27 Tools-in-1 Wichio Browser

Editors' ReviewDownload.com staffJune 26, 2008This Internet Explorer-based browser adds a number of tools to the shell, as its name suggests. Perhaps it's inevitable that the interface of 27 Tools-in-1 Wichio Browser bewilders, with its 30-plus buttons, but it does let you choose to display fewer buttons. Wichio comes packed with a huge number of features, some of which we found useful, such as its network tools. We appreciated the tabbed-browsing feature, which let us quickly switch among sites and save groups of tabs as a bookmark. The most useful tool is the download manager, which resumes stopped transfers. The application's features include notification of e-mail and Web page updates, an alarm clock, a pop-up blocker, and automatic connecting and disconnecting. Another group of utilities offers searching, a dictionary, song lyrics, and weather lookups, but you can't customize the links for online resources. We like the new Private Surfing feature that lets you create private URL lists specific to your username that remain hidden when other users log in. The Lyrics Finder, which finds the lyrics to your currently playing song on Winamp, seems frivolous, but some people might find it useful. More advanced surfers will like the Whois, Traceroute, and DNS query tools. All these enhancements make Wichio eat much more memory than Internet Explorer, but high-end Internet users might deem it worth the extra load.