February 2016

Bitdefender security software displays a prompt to log in to My Bitdefender after the first 30 days of installation.

While it is possible to close the prompt, by clicking on the  -- very small -- close icon in the top right corner, there is no apparent option to stop the prompts completely.

This means that you will receive these prompts regularly, once a day or even more often than that which quickly becomes annoying.

There has been some confusion in regards to Google's announcement to retire Picasa in 2016. The main issue here is that Picasa is made up of two parts: a desktop program and Picasa Web Albums.

The latter will be retired on May 1, 2016 and no longer accessible after that date. Google plans to provide users who don't want to migrate to the company's new Google Photos platform with a read-only version supporting features that Picasa Web Albums supports but Google Photos does not.

Multi-process Firefox's memory use will increase between 10% to 20% initially on average according to a memory test Mozilla ran recently.

Multi-process Firefox, short e10s, is a major feature for Firefox that has been delayed several times already. Mozilla runs test in beta versions of Firefox currently and plans to release e10s when Firefox 46 Stable is released (subject to change).

The makers of the popular BitTorrent client uTorrent revealed uTorrent Ad-Free yesterday, an advertisement free version for $4.95 per year.

The program has been available in two different versions up until now: a free, advertisement driven version, and a Pro version which adds add-on features to the client that are not linked directly to the downloading or seeding of torrent files, but to processing these files on the local system.

Google announced on February 12, 2016 that it will retire the photo hosting, management and editing service Picasa on May 1, 2016.

When Google launched the new Google Photos web application, it was clear that something had to happen to Picasa as Photos was Google's new focus and Picasa would have to go eventually.

VCLip is a free desktop screen recorder for the Windows operating system that makes it dead easy to record part of the screen.

The program has several appeals including easy of use and the download and go kind of approach to things.

While it may not offer as many configuration options as full-blown screen recorders, it is ideal for users who don't want to be bothered by bitrate, resolution, video quality or related preferences.

Microsoft revealed yesterday that the company's much anticipated game Quantum Break will come to the new operating system Windows 10 the same time it is released for Xbox One.

The game, developed by Remedy Entertainment, will launch on Windows 10 on April 5. Xbox One customers who preorder the game will get a download code for the Windows 10 version of the game free of charge which they can use in Windows Store to download, install and play the game on PCs as well.

Win10 Wizard is a free upgrade assistant to upgrade old versions of Windows to Windows 10, and to configure these upgraded systems once Windows 10 is installed.

Microsoft informed Forbes recently that it plans to release updates later this year that puts users of the company's new operating system Windows 10 in full control over data sharing and telemetry, if they so desire.

Update: According to Ed Bott, Microsoft has no plans to implement these changes this year or anytime in the future.

Actions is an automation program and file launcher for the Windows operating system that is provided as a free limited version and a commercial version.

The main idea behind the program is to provide you with a recipe-based system of tasks that you can run with the mouse or by using hotkeys.

The program ships with a set of default actions that are useful in understanding how the program works.