BPM Studio is a popular choice among Softonic users which might be down to the wealth of possibilities available in this music mixer. This application will allow you to read, edit, mix, encode and write your tracks with precision.

DJs and music fans alike will appreciate the hardware look of the interface and the inclusion of all the essential buttons and functions expected in a professional mixer. It’s very easy to switch between the 3 different views: lists, mixer and ripper, streamlining your music creation process without disruptions.

Thankfully BPM Studio Pro integrates an explorer view of your music library, for quick dragging and dropping of the tracks you need. Although the application only comes with 30 original sounds and tracks you can effortlessly add all the sound you need. The program keeps a record of the tracks you searched for and the play lists you created for quick access. However we were a bit disappointed by the search function, which will not come up with any result if you don’t type exactly the word you are looking for.

Computers often get a bad press when it comes to health. How often are we subjected to health and safety rants about the dangers of impaired vision or repetitive strain injury that PCs can cause? While this may be true in certain cases, it’s always refreshing to see developers coming up with solutions that can actually improve your health. We recently came across an ingenious application designed to alleviate the common, yet serious problem of tinnitus, called TinnitusTamerWin.

If you experience regular ringing in your ears (and it’s nothing to do with your boss pestering you on the phone) then it could be due to this aural defect, often caused by exposure to loud noises. TinnitusTramer helps to ease, or even eliminate, the problem by producing sequences of special tones and silent periods to retrain the neural networks in the auditory system of the brain to weaken the feedback loop that produces the ailment. The program is one of a large number within our Health section that can help you educate yourself about staying fit and take positive steps towards overcoming health problems.

After a couple of setbacks, Microsoft's new operating system, Vista, should be available, if we're lucky, in January. Testers of the latest Release Candidate have been giving back promising feedback, especially with regard to stability and speed. But what if you can't wait a couple more months for it?

We've selected a few programs that you can mix and match to create your very own hybrid Vista. Freshen up the appearance of your desktop with the Vista Customization Pack or the Vista Transformation Pack. If you're not ready to go for a full makeover give the Vista touch to your icons via Software Icons Vista 2.0. A cool feature of Microsoft's new operating system will be the Vista Sidebar, which provides you with all sorts of handy tools, more commonly known as widgets. A relatively unknown, yet clever application is the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor, a quick way of scanning your PC to verify that it is compatible with Vista.

Of course, the keenest of you out there will be looking for the real deal. The closest you'll get to it is Windows Vista Beta 2, yet you'll have to be prepared to suffer the occasional bug or crash that comes with a development version. Whether you choose to go for a cosmetic change or the full Beta tryout, it's a good idea to get acquainted, for free, to the operating system that Microsoft will ambitiously launch in a few months.

If you like to listen to your music anywhere and on anything, be it an iPod, a phone or a PC, you're going to need to change your tracks to different formats. MP3Producer works in the same way as most converters, in that you select your audio files from a CD or from a folder and then select the new format and bitrate. MP3Producer converts your files fairly quickly and can handle more than one track simultaneously.

MP3Producer’s interface is divided into two windows, making it easily understandable. The left side is composed of four tabs: Track List, ID3 Tag, Filename and MP3 Settings. Depending on the tab you have selected MP3Producer will provide explanations on the right side to help you go through the conversion process. The application also offers more flexibility than other audio converters by allowing you to select a segment of a track to be modified.

Given that phones have had cameras built-in for a number of years now, it can be pretty disappointing that when you first fire your camera up, it'll more likely than not be lacking in anything beyond the most basic features. That's where programs like Camera Magica come in. Camera Magica is capable of using bigger zoom, higher contrast and larger image sizes as well as being able to create new types of images such as seamless panoramas and 'joke' pictures.

While opening up the possibilities of your phone's camera, programs like this are actually using some pretty clever technology. When creating panoramas, Camera Magica automatically detects the edge of the last image you took and looks for it as you slowly move the camera. When lined up, it takes the next shot, making it easy for the program to blend the edges of your images for that seamless effect!

PhotoFusion, from Scalado, has similar features. Along with its panorama tools (which use transparent overlays to help the user line up image edges), PhotoFusion allows you to create 'Photo Strips' (one image made up of nine others, in grid format), and warped images. Its developer, Scalado is recognised as being at the forefront of phone camera software development so we can expect more to come from them in the future.

Separating these two programs on anything other than price is pointless: they're both well designed, fun programs which will help you get the most out of your smart camera phone. Camera Magica is true Freeware and is thus our favourite but PhotoFusion certainly deserves a test run for its novel approach to user-interface and attractive output.

As Sony Ericsson's latest offering (the CyberShot Phone) makes clear, portable telephony and photography are now inextricably linked. What may have seemed like a fad has become a major feature - one which is improved and enhanced by programs like CameraMagica and PhotoFusion.

For those of us whose sights are trained on a computer screen all day long, reading in-depth articles on our favourite blogs or sifting through long emails is the last thing we want to do at the end of a day at the office. Imagine our delight then when we came across a program that promised to read all this text for us as we give our eyes a well-earned rest.

The beauty of TextAloud is that it not only reads out anything you copy and paste into the voice window but also allows you to save the resulting speech as an audio file. Effectively this means you can transform any web page, email or text document into a podcast to download to your MP3 player and listen to at your leisure. File sizes are kept to a minimum so it's possible to save entire novels as an audio file of less than 1Mb.

You like watching DVDs and AVIs on your PC? Do you edit your videos and add subtitles to your movies? There are plenty of world famous apps that you probably use but what about the alternative? Softonic compiled a list of 10 relatively unknown yet excellent video applications. Here we go:

1. Sopcast: Watch and broadcast TV via P2P
2. Video Edit Magic: Home editing with many effects
3. Radlight: Sleek media player for Divx with Winamp style skins
4. Staxrip: Free DVD ripping
5. Subfind: Find subtitles for any movie
6. Free iPod Video Converter: Get your videos on your iPod
7. Camtasia Studio: Quick and intuitive video editing
8. All Video Splitter: Cut up large video files
9. Wirecast: Create your own TV channel online
10. Democracy:Watch videoblogs and TV on Internet

System optimisation is a bit like security in that those who understand it, know how important it is and how to alter their browsing and usage habits to achieve it. However, there are a huge number of titles that claim to offer a helping hand in streamlining your system, many of which promise the world but don’t deliver the goods. The makers of Smart PC have put plenty of effort into making an original interface but have they carried that over and made a tool that lives up to its name?

If, like the Softonic Team, you spent your wonder years in the company of moustachioed plumbers and blue hedgehogs then Console Classix is the perfect vehicle to transport you back to those times. The application puts a new spin on emulators such as MAME by allowing you to download and play games for the NES, SNES, Atari, Genesis and Master System legally, rather than having to creep around the Net's dirty side streets looking for dodgy ROMs.

Getting into the action takes just a few moments and involves nothing more than loading the program selecting a console then picking a game from the list. The app then fetches the game via the Net and you're ready to start jumping on mushrooms or punching aliens. The list of games is immense and you could have hours of fun just reading it and recalling those nights spent button-bashing in your bedroom.

Ultimately, the downside of Console Classix is that you need to pay a $5 per month charge to access Genesis, Super Nintendo and Master System games. However, if you've ever owned a NES or an Atari 2600 then you'll realize that this isn't such a problem due to the massive back catalogue of classics such as Paperboy, Super Mario Bros and Duck Hunt. Of course there are a few stinkers on the list (Back to the Future should never have been made into a game) but finding the long-forgotten gems makes using Console Classix a real dream.

Ever since Nintendo came out with its Brain Age title there's been a preoccupation that we're all slowly and irrevocably losing the ability to use our grey matter as efficiently as we apparently could in our teens. Along with this sudden self-consciousness that we're falling into a hole of senility has come a variety of titles that will restore your mind and maintain it at its optimum "level", just like Brain Workout does.

To get started you create a user that will then be used to record all your scores and your overall progress on the way to a sharper brain. There are five categories – Logic, Memory, Numerical, Spatial, and Verbal - each containing three games that can be played at five difficulty levels. The main purpose of the game is the "Daily Brain Test" that gives you one puzzle from each category and records your results for the progress chart. You can also practice the games as much as you like, uploading your score to the Brain Workout web site, but that won't particularly help you in the quest for the perfect mind.

Staying organized, getting on top of things, multitasking, managing your workflow...the list of reasons to increase your productivity can go on and on. There's a whole range of applications in our Productivity section, but we wanted to outline the ten Windows software we think really matter. So here goes:

1. Rainlendar
2. Freemind
3. EssentialPIM
4. WhereIsIt
5. WakeMeUP!
6. TaoNotes 3D Pro
7. TreePad Plus
8. eTunes
9. EverNote
10. Griffith

What are your favorite productiviy tools for PC? Let us know by leaving a comment.

So you’re back from vacation, you’ve downloaded all your photos to your PC, but you’re not convinced by the quality of the images. What you need is to retouch them, adjusting colour balance, eliminating red eyes, setting sharpness and removing noise. While it won’t equal a great picture at first try, at least it'll get you rid of all the imperfections. Corel Paint Shop Pro (PSP) is a hands-on and complete photo editor that intermediate users will take to their liking.

We instantly fell in love with PSP’s easy-to-handle interface. Select the tool panels you need and drag and drop them into the main window. The best way to work with PSP is via the left hand panel, a descriptive menu of all the actions you can undertake, like printing, retouching, collage, or adding text and graphics. Clicking on one option will give you access to a sub-menu with more choices. You can always go back to the main menu by clicking on the house icon. If you have multiple images opened you’ll be able to access them in no time thanks to the tab-browsing feature. The only element that we didn’t like was the image browsing pane at the bottom of the interface, which we found to be pretty cluttered.

Have you ever dreamt of flying a Top Gun jet when you’re sat on the bus? The new game, Sky Striker aims to provide you with just that experience: a complete combat flight simulator with good graphics, tricky physics and multiple weapon options.

Having managed to get the game to run (by deleting everything else from our test phone’s memory – Sky Striker’s a real resource hog), the first thing we noticed was that it overrides your phone’s profile settings. Even on a phone set to silent, the game starts with full volume music. This irritation isn’t unique to Sky Striker but it’s an irritation all the same. Developers ought to design games which work with your phone’s current set of options, rather than completely ignoring them.

A new version of Poker-Spy has been released today and the premise of the program sparked dollar (well, Euro) signs flashing in our eyes as we heard the ker-ching of cash registers ring out around the office. The application boasts a patent pending alert system and game tracker designed to help you constantly monitor online card games and pick up on your competitors' playing habits, thus enabling you to choose your hand more wisely and gain a competitive advantage.

Now, if you strolled into a Las Vegas parlour with such a piece of technology, you'd more than likely end up being driven out to the desert and bashed over the head with a bat by Joe Pesci. However, in the Net's many online casinos this form of "real-time player profiling" (or "cheating" as it's often known) is apparently rife.