Microsoft have released the Windows Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview, a pre-beta that delivers just a hint of what the next version of IE will offer.

Much of the focus is on performance, and it’s about time – IE has been trailing a long way behind the competition for years. In part this is to be addressed by a new script engine, code-named Chakra, which compiles JavaScript on one CPU core while the browser runs in parallel on the other. It’s an optimisation that sees the Platform Preview deliver much better performance on the Sunspider benchmark, which shows it leaping ahead of Firefox. Safari, Chrome and Opera 10.5 remain much faster, but then this is an early version: we’d expect the final IE9 to perform better still.

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CyberLink have released the latest version of their PowerDVD movie player, featuring support for more file formats, direct uploading to YouTube, the ability to post comments on your favourite movies to Twitter and Facebook, and a clever new option to convert 2D DVDs to 3D in real time.

The latter feature is well timed, arriving as 3D TV is just around the corner, and 3D movies like Avatar are continuing to make headlines. PowerDVD’s 3D conversion isn’t exactly up to those standards, but it does work surprisingly well, especially with animated movies, and can add a fun new element to watching your favourite films.

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Having a computer connected to the internet invariably means managing at least one email address, and it is likely that you also make use of RSS feeds and newsgroups to keep up to date with the latest news. Ordinarily this could mean having to frequently visit several web sites or making use of a number of different programs, but Mozilla Thunderbird can be used to take care of all of these methods of communication in a single interface.

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With camcorder prices continuing to fall, and mobiles and digital cameras delivering ever high quality video clips, it’s never been easier to shoot your own home movies. Of course the raw footage may look a little rough, no matter how high-end your camera, but that’s easily fixed: even just a few minutes spent in MAGIX Movie Edit Pro 16 can transform an ordinary movie into something more polished and professional that you’ll be proud to share with others.

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Paragon Hard Disk Manager 2010 Suite is a comprehensive collection of tools that can handle just about every hard drive-related task you might want to carry out.

The partitioning tools, for instance, are worthy of a stand-alone program on their own. There are options to create, format, move, resize, hide, unhide or delete partitions, all of which launch helpful wizards that make them very easy to follow and understand.

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Audio editing software has a tendency to be either overly simplistic or too complicated for the average user, but coming from the Magix stables it is safe to assume that Magix Audio Cleaning Lab 16 Deluxe is going to be not only powerful but also easy to use. Like other Magix software, this program does not disappoint, bringing complex audio editing options to home users in an instantly accessible way.

The program can be used to edit and optimise sound, and you can work with existing files or record sound directly into the application. MP3s and other audio files can be imported in to Magix Audio Cleaning Lab 16 Deluxe, but you also have the option of importing CD audio, DVD soundtracks or the audio from a video file.

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It wasn’t all that long ago that the battle of the web browsers was being waged between Internet Explorer and Netscape, but there are now a plethora of browsers to choose from. Microsoft has come under heavy criticism for its bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows, and many people viewed this as giving the company an unfair advantage in the browser market. Followed an agreement with the European Commission, Microsoft has released a tool called Browser Choice which enables users to easily download and install an alternative browser.

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In the web browser market there are two big names vying for attention – Internet Explorer and Firefox. But while these are certainly the most popular web browsers, they are far from being the only options available. Opera has been around for a number of years, but it is only relatively recently that it has started to receive the attention it deserves.

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If your PC feels slow, then you shouldn’t immediately rush off to disable services, remove startup programs, defrag your hard drive, or follow the other standard speedup tricks. A much better first step is to analyse your PC to try and identify and remove the real cause of your slowdown – and Process Hacker is the ideal tool to help.

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CyberLink Media Suite 8 Ultra is a comprehensive set of tools, no less than ten full-featured CyberLink products, that provides just about everything you’ll need to capture and edit video, watch and author DVDs and Blu-ray discs, organise and fix your digital photos. Plenty of functionality, then, but there needs to be – this is a tough market. Does Media Suite 8 have what it takes to stand out from the crowd? We took a closer look.

PowerDirector 8 HE is perhaps the lead program here, a fast video editor that’s easy to use, yet packed with interesting options. A particle effects generator can add snow to your videos, video noise reduction enhances video quality (especially low-light clips), and a speed control generates new frames to produce smooth slow motion effects.

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With more and more time spent online, it is little wonder that many computer users now have several email addresses and make use of one or more social networks. Many email accounts, from Google Mail and Hotmail to Yahoo and AOL, are online, and checking each of your accounts for new messages can mean having to visit several web sites. And that’s before you even start to think about social networks. Whether you are keeping in touch with friends on Facebook, tweeting and following people one Twitter or maintaining professional connections with LinkedIn, the number of sites you need to visit on a daily basis just to keep up to date soon mounts up. This is where Inbox2 can help.

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