While spending alot of time on your pc am sure that there are lil proggies which are downloaded and installed only to be binned the next day or sit gathering virtual dust....
but there are some which you may come across which soon become firm fav and are always present on your HD....some maybe not used for days, weeks or months but always there cause you can't do without them and you always know they will come in handy. Everyone has lil proggies like these you might have come across purely by accident...some maybe more main stream but after a format (like i recently had to do....inspiring me to write this post) you can be sure they will be the first proggies that are reinstalled on your machine.
Heres a quick list of some of mine...many am sure alot of you will already have but maybe a few you aint come across yet - never know could introduce someone else to a firm fav as well :)
- Irfanview : An image viewer but so much more. Can view almost any file type from the usual .jpg to more many more obsecure image file types. Also incorporates a slideshow function where you can save your show to .src or .exe and a batch conversion utility which i have found flawless. This all bundled together with some basic image editing tools. Ok this may seem like quite enough for one lil exe but it also has the added feature of allowing plugins - just some of the ones on offer on the site are
this is a very small sample....ohhh and did i mention its logo is what appears to be a cartoon runover cat?? ok not the most pleasent of things but def differentQuote:
SOUND_PLAYER - (version 3.80): allows IrfanView to play OGG files (Ogg Vorbis)
VIDEO - (version 3.80): allows IrfanView to play video/sound files (AVI, MPG/MPEG, WAV, MOV, MID/RMI, AIF, AU/SND, WMA, WMV)
WAD - (version 3.70): allows IrfanView to read WAD3 game files
- Winamp : An old fav and IMHO still one of the best even if number 3 is a bit resource hungry. Fully skinable mp3 player with a wealth of other functions....video play back etc Oh but one thing thats nice about V3 is the media library which organises your mp3 collection for easy searching.
- Winrar : Windows compression tool - very similiar to winzip but able to decompress .zip .rar .tar files (as well as .CAB, .ARJ, .LZH, .GZ, .ACE, .UUE, .BZ2, .JAR, .ISO) esential if you download alot as nearly everything is compressed some way.
- File Renamer : A simple little utility that lets you rename file series's - handy if like me you have alot of shots named like image00001.jpg etc and are including them in a webpage....is alot easier to remember that files clubxxx.jpg are form inside the noghtclub and outsidexxx.jpg is outside the nightclub than image0001 to 0127 are inside and 0128 up are outside.....
- KazzaLite : p2p trading software.....the blurb on the site says it all
Quote:
Kazza Lite is a peer-to-Peer File sharing application that does not contain any 'Spyware'. In actual fact it is a modified version of the very popular Kazza Media Desktop
- Mirc : The daddy of all chat proggies. No thrills, no fancyness and thank god no emoticons like the annoying msn ones....also home of the almighty /me command as in
*valhallen slaps msn around a bit with a large trout- Divx Video Bundle : Bundle of video playback codecs a must have if you d/load anything movies (non-copyrighted of course) to watch.
- Download Accelerator : A quality downloader manager - not something i had to use much when was on cable but when was stuck with 33.6 I adored this piece of software....am not to sure if it really speeds up your connection that much but its resume function is quality.
- Acrobat Reader : Enables you to read .pdf documents which is becoming the standard for online instruction manuals etc
- cuteFTP : The first program on the list that aint free to use but it does offer a 30 day trial and is one of the easiest ftp prog to get to grips with but then again there are just as good free ftp progs, WS_ftp
- [url=http://www.opera.com[/url] : One of the best browsers around and free to download if you dont mind the banner or you can pay and have it removed. Has built in features like pop-up blocker etc and my personal fav mouse shortcuts. Hold your right mouse key down move the mouse in a preset direction and it performs a function. see here for full blurb about it
- CoffeeCup HTML editor : ok so most hardcore html coders will tell you that all you need is notepad which is true but coffeecup has a couple of nice features - colored highlighting of html tags and being instantly able to see any changes you have made as well as identing text are the reasons why i use it....one of the user opinions on downloads.com says it best...
but on the other hand of the other raters didn't find it as appealingQuote:
To me, Coffee Cup is pretty easy. I like being able to edit my pages & see it happen in an instant. But it certainly helps if you already know html
I dont think it is at all hard to use as long as you know html as it isn't a wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) builder.Quote:
"Must be for expert NERD's.."
Hard to use not for beginner
- Trillian : For all the chat enthusiasts this is a good send combining ICQ, AIM, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger and IRC in one proggie no more having to jump around to different windows while everything beeps at you.....also their fight against aol has to be admired ;)
everytime aol would try to block people using trillian from being able to talk to people on AIM they would release another patch to find away round it.....only thing tho when i installed it on my g/f machine for her it mixed up my msn buddy list and hers ? not completly but people from hers appeared on mine and people from mine appeared on hers - not everyone from each list just some (lucky [email protected] didn't find its way onto her list >_< j/k)- Windows Blinds : Ok now this one the jury is still out on....it allows you to change a hell of alot about windows appearance (even giving you a third option instead of minimise/maximise you can roll the windows up like on a mac which i like) but it always runs sluggish on my machine and causes too many errors - but i think thats more the machines fault than the proggies as it runs fine on friends more to up-to-date machine without giving him any probs - it is however another shareware proggie so unless you buy it you get bugged with a splash screen everytime you startup
ok well thats the first lot that come to mind - please feel free to add your own to the list am always on the look out for handy progs - i know this list is on the short side when it comes to security progs but i find where they are concerned its better to actual fork over the bucks ;) tho as you have prob read in many dif posts there are a wealth of free firewalls, trojan scanners out there - just search the forums and you'll see what i mean as there has been already been several discussions about which are best hence why i didn't include any of the free ones in here
hope someone finds something in this list they havn't seen before and they like
v_Ln
just thought i would add as well 2 good resources for free/shareware proggies
downloads.com & tucows
happy downloading
