 | | |
| forquare1 wrote: Any special or exceedingly useful apps you use from time to time? | |
| | |
Many of the ones already said, plus:
- PSpad - the best text editor I've found so far. I did use TextPad but I'm too tight to pay for it, and PSpad is very similar.
- WinRAR - I really should pay for it, because it just wins. 7zip is an excellent free alternative, but it doesn't do the fancy stuff.
- Foxit - because Adobe Acrobat is just too damned fat.
- MS Backup - I have previously used WinRAR, SynchToy, Offline Folders and XCOPY, but I'm using Backup. It's scheduled for, err, right this second which is why I thought of it. It's very fast. It just took 6 seconds to backup my 500GB drive. Obviously I've not done any work this week!
- Acronis - mostly because it comes free pretty much every month on the PCpro cover disk! It works very well. I image my machines when I think it's a good time. I need to do my netbook tomorrow for example, before I load XP SP3. I always do it before major changes which could potentially go wrong.
- MS Paint - It used to be rubbish, but these days it does the job I need most often: Crop and save as PNG.
- uTorrent - It's just perfect. I seriously can't think of any way it could possibly be improved. It's light, fast, controllable, customisable - it just does everything a BitTorrent client should do.
- VirtualDub - This program is seriously old, but it still does the job within certain limits. It's light and intuitive, and free. I don't use video very often, but usually all I want to do is chop some bits out, crop, resize, rarely adjust a few things, maybe remove a logo and then encode it to DivX. Sometimes I need to add stills, or make an animated GIF. VD lets me do that in seconds.
- Hamachi - Not used often, but there are some times where nothing else will work. It's easy and reliable. As long as you're only Nazi firewalled at one end, you can set it to any port and break through. An SPI firewall could still block it, but I've never seen one IRL that actually does. It's the easiest way to blast a massive hole in your office security.
- FileZilla - the best free FTP server I've found. Does everything I need, and it's not a hog.
- RealAlternative - Because some people make nice videos in a stupid format.
- RealVNC - because you need it and it works.
- NetDrive - a free ap that maps FTP folders to a Windows drive letter. Lets me schedule simple Xcopy on-line backups for critical things, and it's just handy. There are other ways, but it's simple and easy.
My personal choice for everyday things:
- Windows Live - Mail and MSN. It works with Hotmail, it automatically backs stuff up, the calender is great, I love the automatic contact updates and I love MSN.
- Thunderbird - I use this on most of my PCs, because I do prefer it to Mail and it's the obvious choice on Linux. The Hotmail plugin keeps breaking though, so it's not on my main Windows machine.
- Aunty Vera - it scored higher than most paid-for aunty virus applications, and the price was right. I've had no problems with it.
- FireFox - I'm not a huge fan of the application, but I love the plug-ins. I simply do not enjoy browsing so much without my tool right there in my hand.
- Winamp - It's a little bloaty these days, but it has the best skins and plugins, and generally just works.
- MediaPlayerClassic - It's light, and better than VLC with regards to rendering quality and subtitle handling.
- Gimp - I absolutely detest this program. It does everything I need and it's free, but I really wish I could afford Photoshop. Everything takes me 5x longer in Gimp, because I can never find anything. It's mostly down to lack of use, but I've actually used it way more than Photoshop and yet that just seems "right".
- Open Office - I hate this too. MS Office is definately better if you need a powerful spreadsheet, or most frustratingly "Office Compatibility". However, it's free and it usually does the job.
This may take a while