Ten free apps to install on every new PC You've just taken delivery of a new PC, and you're looking for some good apps to run on it. You'll no doubt have a few in mind, but before reaching for your wallet, check out these ten essentials, all of which we think you'll find darn useful - and they won't cost you a penny. RH Numbers OpenOffice 3.2 Many new PCs come …
Most of this list is on my own list, but here are a few extras to consider.
Eraser - an absolute must, allows for secure deletion of files individually, or via the recycle bin.
RegCompact.NET 2.0 -Speeds up registry-intensive control panel dialogs such as Add/Remove Programs
PowerMenu - Adds functions like "Always on top" and opacity to standard Windows. Even works in Win7.
Actually not sure what problems you've had with Bonjour but it's saved my bacon before. Windows doesn't always find everything on the network (for whatever reason) and UPnP often doesn't work right under XP. I've found installing Bonjour usually allows me to find printers and other computers that the stupid built in network scan in Windows doesn't find. Yes even inside domain controlled networks.
Good tip, one to stash away for future troubeshooting.
However, I've experieced Bonjour (and another random mDNS derivative that came with an Olivetti WiFi printer) completely cutting Windows 7 off from the Internet until the mDNS/Bonjour service was stopped. Also, oon another occasion (when it sneaked in on the back of an Adobe product, imagine that!) it was nice enough to change my default gateway to 0.0.0.0, providing me an hour of hair pulling diagnostic fun. Not to mention the mangled service name string that stops you from realising the bloody thing is there in the first place.
That it Pidgin's greatest failing, it just doesn't do voice. Whilst the SIPE (for Office Communicator) plug-in works, it can't give you any voice support. AFAIK Digsby doesn't support voice either, so there is no alternative to MS Office Communicator.
Am I wrong? Please tell me I am wrong. I cannot stand MS OffComm.
+1 for Digsby. Problem with Pidgin is I still feel it lacks the right experience under Windows and often I find a new update will introduce a stability issue, or there's a change to a protocol that just isn't fixed as fast as the Digsby guys will fix it. Digsby also adds checking your email accounts, twitter, facebook, linkedin, etc.
Trillian - commercial, and the "free" version lacks too much. Found it a bit bloated last time I used it.
But forget all that. I don't use PCs for IM now, I use my mobile, but then IM is so 5 years ago. It's all twitter & facebook now.
If you have a large desktop with a bit too much on it, there are two ways of dealing with, create a heap of folders or install "fences". Users old enough to remember Windows 3.11 may find the idea remarkably familiar.
http://www.stardock.com/products/Fences/ - worth a look.
One caveat: if your desktop is suddenly completely blank, you have accidentally double-clicked it - Fences has a "hide" function which is by default enabled..
many a day I spent thumbing through that exact manual, wrestling with the vagaries of FOR... NEXT loops and the hours of entertainment that were ASCII animation, then getting supremely pissed off with my mum because she switched it off before I'd had a chance to save the 2000 lines of code onto a C90. Great days.
Shocked that you didn't bother to mention http://ninite.com/
You can install most of these apps, in one single go, without the fear of missing "install Yahoo Toolbar?" prompts...
I would also question why any sane person that's locked into Itunes would want that horrid crap when something like MediaMonkey is SO much better...
I would add Fortinet's FortiClient to the list. It is free (as in beer) and comes with a registry watcher, VPN client, spam and web filtering.. amazing.
Freely downloadable from http://www.fortinet.com/products/endpoint/forticlient.html
Not affiliated with Fortinet but I do love their products.
Don't know why you were downvoted. It was about free PC software and Linux/BSDs are by far the best free software you can get esp. if you want lots of free applications.
I don't use anything else and can do everything I need.
Someone mentioned a free defragger - what's a defragger ?
System Protection, what about AVG/Avast etc?
and for image editing with extremely powerful tools, you only have to overcome your fear of typing in "those" words into google and grab GIMP!
it is good to inform of free apps but there is a much bigger choice, you could possibly have done a list for each category.
"(post a reply here if you know of a decent alternative I can use)."
MediaMonkey worked fine with our iPod before we dumped it for a Sony
http://www.mediamonkey.com/
And its free, though for auto conversion of media (say for Flac to mp3) before synch you need to purchase it. You can still manually convert stuff. Oh, it wont convert to mp3 until you buy it, but it does synch the iPod, and its much less intrusive and crap laden.
Internet lists are always subjective and people can argue for centuries as to why [insert favourite app] wasnt on the list but on the whole this seems good to me.
There are others I would like to see on the list (Erase, 7Zip for example) but then you decided you would pick 10 and ten it is.
Well done.
Very timely that, especially the Microsoft virus scan which comes just as McAfee has stopped supporting my aged package (hardly surprising, it's a decade old!).
I do take issue with iTunes, though. Functionality it may have, but it also has a Mac-oriented interface that appears clunky on the PC, it's buggy, it's slow, it's a memory hog and has a penchant for re-organising your music folders unless you have the presence to mind to tell it NOT to (beforehand). I won't let it near my PC and have encouraged all my friends to use WinAmp with the ml_ipod plugin. Much neater.
The article is clear that iTunes' strength is in searching a world outside for media.
ITunes has consequently lost focus as as a media player for my existing files, and is no longer good at this, so I stopped using my Apple MP3 player and iTunes.
You could consider looking at Windows media player, especially because iTunes synchronises with it to some extent. I'd also like other suggestions for this. I used to use Realplayer as well, it also got wiped about 4 years ago for similar loss of focus.
Thanks for the good summary.
It's probably because people still see VLC as the video darling of the free software brigade. Little do they know the politics behind it (like VLC's creators trying to get video formats changed to suit their whims, resulting in odd playback issues with certain containers), nor the fact it's not the most reliable piece of software in the world.
I do use it for some things, but personally if you're using it for codec support then you'd be a lot better off ditching it and going for the CCCP codec pack, which even comes with Media Player Classic in case you've got a big bugbear against the present MS offerings.
I've deployed VLC across three schools that I've worked for to replace bundled DVD / media players, and I've received not one complaint. It loads fast, plays everything you throw at it, and is easy enough for the less IT literate teachers (typically the ICT teachers) to use.
MPC may be great, but saying that VLC isn't will win you no friends.
iTunes, poor choice. Why would you want that on the list.
@ Bo Pedersen AVG? Are you serious? A couple of years ago maybe! Avast! wouldn't be so bad if it didn't self promote so much.
Security Essentials will likely be built around the excellent old product by Giant which Microsoft acquired, gets my vote.
Anything Microsoft acquired usually gets downgraded by them, like the great malware manufacturer they bought and windows defender then downgrade the threat level of the malware to be "Okay." It might have been great when Giant ran it, but as with all things M$ it gets put through the M$ logic mill which usually spits out crap, like home server, Vista and windows mobile, windows media player, IE8.
Personally as the M$ software is written so badly anything that protects that will be equally as badly written because it is the same culture, the same developers writing it. So I always prefer someone outside of the M$ 'logic mill' to create software to help me protect M$ software. Fresh pair of eyes can always see the problems so to speak.
And itunes? The dictionary definition of Malware should either say, Itunes, or MSN as the two great pieces of software that will kill and drain your PC of all it's life and never truly goes away.
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If it sits there and waits for the tea to be ready before responding to your clicks and searches like it has to make reservations to Siberia - just in case your file is there - then it doesn't "Just Work".
Bloated + Resource Hungry + Normal wage earner's computer = FAIL.
What is the point of the brilliance of the dawn if you are not alllowed to open the curtains to see it?
It may be a deeply annoying piece of software, and if you don't watch it you'll soon have Safari, Bonjour, and goodness knows what other Appleware all over your computer. But, it does give you easy access to lots of free podcasty goodness on iTunes, and also a pretty good music catalogue.
I had to find 7 songs for a recent Golden Wedding, including 2 from Jimmy Young (horror!), and some obscure Pat Boone film soundrack. I had to do quite a lot of searching, as they didn't know the names - but once I had titles they were all on iTunes. I'm still not sure if that's a good or a bad thing...
I was quite impressed, as I struggled to find them on other interweb sites. But perhaps my judgement is still impaired by the half hour of Jimmy Young shit I had to listen to in order to find which bloody song 'is called something about roundabouts'... *shudders*
It's the biggest load of bloated garbage ever created. Only an iTard locked into it with all his iProducts would ever use it voluntarily.
Use MediaMonkey or Foobar, or even Windows WMP11 instead and save yourself the gried of forever suffering the endless stream of new appleware that iTunes opens the door to.
Itunes, security essentials,
Should have included:
1. Non MSFT Browsers: Thunderbird. Opera
2. Email client: Thunderbird
3. Last but by no means least in these days of 'emormo' hard discs
Setup disk for a dual booting partition with Linux Mint (due to all the stuff being built in). Most of the above available for that too
Nice list, but some (at least one) are "Free" as in 'Free for home and personal use only' eg: Karen's Replicator - from her site: "Karen's Power Tools programs are free for personal, non-commercial use. But if you'd like to use the programs at work, you need a paid license."
Also check out (Google is your friend):
deltacopy and grsync: Packaged, GUI-driven versions of rsync that can backup to local and remote locations via the tubes.
iReport: Crystal Reports (ish) without the dosh
Kompozer is a half-decent GUI HTML editor
7zip for most of your compressing and decompressing needs
Inkscape - the poor (but free) long-lost-cousin of Corel Draw
Dia - likewise for Visio
PDFCreator - Do you need a description?
Winsplit revolution - Windows desktop organiser
Itunes? Meh!
Jaangle does not appear to have an option to switch output source. Useless for those with more than one soundcard. I would add QTLite and RealAlt to that list plus of course a decent codec like ffdshow (Manually setup of course for the best results) and Matroska Splitter. Still VLC or MPC Home Cinema should do the job if you are too lazy to bother with it. Also don't forget things like Visipics for sorting and deleting duplicate images. I prefer XNView over Faststone purely for speed and ease of use. But Faststone has more options (Like dual monitor support).
Of the 5 PCs I have at home, 3 have copies of MS Office on them (all work provided), and 2 I put Open Office on. I'm on the verge of removing Open Office and ponying up for MS Office on the remaining 2 machines. Why? I'm fed up of 2 things. One is constantly dealing with formatting differences in documents from work (or elsewhere) loaded into Open Office. The second, I'm fed up with complaints from my SO about her work documents not working as expected in Open Office - especially things like track changes etc. Certainly, the article's comment, "And it's fully compatible with its namesake too, able to open and save Microsoft Office documents" is definitely not true. It is not fully compatible and a lot of the more complex features just don't work properly. Furthermore, the spreadsheet offering is an order of magnitude worse than MS Office.
iTunes is a viral piece of crap. I actively hunt it out on any machine I come in contact with and de-install it. I don't want viral installs of other Apple CrapWare just because Saint Jobs thinks I might want to use those items. I also hate the resource hogging and poor user interface. Also, despite that piece of crap turning up on a number of my machines, I've never actually found a use for it. All my internet radio and media playback comes through my SqueezeServer (and network of SqueezeBoxes throughout the house). Incidentally, for those who think I'm a Windows Fanbois, my SqueezeServer runs from a Linux server - as do all my always on services.
I would add a couple of items to the list, although reluctantly. The first is Picasa. I use it as my image viewer on every machine bar one (which has PhotoShop on it for the serious photography). Picasa is a great image viewing piece of software, and also good for managing uploads and e-mails, and doing batch conversions of pictures if you can't be arsed to fire up PhotoShop.
The second, even more reluctantly added, is FireFox. I started using FF with version 1, and initially I swapped from IE simply because of rendering speed. The tabbed browsing, download window and search as you type are the features I liked the most after rendering speed. Unfortunately, stability, and the way it seems to routinely wreck your profile during upgrades, has made me seriously consider going back to IE. In fact, the only reason I'm not back on IE at the moment is because of the infuriating way that IE places some navigation buttons on each side of the address bar, and won't let you customise them. If they fixed that bug, and also had a decent download window and decent search as you type, I would now be using IE again.
Of course Openoffice isn't gonna be 100% compatible with MS Office, it's fairly close (and doesn't have all those annoying GUI changes) and it's FREE! That's the whole point of the article - not everyone can afford to fork out money like that! (Mr average won't own 5PCs.)
I do agree with the points on iTunes and Firefox though, but please stay off the blue smarties =P
So's a bullet-shaped hole in the head courtesy of your nearest mugger; but I don't see anyone queuing up for one.
Point is, it's badly designed, poorly supported, and barely able to work with it's own format - let alone microsoft's, which sad to say seems to be the defacto for office and college. I'm as rabidly against MS as any other self-respecting IT professional, but even I have to admit that MS Office .. well .. works (yeah excuse the pun).
OpenOffice.org certainly does have its faults. But one must keep firmly in mind that it *will* get better and gain traction as it does so. I'm adminstrating a herd of computers in a corporate environment, and OpenOffice is taking over for a lot of machines. It has been running on the PCs exclusively for a while now.
I've never been particularly fond of "track changes" functionality, I find all of the implementations clunky. And if you think OpenOffice.org does it badly, clearly you have not tried using Microsoft's own office suite for the Mac! Enabling the tracking of changes on Office:Mac is asking for it--and ye shall most definitely receive! Actually, OpenOffice (or rather, NeoOffice) is a pillar of stability compared to Office for Mac. (Note that I've never run Office 2008 for Mac, nor do I intend to.)
The spreadsheeting function could be improved. It falls down when you get into doing "deep stuff" with formulas and charts. Yet I'm sure it will be.
It's good enough that the users can get along well with it in a production environment. OOo really does work 99%* of the time in an Office-centric world. One can't argue with the price. One also can't argue with the fact that doesn't have those *infuriating* ribbons in its UI.
iTunes...well, I get along with it. It's certainly more bloated than it ought to be, there can be no doubt. One does have to watch for the delivery of "helpful" Apple software via the software updater. But it'll do, and it's what most people are familiar with.
I administer a lot of Firefox installations running on different platforms in differing situations, with both clued and clueless users. Profile corruptions are pretty rare on this end--only one has ever taken place between when we started using Firefox (1.5.x) and now (3.6). If you're having problems with a Firefox profile becoming corrupt, I'd take the Mozilla Organization at their word and start questioning your add-ons and extensions. Failing that, I'd take a long, hard look at your computer to be sure it's as reliable as you think it is. I just don't think these happen without a solid reason...
* not a scientific figure, yet it still serves my point. Depending upon this figure in precision applications may cause telemarketing, headaches, nausea, printer fires, spontaneous computer explosion and other fun stuff to happen. Effects seen were similar to those using a placebo office suite.
VLC over MPCHC??
Pidgen over Digsby??
Stone something or other photoviewer over Picasa 3??
I also prefer SumatraPDF over Foxit... but that is personal preference.
The other three?? Not just personal preference but only common sense.... VLC, Pidgen and Stonesomethingorother are just plain bad programs and outclasses by these counterparts.
- picasa (photo management)
- irfanview (best image viewer/convertor)
- HxD (hex/disk editor)
- Notepad++ (editor)
- gtalk
and stuff I'll never install:
- skype (sorry, SIP is the standard, not this closed source crap)
- itunes9 (bloatware)
- the suggested backup tool (Karen whatever): written in VB, no wonder is wasn't fluid!
You slag off Acrobat reader for being bloaty, and then include iTunes! Good grief man! I don't care how many other apps it lets you find in the "store" it's a resource munching, memory leaking pile of doodoo.
How you could include iTunes and not Firefox is beyond me.
My list would have a lot of yours, but would include Firefox, Filezilla, Vuze and Thunderbird.
For the power MP3 users out there, may I recommend MP3tag... It's very useful for those MP3 players/phones etc (and iTunes) that continually make a mess of the ID3 track details. Plus it's geek friendly so you can even tell it how to extract the track number, title and artist from the filename if it's already there.
"Partition Wizard Home Edition" & "Macrium Reflect Free Edition" saved my bacon last week. All 3 partitions from my primary drive just disappeared after a reboot. Because I had a recent system image, made with Reflect, I just pasted that onto an old drive and then used Partition Wizard to get the partitions back on my main drive. I was up and running again in less than 30 minutes. I'd highly recommend both.
Oh, and although I like CCleaner, it's on my list of possible culprits, as I'd allowed it to "Wipe Free Space", not long before the parititions disappeared!
Winamp FTW.
Oh and if you're running an old PC I can highly recommend REGISTRY LIFE my MyDefag to speed things up.
Things must be bad on the free protection software front if Microsoft is recommended. What happened to AVG and Antivir? I prefer to buy my AV software - NOD32 all the way.
Okay, so I don't think you need anyone else guffawing at the inclusion of iTunes on your list, or the lack of Firefox/Chrome/Opera, so I'll just snigger under my breath. Good list otherwise. Not sure if I would include CCleaner on a civilians' PC though, registry cleaners can take a slightly corrupted registry and leave it completely FUBAR.
While no GIMP replacement, Irfanview is a very handy "Swiss Army Pocketknife" of an application primarily for image viewing and simple edits. Also ties into TWAIN devices and the like which can be good for quick'n'dirty scanning jobs and the like.
Small footprint and download size as well. Highly recommended.
Some other interesting suggestions in the list as well - will definitely have to check them out :-)
As others have stated ... quite simply what the hell is ITunes doing in there remove it now!! Instead what about foobar2000 now that is excellent! it was a bit buggy when it was first released but its come along way since then and now i consider it the best music player/library tool out there.
Picasa for image viewing you can also sync your albums online for people to see.
And AVG, you have to have some sort of AV in the list this is the pick of the freebies to be honest.
I would also replace Pidgin with Miranda IM which is simple, clean and supports all the main social and IM networks such as Facebook, MSN, Skype, and Google Talk.
Done. :D
If that's "the pick of the freebies" the free software business is in serious poo.
Tried it fairly recently. More false positives than a Chinese battery factory and a terribly short memory for things like "no, I don't want to upgrade to the paid version".
+1 for MS Security Essentials* as the best freebie out there in this area at the moment.
*Yes, the world has officially gone mad.
"""+1 for MS Security Essentials* as the best freebie out there in this area at the moment.
*Yes, the world has officially gone mad."""
I agree. I don't really do much with the Windows myself, but when I fix someone's computer after it's been thrashed by viruses delivered via IE from who knows what kind of sketchy porn sites, chances are the MS product is better than A) Nothing, B) Whatever ancient crap they have a license for, and C) The other free virus scanners. Then I got ahead and neuter IE via that policy deal they have, so it can just connect to get updates.
And I set them up with something other than iTunes to sync with their iHardwares. Apart from the obvious issues it has, it comes with Bonjour, which tends to broadcast personal information all over the place, rather un-safe for unencrypted wifi hotspots and the like. Unless you want people to know your name and the model(s) of printer(s) you use, in addition to potentially your email address, phone number, etc. I've definitely seen MDNS packets in wireshark that were leaking lists of people's contacts and email subjects some how, so I don't trust it one bit.
PuTTY is by far and away MY most useful utility for any new Winblows machine, BUT 97%* of computer users have no use for connecting to SSH/Telnet or Serial Port terminals. Chances are, if they need it, they'll find it. WinSCP I would argue is more useful for many, but how many people do file transfers with SCP/SFTP services?
But it should be top of the list for any IT engineer's kit-list
*Statistic made up for artistic purposes.
I have heard, and investigated, such laments a number of times.
Turns out, that in most if not all cases, the cause of the mess is crappy formatting in the original Word doc.
Such as:
* Using spaces for indents;
* Repeatedly pressing the enter key (in other words, inserting empty paragraphs) to space paragraphs, or even
* Inserting a series of such empty paragraphs to get a page break, and last but not least
* Using fancy typefaces that may not be installed on the recipient's machine and therefore will be substituted by a default typeface, which of course may have different metrics.
A document formatted in this manner is an accident waiting to happen.
A correctly formatted document will retain proper formatting when exchanged between OO and MSO, and only in rare cases some fiddling might be required. Hint: there might be subtle differences in how MSO and OO handle "widows" and "orphans".
Bottom line: If you want your formatting to stick, not only between OO and MSO but also between different versions of MSO, *learn* *proper* *formatting*.
Quite surprised that none of these are mentioned:
7-Zip
Audacity
Daemon Tools
FileZilla
Firefox (or Opera or Google Chrome)
GIMP (or GIMPshop or Paint.NET or Inkscape)
Google Earth
Handbrake
Imgburn
Picasa
Thunderbird
uTorrent (or Vuze if you've got a fast machine)
"One is constantly dealing with formatting differences in documents from work (or elsewhere) loaded into Open Office"
Oh, I'm sorry, Microsoft doesn't do this?
Try dealing with Microsoft's very own Rich Text Format across different versions of Word.
No two versions look alike.
Had this problem with an RTF file created with an (at that time) unknown version of word. Ironically, with the absence of the "correct" version of Word, I had most luck with reproducing the correct formatting with OO and exporting to PDF format.
I mean, if microsoft can't get it right, what hope in hell does anyone else have?
One of the few Mac apps I bought was called SoundJam. It was very cool for its time allowing tunes to be ripped from CD with a few clicks. The authors must have been hired by Apple because iTunes was clearly SoundJam with a new UI except now it was free. It started off being a very useful application but over time it's become bloated and buggy. On Windows, the UI is an absolute disaster zone and slow as hell.
I used to think that the UI was a slug because of the OS X like UI, but Songbird copies the iTunes look and feel and is much more responsive. So now I don't know what to think except the app is terrible. If you don't own an iPod / iPhone I really don't see any reason to inflict this crap on your PC. If you need an iTunes like experience, choose SongBird, otherwise even the default Windows Media Player is a better choice these days.
Imgburn - Best freebie for doing stuff with optical discs.
Alex Feinman's ISO recorder - ISO handling plugin for the inbuilt Win disc tools. Sometimes you just need simplicity and its "always there when you need it" approach just makes any machine without it feel unfinished.
Snippy - Since SnagIT went pay, the best I've found. Lightweight, simple to use and the only addon I have autostarting. Vista and Se7en users get the clipping tool, so this one's for XP types.
uTorrent - Best there is for those, er, "Linux distribution" downloads.
AVG was pretty good two years ago but ditched it recently for MS security.. suprisingly good. AVG free seems to have become worse and worse recently. My main problem was that its plugins for FF and IE kept crashing win7pro64.. Had a look at AVG forums and there was plenty of people with similar issues so I promptly ditched it. No issues since.
Someone suggested RegCompact. I have just spent over an hour repairing the damage it did as it completely hosed my Win7 64 system. Win7 repair did not work, System Restore refused to restore anything saying to remove system protection first (I could not) and the ONLY way I got back to where I was before it killed my system was to restore the backup registry HIV's from C:\Windows\System32\Config
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
Seriously, iTunes is terrible. What memory footprint does it leave post install? My wife's netbook now crawls as a result of installing that hateful sheet.
Hard not to lose respect for el reg after suggesting that. Even if the idrone/any other crapple stuff is any good hardware wise it's completely devalued by that utter wasteware.
"VLC is arguably the most format friendly media player you can download"
VLC just repacks codecs that if you installed any media player could play and bundles them with a so-so player.
If instead you install http://www.cccp-project.net/ you can use pretty much any player you want and play at least as much (and possibly more) than VLC. You can even stick with Windows Media Player if you want.
If you want a minimal, lightweight player I would recommend Media Player Classic http://mpc-hc.sourceforge.net/ (inc. in CCCP)
A very good article and very useful comments too. Actually, for the first time I wanted to print out the comments page so I could run down some of these choices. Unfortunately the comments page has no print version and trying to print from the main page gives you only the first page (as happens with other Reg articles too, but that's why they have a print version). Please Reg, give us a Print link for the comments too so our wise words can be freed from cyberspace into meatspace.
So just thought I'd add the stuff that doesn't seem to have been mentioned.
http://www.tcbmi.com/strokeit/ - Mouse gestures for windows as a whole. The single most 'wtf is that?' app people ask as I become more efficient before their very eyes.
7-zip - It's like every zip program, but better in every way (and gloriously free).
Truecrypt - hide stuff properly.
TorBrowser - Hide and browse.
XBMC - Plug your PC into a TV and whip every piss-poor competing effort at creating a player that well pretty much plays everything.
I have my own preferred list of must have freeware, which I won't bore anyone with but there are two programs on this list that I will take a look at.
BTW a lot of there you can have automatically installed via ninite.com which is a real time saver. Just don't do all the PCs in your house in the same 24 hours or they will flag you as a "business" user and will have to email them and ask to be unbanned.
... can I just add my voice to the iTunes neigh-sayers - I've lost count of the hours I've lost trying to get this working on people's computers or finding it is the cause of knock-on problems. On several occasions recently I've felt like telling people that I won't even touch their computer if it's got iTunes installed (it will never get anywhere near any of mine) but in the end, like a glutton for punishment, I relent.
So, free apps? Some nice ones listed here, to which I could add tons more but I'll restrict it to some of the wee gems that make up my armoury and that I haven't seen mentioned here.
. Revo Uninstaller
. Eusing Registry Defrag
. SpaceSniffer - Disk space usage analyser
. UltraFileSearch
. Universal Extractor
. Browser Chooser - Intercepts app calls to browser
. Autoruns - startup/service etc. organiser
. Jarte - Light portable word processor
. SIW - System info
. Syncback Free - Backups
. VirtualCloneDrive
FastStone is amazing...
... as long as you don't happen to use a different codepage, or -heaven forbid- one of the asian languages, from time to time.
Having to watch out for filenames is sad for an application with such smoothness and speed, make that go away and it might just be the best image viewer out there...
Scribus, Scribus, Scribus
Excellent DTP makes excellent PDFs too - always overlooked
others:
FreePDFXP - for printing anything to pdf
Aptana for webdevs - Netbeans for other devs
Must Haves: Firefox - Thunderbird Foobar 2000 (was a Songbird fan but loads and closes too slow and not happy it's stopped supporting Linux - has some nice features though)
+ a system recovery disc of course :-)
Yes, it's slow to launch, yes it installs crap that needs removing. Yet I still use it, because I dislike all the other music players. I've tried WinAmp, MediaMonkey and many others, but the interfaces are always too fiddly and annoying in comparison, so I put up with iTunes.
I don't understand the support for VLC, though. I've tried it a few times, due to constant recommendations. It's always seemed ugly, unstable and generally less reliable than MPC to me. Oh, and I hate its icon.
Media Player Classic also allows all menus to be removed, so you just see the video display, which is a killer feature, IMO.
Some have been mentioned, others are hidden gems:
GIMP - image editor/creator - http://www.gimp.org/
Faststone Capture - Best freeware screengrabber - http://www.portablefreeware.com/?id=775
Flexible Renamer - Best file/folder renamer - http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA014830/english/FlexRena/
CCCP Codec - Includes all major codecs, MPC, everything to play any movie - http://www.cccp-project.net/
Unlocker 1.8.9 - Removes any locks on files so you can move/delete them (even networked files!) - http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/
Windows Live Writer - Super easy to update almost any blog - http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/default.aspx?sa=526965265
Filezilla - Simple FTP client and/or server - http://filezilla-project.org/
File Date Changer - only useful if you wish to fake the date a file was made! - http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/filedatech.html
Eulalyzer - Reads any EULA and points out odd paragraphs - http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/eulalyzer.html
These are the ones off the top of my head, when I think of more, I'll reply again.
Basic items that almost every coputer should have:
Firefox, with the follow add-ons
- Coral IETab (IE in firefox for those odd sites)
- DownThemAll (download manager
- Firebug (incredible HTML debugger)
- Adblock plus (blocks ads, obviously)
- NoScript (prevent certain scripts from running etc, better protection for you)
- Download statusbar (self-explanatory)
Thunderbird
Sunbelt Kerio Firewall - free firewall, with 'easy' and 'advanced' modes - http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/home-home-office/sunbelt-personal-firewall/
avast antivirus - free anti virus - http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html
Spybot search and destroy - spyware killer, also innoculates IE from dodgy sites - http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html
foobar2000 - music player - http://www.foobar2000.org/
These are the main things I use.
Unfortunately, most of my friends are not computer literate, but they still buy ipods and ask me to put music on them. I installed itunes (what a hog) and i use it to update their ipods. When i'm done, i disable all of it's associated services from running at startup. Next time i need it, i just run a little NETSTART or NETSTOP batch file to run or kill all itunes services...
BTW brill + vitally necessary article + replies. Nobody needs cygwin? Weird. But on to OO32. Oh dear: bugs. And yes I've done the diligence reporting. And yes I think it's a jolly good thing. But given that the only time I ever touch microsoft doc is because someone is holding a gun to my head, it aint cool that OO32 spins off and thinks for a few minutes, trying to disentangle some windoze artifact. And sometimes it never comes back. And the pdf-maker fails. And the layout. And ...
.. if you ever work on complex documents and Word borks on it to the point of simply crashing, OOo will save the day (and your doc). Open and save in OOo, and the crashing goes.
Don't know how it does it, but I have been using that trick since OOo 1.2 or so, it has saved me + formed colleagues an absolute *ton* of work.
We had an issue with a ~2MB spreadsheet that would slowly creep up to about 40MB with frequent opening-and-saving through Excel 03.
The only fix we could come up with was to every morning open it in OOo and save it again to bring the size down. Apparently OOo wasn't 'secure enough' to actually deploy it proper, so we went and got MS Office 07 where the file's just allowed to be ginormous.
It cannot be emphasised enough. Say no to iTunes. Do not install iTunes unless you absolutely have no other option. And even then, lock it down so it does nothing without asking you twice first.
Otherwise it will take over your computer, re-organise, retag, and install no end of crap that interferes with everything else.
Apart from that, it's garbage. There's a dozen other free media players who can do the same better, or without all the accompanying grief iTunes brings.
I, and most people I know, have settled with Google's Chrome browser and are very happy with it. So simple, just does what you want.
Open Office gets installed on every computer I own, but honestly almost never gets used. The Real World runs on MS office, and MS Office file formats. If you want to get real work done, they're your only choice.
As with others, I avoid iTunes. iTunes is NOT a tool for people who understand computers, it's a tool for users who want the fully managed Apple experience. And yes, it will all break down when they want to get a new machine. However, we all know these users will not be commenting on this thread, but instead be blissfully happy with their managed media library.
I think most of us understand that iTunes exists primarily as a tool to help Apple sell hardware and media. It's an advertising channel for them, and that will always be it's priority.
All these recommendations of foobar, winamp etc. And not one person mentions Songbird. Been giving that a shot for a while (to be fair on a mac, but same same), and while yes, to get it to how i wanted it, i had to put in a few plug ins, but it's 100% open source, and from the Mozilla foundation, and largely the firefox code base.
Microsoft Security Essentials (which I like in fact - it's the most invisible a/v i've ever seen on windows) is NOT free. You need a paid and activated and "genuine" version of windows to download and install it. Every other A/V will install on a pirated copy of windows. MSE requires you to PAY.
Cheers
san1t1
See my remarks under scribus scribus scribus re Songbird
Also
foobar does some things I like which songbird doesn't
and it seems that Songbird is in danger of making the same mistake as Nero i.e. moving on to video pmps support etc etc and prioritising new features on these media rather than fixing/adding to basic audio functionality.
Although not fanatical about Linux I do feel it's a shame that Songbird dropped Linux support coincidentally after making contracts with Sony (DRM fanatics) - get more funding and drop support for Linux??
- as they're based on Firefox platform as well it seems wrong somehow.
Just my two penn'orth
Tried Foxit PDF Viewer on this recommendation and chose to control the installation options (to avoid its sneaking in stuff didn't want). But the Firefox "add-on" isn't just for viewing PDFs: it occupies window space all the time.
Foxit also changed my IE home page to suit itself. There was no option not to do this.
Deleted it immediately. Clearly I'd expect more trouble from a program that believes it owns my PC.
Seems to confirm independently that the latest FoxIt version does set Internet Explorer's home page, and also unavoidably installs the Ask.com toolbar under its own brand. Publisher presumably is right now realising that this is unpopular behaviour, so it may go away.
itunes? gold standard??
wtf?
it's bloated and awful, try as you might you'll not be able to stop the ipod service from starting at startup even if you dont have an ipod and you disable the service.
The music you can buy through it is 128Kbps - shitty quality, it's inexplicably large for a music player, horrible piece of software to have on your machine.
Mediamonkey, songbird, much better choice.
How can ANYONE live without DropBox?
http://tinyurl.com/Dr0pB0x2
Like UbuntuOne, but better in virtually every respect, and multiplatform. It's also got Android and iPhone apps in beta and soon to support selective sync.
Click the link above and checkout the video on their site for a better explanation of how it works, and what benefits it offers...
Different than CrapCleaner (CCleaner), this will remove all
of that preinstalled trialware from a new PC. Excellent for removing those demos you'll never use
like AOL (?!) MSN and a lot of the rest. It's works flawlessly in my experience, but even if it misses something, you're that much closer to a less-crappy machine.
... before one gets around to installing software that's actually useful.
On more than one I've had the, ahem, pleasure to deal with a brand new out of the box machine, and in each case, the plethora of toolbars, trial versions and thinly veiled spyware could have easily taken an hour or more to manually hunt down and remove.
So yes, on a new machine, Decrapifier should be the first thing you run.
Netpaint, its free (payment via donation), it does not install crap, and it works really nicley.
I use it as a replacement for Paint Shop Pro 3, where afterwards they broke what I liked about PSP.
Anyhoo whilst I disagree with some choices (ie iTunes ), I used to agree with others such as FoxIT, when I first found it I loved it, now I am not so hot as they have been slowly but surely making it less of a pleasure, and have now managed to put me off stumping up the cash for there PDF publisher version.
Overall its nice to have somthing like this published every so often so I can have a shuffty at it and see if there is anything I have missed.
Also insists WGA be installed, despite doing a check with Redmond that the XP license is valid before installing. Then it demands WGA installation daily and insists my valid XP license is probably fake. Then it states 31 -n days to deactivation.
And it crashes something every hour or two and wants to send "error logs" offsite containing personal details. As soon as I can convince my wife to use a reliable OS, MS and its products will be gone.
No I dont want to install WGA and use the common deactivation hacks. Back to other suppliers for security from some firms less nosy.
OpenOffice, despite the flack it gets as a 'freetard product' is absolutely a must have for a home computer. Honestly why anyone would pony up the money for the fugly piece of crap office suite Microsoft tries to cram down our throats is beyond me. Open Office looks better, works better, and is free. A clear win even if it is a bit on the slowish side.
iTunes....Seriously....Freckin' ITUNES? WTF are you people thinking? I can name off half a dozen free media library/player programs that are better than that sorry excuse for software.
Foxit Reader rocks. Easily 3 times as fast as Adobe Reader and gives you some editing capability as well (with the Windows version anyway). Just make sure you grab the zip file rather than the exe when you download it unless you want extra crap on your computer.
I used Pidgin till I got sick of being bothered by everyone on my buddy list every time I sat down at the computer. I used Trillian before that but got fed up with that program for some reason I can't recall. Anyway, Pidgin is a nice program to have if you do IMs.
iTunes? No thanks. Never. Ever.
MSSE? Just use Avast or Avira or $yourfreeAVchoice.
Skype? Okay, it's not bad. Not even close to necessary though.
OOoOOoOOO or whatever the hell they're calling it now... eat me. Never putting that piece of shit anywhere near a computer again. Long story. Many flaws. Not usable.
on what you are going to use the machine for, for me an absolute essential freebie application is visual studio express.
obviously pretty useless if you're not a programmer though. To my mind pidgin, skype, etc would fall into the category of preinstalled crap i'd remove before using. Not exactly essentials!
Only, please, remove iTune...
I would also add the following FREE apps:
7-zip. First thing I install on a PC. Will do zip, rar, 7z format and MANY other like CAB and MSI. Faster than winzip and winrar!
Total commander. Will do batch rename, super fast FTP, batch archive conversion, cut and join file and so many other thing, the list is endless... It's my swiss army knife.
MSSE. Best anti-virus, anti-spyware I ever used. And I've tried a lot of them. Practically no resource overhead. Catch everything. Zero false positive. Oh, and it IS -free- with my *legally* purchased Windows... and since it only run on Windows anyway, saying it's not free is illogic!
Spybot. Mainly for the "immunize" function which I do once a month to black list bad website form IE and Firefox. Since I use MSSE, Spybot find nothing save minor things like bad cookies! :)
Malwarebyte's Anti-malware: A complement to Spybot. Can also delete locked files. Not much a use since MSSE, but you never know...
Superantispyware: A complement to Spybot. Not much a use since MSSE, but you never know...
Spywareblaster: A great web browser immunize. Prevent you from accessing bad website. Just run the app once a month to update IE or Firefox black list. No need to run all the time. Complementary and similar to Spybot immunize function.
Utorrent. Best torrent client in my book. You might want to disable the bandwidth management function that cause problems on some configuration.
Bit Che. A fantastic torrent meta crawler. Can't live without.
TCP-Z. Wonderful to analyze your bandwidth in real time with a lot of statistics. Also patch Tcip.sys file (permanent) or even live in memory (until reboot) without modifying your original file! Changing half-open limit to 50 result in getting my file to download at peak speed a lot faster in all my peer apps!
PC tools firewall. Light years ahead of even costly retail solution. As good and simpler than Comodo.
Peerblock. The successor of Peerguardian. Much better and stable. Work with Vista and Win7. You like to preserve your anonymity online and make sure you don't access suspicious/harmful website? Get this, fast.... This is not a firewall, it's an IP filter! Work great with PC tool firewall.
Netdrive. Want to have the ability make FULL folder operation on FTP folder? Just map a windows drive letter to an FTP address with this app and you are all set!
DAEMON Tools Lite. Do I need to present this? Best CD/DVD emulation ever.
Firefox with: Tab mix plus, DownthemAll!, DownloadHelper, Adblock plus, Default Zoom level and your choice of dictionary to correct your spelling in post such as this one!. (I use United-State dictionary 4.0)
On a new Windows PC the following is always done:
stop it hiding extensions for known file types,
Set the swap partition as fixed 2x memory
Install Firefox and disable Internet Exploiter (IE)
Install Spybot S&D
Install AVG antivirus Free
Install RocketDock - amazing applesque looks and skinnable
K-Lite Codec Pack incl. Media Player Classic
Winamp + shoutcast (i stream to the internet a lot)
Notepad ++ (a must have)
Then for my official capacity as Developer
XAMPP
Tomcat
Java SDK
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