GOM Media Player

As various media players jockey for position to become your default setting for music and video streams, GOM Media Player's support for a wide range of file formats has helped it stand out as a firm favorite.

Supported formats include DAT, MPEG, DivX, XviD, WMV, ASF, AVI, and MOV, as are common codecs like FLV1, AC3, OGG, MP4, and H263. A pop-out playlist can save and organize your various media files, though the limited sort modes--two--hardly makes it a champ.

More impressive are the customizable settings on the control panel. Here you can adjust a video's image brightness, hue, and saturation. There's no preview window, and changes occur as the video runs, so unless you care for a rousing session of trial and error, be sure to tweak the settings after clicking "play." There's also a built-in screen-capture feature that includes zooming and panning, customizable themes, hot keys, and a host of preset and adjustable audio controls.

GOM is weakest when you're looking for help documentation and trying to tweak Save settings, but overall it's a very strong player worth at least a supporting role in your video-watching habits, if not the lead.

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FrostWire

FrostWire is a fork of the LimeWire source code, and as such, it functions exactly the same. When you search for a file using FrostWire, you get results from LimeWire, and vice versa.

However, the user experience differs in two ways. One is that the code is actually based on LimeWire Pro, the paid version of the popular P2P client, so users don't have to worry about simultaneous download restrictions, and they won't get bombarded by ads. Also, befitting the name, the interface has changed from green to blue and has been slightly improved. Tabs have rounded corners, and there are two additions, as well. Connections monitors your outgoing and incoming connections by host name, but also provides bandwidth information, the vendor and version being used, and more. There's also a built-in community chat.

When we tested it, the built-in media player in FrostWire didn't work with MP3s or MPGs, although those files worked fine in LimeWire and elsewhere. The app also comes bundled with the ASK toolbar, but you can opt out of that during the installation process. While some people have experienced faster download times with FrostWire compared with its parent, others have not. FrostWire and LimeWire are practically indistinguishable, although the lack of ads is a big plus.

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BitComet

Taking a slightly different approach to solving the multimedia lover's dilemma of how best to download torrents is BitComet, which uses an interface heavily cribbed from Windows Explorer--with a dose or two from the basic BitTorrent template--to create something instantly recognizable to the user.

There's a familiar tree of features on the left, including links to torrent-aggregating Web sites and several promotional offers. The top of the app has big buttons with familiar icons, the center window shows the files being downloaded, and the bottom pane has tracker and peer info. The pane on the right rounds out the layout, with a torrent search feature and advertising. Among the usual features, BitComet offers chat capabilities, the ability to bookmark your favorite sites, a toolbar for Internet Explorer 7, and a context menu for Firefox 2.

While the app held its own against better-known competitors in terms of speed and handling multiple torrents, we found the ubiquitous advertisements to be annoying compared to the competition's ad-free environs. Overall, we think BitComet is worth trying and could become a major torrent app in the future. 

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Orbit Downloader

Downloading videos, Flash games, and large batches of files is greatly simplified with this freeware download manager, but Firefox 2 users may have difficulty with integration.

Orbit's primary interface is bland, but the basic toolbar and info boxes guarantee everything is easy to find. Orbit shines with Internet Explorer integration. To get a media file, simply right-click a video or photo and choose Download from your context menu. Grabbing a Flash game is even easier. Hover over a Flash file, and Orbit displays a button for a fast download.

Fast and small are key traits of this application. It uses a bare minimum of memory, and downloads are much faster than with a browser alone. Where Orbit shines is its one-button simplicity for downloading multiple files on a site. From there, you can easily filter for file type. Orbit's numerous configuration options make it one of the more flexible download managers available.

Although designed to integrate with the IE, Firefox, Opera and Maxthon, we had great difficulty getting Orbit to work seamlessly with Firefox. We finally gave up trying to get the Flash download feature to work. Nevertheless, anyone downloading large numbers of files will find this freeware indispensable.

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YouTube Downloader 2.1.6

This simple freeware application works pretty well, given how basic the interface is. It has two main features: to download FLV files from YouTube, and to convert them to most major formats. If there's a YouTube URL in your clipboard, it will automatically paste it for you when you click on the dialog box. From there, just hit OK and the downloading will commence. One more left-click is all it takes to load the file in the converter, which supports iPhone, iPod, PSP, cell phone, AVI, MP3, WMV, and Xvid. Surprisingly, there's also a basic video editor for cropping videos by time stamp. You can also cut out the sound when converting.
This is one of the lightest editors around, but the simplistic interface belies its functionality and it performs exactly as advertised. We'd like to see support in future editions for hunting down missing codecs, and version 2.1.5 and earlier won't work because of embed code changes on YouTube itself. Still, the YouTube Downloader is proof that not only is video-making accessible to everyone, so is video downloading and editing.

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FLV Player 2.0.24

Most people don't need anything more than a Web browser and a Macromedia plug-in to watch Flash videos. However, if you want a hair's breadth more control over your viewing, this open-source freeware program will do the trick.
FLV Player's exceedingly simple controls allow you to navigate backward and forward through videos and play them in a loop. You can also adjust the volume, mute it, and adjust the size of the player. The Settings menu provides some basic control over program behavior, such as opening a new player window when double-clicking on an FLV file and remembering previous settings. And that's about it.
Our only major complaint is that the display window doesn't automatically resize to the size of your movie frame. We hope this problem will be remedied in future versions. FLV Player isn't a must-have by any stretch, but it's a decent tool for penny-pinching Flash developers.

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Avast Home Edition 4.8.1229.80826

Avast Home Edition is a complete ICSA & Checkmark certified antivirus, Checkmark certified anti-spyware & anti-rootkit package. Avast includes the following components: On demand scanner with skinnable simple interface, just select what do you want to scan in which way and press the Play button; On access scanner, special providers to protect the most of available e-mail clients; Instant messaging--ICQ, Miranda; Network traffic--intrusion detection, lightweight firewall; P2P protection for Kazaa, BitTorrent; Web shield--monitors and filters all HTTP traffic; NNTP scanner--scans all Usenet Newsgroup traffic and all operations with files on PC; Boot time scanner--scans disks in the same way and in the same time as Windows CHKDSK does.

Version 4.8.1229.80826 contains improvements in the anti-rootkit module.

Note: You'll have to register (free) on the publisher site to be able to continue using this program after 60 days.

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Advanced WindowsCare Personal 2.8.6

Slow down, freeze, crash, and security threats are over. Advanced WindowsCare Personal is a comprehensive PC care utility that takes a one-click approach to help protect, repair, and optimize your computer. It provides an all-in-one and super convenient solution for PC maintenance and protection. All work will be done with 1 click and 1 minute. This fantastic program is available free of charge. Compared with its nearest competitor, Advanced WindowsCare Personal provides the more essential and practical formula for Windows: Removing Spyware and Adware, Preventing Security Threats, Privacy Protection, Fixing Registry Errors, Temporary Files Cleanup, Startup Cleanup, Repairing Windows, Speeding up System and 1-click Mechanism.

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