Keep your PC perfectly safe with sandboxing

Wayne Williams explains how to use a sandbox to protect your PC from malicious programs, snoops and more

Sandboxing is a method used to prevent software from taking control of your operating system or making any changes to it. It works by containing the program in a secure and disposable section of your computer’s hard drive or memory. Software running in this ‘sandbox’ is allowed to read data from the hard drive as normal, but it can’t write data outside of the sandbox or make any changes to Windows.

There are several benefits to sandboxing software in this way, such as keeping your system safe from potential malware and letting you try as many programs as you like without worrying about cluttering up Windows or causing problems.

It’s also useful for privacy reasons: if you sandbox your web browser, nothing you do will be recorded on your computer, and bookmarks, cookies, cached pages and browsing history will vanish when you empty or exit the sandbox.

Best Add-Ons For Anonymity

Lots of browser add-ons claim to keep you anonymous online, but many are ineffective. Here, we pick the nine tools you need to guarantee your privacy

Download Paid-For Software That’s Now FREE!

Not all tech prices are rising – in fact, many have been scrapped completely. Wayne Williams picks the 20 best formerly paid-for programs and apps that you can now download for free

We’re so used to reading about tech prices going up – from broadband to iOS apps – that it’s both a surprise and a pleasure to learn that a onceexpensive product is now available for free.

Obviously, as you see, plenty of brilliant free programs and apps around, but Premium and Pro versions of software have the advantage of being unrestricted, offering many more features and being free of ads and nags.

Over the last year, many quality tools you previously needed to pay for have become completely free. In this feature, we round up our favourites – full software, not free trials – and explain why you should download them.

Our list of newly free products includes image editors, photo filters, professional video tools, system and security software, iOS and Android apps, and much more, and will save you a grand total of at least £1,327. We also show you how to use two of our favourite new freebies.

Top extensions for securing your web browser

Every now and again in this column, we like to go through and update our list of the best add-ons for securing your browser

These are the very top add-ons for making you safe from tracking cookies and metrics, from malicious website code and from hackers trying to intercept your browser traffic. They will block ads and bypass geoblocks and content filters as well — the latter particularly relevant now that certain websites are being blocked by Australian ISPs. All of these are available in the Chrome Web Store and in the Firefox Add-ons directory.

Secret Tips For PrivaZer

Access advanced scanning options, manage cookie removal and delete any folder or file permanently

Best free sticky-notes software

Is your workspace drowning in a sea of Post-It notes? Chuck them out and transfer their vital information to the Desktop of your PC. Andy Shaw tests six of the best tools to do it

31 Chrome Add-Ons (That Are Actually Useful)

Mark Oakley rounds-up the Chrome extensions that make a difference

Google Chrome has become the go-to web browser for much of the Internet-using world. Such is its dominance, it is now used by over half of all desktop users. For the longest time, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer was the browser of choice for desktop users but as Microsoft dabbled close to the Edge, so Google Chrome surpassed all its rivals.

Chances are, then, that you’ll be using Chrome, but are you making the most of Google’s browser? Here are 31 of the add-ons that will genuinely make a difference to your browsing experience. Find all of them over at the Chrome Web Store, of course.

Take your free software with you

Saving your favourite software as portable apps to a USB means you can use them on any PC. Edward Munn rounds up the best ones

Swift Playgrounds For The Apple iPad

David Briddock reviews Apple's new interactive coding experience for the iPad generation

For many, the act of creating apps simply by typing code statements into an editor can seem somewhat magical. Yet coding isn't just for software wizards or a gifted minority. With modern tools and computing platforms, it's something anyone can do.

The importance of coding as a fundamental skill is finally being realised by the educational community and government bodies. Indeed, coding is now a key part of the educational curriculum. It's also an essential ingredient in the 'constructional thinking' movement - something that encompasses computing systems and electronic hardware hacking.

10 Totally Free Photo Editors You Should Be Using

Roland Waddilove shows you how to supercharge your photo editing, with these great apps for PC and mobile

Most people have at least one photo editor on their PC. It’s most likely one of the wellknown favourites like Photoshop, Gimp or Paint.Net, but there are many more great programs available. Alternative applications often provide different ways of working, new tools and exciting effects, so it’s a good idea to expand your toolkit with a few freebies.

Best Android apps for scanning documents

Edward Munn rounds up the best apps for turning your smartphone into a pocket scanner

Secret Tips For… Audacity

Record web radio, get rid of crackling noises and remove long silences

Record sounds playing on your PC

Free audio-editing program Audacity (www.audacityteam.org) is great for editing digital files from your music collection as well as voice recordings. But it can also record any audio playing on your computer – for example, an internet radio station, a YouTube video or an iTunes song.

To start recording, open Audacity, select Windows WASAPI in the Audio Host dropdown menu and click the record button. Once you’ve made your recording, click the stop button. If you’d like to listen to your recorded audio on an MP3 player or smartphone you should convert the audio file to MP3 (see next tip).

Best free Android VPNs

Mobile VPNs protect your privacy on the web and let you unlock restricted content wherever you go. Edward Munn compares six of the best VPN apps

Best free torrent tools

BitTorrent has plenty of excellent, legal uses, so don’t be put off using it. Rob Beattie compares the top torrent software for downloading videos, music and more

Magix Video Easy

Edit the easy way with this capable editing software

Arguably, Magix has the most comprehensive range of editing software available today, covering type of user, from the rank amateur to the professional videophile. Yet there are times when you simply want to get your footage from the camera to the screen, in the quickest and simplest way possible. That’s why it's introduced this latest product, imaginatively titled Magix Video Easy.

Best free file-compression tools

Windows can store your files in compressed folders to save space, but it doesn’t give you much choice over how it does this. Andy Shaw tests six free programs that work faster and compress your files into smaller packages

Magix Video Pro X8

Magix update its top-of-the-range video editor

VideoPro X8 is the latest version of Magix professional video editing suite. Admittedly it’s a product with a fairly hefty price, yet as our American cousins would say, it provides a lot of bang for your buck.

And for those that simply dabble with video editing or only throw together the odd celebratory slideshow, Magix offers a comprehensive range of more affordable alternatives. But make no mistake: Pro X offers as much as, if not more than, many professional editing suites, which could cost you five times as much.

Magix Audio and Music Cleaning Lab Premium

Is this the ultimate sound and music editor?

Afew weeks ago, I reviewed the Video Audio Cleaning Lab from Magix, designed to fix and enhance any problems you have with your video sounds. Well, this latest product is the big brother of that package, so it’s quite capable of fixing the same problems, yet it can also handle a whole lot more as well. The name of the product on review is the Magix Audio and Music Cleaning Lab Premium. The Premium tag indicates that it’s the top of the range in this series, and one that includes some very sophisticated sound editing features.

Xara Web Designer 365 Premium

Website creation made simple

Once upon a time, learning some basic HTML and CSS commands was enough to put together a competent web page. But things have got more complicated, not least because people use a wider variety of computers and mobile devices to browse the web. So these days the best options are either to use an online service that does most of the work for you, such as Weebly, WordPress.com or (if you don’t mind paying a subscription) Squarespace. Alternatively, get yourself a web-design program like Xara Web Designer.

CorelDraw X8

Joe Lavery looks at the latest version of Corel’s premier graphics suite

Here we have version 8X of the CorelDraw Suite, bristling with new features and a few tweaks for the old ones. If you’re familiar with the product, you’ll already know it contains a lot more than the illustration program that forms the core part of the package, because you also get Corel Photo-Paint, Corel Website Creator, Corel Capture, Corel Font Manager and more. The company have now made purchasing the product more flexible. Naturally, you can still buy it with a one-off payment, but alternatively you can start a 365-day subscription for £14.95 a month. At a total outlay of £179.40, it’s considerably cheaper than upgrading.