June 2016

When I look back at my software buying history of the past five or so years, it is clear almost immediately that I did not really buy many products in that time.

The main reason for that is that there are lots of free programs available for Windows -- and other desktop operating systems -- that provide me with the functionality I require.

In fact, there are types of software where commercial programs are non-existent. Think of web browsers for instance and let me know if you can name a single commercial browser.

The Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14361 has just been released by Microsoft to the Fast Ring channel.

The company announced last month that the Anniversary Update was feature complete, and that it would concentrate the remaining weeks until its official release for fixes and polishing.

It should come as no surprise therefore that the list of new features is relatively small, and that the list of fixed issues is mighty long.

When you open the official uTorrent web forum right now, a security advisory notifies you that forum data has been compromised and that attackers were able to download the forum user list.

Users of the forum should consider passwords used on the forum as compromised even though they have not been available in clear text but as hashed passwords.

Opera 38 Stable was released on June 8, 2016. It features a new power saver mode as well as other improvements.

The new Opera browser version is already available, and users can update the stable version of the browser using automatic updates, or by downloading a copy from the Opera website.

You can perform a manual check for updates in Opera by loading chrome://about. This reveals the current version, and whether an update is available.

If an update is detected, it will be downloaded automatically and installed thereafter.

The following guide provides you with information about all Microsoft Edge policies up to the release of Windows 10's Anniversary Update in Summer 2016.

Microsoft Edge is the default web browser on Windows 10. Most who used it agree that it works better than Internet Explorer in many regards, but also see quite a few issues of which some will be resolved with this Summer's Anniversary Update for Windows 10.

Policies are designed to manage Microsoft Edge, and here in particular in business environments and the enterprise.

Mozilla plans to make Firefox 49 the first stable version of the web browser in which the browser's new multi-process architecture Electrolysis (E10S) is enabled by default for a major part of the browser's userbase.

It seems that the never ending story of making Firefox a multi-process browser will soon come to an end, as plans are underway to deliver the feature to the stable version of the browser with the coming two releases.

Gifster is a free program for the Windows operating system that enables you to capture part of the screen and save the captured data as a gif animation file or a simple screenshot.

Animated gifs are highly popular on the Internet, especially on entertainment sites but also user forums. On some sites, they appear to be posted by the thousands each day.

The main appeal of the format is that gifs can be embedded on websites just like images.

Firefox 47 has been released on June 7th, 2016 to the stable channel. Firefox users can upgrade to the new version using the update functionality of the browser, or by downloading Firefox 47 from the Mozilla website.

All Firefox channels that Mozilla maintains are updated on the same schedule which means that Firefox ESR, Beta, Developer and Nightly editions are also updated today.

Firefox Stable is updated to version 47.0, Firefox Beta to 48.0, Firefox Developer Edition to 49.0, and Firefox Nightly to 50.0.

Memory History Tool is a free memory monitor for the Windows operating system that provides you with real-time and historic information about a device's memory use.

While desktop memory is cheaper than ever nowadays, considering that you can get 16 Gigabytes of RAM for less than $50, it is still something that is of major concern to many computer users.

Reasons for this are manifold, from running systems with low memory over devices with fixed amounts of memory, to going crazy if half the memory is used up by the operating system even though plenty is still available.

Battery Aid is a free application for devices running the Android operating system designed to improve battery life in various ways.

Battery life is an important factor when it comes to mobile devices, considering that you may not make it throughout the day or night without recharging a device if its manufacturer shipped it with a weak battery.