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A big TV without big speakers is just plain criminal. Alas, you can't just buy a pair and plug them directly into your LCD or plasma; you need a receiver to act as the hub and amplify the audio.

Of course, if you've ever shopped for one, you know that receivers can cost a small fortune. But not today.

Today only, and while supplies last, Woot has the Pioneer VSX-521-K 5.1-channel A/V receiver for $134.99, plus $5 for shipping. Unlike many Woot products, this one's new, not refurbished.

The VSX-521-K is nicely equipped for … Read more

Cosmetic Guide Lite cosmetically corrects portraits, especially full-face portraits, with graphics editing tools instead of makeup. The Lite version is a freeware release of a premium tool. Unfortunately, it contains few of the cosmetic-specific features of the paid version, making it of little use beyond demonstrating the paid tool's capabilities with video demonstrations.

Cosmetic Guide Lite is essentially an image editor, like Photoshop and many others, but with reduced and simplified features. The Lite version includes the standard Smudge, Brush, Crop, Resize, and Text tools, as well as the Smart Patch and Bleach Teeth tools from the premium version. … Read more

We've seen plenty of Internet bandwidth speed tests, both the online and standalone kind. Download Speed Test from AB-Tools.com is a standalone freeware speed test, which means it tests your bandwidth from your PC instead of from a Web site. This approach has advantages, such as letting you choose any download for your speed test. Download Speed Test also lets you run continuous tests, yielding a better average score over time.

Download Speed Test's twin automotive-style gauges display the current and average download speed. A line graph beneath the dials displays download times graphically, and the lower … Read more

MiniBin is a free recycling bin for your Windows system tray, also known as the notification area. It lets you open or empty the Recycle Bin from the system tray, or drag and drop items into it. It can serve as a Recycle Bin replacement if you're using a desktop environment that hides or disables the default bin. But it also makes a great little trash bin, sort of an ashtray for the system tray. It even includes some themes for changing the tray icon's look.

After we installed MiniBin, we clicked the system tray and selected Customize … Read more

A MOT test is a U.K. Ministry of Transport vehicle inspection. It's thorough, so any rigorous checkup is apt to be called a "MOT test." Computer MOT from Dizzy Solutions is a free utility that automatically cleans your system, scans it for spyware and adware, and performs a variety of maintenance and tune-up operations. It uses two of the most-popular freeware utilities, CCleaner and Spybot, plus built-in Windows utilities like the disk defragmentation tool and CheckDisk. And when we say automatic, we mean "automatic" as in "no manual options" and no stopping … Read more

Glaryutilities' Disk SpeedUp is a free standalone utility that analyzes, defragments, and optimizes your disk drives or individual folders. It offers manual and automatic defrag options as well as automatic shutdown after defragmenting finishes.

Like many system utilities, Disk SpeedUp has a colorful interface with large, clearly labeled buttons and tabs labeled Defrag Show and Settings. The Defrag Show tab showed our two disk drives and their capacity, free space, status, and percentage of fragmentation. In the middle was a standard defrag map, while at the bottom of the interface, Disk SpeedUp displayed tabs with our three partitions, each with … Read more

Filmmaker Ken Burns revolutionized historical documentaries by using subtle motion with sound overlays to bring life to old still photographs. Developer Jens Gopfert's PhotoFilmStrip uses what he calls the "Ken Burns" effect. This free slideshow maker actually creates movies out of your still images in three steps: select images, set motion paths, and create a video that can be saved in several high-quality formats, including full HD. You can also add music or other audio tracks and add comments in image subtitle fields.

PhotoFilmStrip's clean interface opened with a How to Start page that let us … Read more

The Photo Viewer is like many built-in Windows tools: it does a fine job, but it has room for improvement. ImageGlass is a lightweight, versatile image viewing application that is designed to take the place of Photo Viewer in Windows 7 and Vista, especially those installations that may have trouble displaying PNG and GIF files in Photo Viewer. ImageGlass loads images faster than Photo Viewer, thanks to a feature that uses RAM to preload the next image. It also lets you quickly resize and reorient images in the main display.

With a blank main window and an icon-based toolbar, ImageGlass … Read more

We admit that hearing the term "meta-analysis" always leads us to imagine Groucho saying, "I never met a nalysis I didn't like," but the technique of combining the results of several studies to achieve a more accurate overview of the subject is nothing funny to statisticians. MIX 2.0 Lite is a free add-on for Microsoft Excel that performs professional-level meta-analyses from Excel's ribbon. It offers more than 20 built-in datasets taken from published methods, plus a data wizard that cites book and page number for users who want to look it up themselves. … Read more