Essential Applications thread

hambone

I did a search and checked AFK and couldn't find one of these threads, but I know we've had them before.

I'm installing a new HD with a re-install of Windows this week, and figured I should ask if there are any essential applications that should go along with that install.

To get the ball rolling:

Firefox - best browser on the market, and just happens to be free. Anyone have some recommended plug-ins? I just use AdBlock.

Grisoft AVG free edition - free, regularly updated virus protection, without the constant nagging of McAfee and Norton.

SpaceMonger - an awesome utility that gives you a visual representation of the contents of your hard drive. The free version is a little buggy, but still worth trying out.

µTorrent - The best bittorrent client I know about. I don't d/l a lot of torrents, so there might be better out there, but this one is pretty powerful and user friendly.

7-Zip - an open source file compression utility. I honestly don't use it that much, but it's always good to have in case I need to open a weird archive.

Winamp - when you cut out all the extra crap, Winamp is still my favorite little music player, with a good media library system and broad codec support.

Media Player Classic - a very small, efficient media player with a classic interface, with support for just about every codec out there.

Spybot - a solid suite of anti-Spyware/AdWare utilities.



What are some other (preferably free) utilities/applications that you just can't live without?

Echo

Miranda free open-source IM client that does anything you can imagine, except blowjobs (though I hear they're working on that).

There's Pidgin too, but I prefer Miranda.

DrFrylock

Putty: Because ssh is necessary.
Cygwin for the X server as well as the Windows versions of command-line utilities that you use all the time.
RealVNC: for remote accessing other machines and allowing others to remote access me when I need it.
ScreenGrab: Because PrintScreen doesn't always cut it.
TortoiseSVN: Because version control is good and CVS is the suck.
FileZilla: Because FTP is not dead, SFTP certainly isn't, and the command-line clients make dealing with trees of files and download-resuming a real pain in the ass.
MiniTuner: Because you can't tune a fish, but sometimes you need to tune a guitar.
Thunderbird: Because it sucks slightly less than Outlook and in completely different ways.
Audacity: Because sometimes you just need to tweak that .wav file.

Hewn

GIMP is a free photo editing program. Not as robust as retail products, but provides excellent functions and features for free software.

Jasconius

Aptana: The best free HTML editor on Earth.

Mumblyfish

AOL Active Virus Shield is Kaspersky Anti-Virus, but rebranded and, most importantly, free. I allowed my blind hatred of AOL's software to keep me on Grisoft's AVG for longer than I care to remember, but Active Virus Shield has been programmed by the best, at least according to this very comprehensive site which ranks Kaspersky Personal Pro, the product from which AOL Active Virus Shield derives its database and workings, as the most reliable antivirus on the market. AVG, should you check its ranking, is considerably worse.

Active Virus Shield updates in the background, many times a day, and uses very little system resources (at present, it is using 2.5MB of memory). You'd be a pillock to pick any of the other free options.

Comodo Personal Firewall is my favourite software firewall. It uses few system resources (15MB of memory at present) and is not only one of the more comprehensive software firewalls I have used, it is by far the easiest to manage. You can leave it on default settings and it will keep your system in check, only prompting for action (a simply allow/deny) the first time you run any program that attempts to use a network connection.

Unless there are some Firefox extensions you absolutely must have, I would recommend trying Opera before reformatting, and decide which you prefer. It is free, has built-in adblocking, a built-in e-mail and newsgroup client and in my opinion a far superior interface to Firefox. It works right out of the box, and is also customisable to an impressive degree. Not as much as Firefox, from my experience, but I'm not a "power user", and it doesn't seem you are either, since the only extension you only use is Adblock. Screenshot of my Opera setup. Dig the easily accessed per-site preferences, for enabling cookies and disabling annoying GIFs when browsing forums. Also, the easy toggles for JavaScript/plugins/cookies/animated GIFs on the status bar at the bottom-right. And the mail panel. And everything else. It is so perfect.

TychoCelchuuu

Opear: The best browser. Yes, better than Firefox.
WinDirStat: Tells you what's on your computer, how much space it takes, stuff like that. You kind of have to use it once to understand, but it's awesome.
Process Explorer: Ctrl + alt + del on crack. And PCP. At the same time. But in a good way!
Foxit Reader: Reads PDF files far faster than Adobe ever can, and you don't even have to install it. It's just an .exe.
IrfanView: You'd think looking at pictures would be a pretty mundane thing, but IrfanView does it better than everyone else.

Cold Koala

CCleaner gets rid of a lot of crap.

Also Thunderbird has always met my needs for email.

hambone

WinDirStat is so much better than SpaceMonger. Thanks for the tip.

embrik

Don't know how this got missed: VLC. - Will play quite a few things (including DVDs) without the need for codecs.
Also, I keep TrueCrypt around for securing my files (tax records, etc).

JWFokker

Mumblyfish wrote: »

AOL Active Virus Shield is Kaspersky Anti-Virus, but rebranded and, most importantly, free. I allowed my blind hatred of AOL's software to keep me on Grisoft's AVG for longer than I care to remember, but Active Virus Shield has been programmed by the best, at least according to this very comprehensive site which ranks Kaspersky Personal Pro, the product from which AOL Active Virus Shield derives its database and workings, as the most reliable antivirus on the market. AVG, should you check its ranking, is considerably worse.

Kaspersky is at the top of every antivirus ranking I've ever seen. But does AOL force any shit on you when you download/install it? It seems too good to be true.

pacbowl

Folder Size: shows you the size of directories in windows explorer without having to look at the properties. very handy.

Daemon Tools: Mount those cd/dvd images. (older versions are free. newer versions are shareware)

CurrPorts: Shows a listing of all current open tcp ports and whats using them.

MP3 Trim: Free mp3 trimmer

WhoLockMe: Shows you what process is keeping a file open, via right click explorer extention.

Blue screen Saver: The screensaver so nasty, some antivirus programs flag it.

Megalodon

All-in-One Gestures: Firefox add-on that's hardly essential, but I've become so used to it that every so often I attempt go through the motions in Explorer. It allows you to navigate and perform various functions in Firefox via "gestures," simply by right clicking and dragging the cursor to make a shape or line.

Unlocker: it's like "WhoLockMe" listed above, only it actually allows you to unlock the file in question.

ClearType Tuner: makes text remarkably easier to read on LCDs.

hambone

JWFokker wrote: »

But does AOL force any shit on you when you download/install it?

Nope. The worst you have to do is give them an e-mail address so they can send you a verification code.

Ferrus

embrik wrote: »

Don't know how this got missed: VLC. - Will play quite a few things (including DVDs) without the need for codecs.

Anything that isn't playable by VLC isn't worth watching.

PeerGuardian2:A small firewall programm that blocks IPs known for spyware and other shit. I actually dislike firewalls but this one doesn't fuck up your whole connection and is easily shut down (for online play ect.).

Tophobii

JDiskReport is another graphical representation of your hard drive, if SpaceMonger is annoyingly buggy.

_Y_

OpenOffice.org - For your Microsoft Word needs, except free.

tdonlan

Notepad++ - text editor with syntax highlighting, tabbed windows, tons of shortcuts, line numbers

Zell

Pitaschio - Program that does various stuff, I use it to:

• Desktop list view
• Double mouse clicking an empty area in Explorer goes to parent folder
• Middle mouse click on title bar closes window
• Snap windows to edges (a program named allSnap also does this)
• Scroll button scrolls whatever window the mouse cursor is over, without activating it

Taskbar Shuffle - Allows you to rearrange taskbar items, but more importantly, middle click taskbar items to close them.

Tclock2 - Taskbar customization if you're using the classic visual style. Also allows you to change desktop icons to list view.

I also recommend Daemon Tools, foobar2000, Media Player Classic, Miranda IM, Opera and uTorrent, but I think you'll get enough information about those anyway.


Assuming you're reinstalling XP, and not Vista:

TaskSwitchXP - Alt-tab replacement with lots of advantages, I use it mainly just so I can do alt-tab - mouse over application I want to activate - release alt-tab.

Xentient Thumbnails - Replaces icon of image files with thumbnails

AngelHedgie

As for Firefox extensions, you need to have NoScript. Finetoothed JavaScript execution control with both whitelist and blacklist and XSS protection make this a MANDATORY extension to have. (Seriously, Mozilla should just incorporate NoScript into Firefox directly.)

Mumblyfish

JWFokker wrote: »

Mumblyfish wrote: »

AOL Active Virus Shield is Kaspersky Anti-Virus, but rebranded and, most importantly, free. I allowed my blind hatred of AOL's software to keep me on Grisoft's AVG for longer than I care to remember, but Active Virus Shield has been programmed by the best, at least according to this very comprehensive site which ranks Kaspersky Personal Pro, the product from which AOL Active Virus Shield derives its database and workings, as the most reliable antivirus on the market. AVG, should you check its ranking, is considerably worse.

Kaspersky is at the top of every antivirus ranking I've ever seen. But does AOL force any shit on you when you download/install it? It seems too good to be true.

Nothing forced on you at all. You have to get a serial number sent to an e-mail address, but if you're afraid of being signed up for spam you can easily create a "spam" e-mail address for this purpose. I had the key sent to my primary e-mail and have recieved nothing from AOL apart from the key itself.

devoir

Citrus Alarm Clock - If your mobile/cell phone or standard alarm clock doesn't do it for you anymore, here's an awesomely customisable alarm clock. Pick out your loudest, most obnoxious 80s hair metal power ballad, set it to play when you want (day/time) on as many different schedules as you want, etc, etc. Especially good if you sleep with a laptop on the bedside table.

gneGne

Here's some programs I really like, especially because they tend to use less resources.

Internet Browser
Opera

PDF Reader
Foxit Reader

BitTorrent manager
uTorrent

CD-Ripper
CDex

Media Player and Codec Pack
Winamp

CCCP

Image viewer/editor
irfanview

CD-Burning/Audio Editing
DeepBurner Free

Audacity

Compression utility
7Zip

Anti-Virus, Cleaner and anti-malware/spyware utilities
Crap Cleaner
Avira Antivir
Spybot
Ad-Aware
SuperAntiSpyware (what a horrible name )

Chaotic Descent

how does uTorrent compare to other Torrent apps, like ABC? I had been switching around for a while. I currently use ABC. I wanted one that supported setting priorities on files within a torrent, so that I could chose to download some files first, or never, or later.
Oh, and also set a cap on how much bandwidth for upload and download. This one even lets me set it per torrent in addition to in general.
Unfortunately they all seem to take a lot of system resources... probably because when you're downloading multiple torrents and you don't even have SATA HDs, things are a little slower. :S

gneGne

Well, who's stopping you from trying?

Phoenix-D

Hewn wrote: »

GIMP is a free photo editing program. Not as robust as retail products, but provides excellent functions and features for free software.

It also has an interface that will leave most newbies going "WTF?"

Another free one to try if the GIMP is too much is Paint.net.

Raere

AF5 Rename for mass file renaming. You can drag and drop a bunch of files, put in a name, and put in a counter or something so that each file is 'asdf 1' 'asdf 2' and so on. It's easy for me, at least, to rename all of my TV shows.

hambone

Phoenix-D wrote: »

Hewn wrote: »

GIMP is a free photo editing program. Not as robust as retail products, but provides excellent functions and features for free software.

It also has an interface that will leave most newbies going "WTF?".

That's why there's GimpShop.

Peter Principle

Zone Alarm

Andorien

hambone wrote: »

Phoenix-D wrote: »

Hewn wrote: »

GIMP is a free photo editing program. Not as robust as retail products, but provides excellent functions and features for free software.

It also has an interface that will leave most newbies going "WTF?".

That's why there's GimpShop.

Eh, GimpShop just sticks all the little windows into one big window. It doesn't really help much.


Edit: Best actually add something of worth:

FindeXer: Adds a left panel to every explorer window with a set of shortcuts you can add, like what you'd see in OSX. A picture of my setup:

devoir

Chaotic Descent wrote: »

how does uTorrent compare to other Torrent apps, like ABC? I had been switching around for a while. I currently use ABC. I wanted one that supported setting priorities on files within a torrent, so that I could chose to download some files first, or never, or later.
Oh, and also set a cap on how much bandwidth for upload and download. This one even lets me set it per torrent in addition to in general.
Unfortunately they all seem to take a lot of system resources... probably because when you're downloading multiple torrents and you don't even have SATA HDs, things are a little slower. :S

uTorrent has all of those things, without most of the performance hit you've come to expect.

Corvus

TychoCelchuuu wrote: »

Foxit Reader: Reads PDF files far faster than Adobe ever can, and you don't even have to install it. It's just an .exe.

Good recommendation. Acrobat Reader is a giant pig compared to Foxit in terms of speed and resource use.