Useful Software

[Morgan Evanar]

Firefox. http://mozilla.org IE is like riding a giant wild AIDS virus that will give you AIDS while doing awful things. Awful things.

Google Chrome has joined the party and it's pretty cool.

Opera is an excellent alternative to Firefox, and is now free.

The best Anti-Virus package:
NOD32

A very good free AV package
Microsoft Security essentials. The other stuff isn't as good.


An IM Client:
Pidgin http://www.pidgin.im/
Trillian http://trillian.cc
Miranda IM http://www.miranda-im.org/

A good audio player:
http://www.musikcube.com/
http://www.foobar2000.org/

Videolan, in case that stupid video doesn't work
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

To upload images to websites without using the silly web interface:
http://filezilla.sf.net

Crap Cleaner. Because everyone has crap on their computer that needs cleaning. CCleaner removes old temp files and other unnecessary junk, freeing up tons of room. For most people, CCleaner will often find anywhere from 300mb-2GB of useless junk the first time it runs.

IrfanView. A VERY small and quick image viewer/editor/resizer/everything. Awesome program.
http://www.irfanview.com/

Don't have Photoshop? Bashing your head against MS Paint?
Paint.net or The GIMP can help you out.

[Tear]

How come no ones sticked this list yet? This is like the third or fourth time ive seen a thread like this where people list useful software.

Stickeeeeeeeee

[Rathe Maris]

My current personal favorite audio player.

http://www.cowonamerica.com/download/

[Shawn]

Zoom Player is a robust media player that can play any filetype under the sun, has easy to use stream switching (for files with multiple audio/subtitle tracks) and aspect ratio correction.

Crap Cleaner. Because everyone has crap on their computer that needs cleaning. CCleaner removes old temp files and other unnecessary junk, freeing up tons of room. For most people, CCleaner will often find anywhere from 300mb-2GB of useless junk the first time it runs.

[Marceloi]

Originally posted by Shawn

Microsoft Anti-Spyware (Beta) - I find that it works better than Spybot and Ad-Aware combined. It's basically Giant's Anti-Spyware program under a different name.

I would steer clear big time. Too many false notifications and has dowgraded Gator and related spyware and wont clean by default. Microsoft correct response to spyware is to seal the holes that that crap uses to install itself.

[Shawn]

They switched the default suggestion for Gator-related programs to "Ignore", and I can understand why, since most people who have things like WeatherBug installed want it installed. You can still choose to clean it if it finds it.

It still catches more stuff than either Spybot or Ad-Aware.

[Zasz Grimm]

Is their a better version of trillian? Or something to make it easier? I'm sadly using AIM.

[Shawn]

There's GAIM. I don't like it, but it's another alternative.

[Daiquiri]

I actually prefer AIM to GAIM (which Ive been using since before my departure over a year ago) but theres less clutter with GAIM. Cant send files with it, tho and cant connect to others

[Jaime Tomahawk]

Eh? Yes you can....?

I straight out prefer GAIM as it's nice, easy, does the job and has never given me a hint of a problem. Plus, I've always hated trillian's interfaces and useless bits.

[Daiquiri]

How do you do it?? Ive never been able to send files or connect since using GAIM

[Morgan Evanar]

Ok, I added AIMhack, which takes most of the crap out of AIM and turns it into what it was 4 years ago.

[Shawn]

µTorrent - An amazingly tiny BitTorrent client that has nearly all of the features of the "big boys", but takes up less than 4mb of memory usage under load. It still has a few kinks in it, but the devs are squashing bugs at a breakneck pace. The program itself is only 82kb and doesn't need to be installed to run.

[Yog]

Originally posted by Shawn
µTorrent - An amazingly tiny BitTorrent client that has nearly all of the features of the "big boys", but takes up less than 4mb of memory usage under load. It still has a few kinks in it, but the devs are squashing bugs at a breakneck pace. The program itself is only 82kb and doesn't need to be installed to run.

uTorrent replaced Azureus as my primary torrent program. I love it. Its so fast and small, and no java crappiness.

I would also add Opera browser to the list of "Must have programs". Its free now, fast, flexible and easy to configure. You dont need to fiddle with extensions, as anything you need are standard features

http://www.opera.com/download/

[Darth McBain]

A few weeks ago a power surge blew out my KVM switch, so I've been poking around for an alternative. I found software called Synergy which allows a single mouse and keyboard to control all computers on a network. It's free at sourceforge.net. It was really easy to install - you just define how the screens "link-up" (i.e. you tell it which computer to go to when you run your mouse off a given edge of your current screen) and you're good to go. It makes working with multiple networked PCs much easier...

[Mitch]

A must-have for any Windows user. And it's free, officially from Microsoft themselves.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sys...lueScreen.mspx

[Hartus Kenobi]

I'm a MAC user, and these are some of my more frequently-used programs that weren't a part of the installation package:

BIT TORRENT:
Transmission : http://transmission.m0k.org/

INSTANT MESSENGING:
Adium: http://www.adiumx.com/

IMAGE VIEWER:
JView: http://home.nc.rr.com/jview/jview.html

FLV Viewer:
flvThing: http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/22760

Watching QT files full-screen:
Fullscreen4free: http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/23093

I also have a PC though, and for that, my favorite program is IrfanView. A VERY small and quick image viewer/editor/resizer/everything. Awesome program.
http://www.irfanview.com/

[Turbogeek]

There should be a "Programs to avoid thread" And then the subsection "If you really MUST have Vista, then here's some tips to make it actually work"

Like turning off Remote Differential compression
Turning off display thumbnails
Install patch to fix the borked network stack
Turning off the utter crap Vista comes with
How to install Ubantu and forget this BS ever existed.

Office 2007 is as good as Vista is crap

[Turbogeek]

Linux geeks should have the following

a) Ubuntu 7.10 - KUbuntu isnt quite recommended until 8.04 and then you get KDE 4 with blows Vista's crap interface away

b) Open Office 2.3

c) Azerus isnt too bad on Linux. Certainly the Java run time seems to actually work properly.

d) Pidgen IM - GAIM with the new name

And handy knowledge of the inbuilt Add / Remove programs and applications. There's so many to browse through and your Windows favorites are almost certainly somewhere in that list.

e) NO Antivirus or anti spyware required.

Now I've really gotten used to Ubuntu, I find Windows depressingly awful.

[Miranda Tarkin]

What's a good spy-ware zapper?