Brief notes on a few of the apps in this generous offer -- most of those not covered are at least fairly well known with plenty of reviews & testimonials, & have been given away previously.
AOMEI Backupper
The offer's download is the same version recently given away, though AOMEI's web site has a *slightly* newer version that works with this offer's key [& no, the USB stick won't work either].
Since Macrium Reflect Free will no longer be available, I've taken a good look at Backupper as a possible replacement. The main problem with it is that the bootable USB sticks you create with the app do not work for me with Secure Boot enabled. I created a working USB stick using Microsoft's generic WinPE, finding that if you want to restore a backup, the copy of Backupper on that USB stick will not let you select the destination drive/partition. I have no idea if that's also a problem with AOMEI's USB stick since that doesn't work. Otherwise the software appears to work fine. It's possible that AOMEI's USB stick works fine if you disable Secure Boot, but I see no reason to go through the hassle -- disabling Secure Boot is easy, & so is turning it back on, but actually making sure it's enabled can involve playing with the key options in the BIOS, which can be a bit of a PITA in my experience.
Why do you want/need the bootable USB stick?... The reason you back up a hard disk/partition is so you can put things back the way they were if/when something goes wrong. And if the hard disk with Windows is what went wrong, you can't run that copy of Windows to replace the contents of that hard disk -- you have to boot to another OS, in this case the mini version of Windows on a USB stick.
Backupper itself is software to make disk/partition image backups -- it copies [clones] the raw data stored on a hard disk, USB stick etc. to another storage location, making an exact duplicate. When you clone a hard disk/partition you copy that data to another storage device [usually a hard disk or USB stick], and when you perform a backup you do the same thing, only the destination is a VHD [Virtual Hard Disk] that can do pretty much everything a real hard disk can do. The advantage of the VHD is it's smaller, since unlike a hard disk there's no free space, & it's more convenient.
AOMEI Partition Assistant
This offer includes a *slightly* newer version than the last one given away. It's a cool app that does what it's supposed to, but I think it's irrelevant to less technical users -- you can easily live your life with Windows PCs & laptops etc. & never, ever run a partitioning app. And unfortunately, just like Backupper, the bootable USB stick you can create using the app does not work with Secure Boot enabled. That can matter, since not everything you can do in Partition Assistant can be done while you're running Windows -- you must be running another OS from a drive or USB stick separate from the hard disk you want to work on. When necessary, Partition Assistant does give you 2 options to perform tasks outside of Windows without booting to a USB stick or drive, but you may wind up with the same limitations as with their USB stick, i.e., it may not work. Perhaps ironically, one thing Partition Assistant does do well is create Windows To Go drives, putting a copy of Win10/11 on a USB drive with Windows boot files that do work well with UEFI & Secure Boot. [I use a full copy of Partition Assistant on a Win 2 Go drive.]
Background in brief... to store data a hard disk, SSD, USB stick etc. has & uses a partition, which keeps track basically of what data's stored where. There are 2 kinds of partitions, MBR & GPT -- GPT is newer/better, but for most people the difference between the 2 types comes down to booting Windows [or another OS]. In the past, most devices used Legacy BIOS, slowly switching to UEFI BIOS maybe midway through Win7's lifespan. While it's not technically required, some PCs, laptops, & tablets with UEFI BIOS expect to see a GPT hard disk/SSD -- an MBR disk may or may not work, &/or may cause the BIOS to go into a Legacy Compatibility Mode. A GPT hard disk is one of the hardware requirements for Win11.
A hard disk/SSD can have more than one partition -- Windows sees each partition as an individual drive -- Windows by default creates 4 during setup/installation -- while separate partitions, on the same or different drives, are required for each added copy of an OS, e.g., dual booting Win10 & 11 or Win10 & Linux. Adding partitions can also make organizing files & performing backups easier. You use a partitioning app like Partition Assistant to create, delete, resize, move, &/or copy partitions, e.g., a full update install of a new Windows version can unfortunately add an additional recovery partition, and you can use Partition Assistant to delete the old, now unused partition & reclaim that disk space.
Franzis Image Editing Suite
Unfortunately this requires a few more added hoops to jump through to get the downloads & keys. As usual, older copies of Microsoft C/C++ runtimes are included -- after installing in a VM I copy the program's folder to my regular Windows HDD to avoid them.
DENOISE projects 3
Before AI tools became available, Fanzis Denoise was IMHO the best app to remove or at least mitigate noise in a photo. AFAIK version 3 has never been given away, but as this is the standard version, no plugins are included. That means you must run your photos through DENOISE projects 3, likely saving them as .tif files that you can continue working on in your choice of image editing app.
COLOR projects 6 pro
As a pro version plugins are included, along with almost 1GB worth of textures. With the plugins it can't hurt to see if you might improve the looks of a photo while working on it in your favorite editor. The included manual is in German -- the Enlish version is here: transfer.franzis[.]de/support/70772-7_COLOR_projects_6_professional_manual.pdf
FOCUS projects 4 pro
This was recently given away on BDJ. More of a niche app, some photographers use photo stacking to produce ultra sharp macro photographs -- macro photos themselves are extreme closeups, e.g. full frame photos of insects. Again because it's a pro version plugins are included.
NEAT projects 2
This standard version app [no plugins] is *to me* a bit of an oddball. I think the basic idea is to improve the look of your photos without having to spend any time learning how to edit photos, since that can have what seems an endless learning curve. The *odd* part to me is that unlike Ashampoo & Engelmann apps with the same general purpose, NEAT projects goes in depth with a bit of a learning curve all its own. [I mean if you're gonna learn, you might as well learn a full featured editing app where you'll have [sometimes much] more flexibility.]
AOMEI MyRecover Pro
This is a minimal recovery app in terms of features, but it does appear to be portable, which some always ask for.
Text Edit Plus
A programming oriented text editor with a spell checker, a 2nd folder [VOVSOFT] is added to Users\ [UserName]\ AppData\ Roaming. In a Win10 VM I recorded over 400k new registry entries.
