Only yesterday we announced that Acronis were offering True Image 11 Home for only $9.99 (£5.89) for one week only. However, we've noticed that if you go for the Acropack 2008 option, which is Acronis True Image 11 and Disk Director 10 as a bundle, then enter the coupon code we gave you, you can get Acronis True Image 11 for 80% off, or $9.99, but then get Disk Director 10 for free! This has to be the software bargain of the year.

To take advantage of this offer, simply head to our Acronis True Image 11 Home page and follow the instructions on the page, remembering to enter the coupon we gave you. Getting Disk Director 10 for free is a no-brainer as this is an excellent disk management suite that will enable you to partition your drive and more.

Acronis True Image 11 and Disk Director 10 for free link.

Components that are shipped with your new computer are ultimately responsible for its performance. Even if your computer does require a performance enhancement, it's important to identify the area that is most beneficial to upgrade depending on your own needs. If you just browse the web and your computer is sluggish, upgrading your systems RAM may improve general performance but will not necessarily have any impact on web browsing. Use a system analysis tool to identify hardware upgrades applicable to your own needs.

Everest Ultimate Edition 4.6 enables users to run a full system analysis helping to identify performance statistics of all installed hardware. Use it to compare it to other hardware or check if components are performing correctly. The latest version fully supports Windows Vista.

Everest Ultimate Edition 4.6 link.

Wouldn't life be interesting and rewarding if you could make money, working from home, helping other users understand their own machine? I bet there are few novice users who do not want to have to spend money purchasing 'How To' books to teach them how to use their PC. It's way easier if you can have someone around at your home showing you how to use a particular application.

The alternative solution is to give someone access to your machine, remotely, and enable them to show you how to perform particular actions on your PC. You're in control. Although you give remote access to other users, you can disconnect them at any time and they can't suddenly infect your machine with a virus. You can also prevent access from particular areas of your computer - so files in your 'work' partition are out of bounds to the remote user.

However, if you want to do the demo work, you can choose to help other users and charge a fee. For instance, you could charge someone $40/hour to help someone get to grips with using their email client, as an example. Remember, you don't need to leave your laptop to do this. You simply need a fast Internet connection and hope your remote user also has a fast connection.

CrossLoop 2.3 is the solution we're recommending for this task.

If you work between an office and a laptop, file sharing may be part and parcel of your computers everyday life. You may use your laptop during meetings, on the move or whilst on business where you may also need to upload and download folders and files from numerous external sources. The trouble with constantly transferring files is that some files may be infected with a virus or other malicious applications, which inevitably, infect your computer.   

ClamWin 0.94 Portable is the portable version of the popular open source antivirus application. Take it with you on a USB flash drive, CD or even your iPod and use it to scan folders and files and folders. You can use it on your laptop or on any other machine you may be using without leaving any personal information behind.

ClamWin 0.94 link.

It's a good idea to backup your most important data. If you have your work or media files stored on one partition, you could simply backup this partition and restore if necessary. With incremental and differential backup, you only backup new and updated data on your partition, so the next backup is handled swiftly. With Acronis True Image 11 you can now backup your files, as well as an entire drive or drive partition.

Acronis True Image 11 is being offered at a staggering discount of 80% off the standard retail price for this week only. That means you can buy Acronis True Image 11 for only £5.98 ($9.99), which a massive discount from the $49.99 retail price. To buy, click the link on Acronis True Image link and then 'buy now', entering the coupon code.

Acronis True Image 11 for only £5.98 link.

When installing or upgrading Windows many users are unaware of how overabundant default installations are. Many of the languages, add-ons and modules are unnecessary to most users taking up hard disk space and contributing to long-winded installations. Unfortunately, you can only slim down your installation to a certain extent and may need to use a third-party application to configure a pre-installation setup which enables you to remove any unwanted items.

nLite 1.4.9.1 is an application that enables you to create a custom Windows installation, removing any unwanted components. Remove language packs, add-ons and other items you may not need. You can also use it to perform a number of useful tweaks to create a slimmer operating system which will also reduce installation time.  

nLite 1.4.9.1 link.

If you're seeking an alternative, there's no reason why you couldn't buy yourself a Mac laptop and use OS X to manage your photos, your iPod and handle your work. If you need to launch Windows, simply run a virtual manager such as VMware Fusion and you'll be able to run XP, Vista or Linux OS, without having to leave your regular operating system.

VMware Fusion 2 RC1 is now available and it's still free whilst in beta-testing. The new version has a few additional features including a free version of McAfee Anti-Virus, including 12 months free updates, so you can keep your Windows-based virtual OS virus-free during use. There are also many fixes and enhancements.

VMware Fusion link.

Ever wonder what your computer is doing? Sometimes it can feel as though you don't have any control over which areas your systems performance is concentrated. You could be listening to music, browsing the web and all of a sudden an application will freeze and you may be unable to continue using it or even close it down. Being able to actually view performance statistics of your computer may enable you to identify where system resources are being used.   

Moo0 SystemMonitor is a small utility that enables you to view important system information. It enables you to check processor performance, memory used, hard disk activity and even the performance of your operating system. This monitor uses few resources itself, so you can accurately see what your system is doing.

Moo0 SystemMonitor link.

Explorer is a fairly basic component of Windows, certainly prior to Vista. Within Vista, the Explorer interface was revamped, extra functionality added, but it still isn't as good as many of the Explorer replacements that are available. For instance, Directory Opus is superb. At a very basic level, if you want to open an Explorer Opus window, simply double-click on any location on your desktop and the window will appear under your mouse pointer. For anyone who works with files, folders and other information, this makes life far easier.

XYplorer 7.60 is another alternative Windows Explorer replacement which, like Directory Opus, will enable you to open a multi-tabbed window so you can quickly move files between different directories. It's portable too, which means you can take XYplorer with you, on the road, and use it to manage a host PC.

XYplorer link.

There are numerous Firefox add-ons, some more useful than others. The good thing with using add-ons is that you can take the best parts from other software applications or web browsers and incorporate them in Firefox. Some features incorporated into other popular browsers such as Internet Explorer and Opera are useful, but others less so, so being able to pick and choose how to customise your version of Firefox enables you to get exactly what you want from your browser.

Fast Dial 2.6 enables you to create a panel of thumbnails of your favourite sites. It replaces the ¨about:blank¨ page and enables you to assign URL's to empty cells, with a thumbnail preview of each one. There are also a number of other customisable features as well as shortcuts designed to personalise your browser.

Fast Dial 2.6 link.