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There are a lot of great reasons to use a VPN, or . When traveling abroad, it can help you connect to content you subscribe to regardless of local licensing agreements. When traveling within your country, it can still add a layer of security to public hotspot of hotel WiFi connections. Some users deploy VPNs to protect their privacy from social media platforms and advertising trackers, while a smaller number of people do use them for more “sensitive” personal reasons.

While there’s little doubt that a VPN can help everyone from the most casual user to internet pros, there are some questions when it comes to which one to choose. Ideally, users can find ones that meet their data-versus-cost needs, and ones that will afford them a freemium model before committing to set amount of purchased data per year.

HMA! Pro VPN (which yes, stands for “hide my a$$” in true VPN nature), part of the Avast security company, offers incredible protection at highly competitive prices. Even better, there are multiple payment plans to choose from, so you’re not locked into service you don’t want or need. Students can take advantage of special in-school pricing, while businesses can choose from three different pricing structures to protect their entire network of computers. Corporate users can even request custom pricing tailored to their specific network needs.

But what do you get for these price? A standard license installs on up to five devices across Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and Linux, letting you wrap yourself in your own private tunnel to the internet with one click. Once installed, there are no data limits, which means you can upload, download, and stream content without worrying about running over your limit. In order to ensure that your VPN use is seamless, HMA! maintains more than 700 servers in over 190 countries, connecting you no matter where you travel.

All of that may sound great–and fairly standard for the better end of the VPN market – but the security is what sets it apart. HMA! does not monitor or log any user activity. The only thing they can access is the legally-required IP address they assign you, and even then, that’s only for three months. Some other encryption apps have unfortunately forgotten to be as forthcoming with the legal requirements in the past, and others like the early days of Snapchat have neglected to factor in the monitoring or storage from the cellular providers who are supporting the mobile device. HMA! can’t maintain a log of your use because they never gathered it in the first place.

HMA! Pro VPN customers can choose a combination of desktop and mobile protection with their accounts, which can be done navigating to the company’s site or downloading the app from the corresponding app store for your device. Currently, the tool supports twelve languages from major markets, and offers a thirty-day free trial of its software with no upfront charge. If you’re not satisfied with the product after purchase, the developer also offers a 30-day money back guarantee along with seven day a week customer support.

The standard Add/Remove uninstaller that comes with Windows is a decent enough little tool from Microsoft, that for the most part does it’s job, but let’s face it, it’s not great. More often than not it leaves trace elements of the program you’ve asked it to uninstall, and over time this can lead to an accumulation of junk data you a) didn’t ask for, and b) clogs up your system.

It’s better than the one that comes with Windows…..

IObit also gives you a categorized overview of all the software (wanted/needed/or-not) on your machine, and features an Advanced Uninstall Mode for advanced users.

Perhaps however the most outstanding feature (for us anyway) is the ability to uninstall several different programs at once. This is especially handy if you’re looking to do a spring clean of your computer or free up some space in a hurry.

Another key point worth making is that as well as completely removing programs from you machine when you choose to uninstall them, it removes all the junk clutter and left over components that the Windows uninstaller tends to leave behind. Why Windows in 2018 still does this sort of thing, is anyone’s guess.

The cleanup utility is another winner of a feature, designed purely to find and eliminate invalid and non functioning shortcuts, useless and incomplete downloads, and also a cache cleaner which works exceedingly well.

IObit also comes fully loaded with autostart utilities and task manager options with easy to see running processes and programs that you can end or modify at will, and again, quicker and easier than using Windows own Task Manager.

IObit uninstaller is good, really good. IObit is easy to use, effective, and much, much better than the one that comes with Windows. It’s also easy on system resources, and isn’t annoying.

Macs are glorious machines with a fiercely loyal fan base. Super-fast and with a killer OS, it’s no wonder people fall in love with them. However, in time even the newest and fastest of Macs will begin to slow down, as it gradually gets clogged up with unnecessary files and content.

But worry not – help is at hand! With the all-new you can quickly and easily clean, optimize, and maintain your Mac. CleanMyMac 3 scans every inch of your system, removes gigabytes of junk in just two clicks, and monitors the health of your computer.

Clean, optimize, and maintain your Mac with the all-new CleanMyMac 3. It scans every inch of your system, removes gigabytes of junk in just two clicks, and monitors the health of your Mac.

And we’re talking major deep-clean here. CleanMyMac 3 scans your whole system and removes all the clutter from the hard drive, including system junk, caches, large and old files, mail attachments, and much more. During a full scan with CleanMyMac, the average user finds about 74 GB of junk to clear out.

That’s because it scans everything on your Mac, including your Mac’s system, iTunes, Mail, Photos, Trash bins, and even those pesky old folders that have been secretly avoiding you!

Macs are easy to use. And MacPaw believes Mac cleaners should be too. That’s why CleanMyMac 3’s Smart Cleanup relies on just one button to scan every inch of your Mac and then remove the junk it finds. And, it only selects files that are 100% safe-to-delete, so you never have to worry about removing the wrong ones. It’s not just an automatic cleaning utility — it’s incredibly smart.

With Smart Cleanup, all you need to do is click “Scan” and then “Clean” — that’s it. It knows what can be cleaned up for extra space on your Mac, making it incredibly safe to use.

The thing about Smart Cleanup that makes it stand out against other  is its Safety Database.

The Safety Database is a list of items, rules, and exceptions that CleanMyMac refers to in order to correctly select and clean out the junk on your Mac. It’s been updated and expanded over the past seven years — that’s seven years of working with developers to help improve CleanMyMac’s cleaning algorithm.

The clever types at MacPaw tell us: “Our number one priority is keeping your Mac safe. We’ve been building our safe cleanup algorithm for many years now. It’s called the Safety Database and is a list of rules, items, and exceptions that CleanMyMac 3 refers to every time it scans your Mac. With CleanMyMac 3, you can be absolutely sure that you’re only cleaning up the right files.”

Trim gigabytes off your photo library — without losing a single picture.

Did you know? It’s not your photos that are wasting space, it’s the hidden cache in your Photos library. You see, anytime you view photos stored in iCloud or use Faces, cache files pile up on your Mac. In time, these files can add up to gigabytes of data, especially if you have a large library. The good news is CleanMyMac 3 cleans out all of them, without harming any of your precious photos.

As the name implies, the Photo Junk module cleans up all the useless files left over by Photos. It’s 100% safe to use because it doesn’t remove any actual photos. The module scans your Photos library, locates useless cache files and heavy RAWs that take up space, and then deals with them seamlessly, to free up much-needed space.

When you import RAW files into Photos, the app creates JPEG copies of them. These JPEGs are what you see in Photos — and heavy RAWs just sit on your Mac, forgotten. If you no longer need the RAW originals, CleanMyMac will remove them* to save you gigabytes of space. But don’t worry: it will always ask you first.

*Please note, this feature is not yet available on macOS High Sierra.

Just like the Photos app, iPhoto has tons of junk hidden in its library. It’s a whole different kind of junk, and CleanMyMac cleans that up, too. Clever, right? Photo Junk searches your iPhoto library to locate useless and hidden copies of your pics, kept by iPhoto after you rotate, or crop, for example.

Mail is a lot heavier than it looks! Each and every attachment you receive in Mail, from PDFs to signatures, get saved to your Mac. Know what that adds up to? A lot! Plus, if you want to manually clean out those gigabytes of attachments, you’d have to crawl through your entire mailbox searching for every single paper clip. Save yourself the trouble — CleanMyMac 3 is happy to take care of it for you.

There’s more than just tunes in your iTunes… iTunes stores gigabytes of files other than your music, including outdated device backups, old software updates, broken downloads, and more. But it’s easy to clean up with CleanMyMac 3. Just do a quick a scan of iTunes and you’ll have more space for your tunes in no time. Simple.

Use CleanMyMac 3 to discover all the old files you’ve forgotten about on your hard drive. It scans folders and disk drives to show you the files that haven’t been opened in a long time. Why hang onto stuff you never use? Let CleanMyMac 3 gather it all together, and then you decide what’s worth keeping.

Probably the most popular freeware cleaner globally with over 2 billion downloads since its launch in 2003. Piriform’s CCleaner is a quick and easy to use program which makes your computer faster, more secure and more reliable. CCleaner removes cookies, temporary files and various other unused data that clogs up your operating system. This frees up valuable hard disk space allowing your system to run faster. Removing this data also protects your anonymity meaning you can browse online more securely. The built in Registry Cleaner fixes errors and broken settings to make your computer more stable. The simple, intuitive UI and rapid but powerful cleaning make CCleaner a favourite among novices and techies alike. Professional, Network, Business and Technician Editions of CCleaner are also available for serious users.

Browsing the internet your computer picks up a whole host of unnecessary files, cookies and history. The same thing happens when you run most programs on your computer – lots of temporary files and settings are saved. CCleaner removes these unused files and settings to free up valuable hard drive space, enabling your system to run faster. The default settings only focus on typical junk files and locations so you’re unlikely to lose important information unless you alter these. A Startup Cleaner also helps you to identify and remove unused programs running in the background when you start your computer. This makes the startup time shorter and puts less strain on your hard drive throughout use. 

If you notice lots of system freezes, error messages and often experience crashes, the chances are your registry become cluttered with unused files and broken settings. CCleaner’s fully featured Registry Cleaner identifies these issues and fixes them. The registry analysis takes seconds and cleaning just a little bit longer. Prompts advise you when to save backups to avoid losing important data.

Advertisers and websites track your behaviour online with cookies. Saved passwords, cached data and internet histories make your identity less secure. CCleaner removes these files to make your browsing experience confidential, meaning you are less likely to suffer from identity theft and/or online fraud. The military grade Drive Wiper ensures any data you want to be permanently deleted, stays deleted.

CCleaner Tools and Options tabs allow you to customise cleaning options to fit your needs. If you are not a savvy user, you might want to stick with the safe default settings. Advanced users can uninstall unwanted programs, select which cookies to save, customise cleaning settings and setup system monitoring.

CCleaner has earned its position at the top of the freeware cleaners offering the sort of features premium programs struggle to compete with. The clean, intuitive UI makes it one of the easiest programs to use, but don’t let its size and simplicity fool you. This is a powerful utility for improving your computers performance. Piriform’s regular update process means CCleaner is constantly improving and its popularity will continue to grow.

The features which are present in other BitTorrent clients are here in µTorrent, including scheduling, bandwidth prioritization, RSS auto-downloading and compatibility with BitComet-Mainline DHT. µTorrent also supports peer exchange and the Protocol Encryption joint specification (compatible with Vuze / Azureus 2.4.0.0 and above and BitComet 0.63 and above).
Unlike many other torrent clients available, µTorrent does not eat away at valuable system resources; in fact, the program typically runs on approx. 6MB of memory. µTorrent is contained within a single executable file, smaller than 1 MB.

Features include:

The customization options for icons, toolbar graphics and status icon replacements are vast, you can even create your own. µTorrent incorporates localization support and has language support; therefore it will automatically change to your system language.

The µTorrent software was designed to use only minimal resources, yet still offering the functionality comparable to larger BitTorrent clients. µTorrent is very user-friendly; the program updates are not scheduled and are only released when thoroughly tested. This product is available for all major releases of Windows.

µTorrent provides high quality service in a tiny package.

The latest version includes a much simpler and quicker to use UI than previous versions. Key features can be easily reached in the sidebar and the homepage is now customizable so you can access the tools you use most often directly. The overall appearance is clean and uncluttered, with buttons intuitively labelled and positioned.

Avast are constantly updating their database of virus definitions, meaning your computer will be protected against the latest spyware, viruses and potentially hazardous websites. Avast’s large and active community quickly alerts the development team of new security threats which are swiftly countered and added to Avast’s significant database. The browser add-on further improves computer security with features like cookie and social tracking blocking.

Avast Free Antivirus comes with a range of standard scanning options, based on depth and speed. Rapid scan will suffice in most cases - targeting removable media and the files you select, identifying security threats in usually less than a minute. A startup scan will launch automatically on boot up and is a useful, regular security check. The optimized scan engine in the latest version means scanning of text content is significantly faster than previous versions. Scanning of EXE files is around also faster. Improved memory usage means Avast Free Antivirus should cause less strain on your system so you can continue with other tasks faster.