Essential Software

[Hoax]

So yeah, besides drivers what do yall go download right away on a fresh install?  Free stuff or stuff that "should" be free only.

Musicplayer -- I use winamp, because I've used it forever and it works.  There was a time when I had a plug-in that gave me controls bound to obscure keys so I could move around a playlist while I was playing but I lost it long ago.

Ripping software -- I've been using DeepBurner, but not because I think its great.

.zip files -- I like 7zip it handles all that sort of shit while being free and not having any shit  that pops up asking me to buy it.

Movie players -- besides updating WMplayer I usually download VLC and Media Player Classic.  I also usually install the latest CCCP codec bundle.

Torrents -- uTorrent has been my go-to on this front.

Digital drives -- DaemonTools here, don't even know of alternatives

Browser -- I don't know what to use here?  I had Opera for awhile, but it wasn't amazing.

Streaming TV -- TVants & Sopcast, so I can try to watch some euro football via myp2p.eu

ftp's -- Core ftp lite, follows the K I S S rule well small little thing that is easy for me to work


So that's my list, I'm looking for other cool shit that everyone should have & I def want to here if others have other software they prefer over any of my choices.  The big question is, what browser is best these days out of the non IE competition but I hate asking only one Q in a thread.  Plus I'm doing a fresh install and some HD juggling so I wanted to set up my reinstall folder again, it needs an update.

thanks f13

P.S.  I would have put this in the PC forum but I feel like thats more Hardware issues?  If a mod disagrees well your wrong but move it anyways.

[Venkman]

I use FreeFTP, DeepBurner, and Firefox.

Other stuff I don't do as much.

But what's a "Digital Drive" (Daemon Tools)? That something like VirtualCD where it creates accessible CD/DVD image files so you don't need that media in the drive to launch the program (stupid old skool thing that it is).

[lesion]

Firefox is a popular browser, but I like Opera.

HoeKey for global hotkeys. It's pretty useful for vanilla keyboards.

Audacity for simple sound edits. Recording usually sucks but chopping up/converting files is all good.

Process Explorer and HijackThis for housekeeping.

PowerToys for XP. Whole bunch of fun stuff, TweakUI being essential for me.

Unlocker for...unlocking.

[Venkman]

Oh I am sooo picking up Unlocker. Can't count how often I've just wanted to reach through the Task Manager and strangle whoever couldn't just make that a default part of the OS.

[Zetleft]

MediaMonkey for listening to my music files, it replaced winamp which I used exclusively for years.  Very easy to use interface and very light footprint so can use this and game at the same time without a problem, had to load a global hotkey dll from winamp to get that working though. 

Aston Shell to replace the windows desktop with something a little more unique.  Tons of different user made themes to choose from.  Some I like for function others just look damn cool. 

[caladein]

About the only one I would add to the above lists is Pidgin, or some other mutli-IM client.  Also, Unlocker looks very nice, downloading it now.

[Zetleft]

Just installed Unlocker myself, thanks for that one.

[Evil Elvis]

GOM Player - much better than VLC / WMP

InfraRecorder - CD/DVD burner

DVD Flick - avi/wmv/mpg to dvd

ALZip - in all honesty WinRAR is the only software that handles every format w/o problem, but ALZip isn't too bad

Notepad++ - notepad/wordpad replacement

FoxIt - PDF viewer that doesn't take 5 minutes to load

Paint.NET - pretty good for simple image editing

uTorrent - bittorrent client

[MisterNoisy]

Outside of the stuff already mentioned (Process Explorer, WinAmp, etc.)and the no-brainers like FFox, etc:

AVG Antivirus

Zonealarm Firewall

dBPowerAmp Music Converter

The Gimp

[naum]

Looking at these lists, so glad I don’t do Windows OS (no need for drivers, anti-virus, etc.…) anymore (well, sort of…)… …most of the developer tools I regulary use already come bundled with a new Mac — GCC, Vim, Apache, X11, PHP, Ruby, Rails, Perl, Bash. And all the *nix CLI stuff — ssh, curl, etc.…

But here’s some things I do put on:

1. **Gimp** — Call me goofy, but I like it better than Photoshop, used to its quirky UI, and tearoff GTK style menus…

2. **VLC** — primarily for playing the kind of files QT won’t play (though Flip4Mac app will enable it too…) like *.wmv files.

3. **Handbrake** — for turning DVDs into movies/videos I can stream to other machines and port to iPod/iPhone…

4. **Firefox** — bug laden, crashes on me constantly, really is now inferior to Safari which has surpassed in speed and reliability, but I like it because of Firebug and the dozens of developer plugins I’ve come to depend on (which might be the reason if flakes on me so much…)

5. **Inkscape** — X11 vector graphics program

6. **Skype** — not that I want to have it on my box, but sometimes you need to keep in touch…

7. **Audacity** — for audio editing

8. **Textmate** — though Vim probably gets the heavier usage, TextMate is an awesome editor, and use it for doing Latex, HTML, markdown, and Ruby (Vim for PHP, shell scripting, Lua, Perl, simple text files, etc.…)

9. **Skim** — another PDF reader, between it and Preview (OS X built in…), no need for Adobe bloatware…

10. **Colloquy** — IRC client

11. **NetNewsWire** — slick RSS reader (Windows version is feedDemon), now totally free, will sync up multiple machines, and accessible online (and iPhone) via NewsGator

12. **Skitch** — screen capture / drawing program, in beta, if anyone wants in let me know (Mac only though)

13. **Radioshift** — TIVO for net audio streams (radio stations around the globe), with easy porting into Audacity or iTunes…

14. **Parallels** — for when I have to run Windows… :(

[Samwise]

AVG, Google Toolbar, Paint .NET, Cygwin, DivX, iTunes, Acrobat, BitTorrent, Perforce, Steam, WebThumb, Genesaver, and Scenesaver.

[Krakrok]

FireFox (plugins: StumbleUpon, Google ToolBar, v1.5 button patch, FireBug, FasterFox, Download Statusbar, Web Developer, SearchStatus, IETab, Extended StatusBar) - browsing

IE7/Opera/Safari - for compatibility testing only

TextPad/Notepad - all text based files

Winamp (w/ MilkDrop) - Shoutcast streams from di.fm

Thunderbird - email

UltraExplorer (a must on Vista) - file management

WSFTP95 LE - ftp

Trillian - quad service IM client

JkDefrag - visual defrag & file optimization on Vista (works on all Windows though)

VirtualDub w/ smart deinterlace filter - process raw video

Windows Movie Maker - easy video creation

Windows Media Player - plays everything except mov

Quicktime - plays mov

Acrobat 8 - PDF. version 8 actually isn't a piece of crap

VLC - plays DVDs, video upscaling, audio equalizer

DVD Shrink - stores DVDs

PDFCreator (XP)/CutePDF (Vista) - print to PDF

[stray]

2. **VLC** — primarily for playing the kind of files QT won’t play (though Flip4Mac app will enable it too…) like *.wmv files.

Better off using Perian now, in my opinion (it's a plug-in for qt that supports just about everything vlc does). Get the xiph plug-in (for ogg), and you're just about set for transparent, format support.

[sidereal]

Textpad, BeyondCompare, Firefox, Kerio Personal Firewall (an old version I keep the installer for.  Better than Windows firewall for watching software call home), Gimp, Itunes, Daemon Tools, Process Explorer (Much better task manager replacement), Pine, 7zip, quickpar

[Engels]

2. **VLC** — primarily for playing the kind of files QT won’t play (though Flip4Mac app will enable it too…) like *.wmv files.

Better off using Perian now, in my opinion (it's a plug-in for qt that supports just about everything vlc does). Get the xiph plug-in (for ogg), and you're just about set for transparent, format support.

For me the whole point of VLC is to NOT have to deal with an Apple product.

[stray]

If you don't want to deal with Apple products, why have a Mac then?

I think Perian (as well as Flip4Mac) is cool because I can just shove any video file into the "Movies" folder, spark up FrontRow with my remote, and chill and watch shows and movies from my bed.

[Engels]

Ah, sorry, didn't realise you were talking about apple software for an apple machine. I'm sure apple software on an apple is great and all, but on a PC, quicktime, Itunes and all other associated processes that are foisted upon your machine just to run a damned media player annoy me. Its bad enough that we have to deal with Microsoft bloatware without having to ad software that thinks you bought the machine *just* for them.

[stray]

Yeah...I don't even bother with apple stuff on windows really. But I do pretty much the same thing with microsoft software: I'll just use windows media player, and try to extend it's functionality as much as possible through plug-ins, instead of depending on seperate apps.

[schild]

I wish the PC had a sweet media program like that mac one.

Really, what niche software maker makes stuff only for the Mac.

WAY TO CUT YOUR MARKET.

[JoeTF]

Foldersize (shows the folder's size in size column of windows explorer, you will feel blind without it)
RapidCRC (ze best checksum checking program - the only one that can read crc codes from filenames, and has generally the best interface of all)

Lastly,
how the hell did you forgot Irfanview?
You can't have a PC without Irfanview (or Wildbit Viewer)

Schild:
Those people use macs in the first place. They cannot be  sensible.

[stray]

I wish the PC had a sweet media program like that mac one.

Really, what niche software maker makes stuff only for the Mac.

WAY TO CUT YOUR MARKET.

It's funny, but that's been like a hallmark of Mac software for a long time. Cool little ideas here and there, that for whatever strange reason, the developers aren't inclined to bring anywhere else. They all start adding up and make me miss Macs when I use PC's, whether it was some little feature in a text editor, or something built in the OS.

Hell, even the ho-hum idea of a "cataloging" app can be kind of cool. Take Delicious Library, for example. It's got a sweet little feature I've never seen anywhere else. I can grab a book or dvd, hold it up to my webcam, it scans the barcode, looks up an online database, and puts the entry on a virtual shelf, with metadata and pretty thumbnail and all.

[Prospero]

I wish the PC had a sweet media program like that mac one.

Really, what niche software maker makes stuff only for the Mac.

WAY TO CUT YOUR MARKET.

The faithful don't care.

[schild]

The faithful have more in common with hardline militaristic islam than every day society.

On that same note:

CCCP
BS Player
utorrent

Endless entertainment. All for free. I'm not condoning you laugh at the writers strike since you don't pay anything for TV. But then, laughing is a bonus, I suppose.

Edit: Stray you bastard. Delicious Library is what I was talking about. Almost bought a mac mini just for it.

[stray]

Ah, thought you were talking about something else.

Anyways, yeah, it's neat. Not enough to buy a comp for though.


You're confusing the hardliner Mac faithful with hardliner Stallmanites. That'd be militaristic islam. Mac heads are much more pleasant zealots.

[JoeTF]

Delicious Library is first thing I going to code when I finally get into coding. Viva software patent free EU:P

[Krakrok]

I could probably build that on Windows for the price of a mac mini (maybe less depending on the price of the components). Seems like the product database would be the hard part though. I don't know what data is stored in a bar code but if it included a title (or ISBN for books) the easiest product database to access is Amazon. Couple possibly do it in Flash too without too much trouble since Flash lets you access a webcam.

[stray]

You need a firewire cam specifically, not just any webcam. It'll also work with firewire dv cams.

[Prospero]

Mac heads are much more pleasant zealots.

Perhaps you've never had the "pleasure" of being trapped in the kitchen by one telling you the glories of the Mac platform. Being shot might be the lesser of two evils. At least there was food.

And delicious library is teh sexy. I need to get a webcam for my laptop so I can play with it.

I made a list recently for a computer rebuild, so here is my list of essentials:

DVD43 + HandBrake
DeepBurner             
Irfanview
iTunes/QuickTime
Firefox
Media Player Classic
7zip
Picasa
Perforce
Gnuwin32
Activestate Perl
Putty
Process Monitor

[Endie]

I always install OpenOffice these days.  Which may be taken as surprising since I get several MS Office licenses every year from Microsoft as a perk of being MS certified.

I reluctantly install iTunes just because of my iPod, which I heartily regret buying since it is an awful piece of engineering with a shiny (but easily scratched) cover and which is little more than a trojan for Apple's anti-competitive practises.  I will never buy another.

[schild]

Endie, wanna hook a brother up with a Vista Ultimate key? lol

[Yegolev]

I think everything I use has been mentioned, except I use Cheetah Burner for ripping.  Or, rather, I did before I had to relocate my burner into another machine.  Now I use whatever it is that comes with Ubuntu/Debian.  I haven't decided if I want to run a graphical sftp client or not.  Sometimes I use FAR (from RARLabs) but that's usually a precursor to a reinstall.

There is a wad of UNIXy utilities, probably on SourceForge, that contain such indispensables as df and du, but in practice I don't use those much.  Instead I use SC Diskinfo.  I have used Movica to stitch together movies, works.

[Viin]

TextPad - Best Windows text editor
PuTTY/PSFTP/PSCP - Best light weight SSH/Telnet client
Pidgin - Best AIM/Jabber/Yahoo/Whatever client
PureText - Paste PLAIN TEXT instead of HTMLed/Formatted crap from Word, Outlook, etc
FastStone Capture - Easiest screenshot capturing utility I have found, probably doesn't work on games

And, of course, the basics: Excel, Fireworks, Firefox, Thunderbird

[schild]

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH YA.



FUCK YEA. DELICIOUS LIBRARY CLONE FOR PC WITH EVEN MORE FEATURES.

GO GO MEDIAMAN 2.70.

[SnakeCharmer]

FastStone Capture - Easiest screenshot capturing utility I have found, probably doesn't work on games

Serious question:  How is using that any easier than using cntl+print screen, then pasting in paint?

[Viin]

Couple reasons: you can drag a box around the area you want captured, you can click the window you want captured, and a couple of other options, and it'll automatically make an image file in your preferred format without having to open up another program. Takes maybe 2 seconds, and you end up with exactly what you need rather than your whole desktop.