Essential Windows Programs, Tell us yours here. Options

[macgirl]

iTunes iPod thing.

PuTTY SSH and Telnet.

DVD Decrypter you know

DVD Shrink You know, also

AC3 Filter For getting AC3 very well handled, even DTS can be decoded.

Active Perl Sure I love perl.

CygWin Unix things without booting in another OS

AutoCad To maintain happy my significant other

SonyEricsson Theme Creator Create my own phones themes

eDonkey2000 No comments.

UT 2004 Essential

VMware Mac OS X thing.

SpeedFan Temperature monitoring tool.

I have been tinkering around with my Bluetooth headset and the somewhat new and patched Widcomm driver stack v5.0.1.802 for the past few days. I finally figured out a way to use my Bluetooth headset as an audio gateway in conjuction with Skype, MSN, Yahoo, gtalk, and any other Windows messenger that allow voice or VOIP. I mostly use skype because the audio and video streams is so much more crisp than the other messengers I have used.

I use a Linksys PAP2 phone Adapter with my VoIP account and a free VoIP and free Thelephone number from ipKall

Thinking to buy a WiFi VoIP Phone too.

[REVENGE]

iTunes - iPod

VOIP Stunt - Free VOIP to Landline Calling

MPlayer Classic - The best Media Player

Azureus - torrents

PeerGuardian2 - For protection of my "privacy"

Daemon Tools - For ISOs

TA Spring - The best remake of the best RTS game of all time

[domino]

I use a Linksys PAP2 phone Adapter with my VoIP account and a free VoIP and free Thelephone number from ipKall

Thinking to buy a WiFi VoIP Phone too.

How is FWD these days? I had a horid experience with it last time I used it. I think a WiFI VOIP phone is well spent if VOIP quality gets better. Those in the USA, most parts of Europe, Canada, Japan, and South Korea will have the best experiance. Others can will just regret purchasing hardware, a dedicated IP, and a phone number. Of course I'm speaking in regards to Skype and Vonage services.

[macgirl]

How is FWD these days? I had a horid experience with it last time I used it. I think a WiFI VOIP phone is well spent if VOIP quality gets better. Those in the USA, most parts of Europe, Canada, Japan, and South Korea will have the best experiance. Others can will just regret purchasing hardware, a dedicated IP, and a phone number. Of course I'm speaking in regards to Skype and Vonage services.

I do not use FWD, I get an account with fonosip.com, it works fine, of course I haven't much calls to my number because I'm in Mexico and my friends too, but I get it for demonstrations purposes now that I begin with VoIP recommendations/business.

[cyrana]

I always install the cygwin tools on any Windows installation. http://www.cygwin.com.

Otherwise:

1. FileZilla
2. SecureCRT
3. iTunes
4. vlc
5. UltraMon
6. FireFox + Session Saver + Adblock
7. Thunderbird
8. Daemon Tools
9. CDBurnerXP Pro, although sometimes I have used Nero
10. uTorrent
11. Peerguardian

Then on pay tools, I always have Office and Photoshop, among other things.

[Mr. Bond]

Similar to some of your lists...

Firefox - Lightyears ahead of IE. And half the bugs!

XLink-Kai - Why use XBLive, when you have a friendly, open-source community that also supports mods?

FlashFXP - For all your FTP needs.

iTunes - Because I am just another pawn in Apples quest for world domination.

Azureus - Had no problems...though I might try uTorrent now because of you guys.

Cubase SX3 - Me + Music Recording = Enjoyable waste of a Friday night

Stepmania - Yeah...I've become addicted to DDR. 343 songs and counting.

[thegafferazzasatz]

1) Office XP -used all time obv.
2) MSN messenger
3) PCDJ FX VRM

[ZX81]

some good free ones are:

crapcleaner (from ccleaner.com) & process explorer (procxp from sysinternals.com)

crap cleaner is great for fixing broken regisry links (removing) and removing clutter. I use procxp for seeing what is running under windows and toggling off unnecessary processes before gaming)

& Object dock for the mac look



day to day I use mainly firefox / incredimail / office 2003 / macaffee security suite

(I use azerues for torrents on my desktop; and dvddecrypter/shrink there; ultraiso/poweriso/ nero)

I find nero showtime is the best player for me, esp with shrunk dvds

[Swad]

Font Expert is a great app for those who need to manage a lot of fonts. I looked around for a good program to do this and it's the best one I've found!

[Metrogirl]

Font Expert is a great app for those who need to manage a lot of fonts. I looked around for a good program to do this and it's the best one I've found!

After years of messing around with fonts I've found just a handful which I always put on any system I build, and I keep a few others handy for special jobs. The ones I install by default are -

Dark Courier. Yes, it's Courier but a specially crisp version - if you're a writer you NEED this to satisfy publishers - normal Courier just looks feeble on the page with most laser printers.

Distressed Olympus. (usually called F***ed Olympus) - great 'old' typewriter font.

Gill Sans.- the whole set. Just nice, clear and sharp for sans-serif work.

Girls Are Weird. - I used this odd font on a website years ago and, well, I just like it. It's weird and I'm a girl.

ITC Garamond 2000. I used an old version of Corel Gatineau on a website and then lost it in a disk crash. It took years to find another Gatineau/Garamond font which had italics with matching uppercase and lower case slants (some don't), and with the hooked "H" and drop apostrophe. Corel's version had been brought into line with Garamond and lost some of those features. ITC has the whole lot.

London Tube. An imitation of the script used in London Underground signs.

Marriage Script. A nice joined-up script font for fancy work.

Monsoon. A very clean and tidy handwritten script.

Mylius. This is the font used by British Airways. I use it for all my printed correspondence, it's really nice.

Pica. Another typewriter font.

Village. If you ever watched 'The Prisoner' you'll recognise this.

Witzworks. A comic-book speech-ballon script.

For editing fonts (and removing the er, unwanted glyphs from samples, and changing the text) I use Font Creator Pro3.

Most of the above are links which will download the font or a zipfile with all the font parts. Note they are WINDOWS TrueType format. I haven't linked Mylius because BA are very proprietary about it. The rest are public domain to the best of my knowledge - at least I found them all on the web without any restrictions. If you think they shouldn't be here PM me and I'll remove them!

Edit - I searched the web and discovered that lots of people are trying to get their hands on Mylius and you can't download it anywhere. As it's commercial, very expensive and under copyright I won't be risking linking to it.

[billeuze]

Many of the above programs and:

treesize, http://www.jam-software.com/freeware/index.shtml
A tny little app gives you a right click menu in windows explorer. will tell you the size of all directories within the directory or drive you right click on. extremely useful for locating source of what's filling up your hard drives.

also

context highlighting text editor, http://www.context.cx/

[Hitesh]

Stickies for windows

[non sequitur]

I always install DVDshrink and videora ipod converter (i havent found anything better) if the computer has a dvd drive (i use old computers form time to time ). Mozilla Firefox is a must, and so is itunes. never liked winAMP. i also always install objectdock, because its the best way to access your programs. period. i also tried desktopX on my 1ghz laptop, and it runs great. widgety goodness . teamspeak, xfire, and trillian are also a must, even if im not gaming. best messengers ever.

and i also refuse to use MS Office if i have a choice. i use openoffice.org2.0, because it is free, not as buggy, and has more utilities intalled.

[Veeoh]

Easy..

Textpad
uTorrent
Filezilla and Filezilla Server
Firefox
Thunderbird.

Ta

[Hitesh]

I like the SPOTLIGHT in mac .... which is the best search program for Windows ? may be some thing like spotlight

This is been a great thread....object dock is lovely ..thanks for the info non sequitur

[treleung]

Itunes
Firefox
DamnNfo
BsPlayer
VLC Player
DVD Shrink / AnyDVD
Trillian Pro
FlashFXP
utorrent
Kaspersky Anti-Virus 6.0
Alcohol 120%
WinRAR
Photoshop
Office
PowerIso

[myzar]

No one mentioned the best filemanager , there's a copycat on every os but the original is

TotalCommander http://www.ghisler.com/

I find scary that many people mentioned Itunes eeewww

[mimix]

uTorrent,
firefox (flashgot, stumbleupon, answers, adblock, adblock filterset.g updater, reveal),
thunderbird,

kerio personal firewall,
Avast!,
ad-aware
spybot SD

itunes (podcasts and mp3s),
DivX player
7-zip,
Alcohol 120%

daemon tools,
VM-ware (native installs only),
partition magic,

Blender,
Adobe CS2,
NVU,
Synfig,
Flash 8,

Steam (DOD, DOD:S, CS, CS:S)

it goes on and on really

[Colonel]

All I really use is Bit Commet and VMWare.

[bwhsh8r]

Litestep

iTunes

Trillian

Microsoft Virtual PC (i try out alot of oss)

Azureus

Motorola PST (for my phone so I can hack that)

DVD shrink/ decrypter

Roxio easy media creator suete 8

Magiciso

Hard Drive Killer pro (for the feds if i get audited)

adaware se

spybot s & d

Mozilla Firefox / Opera 9 beta 3