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| Technology & Technical Skills Computer skills, hardware, software, internet topics, gadgets, programming |
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05-06-2008, 01:41 PM
| #1 (permalink) |
| Member Join Date: Dec 2007
Posts: 32
 |  Recommended Software
hey guys, im just interested in getting some useful software/Programs, do you guys reccomend anything? just software which you guys found very useful. absolutely anything. i found this alarm clock sofware very useful, Citrus Alarm Clock: Alarm Clock Software its a free trial actually but its great. Thanks in advance. |
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05-07-2008, 06:52 PM
| #3 (permalink) |
| Senior Member Join Date: May 2008
Posts: 100
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Hopefully it's not too early for a shameless plug.  But, my company has a note-taking program called NoteScribe, which yes, we did create, but I use it every day for keeping all of my sales and marketing together. It's really convenient if you need something to help keep your school, business, or home notes organized. A lot of our friends are using it in undergrad and grad school, and a lot of business folks have bought it in the last few months. Anyways, give it a try and see what you think. Again, sorry for the shameless plug so early into my tenure hear! |
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05-07-2008, 08:01 PM
| #4 (permalink) |
| Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2006
Posts: 336
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Software I use on a regular basis(mostly freeware): -Firefox 1.5 + HTML Validator/Search Status/Web Developer -- Probably the best browser for web development and good for general use also. They keep changing the UI in the other versions so I'm staying with 1.5. -Proxomitron -- Web filter which can block ads, etc. Will work on any browser that can use a proxy. -Winamp -- My music player of choice due to its small size(seriously, why would I want a media player that takes up the entire screen?) and vertical design. Probably has the best format/output support of any media player. -ATI Tray Tools & Omega Driver -- Alternative driver for many ATI cards. -FileZilla Client -- My favorite FTP client. -DosBox -- DOS emulator for playing old DOS games. -Paint Shop Pro 9 -- Cheapish image editor with lots of functionality. -Dev-Cpp & MinGW -- C++ IDE and compiler. I use Dev-Cpp for other things too because I like the interface. Remember to download a new copy of MinGW since Dev-Cpp is kind of a dead project. -Media Player Classic -- My video player of choice. Like Winamp it's simple and easy to use. Has problems with file association though. System admin tools(freeware): -Process Explorer -- 10x better than Windows's crappy task manager. -Regmon & Filemon -- Monitor registry/file access. -Startup Tool -- Removes extra startup entries. -TweakUI -- Basically changes around parts of the Windows UI. -SelfImage -- Backs up hard disks or partitions and can restore them. -Resource Hacker -- Changes the images/text used in Windows GUI applications. -7Zip -- My favorite archiver. -XVI32 -- My hex editor of choice. Also, it's not really software but I load all of my startup programs from a batch file with a 200-500ms delay between programs to make startup quick(a few seconds in total). I use a custom program to actually make the delay... |
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05-13-2008, 04:40 AM
| #9 (permalink) |
| Senior Member Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: USA
Posts: 323
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My absolute favorite text editor is the free NoteTab Light. I use it constantly, probably more than any other program. It has tabs like Firefox, and a wonderful feature called the Clipbook, which can be used for such simple purposes as pasting in a piece of text you type in frequently, or, you can actually program it to do much more complex tasks using the Clip programming language. ShortKeys Lite is a handy little program for making shortcut keystrokes for strings of text you type frequently, or the current date/time, etc. My favorite web browser is Opera, even though I also use Firefox and even Internet Explorer 6 at times. BrowserTraySwitch allows you to quickly and easily switch between your default web browsers. This is useful for such things as quickly and easily making it so that when you double-click on an HTML file, it will open in the default web browser you selected. UrlHistory - "Watches the clipboard for web addresses and saves them with a comment." Makes it easy to save URLs. There are plenty of other useful little programs on the same page, but I use UrlHistory most often. For what little audio editing and audio recording I need to do, I use Audacity. WinJammer Shareware is the only MIDI software I've found for Windows that I can stand to use. PKVolume is a little hovering volume bar with which you can easily change the audio volume whenever you want. Skype is an internet phone service. It's free to call other Skype users. Hopefully it won't crash your computer - I tried to upgrade to the new version but it crashes my computer, and I didn't keep any installers for the old versions, so now I don't have Skype anymore. Fortunately, I never used Skype that much, so, I don't miss it. Paint.NET is a paint program which I haven't used very much (just haven't had any reason to), but I tried it a while back and remember liking it. A really fun paint program is Art Rage 2. It's probably even more fun if, unlike me, you can actually paint well... POV-Ray - short for "Persistence of Vision Raytracer". I haven't used this very much, since I'm not really into making graphical stuff, but, with this, you can type in some textual source code describing what kind of objects you want displayed and where they should be located, what kind of light source you want and where it should be, etc., and end up with very neat-looking 3D scenes based precisely on what you input. Celestia - "The free space simulation that lets you explore our universe in three dimensions". Google Earth, a program where you can zoom around the Earth looking at actual satellite imagery of various places. Astrolog 5.40 - my favorite free astrology software, at least which is for Windows. Second Life is a massive multiplayer online virtual world. Basic user accounts are free. It has 3D graphics, nice, intuitive 3D building tools, and its own programming language, LSL (Linden Scripting Language). Second Life also has its own "virtual" economy, a currency called the Linden $ (L$), which can actually be exchanged for real money. I think Second Life actually has the best instant online payment system currently in existence - better than both PayPal and credit cards, due to the lack of fees on any transaction within Second Life, and the fact that you don't have to worry about chargebacks or a transaction being disputed or anything like that, since all transactions are final (unless I'm mistaken). Entropia Universe is another massive multiplayer online virtual world, with much nicer graphics than Second Life, but it's not as customizeable (for instance, you can't change your avatar's appearance on a whim), and it's more like a standard roleplaying game. It too has a "virtual" economy. But, sadly, there are big fees if you want to cash out your money, and it's a lot harder to make any money. The most fun thing about EU for me is just walking around taking pictures - the graphics are so great it's not hard to take some really desktop wallpaper-worthy pictures. Fraps - screenshot software you can use with Second Life and Entropia Universe, and other programs. Perl, a really useful programming language. The Perl distribution for Windows is called ActivePerl, and it's available as a free download. Even short scripts written in it can do remarkably useful things. Inform, "a design system for interactive fiction". Another programming language. It's intended for creating text adventure games, but can be used for other purposes. xampp - "an easy to install Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP and Perl". Web server software/offline development environment which is useful if you want to develop PHP/MySQL stuff on your own computer without having to upload stuff to your web server to test it. I assume it's probably a good idea to take security precautions when running it whilst connected to the internet, unless you actually want to serve web pages from your computer to the internet. I also like some things others have mentioned already - Gimp, Winamp, WinRAR, and Spybot. Haven't tried or used most of the other programs mentioned but they sound interesting. Thanks, everyone. |
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05-13-2008, 05:15 AM
| #10 (permalink) |
| Member Join Date: Dec 2007
Posts: 32
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thanks guys... interesting stuff... by the way, anyone know a goood VIDEO converting software? which converts videos into most formats..???? and is free?  unless there is a free trial.also, any good reccomended audio converting software.? free, most formats supported etc... any nice anti viruses?... also, any good downloading programmes like bearshare, or kazaa, but SAFE? hm... thanks in advance. |
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05-13-2008, 02:17 PM
| #11 (permalink) | |||
| Senior Member Join Date: May 2008
Posts: 144
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More useful and free stuff: Abiword, alternative to MS Word CCleaner, clean crap on your HD DiskeeperLite, faster defrag tool for your HD EphPod, please replace iTunes IEmaximizer, maximizes new IE windows automatically IZarc, archiving tool MP3Tag, easy to use MP3 tag tool PixSizer, resize your photos SyncBack, backup tool VLC player, alternative to mediaplayer WinAmp, unbeatable champ Enjoy Edit: in the antispyware camp there is: spywareblaster, spybot s&d and ad-aware. Last edited by moriez; 05-13-2008 at 02:25 PM. | |||
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05-13-2008, 05:07 PM
| #12 (permalink) |
| Member Join Date: May 2008
Posts: 36
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There are a few that you guys missed that I find invaluable: Visual Studio 2008 Express editions, invaluable for software development, whether you're doing .NET or C++ work. VMWare Player, you can run many different types of preconfigured virtual machines and use it to test out any of your software development without affecting your host OS. Tortoise SVN, lets you track each and every revision you make to any file you tell it to. Great for when you make a change and later on you want to revert/undo that change because you think you messed up somewhere and want to go back to a good version. Filezilla, quickly and painlessly upload all your files to your webhost so you can get your website up and running faster. |
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05-14-2008, 07:53 PM
| #13 (permalink) |
| Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2008
Posts: 140
| AAA Logo - very fun logo-making software....very user-friendly. I highly recommend. MagicISO - make ISO images of your DVDs/CDs. Magic Disk - mount virtual DVD drives (allows you to simulate DVD drive)....its like having multiple DVD drives on your system. Then you can mount ISO images. VMware - allows you to run an Operating System inside an Operating System virtually. Norton Ghost - allows you to image your hard drive...great for backups! Acronis True Image - allows you to image your hard drive...great for backups! Last edited by MrNotebook; 05-14-2008 at 07:58 PM. |
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05-16-2008, 08:13 PM
| #15 (permalink) | |
| Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2006
Posts: 336
| Quote:
Winamp can read almost any format and also has a crappy converting interface that works. Foobar2000 can do batch conversions better than Winamp. Spybot and Ad-Aware are the two recommended for antiviruses but I would just not bother with an antivirus. Get a hardware firewall/router and learn to not be stupid. I use uTorrent... Many torrent sites have an active community with comments, etc, and are pretty safe from viruses if that's what you meant(if not then uTorrent is safe and can be configured to be more safe if you're paranoid). | |
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05-24-2008, 05:07 PM
| #16 (permalink) |
| Love in Action (Mod) Join Date: May 2008 Location: Ohio
Posts: 2,527
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Text editing PSPad it supports multiple programming languages, though I usually just use it for plain text, HTML, or anything that I don't have a specific program for editing. FTP FileZilla The only FTP program I will use. I use a screen reader also since I'm blind, and I find that this is one of the only FTP programs that works perfectly with the screen reader software. Budgeting and money management You Need A Budget Before using this, I was using another program made specifically for blind people. it worked very well for me for about a year. However, I found a link to YNAB in someone's signature here I think, or maybe it was just in a post. either way, I tried it out and like it much better than what I was using. It's not as accessible, but I've been using the computer for so long that I can usually navigate my way around anything. I'm using the pro version. I'm not in debt, but still find it useful, and especially good if you follow the four rules they discuss. Well I'm wrong. I'll be in debt once I get this student loan, lol. Audio conversion Switch Sound File Converter I do a lot of recording, especially of my piano lessons, but the digital recorder I use uses WMA format. I wanted MP3, since I have all these files on my blog within my practice journal, and MP3 is the most widely supported format. Switch supports many, many other formats, though. Programming Visual Studio I do a lot of programming in C# and use ASP.NET for making Web sites. Obviously this is the only way to go for a .NET developer. I currently have Visual Studio 2005, but am looking to upgrade to 2008 soon. Proxy HTTP Tunnel Once I went to college last year, I quickly found the need for this program. They limit bandwidth on certain ports, which made some tasks very slow, such as IM (especially MSN), SSH, or anything not on the common ports like 80, 110, 25, etc. It just tunnels everything through HTTP. Music ITunes The most inaccessible software known to man (luckily I found software for making my screen reader work better with it), but still my favorite for playing music. Chess KChess Elite This program lets you play chess against the computer or another player. It's very nice for me because it speaks the positions and moves. Recording and Audio Editing Audacity It's not often I record from my computer, but if I would, I would use Audacity. Password storage Password Safe I started using this program in March. Previous to this, I either used the same password if I was too lazy to come up with a unique one, or would store all my unique ones in a plain text file on my computer.  However, this makes it much easier. It is encrypted, so the passwords are safe, and it is very easy to create new passwords. My default password is 77 characters long with letters, numbers, and symbols. If it is too long for a certain site, I use their maximum length. Some don't even allow symbols so I sometimes have to cut those out. It also has an option to only allow readable characters (no mixing up 0's and o's, for example). You can also set an expiration for your passwords so that you can periodically change them.Instant Message Trillian Again not the most accessible, but I manage. It lets you add screen names from AIM, MSN, Yahoo, and ICQ, and has an IRC option though it's not my preferred method for connecting to IRC. File Compression WinRAR My preferred tool for extracting compressed files such as zip, tar.gz, etc. Has anyone noticed that the trial never quite runs out?  IRC mIRC I rarely connect to IRC anymore, but when I do, I use mIRC. Another one where the trial never quite expires. Last edited by pianoperformer; 05-24-2008 at 05:10 PM. |
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05-24-2008, 05:24 PM
| #17 (permalink) |
| Family Member Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Raleigh, NC
Posts: 1,031
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Windows Media Center. Revolutionized my TV watching. Beats the heck out of a regular DVR. Constantly being reborn. Gets better every week. Ultimate storage and access to all of my media, music, photos, vids in any room of my house. The Green Button - Your Media Center Community Jennifer |
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