Utilities articles

Rufus is a top utility for formatting and creating bootable flash drives and this new version not only improves their already solid offering, it also debuts a new user interface. For the complete change log and downloads, head here.

Sandra (short for System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) has been a long time favorite app to have in your PC toolbox. With a plethora of synthetic benchmarks and system diagnostic options, it's also free for personal and educational use. This latest version revamps the interface and adds support for newer CPU architectures (AMD Ryzen, future AVX512) among other improvements. To give it a try head to our downloads section.

A popular essential app, CCleaner removes unused and temporary files from your devices giving you more storage space. CCleaner's often solid advice translates into a one-click solution to gain back space, a lifesaver for those of us who rely on somewhat scarce SSD storage. The latest Windows version improves Chrome and Opera history cleaning, and Firefox session and cache cleaning, among other things. There's also CCleaner Portable, for Android and for Mac, free of charge.

Odds are you know what's in your PC, like the processor model, how much RAM you've got, and what GPU. But how about when you are trying to troubleshoot your work PC or a relative's. Piriform's Speccy (from the same guys that make CCleaner) is a straightforward solution to find complete specs about your hardware and software in a single place.