- Joined
- May 2, 2005
- Location
- Seattle, WA
UI enhancements
Hardware monitoring / [over|under]clocking / Benchmarking
System Utilities
Antivirus & Security
Web Browsers
Audio & Video
Miscellaneous
P2P/Filesharing
CD/DVD Burning Software
Imaging browsing/editing
Comments? Suggestions ( Win9x/NT Freeware ONLY!). Would love to hear them.
In my opinion this is exhibit 1 for why Windows trumps Linux and OS X.
It would be great if people could post their own experiences with software on this list, as it will help improve the quality of the list. Don't feel the program has a fair blurb? Write a new one!
- XP TaskswitchPro
A lightweight Alt-Tab replacement. Similar to the XP powertoy only with more useful features. Uses less than 1MiB of system memory!! A must have for productivity.
- Launchy
You don't know how sweet this program is until you try it. It is an ultra-lightweight shortcut (and other filetype if you so choose) indexer. Instead of ferreting through your start menu looking for an application you simply hit ALT+SPACE and then type in a string to find the shortcut.
So to find, for example, the shortcut "Play battlefield 2 now!" You would only have to type "bf2", A must have for power users, I don't know how I lived without it.
- allSnap
This is precisely the program needed to break away from the "FullScreen" application paradigm. Snap windows to screen edges or other windows. Very customizable and fairly lightweight (less than 2 MiB of memory). No longer fumble around trying to tile windows on your display.
- Royale Theme
An update to luna that makes it not suck. Done by microsoft, so you don't even need to use a cracked version of uxtheme.dll.
- RocketDock
If you're a fan of the mac style interface you won't know what you did without this. There are other programs which offer similar features (Yz dock, Stardock objectdock), but none are as stable or lightweight. Personally I am not a fan of the "dock" but those who are love this program.
- MS TweakUI
Absolutely necessary for tailoring the interface to meet your needs. Most people know about this tool, but most of the features it offers are subtle. Auto-Logon on boot (not secure), customization of mouse hot tracking, removal of the annoying "shortcut" graphic overlay, etc.
- StrokeIt
Custom mouse gestures for applications. I like the idea, but will have to use it more before I can definitely say whether it is a must have.
- WinRoll
Emulates a common feature of Linux Desktop Environments, "Roll up", good for a quick peek behind some huge window.
- Sizer
Resize windows to predefined sizes, send to location on screen, etc.
- Hot Key Plus
Bind custom hotkeys to .cpl, .exe or other filetypes. Very nice.
- Taskbar Shuffle
Rearrange items on your taskbar. Not of much use to me, but perhaps to others.
- Vista transformation pack
Makes your XP interface look similar to Vista. Backs up and replaces many system files. Thanks to tenchi86 for this suggestion.
Hardware monitoring / [over|under]clocking / Benchmarking
- Prime 95
Needs no introduction. A great tool to test your system for stability.
- 3dmark 06
The latest iteration in a long line of benchmark sweets by Futuremark. Scores from 05 do not correlate well to 06 (the score calculation algorithm is completely changed) so most use both.
- SuperPI MOD
You can't really talk about CPU performance without this microbenchmark. It is deeply flawed, in the respect that the program's algorithm is very much slower than best-known algorithms for computing Pi and that it doesn't have any sort of strong correlation with cpu performance in gaming/etc. Part of its ubiquity stems from its ease of use and reproducability. There are no configuration options so it is relatively simple to do an across the board comparison.
- Pi Fast
A lesser known but much more efficient pi microbenchmark. Even on my relatively slow 2.6 GHz A64 it is capable of doing 1M digits in ~2.5 seconds, which is over a 3 fold improvement over WR SPi scores (~8.xxx seconds afaik). Is the fastest known program for computing pi to > 160,000,000 significant figures on PCs.
- Stu's QPi
An even lesser known Pi microbenchmark. Even more efficient than Pi Fast for significant digits < 160M. With the default profiling I achieve 1M scores of ~2 seconds, after running the profiler I get 1M scores of ~1.3 seconds. Basically makes SPi (which takes ~33 seconds to 1M on my machine) look like a sick joke. ~32M score is 1 min 44 sec.
- rthdribl
A popular program for testing the stability of video card overclocks. I typically take the old fashioned "play a game and see" approach but some people prefer a more defined method. Shows off some cool lighting effects too.
- CPU-Z
Tells you all kinds of useful information about your processor and system memory.
- CPU Rightmark
Not very useful for overclocking but for notebook machines it is an absolute necessity. Allows you to change the VID/Multiplier tables for mobile cpus, which can add a considerable amount of battery life to your machine and reduce heat output as well. Also has chipset specific options for even more power savings.
- Everest
Provides useful information about your system, and a series of pure synthetic benchmarks. Has a limited number of uses. pseudo-benchmarks do not compare across versions either.
- SiSoft Sandra
A battery of synthetic benchmarks. Has become less popular lately as the results don't compare across versions and don't tell you anything particularly useful about your hardware.
- ATiTool
If you're going to overclock your ATi video card, there doesn't exist any other option. A 1 man reverse engineering crusade, you should be thankful for his endeavors as without them you would be stuck at whatever Overdrive saw fitting to cap your clock rate at. Very featureful, but also very buggy. Sometimes requires a voodoo chicken dance to get it functioning at all. Has very limited functionality on nVidia's cards.
- RivaTuner
The solution to gpu overclocking with nVidia. Very featureful and stable. Development pace is quite slow. Very limited functionality on ATi cards.
- SpeedFan
Needs no introduction to this crowd. It has superceded MBM as the defacto temperature monitor. You want this.
System Utilities
- Process Explorer
This *should* be the default Task Manager. It tells you everything there is to know about your system in a compact and efficient manner. It can replace task manager by going to Options>replace task manager. Awesome utility.
- Windows 2003 Resource Toolkit
If you plan on doing any automation at all on your windows machine this is a must. Works perfectly on Windows XP despite its name. Gives your shell a bare minimum of basic functionality.
- ExplorerXP
A free replacement to explorer. Not much to say. I prefer other non-free program managers but this one is a good alternative for the cost conscious. Lightyears ahead of the default file manager that comes with windows.
- Autoruns
msconfig on steroids. A must have.
- XP Antispy
For the paranoid among us, disables automatic updates and other questionable features built into Windows XP. Thanks to FeuerFrei for this suggestion
- Safe XP
Disables questionable and potentially unsecure features in Windows. Also contains various other system tweaks to improve security or usability. Thanks to UnseenMenace for this suggestion.
- Total Copy
"A great file moving tool. Of course it is freeware and simple.," Thanks to EnablingWolf for this suggestion.
- Unlocker
Can clear file locks/mark file for deletion on reboot. Basically, makes those pesky undeletable files deletable.
Antivirus & Security
- AntiVir Personal Edition
Has scored high on the homebrew antivirus tests here. I use it, and it works well and is relatively non intrusive for an AV program. Only uses about 30 MiB of system memory. Scan speed is decent. It does have a nag-screen on the daily update but it doesn't interrupt your work.
- AVG Antivirus
Can't say I've ever used it but other people like it.
- ClamWin
Yet another antivirus option.
- Avast! Home Edition
A competent AV program. Thanks to TollhouseFrank for this suggestion.
- Kerio Personal Firewall
I've used this program before, and as far as software firewalls go, it is pretty damn good. Much more resource friendly than ZoneAlarm, but I personally can't stand the nagging. If you're paranoid this is probably for you.
- Sygate Personal Firewall
Another option, have never used this one before.
- Comodo Free Firewall
Looks to be a featureful firewall. Integrates into Window security center and looks quite simple to use. "A free efficient firewall," Thanks to FeuerFrei for this suggestion.
- Filseclab Personal Firewall
Yet another option to try for a personal firewall. This one does have some advertisements for other programs this company creates, but they are relatively unobtrusive. Thanks to TollhouseFrank for this suggestion.
- SpywareBlaster
Forgive the cheesy name. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and prevent is precisely what this neat little app does. It creates a blacklist of known bad activeX controls and other nasties waiting to infect your machine when a friend or family member uses it. Utilizes no resources and simple to use.
- Ad Aware
Hardly needs an introduction. One of the better spyware removal programs. A necessary tool in your arsenal if you want to repair a borked windows PC. Thanks to TollHouseFrank for this suggestion.
- Spybot S&D
Complements Ad Aware, absolutely necessary for fixing up a spyware laden pc. Thanks to TollhouseFrank for this suggestion.
- Eraser
Securely deletes files by writing over them several times. Thanks to shadowdr for this suggestion.
- DBAN
A bootable floppy disk that securely wipes an entire disk drive. Useful when disposing of a machine or passing it on to others. Thanks to Adragontattoo for this suggestion.
Web Browsers
- Opera
I don't know how they could make the interface any better.
- Mozilla Firefox
A popular choice. A definite upgrade from some of the more primitive browsers.
- Internet Explorer 7
A huge upgrade from Internet Explorer 6.
Audio & Video
- Foobar 2000
The best audio player for windows, hands down.
- Winamp
A popular choice as an audio player. It's pretty.
- CCCP
A newer codec pack, seems to have better compatibility than KLite. Thanks to G-PHoRCe for this one
- Media Player Classic
My personal choice for a video player. Easily configured to do what you want it to.
- Audacity
A featureful sound editor. "Does pretty much everything when it comes to audio," Thanks to FeuerFrei & baylord for this suggestion.
- tranzcode
"It seperates 6 channel DTS files into 6 mono WAV files. It does this VERY well and very fast.," thanks to jimmsch for this.
- CDex
A fully featured CD audio extractor. "Rips Audio CDs - Access to CDDB database," Thanks to FeuerFrei for this suggestion.
- EAC
Another CD-DA extractor. The workflow in this program is great and it produces the best possible rip quality. My personal choice for a CD ripper.
- VLC Media Player
Lightweight multimedia player. Thanks to FeuerFrei for this suggestion
- Burnatonce
A simple cd burning application, main nicety is that it supports FLAC. Thanks to matva for this suggestion.
Miscellaneous
- Miranda IM
Connects to all networks (jabber, aim, icq, msn, yahoo, irc). Not much of a looker but it gets the job done and has some useful features.
- Nokia Monitor Test
A program which is quickly becoming irrelevant due to the planned obsolesence of CRTs. Contains a battery of tests which are useful for calibrating focus/convergence/geometry on a display (these are never issues on a LCD) among other useful features.
- Undead Pixel
Great for spotting dead/stuck pixels on a LCD, and even has a utility which occasionally fixes a stuck pixel. Thanks to mbigna for this suggestion.
- Fraps
A nice frame counter for directX.
- Rainlendar Lite
A quirky but thoroughly useful calendar application.
- FoxIT PDF Reader
We all know Adobe Acrobat is a spawn of satan. This takes care of that nasty little problem. Small, lightweight.
- PDFCreator
A virtual printer for creating PDF documents. Extremely useful. "plugin for windows that allows you to 'print' any document to a virtual printer that in turn, creates a PDF file." Thanks to TollhouseFrank for this suggestion.
- Hamachi
A great tool for making a VPN.
- CCleaner
The best cruft cleaner out there. I don't recommend clearing out your primary browsers cache/cookies (just an inconvenience to you). Also, absolutely do not let it delete your prefetch data, will only slow your machine down. Aside from those caveats this makes for a great all purpose temp file deleter.
- Ext2 Filesystem driver
Reads Ext2/3 and writes Ext2 (can write to Ext3 as well but it isn't journal aware). A must have if you dual boot. I've tried the other ext for windows filesystem driver and it has corrupted data on my ext2/3 partitions when I hibernate my windows machine. This one works great though.
- PuTTy
A very popular SSH/Telnet client.
- WinSCP
An awesome and very configurable SFTP/SCP GUI.
- OpenOffice
The only "alternative" to Microsoft Office. Is adequate for performing the majority of tasks one would undertake with MS Office, but at no cost. Thanks to FeuerFrei for this suggestion.
- 7-zip
Reads all common compression archive formats. Thanks to icedragn for this suggestion
- ZipGenius
"very nice GUI compression tool with nice features," Thanks to UnseenMenace for this suggestion.
- CoreTemp
Monitors CPU temperature, widely acclaimed as "most accurate." Thanks to FeuerFrei for this suggestion.
- Driver Cleaner PRO
The best solution for eradicating old drivers lurking in your sytem. Thanks to albynomonk for this suggestion.
- nLite
"allows you to merge updates and hotfixes and all kinds of other stuff to make your own personalized windows install cd," Thanks to TollhouseFrank for this suggestion.
- BartPE
Great for rescuing spyware infected pcs or doing simple data recovery, similar to Knoppix, only it is based on the Windows Preinstallation Environment.
- Namu6
Free html editor, wysiwyg editor. found it last night browsing, nothing fancy, but it works, does the job and it's easy, thanks to cornbread for this suggestion.
- Nvu
A freeware WYSIWYG web development suite (like dreamweaver). Thanks to UnseenMenace for this suggestion.
- GetDiz
Useful little tool for viewing *.nfo and *.diz as they were meant to be used.
- Synergy
"Synergy is a great lightweight program for sharing a keyboard and mouse between two computers that are next to each other. It works with more than one monitor per computer as well," thanks to grumperfish for this suggestion.
P2P/Filesharing
- CoreFTP
"Free efficient FTP, not as good as WS, but it's free!" thanks to FeuerFrei for this suggestion.
- Azureus
A big bloated torrent program. Has everything including the kitchen sink. Despite its enormous memory footprint (sometimes exceeding 100 MB) I still prefer it. Many of its features simply don't exist in other Torrent programs.
- uTorrent
A very small and compact torrenting program for Windows. Do not let it's size decieve you, it is very featureful. "Small, Fast, Reliable, uses next to no RAM and I have yet to see it crash," Thanks to FeuerFrei for this suggestion.
- BitComet
One of the first torrent programs, has a healthy featureset. Thanks to Neur0mancer for this suggestion.
- QNext
A featureful P2P program. Not just for filesharing! Also has remote desktop and messaging capabilities. Thanks to Neur0mancer for this suggestion.
CD/DVD Burning Software
- CDBurnerXP
A great replacement for Nero. For all your DVD/CD needs.
- DVD Shrink
A great tool for ripping dvd-video discs. Thanks to AngelfireUk83 for this suggestion.
- DVD Fab Decryptor
For ripping dvd-video to your hard disk. (nagware?) Thanks to AngelfireUk83 for this suggestion.
- ImgBurn
Burns most DVD/CD image formats. Thanks to Neur0mancer for this suggestion
- Handbrake for Windows
The quintessential DVD ripping tool for OS X has been ported to Windows. Great for making videos for your iPod. Needs to be paired with a CSS Decryptor. Thanks to eli for this suggestion.
- Daemon Tools
WARNING: optional adware install, deselect during installation (typically *AFTER* you reboot).
The standard in drive emulation. Paired with mini images makes for a great alternative to rummaging through disks to play games.
Imaging browsing/editing
- IrfanView
Awesome image editor reads nearly all formats (even CRW & CR2), has good resize filters, intelligent cropping, etc... lightweight. Meant for simple operations on images (rename, resize, crop, tag, convert, etc.).
- Paint.NET
Fully featured editor. Similar to photoshop, only it is free (opensource).
- GIMP for Windows
A popular choice on linux, more mature and more featureful than paint.NET although GTK on windows is like using a Humvee as a boat. Still a great choice if you're looking for something more powerful than paint.NET. Thanks to icedragn for this suggestion.
- Picasa
Google's image browser. It is like Adobe bridge, only better, and free!
Comments? Suggestions ( Win9x/NT Freeware ONLY!). Would love to hear them.
In my opinion this is exhibit 1 for why Windows trumps Linux and OS X.
It would be great if people could post their own experiences with software on this list, as it will help improve the quality of the list. Don't feel the program has a fair blurb? Write a new one!
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