Preview window helps ensure that your recompressed images still look great

Caesium also includes an optional image resize tool to cut the file size even further, handy when you want to share your latest photos with others, but you know they don’t need the original high resolution versions.

How does it perform? JPEG results were generally very good, with typical savings ranging from 30 to 90% (and without any significant reduction in visual quality), although around 10% of our images remained virtually the same size, or got larger.

PNG compression was relatively poor, though, with most of our test images increasing in size. (While this is disappointing, it doesn’t actually cause any problems, as you can tell the program not to save recompressed images if they’re larger than the original.)

There’s no way to say precisely what sort of results you’ll get from Caesium, then – it all depends on your source images. If you just want to shrink some large JPEG photos, though, there’s a good chance that you’ll see a significant reduction in file sizes. And as it’ll take at most ten minutes to find out, we’d recommend you download a copy, see what the program can do for you.

The program opens much like any other image viewer. You can display individual files or complete folders, for instance (there’s support for viewing all the main formats, including many RAW file types). A thumbnail browser helps you manually navigate to the images you need, or you can use the Player to create an automatic slideshow.

The viewing area can be customised in various ways. You can choose to view basic details (file name, creation date, rating), metadata, histogram and more. Nomacs can run full screen, if you like, or you can reduce its opacity to leave the program very much in the background.

There are some very basic image editing options, too: “resize”, “crop”, “rotate” and so on. Nothing even faintly surprising, but they might come in useful occasionally.

nomacs is a good-looking image viewer, but the network features are what really make the program stand out

What’s more unusual, though, is that multiple instances of nomacs can be connected and work together. If you’ve two copies of nomacs running on the same PC, say, you can synchronise them, so that when you pan or zoom on one instance, the second does exactly the same thing (very useful when you need to compare separate images).

You can do much the same thing across a LAN, too. Set up one nomacs instance as a server, and you can have others connect to it, then synchronise your movements through a folder (“next image”, “previous image”, pan, zoom and more). You can send a particular image across the network. There’s even an option to overlay two images and change the opacity of one, again very useful when you’re comparing images or looking for differences.

Understanding how to make these more advanced features work can be a challenge, at least initially, as they’re mostly based around hotkeys – Alt+I to send an image across the network, say – and there’s no significant local documentation to fill you in.

Browsing the online help will quickly point you in the right direction, though, and if you can use this kind of cross-platform image sync then nomacs could prove very interesting.

This is only a very small step forward, of course: the chances are you’ll still need to spend plenty of time editing your grabs before they’re ready for use. And so a better approach might be to install a tool like the free HotShots, which not only captures screens for you, but also provides some excellent editing tools to help you get them ready for prime time.

The program starts by offering a good range of capture types. It can grab the full screen, all screens (in a multimonitor setup), the active window, and rectangular or freehand regions. These all have their own default hotkeys, but you can customise them to whatever you like.

HotShots really starts to get interesting after it’s taken a snapshot, though. At its simplest, you can have the program add some quality effects (drop shadows, borders, progressive opacity, torn edges) before saving the image directly to disk, either automatically or with a regular “Save As” dialog.

The excellent vector editor helps HotShots stand out from the crowd

But if that’s not enough then you may have grabs open in the HotShots editor, where they can be enhanced with a host of vector-based annotations.

These start with the basic tools for drawing lines, squares and ellipses, and to add images and text captions. But there are also more advanced drawing tools, including curves, polygons and polylines. Because they’re vectors, you can easily adjust these to suit your requirements. And once you’ve created some complex polygon, then a Duplicate tool allows you to create multiple copies with a click. (One deficiency is there’s no Undo tool, oddly, although this isn’t as bad as it seems – select any of your vector annotations and you can delete them with a click.)

Perhaps best of all, you get a host of tools which actually match many of the functions you need when you’re annotating screen shots. So you might use a highlighter to highlight particular text; an “Encircle” tool to draw a ring around something interesting, or maybe the “Magnify” tool to magnify a circular area of the image, zooming in on some fine detail.

An Obfuscate tool is handy, pixelating the area you select to hide some confidential detail (a user name, email address or some other personal detail included in the grab).

The Tag tool is simple and effective. If you want to add numbered bullet points to an image, there’s no need to create them manually: just select the Tag option, and then every click on your image adds a new, sequentially numbered tag, ready for positioning wherever it’s required.

And finally, once all this is finished, your image can be copied to the clipboard, saved directly to disk, or even uploaded to the web (there’s support for saving to Imgur, Imageshack, FreeImageHosting and CanardPC, as well as your own FTP account).

On balance, then, HotShots is an excellent screen capture tool, but the editor takes it to a whole new level. It’s not just the basic addon you’ll get with similar packages – in fact it’s better than some stand-alone vector editors – and if you regularly need to take grabs, and annotate them afterwards, then HotShots is one tool you really need to try.

You could focus on a single key function, for instance, and make that just as good as it can be. But if that’s a problem, then you can always follow the example of do-everything MP3 tool z33k, and cram it with as many features as you can think of (and then a few more, for good measure).

Z33k arrives as a portable executable, and on launch displays a compact interface where its functions are organised into various tabs.

The heart of the program is its “MP3 Search” tab. Enter an artist or title here, click “Search”, and z33k will immediately check mp3skull, emp3world and other databases. A list of hits quickly appears, and these can be played or downloaded in a click or two.

Playing internet radio is just one of z33k’s many features

Not sure what to search for? Click the Charts tab and you’re able to view the iTunes chart, the “World Top 100″, or the best-selling songs in the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and more. Some of these include chart archives (you can view the UK charts for the last 10 years). Locate and double-click a song in any of these and it’s sent to the Search tab, where again you can be listening to it in just a few seconds.

A “Radios” tab gives you quick and easy access to a selection internet radio stations. Just choose your preferred genre (Alternative, Classical, Electronic, Metal, Pop – 25 in total) and double-click a station to hear more. The selection can be a little limited, but overall there’s still plenty to explore.

A Lyrics module helps you to find song lyrics. You can save these with a click, too, but beware – this feature is a little more basic than you might expect. Click Save and your current lyrics are saved to a file called “Lyrics.txt”, in the same folder as z33k. And that would be just fine, except clicking Save for another song later will also save the lyrics to “Lyrics.txt”, replacing what was there before, without any warning.

There’s also a basic ID3 tagger. Perhaps a little too basic, as it worked only intermittently for us.

But the program finishes strongly with a YouTube downloader. This can search for whatever video you need, download it (in your preferred quality), even convert it to MP3. The conversion isn’t as polished as in some of the competition – it just launches an FFMPEG session, which you get to watch in a console window – but it works, and is a useful addition to the program.

As we’ve seen, the individual modules have their problems, and there are interface issues elsewhere. It’s annoying that you can’t resize the z33k window, for instance. And you can’t launch a song or lyrics search by typing a keyword and pressing Enter; you have to click (or tab to) the Search button each time.

Once you’re used to its quirks, though, z33k works very well: it’s compact, easy-to-use and adware free. It’s probably also time for the developer to focus on enhancing existing features before he adds new ones, but even now it’s a useful program, and well worth a closer look.

The program is compact (a 642K download), portable and easy to use. Launch Ntfs Drive Protection, select your USB drive in the “Target Drive” box, click “Start Protection” – and that’s it. In just a few seconds the program will change your file and folder permissions, and no-one (not even you) will be able to add new files to the drive, or edit what’s already there.

If this all seems a little too inflexible, check the “Create an Unprotected Folder” box, and the program will then create a new folder (\_Unprotected by default) with the standard file permissions. And so any existing files or folders will be locked, but you’ll still be able to save new files in the_Unprotected folder.

The program is small, with a simple and straightforward interface

If you don’t need this drive protection any more than clicking “Stop Protection” will remove it.

And an Options menu provides quick access to various drive-related options: the “Disk Management” applet, the “Safely Remove Hardware” dialog, drive properties, format and more.

One problem with all of this is that it relies on your drive using the NTFS file system, which isn’t generally the best choice for USB keys (it’s less compatible, and writes more to the drive, increasing wear and shortening its life).

It’s also at least possible to change the permissions on a non-removable drive (though not the system drive, fortunately), which could cause you all kinds of odd problems. You’re most unlikely to do this by accident, but it’s still a program you should keep well away from people who don’t know what they’re doing.

NTFS Drive Protection does provide a quick and easy way to lock the contents of a USB drive, though. It should be enough to ensure viruses can’t infect the drive with their own autorun.inf file, and if you’re only transferring files between PCs then there probably won’t be any compatibility issues. Give it a try, see how the program works for you.

As you’ll probably have figured out from its name, the new release requires an Office 365 subscription before it’ll do anything useful (although the app itself is free). But with that hurdle overcome, you’ll find there’s plenty of functionality here to explore.

The app can view Office documents stored on SkyDrive, SkyDrive Pro, or SharePoint, for instance, as well as documents which arrive as email attachments. It syncs with your other Office 365 devices, too, so documents you’ve read elsewhere will appear on your phone’s Recent Documents panel, and when you open one it’ll resume at whatever point you left off.

The Office Mobile interface has been optimised for its reduced screen space

Office Mobile for Office 365 also allows you to add comments to a document, carry out various basic edits, or even create Word and Excel documents from scratch. An interface optimised for the smaller screen size helps to keep this as simple as possible.

When you’re on the move then it’s not always possible to maintain a reliable internet connection, of course, but Office Mobile for Office 365 does its best to assist. You can edit documents even when you’re offline, for instance, and any changes will be saved when you next connect to the network.

And once you’ve created your document, edited it or just added a few comments to someone else’s work, you can simply despatch it via email, or save the file directly to SkyDrive or SharePoint.

There are no real surprises in terms of functionality, then – Windows Phone 8 comes with very similar features preinstalled.

If you have an Office 365 subscription and an iPhone, though, Office Mobile for Office 365, should be much more interesting. Go take a look.

Version 2.45 introduces a new stylised effect (Emergence 2) and improves on an existing brushstrokes-based effect. It also includes a number of minor bug fixes and coincides with the author making a series of scripts available for download.

The new Emergence 2 effect promises quite different results from the existing Emergence effect, creating results that look a bit like a knife painting. It’s based on calculating an approximation of the source image using shaded triangles, and users can quickly produce the most striking version of the effect by double-clicking the number to the right of the “Number of iterations” slider to set it to maximum.

FotoSketcher 2.45′s new Emergence 2 filter produces an effect similar to knife-painting.

FotoSketcher 2.45 also tweaks an existing painting effect – Painting 7 (brushstrokes) – to improve brushstroke placement for what the Thoiron describes as “a more painterly effect”. Two bugs – including one used in the custom brush code for Painting 7 and 8 effects – have been squashed along with a few bugs found in the script (F5) code.

The author has also made available a number of scripts for download in order to demonstrate the power of FotoSketch’s new scripting engine, which was introduced in version 2.40. Users should save the zip file to their hard drive, then unzip the contents before opening them in FotoSketcher’s Scripts window by pressing [F5] to access it. Scripts consist of a series of user-customisable actions, and provide additional effects by combining multiple filters together.

FotoSketcher 2.45 and FotoSketcher 2.45 Portable are both available now as freeware downloads for PCs running Windows XP or later.

If you regularly need to convert videos and make them ready for use online, though, you might benefit from using a more specialist tool, like EasyFLV Web Video Encoder. It doesn’t have anything like the power of the generic transcoders, but it’s far easier to use, while also including a few time-saving extras which you won’t always see elsewhere.

The program has a straightforward interface, and presents most of its options in one main dialog. At a minimum, you can just select the source video (most formats are supported), click “Start Encoding”, and conversion will begin using the default settings.

You’ll probably need to tweak things, of course, and EasyFLV Web Video Encoder keeps things simple here by presenting only the most essential options: resolution, video and audio bitrates, frame rate, and audio sample rate.

Just about every program option is available from the main interface

There are also some useful bonus options, though. The program can export FLV, MP4 and WEBM videos, for instance, but you don’t have to choose one or the other. If you need all three formats, just check each box and they’ll all be created in a single operation.

Maybe you’d like to customise your video with a watermark? EasyFLV Web Video Encoder makes that simple, too: you can define a text or image watermark, set its position (if only approximately, in one of the four corners), transparency and more.

You’ll probably want a still image to illustrate the video content. There’s no need to rely on the first frame of the video, or anything similar – here you can specify a time point within the video and the program will save a JPG of that frame for you.

Any combination of settings can be saved in a “profile” and reloaded later. And so if you encode videos in different ways for different sites then you won’t have to reconfigure the program each time; just open the right profile and you’ll be ready to go immediately.

And as a bonus, you also get what the authors call a “built-in Mp4 moov atom fixer”. What’s that? They explain: “Some Mp4 files… have their moov atom placed at the end of the file which prevents them from streaming online. Our encoder has a small built-in utility that will fix these Mp4 files and will make them web streamable”. Sounds handy, although we didn’t test this and can’t comment on its usefulness.

As video conversion tools go, EasyFLV Web Video Encoder is weak. There are only three output formats, and you get very little control over the finished results.

If you’re only looking to create videos for the web, though, the program may well be good enough. Its simplicity makes for a very straightforward interface. There are a few useful time-saving extras. And it won’t mess up your system with adware, codec packs or anything else, so if you’re at all interested in the idea then you can try EasyFLV Web Video Encoder without suffering penalties or problems later.

Other sites aren’t quite so straightforward, unfortunately. They might disable the right-click menu. Prevent you copying text. Maybe even try to stop you leaving a particular page. It’s annoying, but the Firefox add-on RightToClick does at least give you a very effective way to fight back.

At its simplest, RightToClick is extremely easy to use. If you’re at a site where this kind of restriction applies – copy, paste, mouse clicks and other common actions just don’t work as usual – then all you have to do is click RightToClick’s add-on bar icon. It will disable various JavaScript functionality, and the site should get back to normal immediately.

There are plenty of options to help you customise how RightToClick works

We say “should” because this won’t always be true. RightToClick isn’t analysing a page in great depth, trying to spot the precise restriction and disable that alone; rather it’s turning off whole categories of JavaScript functions and hoping one of these will do the job. And it often will, too, but there’s also a chance that it will break some otherwise legitimate web pages.

You can try to reduce the chance of problems via RightToClick’s Options dialog, which allows you to choose exactly which areas of JavaScript you’d like to turn off. But while this sounds good in theory, it’s far from obvious how some of these options should be configured. Is it best to allow “event listeners”, or disable them, for instance? Should you permit “page mouse-move CSS handlers”, or block them? Are you sure?

This isn’t a fatal problem, though, and you shouldn’t let it put you off entirely. Leave RightToClick off until you need it, for instance, then turn it off again when you’re done, and you won’t have to worry about this at all.

And even if you don’t precisely understand the consequences of RightToClick’s various options, their names alone will often tell you enough. If you find you need to drag and drop some object on a page, but this isn’t working, say, it’s fairly obvious that clearing the “Disable page drag/drop handlers” will be a good place to start.

It may have the occasional undesirable side-effect, then, but on balance RightToClick is still a great way to get annoying web pages working more or less normally. Go try it out for yourself.

The new version also bundles a bootable rescue creation tool and also adds support for access in Safe mode, ensuring it’s more capable of dealing with stubborn malware that proves hard to shift or even cripples the user’s PC entirely.

The most visible new feature in Panda Cloud Antivirus Free 2.2 is the Data Shield, which is enabled by default. It’s designed to prevent malware from accessing the user’s personal data, even if it’s able to infect the PC. By default, Data Shield protects all Documents folder on the user’s PC, and this can be extended to any folder of choice via the configuration panel, while users can also specify which file types are protected and which applications are allowed access to protected folders in normal use.

Panda Cloud Antivirus 2.2 adds three major new features to its roster.

Also added is a Parental Control module, which allows users to block access to websites based on 59 different categories. Users can also monitor children’s activity through a dashboard that can provide a summary filtered by date, website or category.

The third new feature is a Rescue Boot option, which is joined by the ability to both install and use Panda Cloud AntiVirus in Safe mode. The rescue option allows users to create a rescue boot option on their hard drive, or create a bootable rescue USB stick that can be used to try and restore access to a PC that has been crippled due to malware. The bootable version of Panda interacts with the company’s Cloud Cleaner technology online to remove infections using the latest, up-to-the-minute virus signatures.

Users also gain access to a new Community Labs Area where new experimental features can be tested for free before they’re rolled out into final versions. They can now also password-protect the Panda Cloud Antivirus settings section to prevent unauthorised access from other users.

The update also comes with the promise of improved protection, with a particular focus on enhanced behavioural technologies in both the anti-exploit protection and actions against Potentially Unwanted Programs (PUPs). It’s rounded off with the usual performance tweaks and bug fixes.

Panda Cloud AntiVirus Free 2.2 is available now as a freeware download for PCs running Windows XP SP2 or later. Users can upgrade to the Pro Edition for €29.99 a year, which includes a community firewall, protection when using public Wi-Fi networks and automatic USB vaccination.

An open source tool available for Windows, Linux, OS X and more, qMetro comes bundled with 23 maps covering subways in many big cities: Amsterdam, Beijing, Berlin, Brussels, London, Madrid, Moscow, New York, Paris, Tokyo and others. But if that’s not enough, there are something like 200 maps available online (and in theory, at least, you can even create more yourself).

At a minimum, you might use qMetro just to open and display a static map of your chosen subway. Navigation is easy, you can spin the mouse wheel to zoom in and out, or click and drag the map to pan around. Your current map scale and position will by default be saved, too, so you can close the program, come back later and carry on where you left off.

The qMetro maps aren’t just images, though. Find and click on one station, and all the others on the map will display a figure indicating how many minutes away they are.

Browse the map, click a couple of stations, and qMetro will calculate your best route right away

And if you click a second station then the program can even calculate a route for you, including any transfers and the total travel time.

QMetro does have a few interface irritations. If you click a couple of stations then the program correctly displays the route between them, for instance. But if you then accidentally click anywhere in the map window, that route is immediately cleared, which can be very annoying.

Some functions don’t work as you expect. There’s a Search window where you can enter station names, for instance, and we thought the obvious application for this would be to zoom in on, or highlight whatever station you need. But we were wrong: it doesn’t do that at all. (We’re not entirely sure how it works, in fact, and the lack of any documentation doesn’t help.)

And more fundamentally, you’re more likely to need this kind of functionality on a mobile device than a desktop. The program doesn’t even include a Print option so that you can take a route along with you (the best it can do is copy a route to the clipboard, so you can paste and print it elsewhere).

Still, qMetro’s core functionality has a lot of promise. There are plenty of maps. They’re open format, so it’s relatively easy for others to add more. The route calculation engine seems reliable, from what we can see (although that requires major testing to tell for sure). And just a few relatively small tweaks, like providing more ways to save and share your route, would make the program much more useful. If you’re interested in metros or maps then you should take a closer look.

TweetDeck is designed to make it easier to track real-time conversations as well as monitor specific Twitter feeds or hashtags through the use of a multi-columned layout. Users can also access TweetDeck via their browser using its web-based app, which also recently gained a redesign.

TweetDeck 3.0.2 opens with a design refresh that Twitter describes as a “cleaner look”, stripping back the interface to provide a more user-friendly experience with extra space for columns and tweets.

TweetDeck 3.0.2 for Windows unveils a new design and simpler navigation.

As part of this redesign, users can now easily switch between columns using the icon-based sidebar that has been moved from the top of the TweetDeck window to the left. The sidebar also supports drag-and-drop reordering of columns, simplifying this process further.

When adding new columns, a new Followers option has also been added, allowing users to quickly review the Twitterati who are following them, plus take further action from following back or blocking to sending direct messages or tweets. The design tweaks mirror those unveiled last week at https://web.tweetdeck.com.

Version 3 also adds a number of new search filters – including the ability to filter by media or retweets, plus supports minimising to the Taskbar’s Notification area via a new icon. TweetDeck 3.0.2 is available now as a freeware download for Windows, along with TweetDeck 2.7.1 for Mac OS.

Although aimed primarily at UK users, the app can also be used abroad, with coverage extended to providing forecasts for major cities worldwide. Users can also build up a library of favourite locations, checking forecasts for each simply by swiping vertically between them.

UK users can allow the app to detect their current location on first use, or anyone can tap the settings bar and use the search tool to locate the forecast they’re looking for. The app provides a clean, elegant précis of the current day’s weather forecast, including maximum and minimum temperatures and wind speed and direction (UK users also get pollen and pollution counts).

Elegant, simple to use, yet packed with detail – the BBC Weather app is a sure-fire hit for all users, not just weather-obsessed Brits.

Tapping the day reveals an hour-by-hour forecast for UK locations, or a three-hourly forecast for the rest of the world – tap the time for more detailed information about that hour’s forecast, including predicted wind direction and speed, humidity and pressure.

Users also gain access to an extended five-day forecast at the bottom of the main screen – here UK users get hour-by-hour forecasts for the next 48 hours before reverting to three-hourly forecasts for the following three days.

Android users also gain the ability to place a widget with five-day forecast on the home screen, while Android 4.2 users can also place this to their lock screen. In addition, two Android users can swap favourite locations using Near Field Communication technology to “bump” their phones together.

There are more detailed weather apps out there, but for elegance and simplicity without sacrificing much in the way of the detail, the BBC’s new Weather app is hard to beat. BBC Weather for Android 1.0.4 and BBC Weather for iPhone 1.0.1 are both available free now.