Features
Software money-savers
Archive extraction
ExtractNow
Price: Free
From: www.extractnow.com
Windows has built-in support for creating and extracting Zip files, but it's not very advanced. If you want more control and want to work with different types of archives, such as .rar and .iso files, there's no need to go down the commercial route.
ExtractNow can handle all of these file types, and lets you extract multiple archives at once. However, it doesn't let you create archives, so you'll still need WinZip or Windows for this.
Alternative: WinZip 11 Standard (£25)
CD burning
CDBurnerXP
Price: Free
From http://cdburnerxp.se
Despite its name, CD BurnerXP is a CD and DVD burner that works in Windows Vista, too. It's simple to use. When it first launches, CDBurnerXP presents you with a choice between data disc and audio CD creation. The main, intimidating text-heavy window has a couple of tricks up its sleeve, such as the ability to burn and create ISO files. These types of files hold the exact contents of an optical disc on your hard disk. It can also create gapless audio CDs and bootable discs.
Otherwise, there are no fancy extras, such as the backup features and photo-editing tools that you find in commercial alternatives such as Roxio Easy Media Creator Suite. Neither are there any format conversion tools that let you rip DVDs audio and video CDs to other formats. But if you just want your CD-burning software to burn discs, CDBurnerXP is ideal.
Alternative: Roxio Easy Media Creator Suite 10 (£50)
Virtual drive software
Daemon Tools
Price: Free
From www.daemon-tools.cc
Burning images of discs using CDBurnerXP is a great way to create backup disc images of your most important CDs and DVDs. To run the images effectively in Windows, you could burn them back to disc. However, it's far quicker to use Daemon Tools, a DVD/CD-ROM emulator that lets you treat disc images as real CDs.
Daemon Tools boots automatically when Windows starts up. It's a great way of testing that you've made an accurate disc copy without having to burn a CD.
Alternative: VirtualDrive 11.5 (£15)
Disk cloning
DriveImage XML
Price: Free
From www.runtime.org/dixml.htm
Keeping a mirror image of your hard disk on an external device helps protect against the ultimate disaster: hard disk failure. The good news is that you don't have to invest in expensive drive-imaging software to do so.
DriveImage XML lets you create a backup image of any drive or partition to an image file and then browse and restore it to another partition. You can even schedule automatic backups. Uniquely, the header information about the backup is in XML format, so it's easily readable by other applications. DriveImage is limited to backing up entire drives, though, so you can't configure it to copy individual files or folders, and you can't encrypt data.
Alternative: Norton Ghost 12 (£40)
Video conversion
Handbrake
Price: Free
Video conversion
Super©
Price: Free
From www.erightsoft.com
In an increasingly mobile world, who watches movies on their DVD player any more? Handbrake lets you turn DVD-based video into a format suitable for viewing on an iPod or other portable device that can read MPEG4 or AVI video formats, too.
Converting a DVD isn't as difficult as you might think. You just select the DVD as the source inside the program and then tweak one of the presets. Handbrake includes a clutch of prepared presets for popular export formats.
Super© is the Swiss Army knife of video converters. Its interface may look unpolished, but it includes a huge range of video input and output options. What most users will find useful is the ability to convert web-based Flash video (.flv) files to a standard format, as well as being able to grab and convert video from a mobile phone.
To do this, you simply drag the source video into Super©'s window, and from the Select the Output Container menu, choose the format to convert it to, whether iPod or WMV. Then click the Encode button and Super© works its way through your file.
Alternatives: Roxio Copy & Convert 3 (£20); AVS Video Tools (£35)
Media playback
GB-PVR
Price: Free
From www.gbpvr.com
Media playback
VLC
Price: Free
From www.videolan.org/vlc
Windows Media Center is one of Vista's shining lights, but it's only available in Vista's Home Premium or Ultimate versions. If you baulk at the cost of those, the free GB-PVR is an excellent alternative.
The interface isn't quite as attractive is Windows Media Center or that of another commercial alternative, CyberLink PowerCinema. However, GB-PVR is presentable and responsive.
Once installed, GB-PVR automatically runs its configuration routine to set up your capture source, such as a TV card. It also sets up your recording source and your electronic programme guide settings. The guide is the same one that is available to Freeview devices in the UK.
Once you've selected a programme to record, you can put your PC to sleep. It will automatically wake from standby mode, record the programme and go back into standby mode.
GB-PVR's plugins include all sorts of useful add-ons, such as burning DVDs from an MPEG source and even the ability to read RSS feeds in the program.
Want to play QuickTime movies full screen? You'll need for fork out for a QuickTime Pro licence - unless, that is, you opt to switch to VLC. This program plays QuickTime videos, as well as just about any other media format you can throw at it, smoothly at full screen.
But that's not VLC's greatest money-saving secret. You can use it to stream video live across a network. Its Videolan Server can stream MPEG files, DVDs, TV channels and even live video. Home networks should cope with MPEG streaming just fine, although streaming straight from a DVD will require a fairly speedy connection.
Alternatives: CyberLink PowerCinema 5 (£50); QuickTime Pro (£15)
