It’s a fact: the more you use your computer, the more unnecessary apps and processes are listed in the system’s boot-up sequence – and the longer it takes to boot up. And there are few things more irritating than having to wait 5 minutes to be able to use your computer.

The good news is that there are programs that can help you clean the mess, get rid of useless programs and leave only those which really need to be run on the system’s start. Soluto is one of them: an excellent start-up analyzer that calculates the time it takes your computer to boot up and helps you improve very easily.

Soluto is really simple. All you need to do is install it on your computer and then reboot it. Soluto calculates the time it takes the system to completely start up, and then shows you a nice graph with the results. Programs are divided into those that can’t be removed (usually because they’re system core components), programs that can be easily get rid of and those which could be potentially removed – but which you’ll probably need to check before.

Soluto can also help you decide if you should remove a program or not. It displays detailed information about each process – when available –, together with technical data such as how much memory it uses or how much time it adds to the total boot sequence. If the information is not available, you can add it yourself like in an online wiki, and thus contribute to Soluto’s user community.

Despite being still at a beta stage, Soluto already looks really promising. With a clear interface, nice animation effects and lots of interesting data, it makes system optimization much easier for everyone.

With Apple’s WWDC already well underway and iPhone fever rising, the big news for Safari users on both Mac and Windows is that they can now get their hands on version 5 of Apple’s elegant web browser. Faster than ever and with a new intelligent Reader, Safari 5 looks and works better than ever.

The most significant addition is the new Reader which is accessed by clicking Reader which appears in the URL bar on supported pages or by going to View and then Enter Reader. It isn’t available on all sites but when it is, it allows you to read only the text in an article. It removes distracting ads, pictures and sidebars so that the experience is closer to that of reading a newspaper than before:

The other big changes are that Safari 5 is now 25% faster at loading Javascript than the previous version and extensive support for HTML5. I was a bit skeptical about the speed improvements at first but now that I’ve been running Safari 5 for a few hours, it has to be said it’s lightening fast. However, whether it’s twice as quick as Firefox and 3 percent quicker than Chrome as Apple claim, I’m not so sure but it is easily the fastest Safari ever. Greater HTML5 support is something developers will mainly appreciate allowing users to watch HTML5 video in full screen and access HTML5 geo-tagging.

There are many other great additions such as the possibility to use Bing as your default search engine in Safari:

And Safari is now far more intelligent at finding bookmarked and cached webpages searching for keywords within pages as you type them in the URL bar.

Give it a test drive and tell us what you think!

LARRY - Big Dipper is all about falling! This simple arcade browser game sees your hero, or idiot, depending on how he got into this position, having to avoid falling rocks and debris as he falls down a seemingly endless mineshaft. Larry doesn’t look too happy about things.

Cursor keys move the unlucky Larry around the screen and there are power-ups to pick up on the way, as well as the occasional bird who’ll grab Larry by the hair and slow his fall for a while. Points rack up as you drop, and you’ll get multipliers as long as you don’t touch any falling rocks.

LARRY - Big Dipper is so simple it really shouldn’t work, but it’s pretty fun and has that ‘just one more go’ factor that make casual games a little dangerous! Requires Flash, and is played from your browser.

EA are really getting into online free to play - plus premium extras model, with BattleField Heroes, Tiger Woods, FIFA and now Need for Speed World.

All you need to do is download the client, and then sign in with an EA account if you have one, or register for a free account here.

Like all the games in the franchise, Need For Speed World is fast, with arcade-style handling. This makes it easy to pick up and play, and the relatively low system requirements keep it running smoothly on most PCs. Apparently you can earn experience points all the way up to level ten, which should make for hours of racing! It may not look brand new (it features roads from older Need For Speed games stitched together), but it’s yet another fun and impressive online option from the software giant.

We’re almost halfway through 2010, so I thought I’d round up a few free indie games that have caught my eye this year. They weren’t all made this year, but are all free and I guarantee they are worth spending some time on! You can download them via the links below.

Puddle is a simple, but lovely to play physics-based puzzle game. It’s very short, especially for a 300mb download, but it looks and plays really well and I thought it was worth a go, even if a couple of Softonic users disagree!

BitWorld is a stylized pseudo 3D dungeon exploration game. Complete with story and amusing side characters, I was really impressed with the look and feel of BitWorld, which puts bouncy, blocky, pixelized characters into a murky 3D environment. It’s a bit rough around the edges, but totally charming!

Hero Core took me right back to the 80s, with its monochrome graphics and simple yet challenging gameplay. Fly your hero through the headquarters of your nemesis Cruiser Tetron to destroy him forever! It’s a firm but fair game - so expect to die a lot on your way to victory!

Attack of the Paper Zombies !!! is a bit of a weird concept. It’s a real time strategy survival game, where you have to protect your marines against hordes of zombies, and yet it’s presented as a drawing on paper! Despite the clash of styles, it’s a really playable strategy game with plenty of content to keep you involved.

Genetos didn’t come out this year, but is something I tragically overlooked before. It’s a 2D arcade shoot ‘em up that takes your from the Space Invaders origins of the genre right up to what they call the ‘bullet hell’ of modern shooters. This is one of the most accomplished indie games I’ve played for a long time, and if you need an education about shoot ‘em ups, everything you need to know you’ll find in this game - it’s all free!

FIFA fans, you are not dreaming. The amazing truth is that as of now you can play the awesome soccer sim online and for free on your PC.

FIFA Online is EA’s second foray into the realm of gratis gaming, following the release of Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online last month. The new game is now in open beta phase, meaning it’s not quite the finished product, but it’s free for anyone to play.

I’ve been hammering away at FIFA Online all day and I have to say I’ve been blown away by it. Not only does it look and sound great but it’s got stacks of different game modes, online multiplayer, lots of social features, real teams and players, and it even challenges you to lead your country to glory at the 2010 World Cup.

It’s such a rich offering that I felt like writing a thank you letter to EA for this wonderful gift. Then I realized that, like the other millions of fans, I’ll end up showing my appreciation by constantly paying for the game tokens that are used to access new match modes, treat injured players, buy equipment for your team, and bribe referees. Actually, I’m not sure about that last one, but it’s a good idea.

Paint it Red 2 is an extremely relaxing art game where the objective is simple: paint the screen red!

Guiding a cursor around to spread paint, which is sometimes red, sometimes mixed with other colors, and behaves in many different ways, is both addictive and relaxing. Losing an hour with Paint it Red 2 isn’t difficult! Every level works slightly differently, and there are no instructions, you just have to experiment.

Every level has a Red percentage to aim for before you can move on, while your current percentage is displayed. This draws you right into the game, and playing through the many levels on offer is good fun. Paint it Red 2 just requires Flash and your browser.

If you’re still using the default web browser built into your Android phone then you could be missing out. Granted, it’s fast and functional, but it’s not the easiest way to look at the web on your phone, and it lacks the features of some of the other browsers that are available. Here are some alternatives that you should try out if you want a faster and more comfortable way to browse the web on your Google-powered phone.

Opera Mini

One of the first web browsers to hit the Android market, Opera Mini is already a popular, trusted name on many other mobile platforms. I recommend you check out version 5 Beta of the app, which borrows a lot from the excellent desktop version of Opera.

I reckon the user interface in Opera Mini is much more usable than Android’s rather clunky browser. The speed dial feature lets you set up on-click shortcuts to up-to nine of your favorite sites. Mini supports tabbed browsing, meaning you can switch between the different pages you have open very quickly and easily.

Other navigational aids have also been added, such as an auto-complete feature in the address bar, and a built-in search bar. Unfortunately this search bar only supports Google and is not customizable with other search engines.

Page load times are very impressive, thanks to Opera’s server-side rendering technology. Before being served to the browser, sites are run through a compression test on the Opera server’s making them load super quickly.

Opera Mini is rammed with options and settings, too.  You can alter image quality, font size, and screen orientation, and there is a wealth of privacy settings too. As you’d expect, there’s support for bookmarks and browser history, too.

Pros:

Fast performance, speed dial, tabbed browsing, lots of options, address auto-complete

Cons:

Search bar not customizable, some minor bugs

Skyfire

Skyfire is an interesting alternative, notably because it’s the only Android browser that supports Flash video. You can use the browser to watch clips on YouTube, Google Video, Vimeo, and more. The FLV support isn’t perfect though, and some sites such as Hulu, CBS and Fox block Skyfire from accessing their video content. Skyfire supports other web standards such as Ajax, Java, and HTML 5.

Skyfire has a menu bar at the top of the screen where you can quickly access all the features for bookmarking pages, accessing settings and managing open tabs. Interestingly, cycling through the tabs you have open in Skyfire is a very similar experience to Safari on the iPhone, allowing you to quickly flick through pages and launch new ones with the tap of a button.

There are some other innovative features in Skyfire that you might find useful. There’s a Load As function that lets you view pages as if you were looking on a desktop browser or an iPhone. The Explore button at the bottom of the screen displays latest content related to the page you’re viewing, from Facebook, Twitter, Digg and StumbleUpon.

Thanks to its slick rendering engine, the Skyfire browser is pretty fast, although that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. It can sometimes behave strangely and force closes at times. The buttons are quite unresponsive at times, and the zoom feature is a bit jerky.

Pros:

Flash video support, quick page rendering, Explore feature, Smooth tab management tool

Cons:

Unstable and unresponsive at times, doesn’t support all Flash content

Fennec

Fennec, or Firefox Mobile as its familiarly known, is primed to be an exceptional Android browser. Currently in pre-alpha release, Fennec is very unstable and almost unusable at times, but when it works, it’s very, very good.

The browser bears very little resemblance to the desktop version of Firefox, but it does adopt some of the great features made famous by the browser. For instance, pages can be opened simultaneously in the form of tabs, which you access by sliding the screen across to reveal a panel on the left-hand side. Fennec tabs can be opened, closed and switched around as easily as they can in Firefox.

The most interesting thing about Fennec is its support for extensions, or Mobile Add-ons, as their called in the app. As in Firefox these allow you to power up the Android browser with more functionality. Some of the cool tools already on offer include YouTube Enabler, which turns on Flash video for Android; TwitterBar, which lets you tweet from the Fennec address bar; and AdBlock Plus, which removes adverts from your browsing experience.

Other useful tools built into Fennec include a slick bookmarks manager, address auto-complete, and a customizable start page. However, Firefox Mobile is still lagging behind Opera Mini and Skyfire when it comes to features. Also, the zoom feature in Fennec is much more cumbersome than in these other two browsers.

Given time though, and once all the bugs have been weaseled out by Mozilla’s crack team of developers, Fennec has the potential to be the greatest browser on the Android platform.

Pros:

Supports add-ons, user-friendly interface, powerful bookmark management, address auto-complete

Cons:

Very unstable, poor zoom function

For the moment, I would choose Opera Mini over anything else, but feel free to disagree with me and argue the case for a different Android web browser.

EA’s PGA Tour Golf might soon be the last Tiger Woods branded product out there, and with his current form, who knows if we’ll see another. Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online is a massive surprise - a (mostly) free online multiplayer golf game, that’s actually really good.

Once you’ve got an account, there’ll be two courses to choose from (they change on a rota basis) and you can dive straight in. EA have stuck in some MMO features, so you also get loads of stats and earn in-game money to upgrade your player. The in-game chat window, lets you talk to other players on the course, giving it a nice community feel - a great addition to a round of Golf.

Watch out with Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online, you can get sucked in really easily. It may not be as funny as the Tiger Woods game feature in South Park recently, but it’s incredible that there’s this almost fully featured Golf game out there you can play for free.

You’ll need the Unity browser plugin, which you can download here.

After months of anticipation, Steam for Mac is finally here marking a new era in gaming on the Mac. Even better, developers Valve are allowing new Mac users to play Portal 2 for free (pictured in action below) until the 24th of May!

There are initially 57 games to choose from on the Steam platform which should keep Mac users busy for a while including Torchlight, Civilization IV and Football Manager 10. However, some games are still only available to Windows users at the moment so there’s no Team Fortress 2 yet. Valve promise that new batches of Mac games will be released every Wednesday meaning it should eventually match the Windows collection.

Mac users should be aware from the start however that X3100 or 900-series Intel chipsets (the integrated graphics chipsets in older MacBooks) are NOT supported. However, the good news is you will not be required to purchase separate versions of Windows and Mac games. One purchase will work on multiple platforms thanks to SteamPlay. In addition, Mac and Windows users will play on the same servers and join the same lobbies. Most games run very well on the Mac although with some high graphic intensive ones, you may need to bring down the graphics settings a bit to prevent sluggishness.

Installing and setting up a Steam account is really easy, and the download manager is very stable. Whatever your internet connection speed, you don’t need to worry about stopping a download partway through. If you exit Steam, it will continue your downloads the next time you start it without complaints.

The simple interface is mostly unchanged from the Windows version. Categories along the top are used to navigate through the Virtual Store, Games Library, Patch and Update News and Community Functionality. There are occasional pop-ups which are usually either adverts or invites. This slick, fast interface allows you to quickly navigate between games, available demos and videos. There’s also a game wishlist feature, and your game library has real time search and customizable categories.

While you miss out on a box or instruction booklet by buying games from Steam, you do get all the latest patches and updates downloaded automatically. There are often exclusive demos and offers available through Steam too, and there’s a great community service which allows you to join groups and find people to play online. On Windows, its major downfall is that the client auto-updates far too often although it remains to be seen if this will be the case on Mac.

Steam may not sell every game under the sun and the Mac version may lack some of the games available on Windows but overall it’s an excellent application and may finally launch gaming on the Mac in a big way.