Must Have Programs!

[rollingbones]

You can get these FREE! think about it.....,but I will buy AVG PLUS

Firefox+extensions+adaware+noscript=****

End it all-This is a must when you want to shut down all your programs in 1 click.Very handy when installing software.

Absolute Security Pro-This is the only,and last encription program you'll ever need.A ton of cool features.

WinXfiles-Lock up those image files while your at it!

foxit reader-This is a nice piece of software to open pdf files quickly.

Billy-great music player.Uses very little resources.

Microangelo-Change the look of windows completely.I love the ability to change any Icon,which is just one of the great features.

Avg Plus-Anti-virus & firewall in one program.Avg has great resources,and forums to answer all your questions quickly.Easy to set up and configure. Uses little resources.I will NEVER put anything NORTON on my pc again.

Must have utilities!!I use all 3 of these in combination.They all compliment each other.My pc runs smooth using these programs.

1.RegSupremePro / jv 16 power tools is a nice program too.Both are made by same company.

2.Tune-up Utilities 2004-5 stars in my book

3.CCleaner-another 5 star program

Icon Saver-puts all your icons back to the same spot.

Adaware se,spyblaster,and spybot seem to knock out most spyware problems,but If you just use Firefox with the right extensions,you will avoid 95% of your problems to start.Why fix problems after the fact!SpyBlaster will pick up the extra 5%.I only use IE for updating windows period........

[Welch]

Nicely put ... Now for us to try the ones out we havent heard of and come back with our verdict

[rollingbones]

**EDIT BY MOD: This post was in violation of forum rule #12. -Kevin**

[Usacomp2k3]

I can't believe no one has said this yet, but Treesize is definitely a must-have app.
http://www.jam-software.com/freeware/index.shtml

[DragonFli]

Folding@Home!!!!

[rogue426]

PowerDesk 6 from Vcom.

[Klyith]

I can't believe no one has said this yet, but Treesize is definitely a must-have app.
http://www.jam-software.com/freeware/index.shtml

That's pretty cool. But about 5 years ago, I had a little app that would do the same thing and make a pie chart to show you graphically where your space was. Way cool, and it was freeware... but I can't remember what it was called.

In these days when a hundred gigs of storage costs fifty bucks, I just don't care. I have 360gb of total storage, only 137 used, and that includes some big chunks of video files that I should stick on dvds but haven't bothered.

[Kevin]

That's pretty cool. But about 5 years ago, I had a little app that would do the same thing and make a pie chart to show you graphically where your space was. Way cool, and it was freeware... but I can't remember what it was called.

There is Spacemonger, however, it doesn't make a pie chart. But I find it's graphical representation more helpful then a pie chart.

[Voldenuit]

Here's my $0.02

1. Avast! antivirus - I don't know what issues make some people so averse to it. they don't like the default settings but aren't savvy enough to edit their preferences? It's still miles better than NAV and is going into my upcoming x64 build.

2. Azureus - for all the times I need to, uh, download Linux ISOs

3. Opera - It's fast, it's free, and for me at least, it's more usable and stable than Firefox.

4. RMClock - great utility for dynamic over/underclocking of your CPU. Perfect for me since I live in a tropical climate, and don't want my cpu heating up my room with its waste heat when it's just idling.

Notebook users may want to look at Notebook Hardware Control instead, which provides more features and hardware monitoring tools specifically for laptop users. By undervolting my Banias laptop by 25%, I was able to gain an extra 20-30% battery life. Not too shabby...

5. Netlimiter. OK, you have to pay for this, but it's well worth it in my book. App-specific bandwidth control and monitoring. Something that MS ought to incorporate into Windows but hasn't yet. Unless anyone knows any free alternatives...

[Welch]

Hmmmmm. Im intrested in the Dynamic Over/Underclocking program. Totally free ya say . I take it that its for desktops, might be something i'd be intrested in. Although my previous attempts with overclocking VIA BIOS left me with a vegitable of a computer for a week at a time. Does it have the ability to overclock the FSB or just the core clock?

[Mightyflapjack]

Just wanted to add a very good video player:

BS Player http://www.bsplayer.org/

Free, skinnable, works with most file types, and seems to have the best in-built subtitle support for people who like foreign films/anime. Also has easy to use screen-shot function for capturing frames.

I love it.

---

Also, RegSeek 1.45 http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/1035382760/1

Good registry cleaner.
It does not require installation.
It does have a roll-back function for changes, but not always reliable.

Powerful and not to be used lightly (BACKUP the registry file BEFORE you mess with it! and have a BOOT DISK/CD!)

[newbie_of_jan0502]

Well I just got Azureus. WOW!!

Best I've seen so far.

[Smooth Beaver]

Well I just got Azureus. WOW!!

Best I've seen so far.

try µtorrent. It's better.

[Klyith]

try µtorrent. It's better.

Azereus has a lot of plugins for extended functionality. There are cool things like automatic loading from RSS and stuff like that. But I prefer utorrent as well. It's great if you are manually controlling torrents anyways. That and bitcomet are all C++, so they don't use python scripts that require more cpu load.

Azereus : Java, slowest, most features
bittorrent (original), G3 torrent, YABC : Python, medium
utorrent, bitcomet : C++, fastest

[Smooth Beaver]

try µtorrent. It's better.

Azereus has a lot of plugins for extended functionality. There are cool things like automatic loading from RSS and stuff like that. But I prefer utorrent as well. It's great if you are manually controlling torrents anyways. That and bitcomet are all C++, so they don't use python scripts that require more cpu load.

Azereus : Java, slowest, most features
bittorrent (original), G3 torrent, YABC : Python, medium
utorrent, bitcomet : C++, fastest

FYI µtorrent will have RSS autoloading in the 1.4 release

[newbie_of_jan0502]

Got a new one today. Used to delete files that Windows won't let go of.


Unlocker

Thanks to TR forum member Flying Fox.

[Kurama]

uTorrent: Very fast and lightweight torrent application. I find it more stable and less demanding than Azereus. Plus for some reason, a single Azereus client downloading at 15kB/s and uploading at 5kB/s bogs down my network, while a uTorrent client downloading at 700kB/s and uploading at 80kB/s is hardly noticable. Maybe it's just me.

Litestep: A replacement shell for windows. I find it to be unstable unless you're running XP, but then it's a godsent for anyone looking to integrate media players and such into their taskbars, minimalists, people used to Blackbox, and anyone who wants a good looking theme without having to deal with crappy apps like Windowsblinds.

Miranda IM: An IM client without the adware/security risks, etc of AIM. It's more usable than Gaim and much faster than Trillian. It also supports quite a few different protocols, including AIM. I don't think it handles AIM direct connections well.

Last.FM: A free streaming audio player, and a set of plugins for every major audio player to upload what you listen to your profile on their site. With that, it recommends to you bands, genres, etc. that you would like. It also has a streaming audio client that allows you to listen to music based off of their tags. Generally it's pretty awesome, adds no noticable lag to audio players, and will recommend you bands you never thought you'd like. This doesn't fit well into the thread, but I'm just going through my C:/Program Files folder..

[geekish]

ZTREE is a file management , browzer, viewer, editor, and has plugin ability to do just about anything. It is the windows desendant of XTREE the most loved of all pgms. Stand alone, well just let me say that it is my most favorite program of all time. I use it almost everyday.

[tesmar]

Samurize!

For making a cool desktop!

[MaxTheLimit]

Sorry to boot a very old thread in the rear, but I didn't think it pertinent to start a whole new thread for this. One program I've had a lot of success with is Hitman Pro 2. LINK

It's got it's flaws like many spyware removal programs but it incorporates a lot. [/url]

[king_kilr]

Microsoft Office Accounting Express, it is a free version of their accounting stuff for small buisness's.

Ideawins.com

[Philldoe]

Opera Web Browser
Avast! (not free)
ATI Tray Tools
Trillian

[BerserkBen]

Ext2Fsd

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsd

Lets you read/write to the Ext3 Linux file system in Windows. I formatted my external hard drive in the Ext3 format and now I can use it with both my Windows and Linux boxes. Very simple and I have it configured to start up automatically.

[crazybus]

Paint.NET - A very useful free image editor.

RocketDock - A fast, low resource intensive dock if you're into that sort of thing.

Picasa - Surely everyone knows about this photo organizer but I"m continually amazed by how good it is at what it sets out to do.

[Flying Fox]

Paint.NET - A very useful free image editor.

Picasa - Surely everyone knows about this photo organizer but I"m continually amazed by how good it is at what it sets out to do.

Is Picasa's photo editing capabilities be good enough compared to Paint.NET? Just thinking about which one I should be installing on my next reinstall.

[tsoulier]

I find spybot corrupts my registry , adaware , perfectdisk works for me

[crazybus]

Paint.NET - A very useful free image editor.

Picasa - Surely everyone knows about this photo organizer but I"m continually amazed by how good it is at what it sets out to do.

Is Picasa's photo editing capabilities be good enough compared to Paint.NET? Just thinking about which one I should be installing on my next reinstall.

Picasa's just meant for very basic editing so its capabilities are quite limited, basically you can crop, straighten, adjust the color temperature, and tweak the shadow and highlight levels. It has a few filters too but I never use them. For most things that you need to do to photos it works quite well, perhaps not to the the level of the photoshop shadow/highlight tool or a curves adjustments using masks, but good nonetheless.

[axeman]

I find Avast! to have a hideous interface, unless they've fixed that in recent releases, and I have to deal with AVG's email scanner borking POP connections on a daily basis at work (ISP helpdesk), so I use Avira's AntiVir.

The free version on AntiVir pops up a single ad page every time it updates, but the advertisements are pretty amusing, especially since the translation from German is quite odd.

In any case, I signed up for a two-year sub of AntiVir, and have been extremely pleased. One thing I love about it is that it treats many of the more common spyware apps such as Gator or Hotbar crap as actual viruses, which I believe is something the industry as a whole could do.

[crazybus]

Here's another couple programs I've found quite useful:

TaskswitchXP
an alt-tab replacement for Windows XP offering window previews.

Launchy
an indexed keystroke launcher that has pretty much made the start menu unnecessary for me.

[A_Pickle]

Switcher - For Windows Vista users with Aero turned on. It's a clone, of sorts, to Mac OS X's Expose. It's got a ton of features, support for mouse gestures, and live window previews (which I tested with a 720P video). For some reason, Trillian and Xfire contact list windows don't seem to get exposed...

WinExpose - Windows XP users can get similar functionality from from WinExpose, which has quasi-live window previews, and supports mouse gestures and highly customizable features. WinExpose has an easier-to-use interface than Switcher, and seems to be smoother. It does cause some... odd problems... though.