The 15 Best Downloads of the Year

Communicate, Copy, and Protect

SnagIt

If you need to capture or annotate screens for any reason--and who doesn't?--you need this program. It's simply the best screen-capture app you'll find anywhere. With SnagIt you can capture entire screens, portions of screens, active windows, menus, or scrolling screens. Or use its built-in timer to capture screens after a given amount of time. Grab screens with the cursor visible, or eliminate the cursor. And save your capture in any major graphics format. On top of all that, you can print the captured image, send it via e-mail, send it via an instant messenger program, and more.

Want to add special effects to your capture? SnagIt can do that as well, automatically adding drop shadows, watermarks, and many other effects as you direct. The program also has a very good editor for annotating screen shots, and an image browser for looking through graphics on your PC.

Download SnagIt | Price: Shareware ($40)

WinPatrol 2007

Want to rid your PC of unnecessary programs that run on startup, and help keep it free of spyware and other forms of malware? How about doing that for free--and getting other nice freebies as well, such as a cookie remover? WinPatrol 2007 delivers all that and more, conveniently and intuitively.

Set up WinPatrol, and thereafter whenever a program tries to add itself to the set of apps that start up automatically when Windows boots, you get an alert that invites you to block interloper. Click WinPatrol's Startup Programs tab, and you'll see a detailed list of every program that your PC automatically launches at system startup--including the app's manufacturer, the date the app was added to the startup set, and its file name. A clever feature called Delayed Start lets you tell certain programs to delay launching for up to an hour after Windows boots, so Windows can start up quickly and the program can still load later on. You also get a list of all the Internet Explorer add-ins currently running, along withthe ability to remove any you don't want to keep.

Download WinPatrol 2007 | Price: Free

Flock

If you enjoy social networking sites and believe that the Web is as much about connecting to other people as about connecting to Web sites, this browser for you. It's particularly useful if you participate in multiple social networks, such as Twitter and Facebook. In a left-hand pane, it lists friends from all of your social networks, so you can quickly see any changed information about them--an updated profile, say. You may also share media and Web content with them.

In addition, it displays photo and multimedia content from sites like YouTube and Flickr in a kind of scrollable filmstrip. Grab any photo or multimedia media thumbnail with your mouse, drag it to a friend's profile on the left-hand pane, and they'll be able to see it.

Increasingly, businesses are using social networking sites; if you find that work is drawing you to use such sites--even if you have no interest in them as leisure-time destinations--you may want to make Flock your browser of choice. ( Editor-in-Chief Harry McCracken wrote an in-depth review of this browser in October 2007.)

Download Flock  | Price: Free

Trillian Basic

For years, without the assistance of third-party software,users of AOL Instant Messenger haven't been able to communicate with users of Yahoo Messenger or users of MSN Messenger (or whatever Microsoft calls it these days), and vice versa.

That's where this freebie comes in. From one clean, simple interface, you can communicate with anyone who uses AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, or ICQ. It's easy to add new buddies and accounts; you can organize contacts in any way you want; and small, colored buttons show you which instant messaging networks each of your contacts uses.

Trillian simplifies switching from your current instant messaging program because it imports all of your passwords, contacts, and buddy lists. Other pluses: You can check your e-mail on the various services; and Trillian supports video chat and audio chat.

Download Trillian Basic | Price: Free