Software of the week.
02/17/2025 to 02/24/2025
Vivaldi has been making waves in the browser world with its unique approach to user customization and control. Founded by Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner, the co-founder and former CEO of Opera Software, Vivaldi was born out of a desire to cater to power users who felt abandoned when Opera switched from the Presto layout engine to Chromium. Launched in 2015 as a technical preview, with the first stable version released in 2016, Vivaldi has consistently focused on giving users a highly customizable and feature-rich browsing experience.
Vivaldi 7.1, the browser's latest iteration, continues this tradition with many new features and improvements. This in-depth review will delve into the history of Vivaldi, explore the key features and improvements in version 7.1, compare it with other popular browsers, and discuss its pros and cons based on user feedback and expert reviews.
A History of Vivaldi: Built for Power Users
Vivaldi's origins can be traced back to the closure of My Opera, a virtual community website run by Opera Software. Von Tetzchner, angered by the shutdown, believed the community was integral to Opera's success. In response, he launched the Vivaldi Community, a platform offering forums, blogs, and other web services. This community-centric approach laid the foundation for the Vivaldi browser, which was first released as a technical preview in January 2015.
From the outset, Vivaldi aimed to provide a more customizable and powerful browsing experience compared to the simplified offerings of other browsers at the time. It quickly gained traction, with over 500,000 downloads in its first ten days. Vivaldi Technologies, the company behind the browser, is headquartered in Oslo, Norway, with offices in Iceland and Massachusetts. Notably, Vivaldi is employee-owned, allowing it to prioritize user needs and feedback without the influence of external investors. This commitment to its users is evident in the browser's development and its strong community engagement.
Vivaldi 7.1: What's New?
Vivaldi 7.1 introduces a range of new features and improvements across its desktop and mobile versions. The updates in Vivaldi 7.1 demonstrate a continued commitment to providing users with unparalleled control and flexibility in their browsing experience. Here's a breakdown of the key changes:
Desktop Enhancements
- Weather Widget: Stay informed about the weather with a new widget that can be added to the Dashboard. It provides real-time updates for your location or any city you choose.
- Dashboard Customization: Personalize your Dashboard with new background style options for widgets. Web widgets can now pull colors from your Vivaldi theme for a more integrated look.
- Import Open Tabs: Easily switch to Vivaldi from other browsers by importing all your active tabs.
- Speed Dial Improvements: A redesigned "Add Speed Dial" dialog makes it faster and more intuitive to add your favorite websites to the Start Page.
- Seamless Sharing: The "Send Tab to Device" feature lets you instantly share tabs between your Vivaldi-enabled devices, including mobile phones and tablets.
- New Default Search Engines: Vivaldi has partnered with privacy-focused search engines like Startpage, Ecosia, DuckDuckGo, and Qwant as default options.
- Crash Loop Recovery: A new feature automatically detects and recovers from session-induced crash loops, improving browser stability.
- Reader View: For a distraction-free reading experience, Vivaldi 7.1 has made Reader View more accessible from the menu. Reader View simplifies web pages, allowing users to focus on the text.
Mobile Enhancements
- Vivaldi Translate: A built-in translation tool powered by Lingvanex allows you to translate entire web pages or selected text into over 100 languages without compromising your privacy.
- Reader View: Access Reader View more easily from the menu for a clutter-free reading experience. (Currently only available on Android)
- Tab Search: Quickly find open tabs using the new search functionality in the Tab Switcher. (Currently only available on Android)
- Start Page Customization: Choose how you want to start your browsing session with the new "Reopen Start Page" options.
- Quick Save: Easily save pages to your Start Page, Bookmarks, Reading List, or Home Screen with the new "Add Page to" menu item.
Pros and Cons of Vivaldi 7.1
Based on user reviews, personal experience, and expert analysis, here's a summary of the pros and cons of using Vivaldi 7.1:
Pros:
- Highly Customizable: Tailor the browser to your exact preferences with extensive customization options.
- Feature-Rich: Enjoy a wide range of built-in features, including notes, mail, calendar, and an ad blocker.
- Privacy-Focused: Vivaldi prioritizes user privacy with built-in tracker blocking and private translation.
- Cross-Device Sync: Seamlessly sync your browsing data across devices with end-to-end encryption.
- Active Development: Vivaldi is actively developed with regular updates and new features.
Cons:
- Performance: Can be resource-intensive, especially with many features enabled.
- Occasional Bugs: Some users have reported occasional bugs and glitches.
- Learning Curve: The extensive customization options can be overwhelming for new users.
Vivaldi vs. the Competition
Vivaldi vs. Chrome
Vivaldi and Chrome are both Chromium-based browsers, but Vivaldi distinguishes itself through its extensive customization options. Users can personalize nearly every aspect of the interface, from tab positioning and themes to keyboard shortcuts and mouse gestures. While Chrome offers a vast library of extensions, Vivaldi integrates many essential features directly into the browser, reducing the need for extensions.
Vivaldi vs. Firefox
Firefox has long been a champion of user privacy, and Vivaldi shares this commitment. Both browsers offer strong privacy features, including tracker blocking and enhanced privacy controls. However, Vivaldi goes a step further by offering a built-in email client that prioritizes user privacy and data security.
Vivaldi vs. Edge
Edge has emerged as a strong contender in the browser market, offering a balance of performance and features. While Edge provides some unique tools like Collections, Vivaldi's tab management features, such as tab stacking and tiling, offer more advanced ways to organize and manage multiple tabs.
Unique Vivaldi Features
Vivaldi offers several unique features that set it apart from other browsers:
- Tab Stacking: Organize your tabs by grouping them into two-level stacks. This feature helps manage multiple tabs and keeps your workspace tidy.
- Tab Tiling: View multiple pages side-by-side by tiling tabs. This is particularly useful for research, multitasking, or comparing information across different websites.
- Workspaces: Categorize your tabs and tab stacks into separate workspaces. This allows you to easily switch between different tab sets for different tasks or projects.
Conclusion
Vivaldi 7.1 is a powerful and versatile browser that caters to users who want a high degree of control and customization over their browsing experience. With its unique features, privacy focus, and active development, Vivaldi is a compelling alternative to mainstream browsers, especially for power users who demand more from their browsing experience. While performance can be a concern for some users, the browser's extensive functionality and customization options make it a strong contender in the browser market.
Vivaldi's commitment to user choice and control is evident in its development philosophy and its community-driven approach. By offering a highly customizable and feature-rich browser, Vivaldi empowers users to shape their online experience according to their individual needs and preferences. As Vivaldi continues to evolve, it will likely play an increasingly important role in shaping the future of web browsing and promoting a more user-centric internet.
Vivaldi is the browser of choice on all Scientific Frontline's computers and mobile devices.
Anti-Virus / Malware
Protects all aspects of your digital life with cutting-edge expertise and advanced machine learning. This we endorse and use on all our computers for years now.
E-Mail
Still our choice for many years. Thunderbird is an open-source project, which means anyone can contribute ideas, designs, code.
Mailwasher is an email filtering software for Windows that can detect and delete spam from a user's email when it is still on the mail server, before being downloaded to your computer.
Encryption
With Cryptomator, the key to your data is in your hands. Cryptomator encrypts your data quickly and easily. Afterwards you upload them protected to your favorite cloud service.
Encrypt Care is an easy-to-use encryption software which allows users to encrypt or decrypt text and files in batch mode, generate, verify and export checksums.
The GNU Privacy Assistant (GPA) is a graphical user interface for the GnuPG (GNU Privacy Guard).
A certificate manager and GUI for GnuPG. The software stores your OpenPGP certificates and keys. It is available for Windows and Linux. In association with the KMail email client, you can also take advantage of the cryptographical features for your communication via email.
Keeps your notes, cryptocurrency keys (seeds, mnemonics), emails, social networking posts, and any other text safe from snoopers, hackers, and prying eyes. The app provides real security as data is encrypted using strong encryption algorithms: Blowfish 448bit, AES 256bit, RC6 256bit, Serpent 256bit, Twofish 256bit, GOST 256bit +
File Management
AllDup
Freeware tool for searching and removing file duplicates on your computer, network shares or external storage media.
Cyberduck
A libre server and cloud storage browser for Mac and Windows with support for FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, Amazon S3, OpenStack Swift, Backblaze B2, Microsoft Azure & OneDrive, Google Drive and Dropbox
Directory Monitor for real-time surveillance of certain directories and will notify you of file changes, deletions, modifications, and new files.
Back up and sync your files with GoodSync. Their secure file backup and synchronization software will ensure that your files are never lost. Protocols: FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, GoodSync Connect (GSTP), Windows Shares Local and Remote networks. Virtually all cloud storages too.
Internet Download Manager (IDM)
A superior download manager. Satisfied user for over 15 years.
O&O Auto Backup
File backup program
Set and forget about it. . .It will get the job done simply, accurately, and silently.
Internet Download Manager (IDM)
A superior download manager. Satisfied user for over 15 years.
O&O Auto Backup
File backup program
Set and forget about it. . .It will get the job done simply, accurately, and silently.
A disk analyzer that gives you a quick overview of how your hard disk is being used. This makes it easy to search for files and folders that are taking up valuable hard drive space and are slowing down the computer. Similar to Windows Explorer, the versatile tool offers an intuitive interface and a variety of options for searching for memory hogs.
O&O SafeErase
Securely delete files. Browser data, temp files, and so much more. A must have in my opinion.
TeraCopy
A file utility designed to copy files quickly and more reliably, providing the user with many features. TeraCopy uses dynamically adjusted buffers to reduce seek times. It can resume broken file transfers and skip bad files during the copying process. Works well over a LAN.
O&O SafeErase
Securely delete files. Browser data, temp files, and so much more. A must have in my opinion.
Windows utility designed to revolutionize how you find and launch files, folders, applications, and even websites. It's intended for anyone who wants to streamline their workflow and save precious time navigating the Windows environment.
TeraCopy
A file utility designed to copy files quickly and more reliably, providing the user with many features. TeraCopy uses dynamically adjusted buffers to reduce seek times. It can resume broken file transfers and skip bad files during the copying process. Works well over a LAN.
Uninstall Wizard Completely remove unwanted software by removing leftover file system & registry items.
WinMerge is an Open-Source differentiating and merging tool for Windows. WinMerge can compare both folders and files, presenting differences in a visual text format.
WinSCP is a popular SFTP client and FTP client for Microsoft Windows! Copy file between a local computer and remote servers using FTP, FTPS, SCP, SFTP, WebDAV or S3 file transfer protocols.
A very fast and reliable file finder.
WizTree is a very high-speed disk space analyzer utility for Windows. It scans your hard drive and shows you which files and folders are using the most disk space.
A file manager for Windows. It features tabbed browsing, a powerful file search, a versatile preview, a highly customizable interface, optional dual pane, and a large array of unique ways to efficiently automate frequently recurring tasks. There are a lot of file managers out there, I have found none better.
Graphics
A generative AI-powered image enhancement software that deblurs, denoises, restores, and upscales images, generating realistic details for superior clarity and sharpness using new and advanced AI models.
The State-of-the-Art AI-based image matting software for your AIPC, delivering precise background removal, advanced alpha matting for detailed hair, fur, and transparent objects, and seamless foreground-background blending.
Use color gradients, text and image templates to create custom icons.
Ashampoo Photo Commander 18
Photo Commander 18 is a powerful and feature-rich photo management and editing software designed specifically for Windows users.
Photo Commander 18 is a powerful and feature-rich photo management and editing software designed specifically for Windows users.
Highly effective features and tools powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning technology make creating something truly original, achievable. Our choice for many years.
Step into the world of endless possibilities with our trusted, professional digital art software. Sketch, paint, illustrate, and produce unparalleled photo-art with hundreds of impeccably realistic artist-created brushes, superior blending, and an array of versatile art tools.
Designed to manage a collection of photos and videos. It has special collection features such as duplicate detection, fast search and presence.
A powerful, lightweight, yet full-featured screen capture tool that allows you to easily capture and annotate anything on the screen including windows, objects, menus, full screen, rectangular/freehand regions and even scrolling windows/web pages. It also allows you to record screen activities and sound into video files.
An image browser, converter and editor that supports all major graphic formats including BMP, JPEG, JPEG 2000, GIF, PNG, PCX, TIFF, WMF, ICO, TGA and camera raw files. It has a nice array of features such as image viewing, management, comparison, red-eye removal, emailing, resizing, cropping, color adjustments, musical slideshow and much more.
An image converter and renaming tool that intends to enable users to convert, rename, resize, crop, rotate, change color depth, add text and watermarks to images in a quick and easy batch mode.
The mood of an image brings life and meaning! EMOTION projects 2 professional enhances the mood, resulting in visually striking photos.
An image and photo editing software for PCs that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools.
PhotoZoom Pro is a powerful and easy-to-use image upscaling software that can enlarge digital photos without losing quality.
Picture Colorizer is a Windows and Mac application used for B&W photo colorization and old photo restoration. Allows users to adjust various parameters of the photo and apply filHarters.
So many different programs for photo to art. Stop by and check them out.
A fast, powerful and free cross-platform batch image converter allows you to automate editing for your massive photo collections, you can rotate, convert and compress your different images
a fast, powerful and free cross-platform image resizer. Nowadays, the resolution of pictures taken by digital cameras can be very high. It is fine when you want to view them, or print them out
Hard Drive Management
A multi-OS SSD and HDD monitoring and analysis software. Its goal is to find, test, diagnose and repair hard disk drive problems, report and display SSD and HDD health, performance degradations and failures.
A professional hardware information and diagnostic tool supporting latest components, industry technologies, and standards.
A partition management program for hard disk drives developed by MiniTool Solution.
When you defragment, the files that Windows splits up when saving documents across the hard disk or SSD are put back in order again so that files can be quickly recognized and found by the SSD or the read and write heads inside your HDD. Speed increases of up to 100% are not uncommon, and your hardware suffers much less wear and tear!
Let's you carry out a system restore and duplicate, or clone an entire PC or hard drive. You can even restore this backup onto a computer whose hardware is different from the original machine, for instance, where you have changed a motherboard on the target machine
A free open-source software that monitors temperature sensors, fan speeds, voltages, load and clock speeds of a computer.
Internet
So much faster than the other VPNs. It wasn't a matter of megabytes in speed difference, but many times faster than the other VPNs
An open-source cross-platform news aggregator for RSS and Atom news feeds.
An offline bookmark manager for Windows desktops. It helps you to store links to all of your favorite websites in one central repository. It works with the browsers installed on your system so you can open your links in any web browser available to you from one central interface.
A freeware, cross-platform web browser developed by Vivaldi Technologies. We have all the top browsers, yet this has been our top choice since leaving Firefox. It has it all.
Network Management
Whether you're in the office next door or on the other side of the world, remote access via AnyDesk makes the connection possible. Secure and reliable, for IT professionals as well as private users
The program is designed to automatically ping network hosts and detect their outages and connection quality problems.
A set of network scanning, security, and administrator tools useful in diagnosing networks and monitoring your computer's network connections
A free packet analyzer and visualization tool for Windows that can capture and decode data packets, and also allows working with multiple open PCAP/PCAPNG files, operated as one, from a modern UI. It visualizes packets on a timeline, displays nodes on a world map and it lets you arrange connections in a matrix.
A tool for managing networks and troubleshooting network problems! It includes a variety of tools such as an IP scanner, WiFi analyzer, PuTTY/RemoteDesktop.
Go from your desktop to any NoMachine-enabled computer at the speed of light. Thanks to their NX technology, NoMachine is the fastest and highest quality remote desktop you'll ever try. Get to any computer in the world in just a few clicks!
Office
A free character map application for Windows that allows you to browse through the entire Unicode character repertoire of nearly 144,000 characters, or search for a particular character by name or by code point. Characters can then be copied to the clipboard for use in any Unicode-aware application.
Is able to generate and export barcode into image (EMF, PNG, JPG, TIFF, GIF).
Desktop App to Read Barcode from Image File (JPG, PNG, TIFF, GIF, PDF)
An easy and effective way to convert your docs using extra PDF tools. Extract PDF to text, convert it to images abd fubd even more functions!
Clipboard management software for Windows that will revolutionize the way you copy and paste. ClipClip makes it possible to copy multiple texts, images or files to your clipboard. A good replacement for us that once used to ClipMate.
An organizer software and personal information manager to plan your day with Calendar, Tasks, Contacts, Passwords, Notebook and a Calendar of Events.
Although it fills the same role, plain text editing, it offers an arsenal of time-saving tools: block indent/unindent, bookmarking, case conversion, encoding conversion, file backups, file history, jump to line/offset, keyboard macros, print preview, search and replace, skinnable interface, spell checking, statistics, text to speech.
MainType is a font manager designed for graphic artists, typographers, and other power users who demand high-end functionality such as network support, advanced categorizing, and complex searching capabilities.
A free and open-source office productivity software suite, a project of The Document Foundation.
Obsidian is a powerful note-taking software designed to revolutionize the way we organize and connect our thoughts and ideas. With its sleek and intuitive interface, Obsidian provides a seamless experience for users to capture, link, and explore their notes in a highly efficient manner.
English Dictionary and Thesaurus A twenty-first century lexical reference system.
Archive web pages to your PC, Archive web pages to your hard disk. Archive opened pages from your Internet Browser, Archive checked pages from WebSite-Watcher Powerful search feature.
Science Software
This program enables you to draw sky charts, making use of the data in many catalogs of stars and nebulae. In addition, the position of planets, asteroids and comets are shown.
Explore the Solar System and many other stars from the Milky Way with this 3D astronomy application that also provides useful information about celestial bodies
A real-time, 3D, astronomy visualization software that runs on Windows, Linux and macOS. It is developed in the framework of ESA's Gaia mission to chart about 1 billion stars of our Galaxy
Experience Earth and our solar system, the universe and the spacecraft exploring them, with immersive apps for Mac, PC and mobile devices.
The Periodic Table app contains detailed chemical and physical information of all chemical elements. Spice up your chemistry on Windows.
The software PreviSat allows you to calculate the position of artificial satellites, and thus predict their passages in the sky at a given place.
A free open-source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope.
Utilities
Free autorun manager for Windows allows configuring and managing programs automatically.
Quickly set font-smoothing settings in Windows 10 and know what you are getting, unlike using the broken ClearType tuner that is built-in to the OS. This program includes all font-smoothing settings that I have found to work in modern Windows, and does not expose settings that are non-functional.
Outertech's system tool Cacheman offers the best methods to speed up Windows 10, 8.x, XP, Vista, and Windows 7. Cacheman optimizes several caches, manages computer memory
Allows you to customize folders with icons and emblems.
Designed to assist in troubleshooting issues such as hangs, slow performance, memory leaks or memory fragmentation, and crashes in any user-mode process.
Quick access to your favorite folders and programs
A tool designed to allow its user to find, or just to have at hand, all the most important technical information, both hardware and software, of a PC.
A graphics card / GPU information and monitoring utility that quickly describes the essential capabilities of your GPU including GPU type, amount of VRAM, OpenGL, Vulkan, OpenCL and CUDA API support level.
Extract details of all components of your computer
The K-Lite Codec Pack is a collection of DirectShow filters, VFW/ACM codecs, and tools. Codecs and DirectShow filters are needed for encoding and decoding audio and video formats. We prefer the "Mega Package."
A free benchmark program that tests your computer's performance
Microsoft PowerToys is a set of utilities for power users to tune and streamline their Windows experience for greater productivity.
A Windows process automation and optimization software. From tuning algorithms like ProBalance to user-created rules and persistent settings such as CPU affinities and priority classes.
A sandbox-based isolation software for 32- and 64-bit Windows NT-based operating systems.
A free utility that helps you to take control of your important Windows Services. Easily start, stop, or restart selected services on any computer on your network, all conveniently from the Windows Taskbar.
A replacement of the system menu for professionals. Compatible with Windows 11 Power users know how inconvenient and time-consuming it is to launch programs from the system menu.
A quick app to grab any on screen text using the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) built into Windows 10. Text Grab does not need to run in the background and does not require the internet to work. This app was built to be quick and get out of the way, making you more productive on Windows.
Enables you to manage your windows practically and efficiently with several features.
Video
Video Surveillance software. This Video Surveillance and Live Webcam software for Windows is extremely easy on system resources, and does not contain unnecessary bloat.
Edit freely across unlimited tracks with complete control, precision, and the power of pro-caliber tools to transform your creative vision into cinema-grade productions. Tried many, Pinnacle is our choice.
Convert videos, audio files and DVDs to over 400 output formats. VideoProc Converter uses full GPU acceleration, which enables it to process even 4K videos quickly, without compromising quality.
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