Nero Free For All

Back in the days when recordable CDs were still a bit of a novelty there were only a couple of applications on the market that could actually make recordings, and one of them was Nero Burning, and it is still regarded as one of the best CD/DVD utilities you can get. Now here’s the good news, you can get it for free, that’s right, Nero 9 Essentials Free version is all yours for the cost of a download. There are no catches unless you count the pre-checked facility to install an annoying toolbar – so read before you click – and the nags to upgrade to the paid for version. Otherwise it’s good to go with a decent set of basic but efficient CD and DVD burning and copying facilities.

New AVG Annoyance

It’s hard to get too upset with AVG, after all they have been providing us with top-notch virus protection for free these last few years, but the release of AVG version 8 has annoyed a lot of otherwise loyal users. Over the last few weeks popups have been appearing that appear to suggest that AVG was no longer free and to stay protected you had to upgrade to a paid-for version. The fact is AVG 8 is still free for personal use, but of course AVG would rather you purchased the better-specified commercial version – well, you can’t blame them for trying. For the record the free version can be downloaded from http://free.avg.com

The latest problem is a component in AVG 8, called Link Scanner, which has been driving some website owners potty. The idea is when you do a web search it pre-checks all of the links, looking for malicious sites. The trouble is websites get bombarded with fake hits from PCs running AVG 8, clogging up the web with pointless and wasteful traffic. Some users also suggest that the Link Scanners slows their PC down, which could well be the case on older machines. Read more