Essential Programs

The fish · November 9, 2006

Add Prevex1.

http://www.prevex.com

It's a one month free trial, but after that it still finds stuff for you, so you just need to delete it manually.

It will seriously clean up your PC if there is shite on it.

(By the way, Firefox does not know the word shite...)

Emasher · November 25, 2006

for us mac users i recomend a program called quicksilver (like spotlight only better)

Bogbas · December 22, 2006

Opening pdf files usually take pretty long if you're using adobe's reader. Even with a reasonably powerful PC. I found this alternative: http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php

It opens pdf's a lot faster than adobe reader. I recommend replacing it with this.

urso · January 29, 2007

if you want to overwrite rather than just delete data, get eraser:

http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/

or if you've deleted something by mistake and want to recover it:

http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file/fid,23108-order,1-page,1-c,alldownloads/description.html

|Laguna| · April 12, 2007

You should add this: http://www.filehippo.com/updatechecker/

It's a neat little program which checks if there are any updates for the programs you have currently installed, and then gives you a link to download them from.

**Mr_Odwin** · April 12, 2007

You should add this: http://www.filehippo.com/updatechecker/

It's a neat little program which checks if there are any updates for the programs you have currently installed, and then gives you a link to download them from.

That seems really cool. Cheers!

McPhee · November 9, 2007

Back to the sticky-ness it goes!

CoolFunkMan · November 20, 2007

I downloaded Auslogics Disk Defragger yesterday, and it's brilliant! It's speedy and does a fantastic job of sorting your hard drive. I definitely recommend this.

http://www.auslogics.com/disk-defrag/index.php

It took just under 1 hour to defrag my 120gb IDE hard drive, which only had 13gb free before defragging. After running the program I had 20gb free!

McPhee · November 20, 2007

gonna give it a go now, the disk defragger in vista is shite! how did they actually make it worse than the one in previous versions of windows?

KKOB · March 12, 2008

Wasn't sure where to put this but here goes.

Firefox 3 beta 4 is fucking awesome on the mac! <3

It's as fast as firefox used to be, has some really good features which are actually useful and looks like an OS X app rather than a lame windows app circa 1999.

The updated Safari 3 will have to come out soon else Firefox will replace it as my default browser.

thirtynine. · March 12, 2008

Foobar2000 owns all the media players up there for music btw.

for us mac users i recomend a program called quicksilver (like spotlight only better)

Pc users Launchy is the alternative for us, its not as feature filled as quicksilver but its getting there

Jimmy3000 · March 16, 2008

great topic, cheers. My norton recently ran ut so using a zone alarm, AVG, Spybot, CCleaner combo now =)

Konfucius · March 16, 2008

I can also recommend TweakUI

It gives you a lot of options to costumize WindowsXP in terms of settings.

Edit: it seems thirtynine. beat me to Launchy four days ago.

Still here's my post.

And Launchy is a little programm running in the background. It indexes all the Start Menu Shortcuts and other folders and filetypes you specify. With a press of Alt+Space it the Launchy Searchwindow comes up and lets you type in the program name. By pressing enter the program launches.

Jinmu · March 21, 2008

not a lot to say about this one. Stickies/Post Its is something the macs had for years. Its free, indie and only 1mb.

apostille · April 7, 2009

essential programs

When I get a new computer, what programs I need to put on it:

Standard apps (browser, e-mail, office, etc.)

Firefox

Thunderbird

OpenOffice

Trillian

BlitzIn

Development tools (programming languages, text editors, version control)

Perl, Python, Ruby, PHP

EditPlus (Crimson Editor, ConTEXT, and PSPad are also good alternatives)

jEdit (and a bunch of its plugins)

metapad (and replaced notepad with it)

Subversion and TortoiseSVN

MySQL plus the administrator and query browser

KDiff3

Proggy Fonts (Proggy Tiny)

The Regex Coach

Cygwin

Improved Windows Console (still early in development, but promising)

WitchEd

Network tools (protocols)

Ethereal

Putty

FileZilla

WinSCP

VNC

Viewers

Irfanview and all plugins (XnView and The Gimp can also be handy)

7-Zip (I also have to try ICEOWS)

Acrobat Reader

ÂµTorrent OpenOffice downloaded in < 3:45 (!) with it.

iTunes, then uninstall the associated QuickTime, and install the Mega Codec Pack to replace it.

The K-Lite Mega Codec Pack, which includes Real Alternative, QuickTime Alternative, and The Divx codec.

The Ghostscript tools for viewing PostScript on Windows, particularly Ghostscript and GSView. See Obtaining Ghostscript, click through and you'll be able to download both Ghostscript and GSView.

Operating system enhancements/utilities

CLCL

TaskSwitchXP

XP Powertoys, particularly "Open Command Window Here" and "Tweak UI".

Free Launch Bar.

Some of the Sysinternals tools when I have a need for them.

Spacemonger when I later need to figure out what's eating up my space

Spybot and AdAware, eventually.

SlickRun is an excellent command-line style program launcher

Here are some automation utilities that may come in handy.