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Blackmagic Disk Speed Test is a tool designed to test the speed of your drives. Why bother? Well, if you are accessing or storing video or other real-time demanding applications, you want a drive that can keep up with the read and write demands of those applications. Blackmagic Disk Speed Test is designed to let you know how fast your drives are and report their speed changes over time. The app is free and installs easily.

Blackmagic Disk Speed Test launches with a dialog sporting two rotary speed gauges, one for reads and the other for writes. Below those two … Read more

Voice search is such a useful smartphone capability that yours may already have it (ours did). Maybe you already have Google's Voice Search, too. This free app integrates seamlessly with Google Search; just look for the microphone icon. Voice Search lets you search your phone or device, the Internet, and nearby locations just by speaking (clearly) into your phone. Even if you're not the best public speaker, Voice Search is smart enough to offer a range of suggestions, and it can learn to understand you, too. If your Android device doesn't have a built-in voice search app, … Read more

Types is a small configuration application that lets you manage filenames, icons, and other file and folder properties. It also allows you to modify context menus. There are several user-supported language ports of Types, a nice feature.

Types installs quickly and has a very simple interface that lets you navigate to different folders and click on files or folders to examine their basic properties and modify them, or delete the files. The problem with Types is that it is very basic and offers limited functionality. There are other applications that give you more control and more options, but Types does … Read more

Pandora Recovery Wizard is a free tool that helps you locate and recover lost or deleted files from your system. You can browse for files in the main window's tree view, but the easiest way to recover files is with Pandora's wizard, which holds users' hands at every step of the critical process. It can recover deleted files, provided they haven't been severely damaged or securely overwritten.

Pandora Recovery Wizard opened with both its main interface and the program's recovery wizard, which we could set to open each time by clicking a check box. The wizard … Read more

There seems to be a trend to very simple games on the Mac, and LineMaze is a good example. LineMaze draws a maze onscreen, consisting entirely of lines and no graphics, then you maneuver through the maze as quickly as you can before the timer runs out. Simple gameplay with no learning curve.

LineMaze installs and executes quickly. So does each maze. Often you have less than one minute to complete the maze, and as time starts to run down the maze starts flashing which is very annoying and doesn't help focus on completion. It would be great if … Read more

With the popularity of scrapbooking and creating collages of images on social networking sites, CollageIt for Mac is a handy utility that helps you create collages on the Mac. Instead of uploading a bunch of separate images, you can create a larger image with multiple smaller images laid out in a specific order. CollageIt for Mac installs quickly.

The CollageIt for Mac interface is simple, presenting you with four basic collage layouts (mosaic, grid, center, and pile, each with multiple possible templates) in the left pane, and a display of created (and editable) collages on the right. To create a … Read more

Converting PDF documents to easily editable formats requires passing the PDF file through a converter. There are quite a few PDF Converters on the market, some better than others, but there are few very good free applications for this purpose. Wondershare Software's PDF Converter Free is a stand-alone app that allows a PDF file to be converted to a Microsoft PowerPoint file that is fully editable.

PDF Converter Free only works with PowerPoint-formatted PPTX files (or fully compatible file formats from non-Microsoft presentation applications) that have been saved as PDFs. During the conversion from PDF to PPTX almost all … Read more

Byterun Solitaire for Mac is a version of traditional solitaire, made famous as the favorite time-waster on Windows. Implementing Klondike Solitaire, your goal is to get all the cards in each suit in ascending order (as if you didn't know!). This app is a free download and installs easily.

The graphics in Byterun Solitaire for Mac are a bit basic, almost cartoonish, which is unfortunate. A little more care on the cards and card backs would have made this a more attractive game visually. Where Solitaire does shine is playability. The game mechanics are good, and there are basic … Read more

360Amigo System Speedup Free is, as the name suggests, the free version of a larger utility. And while the company hopes you'll like the Free version enough to buy the full-feature version, the free offering is still a good utility in its own right.

Installation is simple and fast, but it still offers to create a system restore point for you, which is a nice touch. Once launched the 360Amigo System Speedup Free is straightforward. Several options are grayed out (prompting you to upgrade to the paid version) but the basic utilities such as junk file cleanup and an … Read more