A year or two ago, hardly anyone was really aware of VoIP (Voice over IP) telephone calls and the technology was very much the preserve of geeks. The revolution that Skype unleashed on an aging and overly self-satisfied telecoms industry was a long time coming and this little program truly has ushered in a new era of cheap global communication. The sign of a great program is its universal appeal, and Skype has that in spades.

But time waits for no software, and while Skype is certainly the market leader it is facing some stiff competition from feature-packed newcomers. So if you've had annoying disconnect issues with Skype, or you'd just like to try an alternative, be sure to take a look at Nick's post on the topic.

On the games front, this week has been a particularly exciting one for fans of the Call of Duty series. The demo for Call of Duty 4 - Modern Warfare was released and we loved it. Check out the review, give the demo a spin and let us know what you think! If you're of a more historical inclination, you may have dreamt of ruling a kingdom from a great castle. Who hasn't? Well if that sounds like your idea of fun, Tony put together a list of the very best castle simulation games on Softonic.

If you're something of a Photoshop addict, don't miss Cyril's latest post in our Photoshop tips series. It's a collection of the best online sources for tips and tricks in the #1 graphics application, so if a tip's worth knowing, you'll find it there. Finally, if you're sick of windows, why not give Ubuntu a go? They've just upgraded to their best looking, most user-friendly version yet… and with every new version, the reasons for staying with a non-free OS become fewer.

Stay tuned for next week's Halloween Special!

Time to order another bag of nails for Microsoft's coffin? Perhaps. Today sees the launch of Ubuntu's latest iteration, 7.10 AKA Gutsy Gibbon. Ubuntu has become increasingly popular of late with boosts from such sources as Dell, who now sell Linux-equipped computers.

The latest version of Ubuntu is packed with new features aimed at strengthening its position as the most popular of Linux flavours. Its graphical environment, Gnome, has been upgraded to offer superior performance (and loads of eye candy). Other improvements and additions include fast user switching, desktop search, better support for video in Firefox and improved security and encryption.

As always, Ubuntu is completely free and can be downloaded immediately. We recommend using the Torrent links, to keep the strain off individual servers. Whether you're a seasoned user upgrading or a newbie who's ready to take the plunge: now's the time! Get it while it's hot.

Call of Duty has established itself as one of the greatest game series ever. With consistently improving graphics and AI, one of the only real criticisms it has faced of late was the repetitive nature of its setting. World War II is a fascinating, multi-theatre world for games to approach in many ways: but how about something different? Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is the answer to that request. This game plunges you head-first into a present-day battlefield, even more fast-paced than its predecessors.

This demo offers you one mission from the full version of the game, where you play Sergeant Paul Jackson, of the US Marines. You're dispatched to save a tank which has become waylaid during its mission against a rebel leader in Saudi Arabia. Like any good demo, the mission features a range of combat situations, including the use of anti-tank weapons, the destruction of an anti-aircraft battery and at least one seriously fast-paced, confusing fire fight.

The graphics in COD4 are top notch, and we didn't notice any lag even at higher-end settings. COD4 is built on a new proprietary engine which offers much better support for up-to-the-minute lighting effects, clearly visible in this test mission. Another aspect of the new engine makes for a really interesting change to gameplay. Some forms of cover (a light wooden fence, for example), won't offer you much protection like they did in years gone by. While buildings are not destructible, many elements of the environment (like cars and, yes, light wooden fences) are easily destroyed with gunfire. Heavier weapons can cut through heavier cover too, "Shoot them through the wall!" you're ordered at one point.

All this added realism makes the general quality of gameplay really high. We noticed great improvements in AI, even on easier levels of difficulty where previous games may have left you feeling somewhat silly. In fact, COD4 was surprisingly good, especially when there had been some negative reaction to the XBOX 360 beta.

Fast paced, intense and varied: awesome graphics and involving gameplay make Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare a must-have for any self-respecting gamer.

Windows XP is the world's most widely used operating system. But it's by no means perfect. Many XP users will at some time experience the nuisance which is a slow computer. But apart from upgrading your hardware (or just buying a Mac), there are several key tweaks you can perform on your system which are pretty much guaranteed to increase its speed and performance. Typically, they involve turning-off, or reducing the resources dedicated to, non-essential processes like fancy graphics and transitions.

Here are our top 5 performance tweaks for Windows XP:

• Start Windows XP faster, by managing which programs are set to run at start-up. Have you noticed that Windows takes ages to finish loading when you turn on your computer? You may well be able to fix this with a utility called msconfig. Click Start Button > Run > and enter msconfig in the text box. Visiting the Startup tab will allow you to disable automatic startup for lots of programs on your computer. Be careful not to deselect critical items like your anti-virus software!
• Get rid of visual effects to speed up your desktop. Visual effects look nice but they can be a real drag on an under-powered system. To reduce their impact, go to Control Panel > System and open the Advanced tab, then Performance > Settings. Then just select the option Adjust for best performance. Using this tweak will make your system look more like Windows 2000 than XP - but it'll run so much quicker!
• Defragment your hard disk. Your system is constantly accessing your disk, and for various reasons, large files (particularly the pagefile) can be 'split' or fragmented into various different physical locations on the disk. This doesn't damage the files but it can seriously reduce performance. Check out Nick's post selecting the best disk defragmenters for more information.
• Disable system sounds and wallpaper. OK, this may sound a bit drastic but how long do you really spend looking at that Anna Kournikova/Brad Pitt wallpaper each day. Actually, don't answer that. Wallpapers and system sounds actually use a lot of system resources, particularly at startup. Go back to the Control Panel, select Sound and Audio Devices > Sounds and under Sound scheme, pick No Sounds. Once that's done, open the Control Panel again and then click Display > Background and choose None. You'll notice the improvement immediately!
• Turn off the Windows Indexing Service. If you're constantly searching your system for documents, this isn't recommended. But if, like the rest of us, you use the search function pretty rarely, disabling the Windows Indexing Service will improve performance. From the Control Panel, go to Add/Remove Programs > Windows Components. Deselect Indexing Service.

Once you've applied these tweaks, restart your computer for a new beginning of faster, more efficient computing!

We often find that the most popular posts on insideTonic involve tips and recommendations for either optimizing Windows PCs, or customizing them with new themes and visual styles. This week has been no different and it's not hard to see why: there's no doubt that we all want to have the fastest, best looking PC on the block.

With this in mind, Nick continued searching for perfect performance by putting together his Top 10 list of the best optimization tools for Windows XP. From complex RAM managers to all-in-one wizard apps, this list is certain to get your PC up to tip-top performance. He's pretty insatiable, though, so he also tested out the most popular disk defrag tools - if you haven't done a defrag for a while, you'll find it improves your system stability and speed.

One of the most popular topics for debate since the launch of Windows Vista is how to get your XP computer to look like Vista without forking-out $400. While some critics have argued that Vista doesn't offer many new features, elements like the new Start Menu have proven popular with XP users. If this sounds interesting, check out my post discussing the pros and cons of installing the Vista Start Menu in XP.

World of Warcraft now has over 9 million subscribers! If you're one of them, you should probably take a look at Elena's latest WoW post, which covers the best add-ons for the virtual world. Finally, our favourite Internet TV application, Joost, has finally launched to the general public. If you still haven't tried it, now's your chance: this is the future of television.

One of the 'new features' included with Windows Vista was the completely overhauled Start Menu. The old version, as seen in XP, is occasionally temperamental and certainly looks messy after you've installed a few dozen apps. It can be pretty hard to spot a favourite program you installed a while back and a wrong move with the mouse results in the whole thing disappearing again.

The new Start Menu is, unfortunately, also no paragon of usability. While the idea of using mouse-overs to display or hide the entire menu is not perfect, it is arguably superior than the new method of clicking a very small spot at the bottom of the menu to display your applications in a small, cramped menu. The fact that what is then displayed needs to be scrolled through, and that the program group icons each need to be clicked on actually make this a 'browsing' experience, rather than a traditional menu navigation experience.

And I've not even mentioned the useless icon at the top of the right-side panel which changes appearance depending on which element your pointer is hovering over. Instinctively, your eye will follow the pointer, meaning that you probably didn't even notice this feature.

OK, I admit it: I'm not a fan of the Vista Start Menu. But I'll give it one thing: that 'quick search we invented that looks nothing like Spotlight on Macs' is pretty darned useful. So if you want to add that feature to your XP start menu (the only possible answer to my questioning title), here are two options for you: ViStart and Vista Start Menu. They're fairly similar but ViStart probably has the edge on VSM because it's completely free (without a 'Pro' version). Alternatively, go the whole hog and convert your XP to look like Vista completely. You won't be missing out on much and you'll save $400.

It's been a really fun week on insideTonic, for one reason alone: Games! Yes, perhaps as an antidote to the falling leaves and temperatures, we've been getting really stuck into gaming again... and loving it!

While the biggest games story of the week is undoubtedly Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 (see our Game of the Week, below), we've been experimenting with a huge variety of game-styles to find the best in each genre for you, the user. Check out Cyril's analysis of the best restaurant and bar management games - genres you probably didn't even know existed!

Tony took some time out to put together a list of the craziest animal-related games for mobile phones and PDAs (compatible with most operating systems), before setting off for Egypt to try his hand at archaeology in Atlantis Redux. Continuing the Egypt theme, I had a look at A Tale In The Desert, a multiplayer online game set in the age of the Pharaohs (and that was while I wasn't tinkering with Shadow President, an amazing Abandonware classic).

If you're not a gaming nut like us, we've still got loads of great free software to try. Take a look at Elena's analysis of the latest free office suite, from computing giant IBM. Could Microsoft be in big trouble? And finally, Nick continues in his quest for optimal internet connectivity: check out his compendium of the 10 best internet accelerators on Softonic.

Fifteen years ago, there were so many cool games I wanted to play but couldn't. We didn't have internet access yet, and the occasional game my brother and I could get our dad to buy (like the awesome F15 Strike Eagle III) were pretty expensive. I remember that one of his work buddies gave us copies of Doom and Wolfenstein 3D, along with X-Wing (with a trainer on the last disk!) but otherwise we were pretty limited in our choice of games to play on the ol' 486.

Now we're living in the future, you may expect me to have forgotten my love for Imperialism II and Wonderboy In Monster World... what do you think I am, fickle? Luckily, the games I loved (and the ones I longed for) can nearly all be found at Abandonware sites like Abandonia. Abandonware exists on somewhat shaky legal ground given that much of it remains under copyright (even though it may no longer be available for purchase).

While I'm not going to condone breaking the law I will say that I support the idea of keeping games alive by enjoying them long after their developers have abandoned them. There is actually a larger point to be made about the validity of the 70-year copyright longevity for software, something which is updated and superseded so quickly. But I'll leave that argument for the dry legal experts of Wikipedia.

My first Abandonware Classic is the remarkable Shadow President. This impressive game puts you in the most powerful seat in the world: that of US President. The aim of the game is to handle your economy and your relations with every single country in the world. From a world map, you can click any country and then decide on all sorts of policy and aid issues such as trading partner status, intelligence operations, military and humanitarian aid and diplomatic coercion. You soon realise that the top job is a lot harder than just shaking hands and delivering speeches articulately. Hmm, that's kind of worrying. Anyway, check out Abandonia's great review of the game here and keep your eyes peeled for more classics.

It seems like only yesterday that we, the crew of the good ship Softonic English set sail on our quest for the very best software downloads on the world wide web. Now, nearly two years later, Softonic is delighted to announce the launch of its latest mission: Softonic en Français.

Dedicated to just the same editorial independence and critical analysis as Softonic Español, Deutsch and English, the French site is packed with software reviews and downloads for Francophones from all over the world.

Félicitations à l'équipe française! To all our French-speaking visitors, please check out the new site and let us - and the French team - know what you think!

A day after a new update to OpenOffice.org, Yahoo's purchase of Zimbra and the release of Google's Presently, a free (and 'lite') alternative to PowerPoint, industry monolith IBM has announced that it too has joined the ranks of the free office brigade. The beta for IBM Lotus Symphony is already available for download, and includes word processor, presentations and spreadsheet components.

In fact, Microsoft must be pretty concerned about the impact of free office suites on what is their core product line, Office. Indeed, it has been a tough couple of days for the firm: an appeals court in Brussels has just upheld the European Commission's biggest ever fine against MS for what was effectively considered monopolistic behaviour. My bet: in five years' time, we won't be using paid office suites for anything but the most advanced database and data management tasks.

Once Symphony has downloaded (in about 3 hours' time by the looks of it!), we'll put a full 'first look review' together. In the meantime, why not check out the revamped OpenOffice.org 2.30?

UPDATE: Check out our full review of Symphony here!

This Saturday is Software Freedom Day, an annual, global event which is dedicated to the celebration and promotion of free and open source software. Groups from all over the world are organising parties and other events to mark the day. Free software definitely feels like it's on the up. With the collapse of attempts to introduce software patents in Europe (for the moment), as well as the news that Dell and other PC manufacturers are now selling computers bundled with Ubuntu, there's no doubt that free and open source software is more popular than ever.

While I have a computer at home equipped with Kubuntu, I'd be crazy not to recognise that the vast majority of PC owners use Windows. But even if you're a Windows fan who can't or won't make the move to an alternative OS, you can still take part in - and enjoy - the very best free and open source software available. Here's a pick of some of my personal favourites.

• Open Office - the most popular completely free office suite
• Ares Galaxy - connect to P2P networks with this safe, stable, free-of-spyware client
• Songbird - still in development, this app is a media player and web browser in one
• Pidgin - open source chat client for AIM, MSN etc (formerly known as GAIM)
• Firefox - despite some problems with memory leaks, this remains my favourite browser
• Kubuntu - and finally, why not go the whole hog and try Linux? You'll never look back
• Check out Softonic's Freeware section, packed with tons more totally free software

Without doubt one of the most popular and reliable BitTorrent clients available, uTorrent (aka µTorrent) is both compact and powerful, and includes a raft of features just not seen in competitors. Its easy torrent creation interface, advanced tagging system and integrated search and download tools perfectly compliment its highly reliable web interface and good download speeds. A must for torrent fans. Check out Cyril's full review for more.

A lot of people were really excited when the BBC launched the beta for its revolutionary iPlayer software, including our resident Net TV addict, Nick. The program works well, is full of great content and has proved fairly popular with EastEnders fans across the UK. Not everyone's so happy with it, though. That's because if you want to try the iPlayer, you'll need to be using a Microsoft Windows PC.

Mac fans and Linux users alike are up in arms over the failure of the Corporation to release the software for their operating systems - and did what any indignant citizen would do. They petitioned on Gordon Brown to sort things out.

Making use of the much-maligned Petition the PM website, 16,000 OS rebels beseeched Britain's leader to make the BBC release versions of the software for computers already liberated from the grip of the Windows hegemony. Eventually, the PM's office responded with a statement which pretty much said that the iPlayer has nothing to do with Mr. Brown but that they were sure the BBC would play fair in good time. Perhaps not the greatest day in the history of democracy... personally, I'd rather people signed the anti-puppy farms petition, but there you go.

[Via: The Register]

There are a number of statistical analysis applications making the rounds on Facebook and Ayelet at Blonde 2.0 has written an interesting, in-depth post about one of the latest, Socialistics.

This app presents you with a raft of data concerning your Facebook friends in the form of tag-clouds, graphs and pie-charts. And the data it collates is truly a marketer's dream. By analysing my friends' profiles, I can rapidly build up a fascinating statistical picture of my social network. I can see this being used not only by marketers but also by any group looking to analyse the way in which its members socialise: who are their friends? what do they have in common? where do they work? and so on... highly recommended to anyone interested in analysing their social network (as is the post at Blonde 2.0).

Opera have released the first public download of the latest version of their ever popular browser. Codenamed 'Kestrel', Opera 9.5 alpha is a fairly major update and adds various new features as well as improving the already impressive tool set of the program.

The first thing I noticed on testing Kestrel was a definite improvement in speed. Opera's always been fairly good in this respect but the developers have clearly pulled out all the stops to tweak yet more power from it. It also uses slightly less memory than before - which makes the performance improvements all the more impressive.

In terms of new features, Opera has introduced a more complete caching system which allows for the introduction of Full History Search. FHS lets you search within every page you've visited - for example when you've seen something interesting but forgot to bookmark it. Assuming you don't delete your cache, Opera will search through every page you've visited, and not just the URIs of pages in your history. You can access this new interface directly from the address bar, so it's pretty seamlessly implemented.

The new 'Synchronize With My Opera' feature is less exciting. It doesn't really seem to do much but share your bookmarks and Speed Dial settings automatically onto a my.opera.com profile page. The aim seems to be to link the browser directly to a sort of del.icio.us and 'blog this' functionality. But the synchronization feature is poorly documented and so doesn't really seem to be of much use. Those who accuse Firefox of feature-bloat would do well to take a closer look at the behemoth that Opera has become.

In summary: Opera 9.5 is faster and more efficient than previous versions. It still passes the Acid Test and has made improvements to text and bitmap rendering. The Full History Search feature is pretty cool but I'm not that keen on the Synchronize feature: not when I've got better solutions which I'm already using. Download from Opera.com here.