Downloadables I'm down with!

Here's a few words about the downloadables I'm fond of right now. Note that I'm a dial-up user at home, so I don't download anything I don't expect to get much use out of.

For those of you who think you are savvier than me about whats out there, and probably are, just look to the two entries in RED.

Office Suite:

Openoffice.org

This is a full featured open source office package that offers everything MSOffice does and even handles doc extensions without a problem. It is about a 60MB download which makes it an easy overnight grab for a dial-sucker. The autoformatting is actually convenient and controllable, unlike MSword and the thesaurus is far more useful. Can't say anything that would do this download justice - the single best free windows download available IMO.

Internet browser:

Mozilla Firefox

Forget about all the problems that come with IE. Forget about popups and adblock any images or flash frames you want. A great all around browser - it comes with links to a full assortment of useful extensions and themes that take only seconds to download.

Plain Neat:

StrokeIt

This program lets you control anything in windows with simple mouse gestures. Very good at recognition and I find myself using it a lot instead of clicking through menu items. Definetly download the minimize to tray plugin with it - it allows you to minimize ANY open window to an icon in the windows taskbar tray.

SayTheTime

Replaces the windows time display in the taskbar. Ability to set reminders/alarms as well as regularly announce the time aloud in a set interval. I find the time announcement most useful as often times I spend hours at a time on the forums without knowing it. Pleasant female or male voice selection.

MPsetupXP

The only reason I use mediaplayer is because of the MP 9 series - it integrates with the taskbar and displays a small non-intrusive window for show viewing or other visualization. Use it all the time.

Maintenance:

System Mechanic

A good program for general maintenance. Quicker than doing things the old fashioned way and I find myself keeping up with things better. I use the registry cleaner more often than anything else.

Regscrub

A good quick registry cleaner. Combined with system mechanic and Norton windoctor I feel pretty good about the cleanliness of my registry.

CWShredder

Eliminates variants of the CoolWebSearch bug. Only program I know of that can remove CWS without doing any damage in the process. CWS is somethign to look out for if you or a net surfer in your family are having browser problems - there are new variants surfacing all the time.

Adaware and Spybot Search and Destroy

Nothing needs to really be said here. Get both though because they won't find everything alone.

Prime95

Go here to know how it's meant to be run and why.

Other

Nimo Codec Pack

Never worry about having the right codec again. Just download and install Nimo's codec pack and everything is there.

Conclusion:

These are the things I always install on a fresh format and think most anybody can find useful. Hope you like them.











UPDATE: Compiled list of linked member suggestions...

MEMBER CONTRIBUTIONS:

www.iespell.com
a free Internet Explorer browser extension that spell checks text input boxes on a webpage

http://www.7-zip.org/
7-zip - free archiver program (e.g. zip/rar/gz/etc). Only thing it lacks is drag and drop.

http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/
FileZilla - excellent (free) FTP program which supports SFTP as well.

http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail.php3?fid=1049831315
Quicktime Alternative - allows you to use any media player to view Quicktime files, no need to use Apple's player. This also includes Media Player Classic which was mentioned in this thread. Also, if you follow the link on that page the the Quicktime Alternative homepage, you should find the Real Alternative (no need for Real player), or just google for it.

Mail Washer
a free (well it is the kind that you can pay for if you really feel like it) proggie that checks your pop server and tells you what is there. It also supports user modifiable filters, heuristic Spam filtering and blacklisting. f that is not enough, you can connect to the spamcop database and the open relay database for still more spam filtering.

Convert
Convert is an easy to use unit conversion program that will convert the most popular units of distance, temperature, volume, time, speed, mass, power, density, pressure, energy and many others, including the ability to create custom conversions!

http://www.burn4free.com/
free CD/DVD burning software works great, though it lacks the conversion from wav-mp3 and vise versa, for everyday file buring this quick little burner holds its own, and it is free

www.realVNC.com
Real VNC allows you to connect remotely and control a system as though you were sitting in front of it.

Putty
SSH tunneling program good for makeing VNC more secure

www.irfanview.com
Great free image program

www.NetLimiter.com
Nifty little utility that lets you limit bandwidth to certain programs. Great for when your on dial-suck and want to try to download something (openoffice) and still be able to load a page in under 30 seconds.

You might want to look at

www.burn4free.com this free CD/DVD burning software works great, though it lacks the conversion from wav-mp3 and vise versa, for everyday file buring this quick little burner holds its own, and it is free

Nice post. Looks like you put a lot of work in it.

Old thread at another forum

Thanks, it actually only took me about 10 minutes, I'm pretty quick at the keys.

Nice link, we've got alot of those threads around here buried in the archives also if anyone else wants to search further too.

Personally, I don't do a whole lot of burning and what I do, usually works fine with windows built in tool. I'm not picky in that area.

When I was on dial-up, I've always liked trillian. 5 chat programs in a small package compared to everything else. Gives me more time to download 5,000 illegal songs a day. j/k

Ehhh, that joke makes me cringe... not so sure it should stay, touchy subject especially with our rules around here.

Anyways, I thought I should make mention of Daemon Tools as its the most useful thing ever to run your game back-ups from HDD instead of having to find the CD and wait for them to load. Forgot that one.

Missed some
AVG Anti-Virus (free) www.grisoft.com
google bar (blocks pop ups) www.toolbar.google.com

I deleted my other 2 post to keep the clutter down. I would recommend that we all do that so as to keep this thread easy to use and view for high speeders as it is for the 56Kers and the lazy ones who pass on large threads, that is as long as IMOG doesn't mind the grunt work of putting the links in his first post.
If we keep it up this thread could make a good sticky !

google does conversions of all types...

go there and type "234329862 bytes in bits" and it will give you the answer. It will work for almost all conversions.

http://www.google.com/help/features.html#calculator

Bah talked me into it.

Another great media player: Media Player Classic.

No link to it right now, but for Windows users forced to update to WMP9, MPC is almost exactly like the old Media Player (at least the one in Win2K), except it has all kinds of nifty options. Check it out, you won't be disappointed =)


Another proggie for videos: GSpot. Just type GSpot into Google, believe it or not, it is the first result.

This program can tell you what codecs most video files use; just select the file, and it spits out what video, audio, etc is used. I've found it exceedingly useful when trying to play AMVs.

Edit:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=82303&package_id=84358
http://www.divx-digest.com/software/media_player_classic.html
Both are Media Player Classic links

http://www.headbands.com/gspot/
http://www.headbands.com/gspot/download.html
GSpot's homepage, and its download page.

winamp 5 is a good program.
Window Washer is a good program as well.
If**********(edited for imog)************************
---

Does anyone know of a program that runs without Outlook being open and tells you if you got a new email?

Thanks

Zoltan

IMOG said:

Ehhh, that joke makes me cringe... not so sure it should stay, touchy subject especially with our rules around here.

Click to expand...

I remember how the RIAA says the average american can download 5 thousand illegal sounds a day. But what they don't realize is that most americans are still on dial up. That's where I'm poking some fun at. Sorry if I have offended anyone.

Well, anyone who dls 5000songs a day, needs help.

Alright, I'm already a... uh... convert to convert. Me likey mucho.

Another one I forgot is Glass2k. Very small program for controlling window transparency. Neat and tiny. There are also programs written by forum members that do the same thing... Downloadable from threads on here if you search.

Did you just recommend a stardock program in my thread?

/IMOG puts his blue stars on a shelf and takes a swing at lord zoltan

Eww, just typing st**do** makes my fingers burn. Lots of junk comes along with those downloads... Better have your adware definitions up to date.

Is there a freeware that will let those with single monitors enable an application to stay on top?

IMOG said:

/IMOG puts his blue stars on a shelf and takes a swing at lord zoltan

Eww, just typing st**do** makes my fingers burn. Lots of junk comes along with those downloads... Better have your adware definitions up to date.

Click to expand...

Crap i didn tknow that. Sorry Imog. Can you reccomend a better dock?

And also, Glass2k is an excellent program. I love using it.

ps. Editing my previous post. Sorry. lol

Edit: nevermind about the dock. Just installed linux.

Lord_Zoltan said:

Does anyone know of a program that runs without Outlook being open and tells you if you got a new email?

Click to expand...

Why yes, I have just what you are looking for. Mail washer is a free (well it is the kind that you can pay for if you really feel like it) proggie that checks your pop server and tells you what is there. It also supports user modifiable filters, heuristic Spam filtering and blacklisting. f that is not enough, you can connect to the spamcop database and the open relay database for still more spam filtering.

It has a bounce feature that tries to make Spammers think that they have reached a nonexistent mailbox but I never use that one as I don't think that Spammers actually care who they send stuff to.

Once all that is done, you can delete the Spam off of your pop server so that you never even have to see it. Altogether, a handy little bit of shareware.

heat: glass2k also has a function where you can assign a program as always on top, besides allowing you to set the transparency of as many windows as you want.

No problem L_Z, don't worry about it. Just not a stardock fan. But popular docks that I know of are moby dock and y'z dock I think... Both can be downloaded from majorgeeks.

I'm thinking about trying them out myself, haven't yet.

EDIT: MobyDock is sweet in appearance in functionality so far, but there may still be bugs hidden in there. Haven't found any yet. Definetly neat.

IMOG said:

No problem L_Z, don't worry about it. Just not a stardock fan. But popular docks that I know of are moby dock and y'z dock I think... Both can be downloaded from majorgeeks.

I'm thinking about trying them out myself, haven't yet.

EDIT: MobyDock is sweet in appearance in functionality so far, but there may still be bugs hidden in there. Haven't found any yet. Definetly neat.

Click to expand...

no need. running linux now finally said F U MICRO$OFT.

linux > microsoft


~Lz

My suggestions:

IrfanView. Awesome little utility to play around with pictures. Resizes, changes colors, saves in a zillion formats, etc. I highly recomend it!

DOSBox. Got an old DOS game that absolutely refuses to play under XP? This nifty program emulates an entire DOS based system (sound blaster included!) for you. You can speed up or slow down emulation as you like, and is great for playing those classic games on your 1337 system


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

JoT said:

Another great media player: Media Player Classic.

No link to it right now, but for Windows users forced to update to WMP9, MPC is almost exactly like the old Media Player (at least the one in Win2K), except it has all kinds of nifty options. Check it out, you won't be disappointed =)

Click to expand...

I dunno if this is what you're talking about, but XP I know comes with an install of the old media player as well as MP8. On my box it's at: C:\program files\Windows Media Player\mplayer2.exe

Great if you hate the bloat of MP8/MP9.


JigPu