The Applications and Utilities thread

The purpose of this new thread is for everyone to post applications and utilities for any OS, be it Windows, MacOS or Linux.

You can also post stuff for smartphones, just make it clear which platform runs it.

Anyway, here's my contribution the Windows Aqua Dock

 

MOve this to the PC support forum. Looks like it is better suited there, than here.

 

I've always preffered RKLauncher and FlyakiteOSX theme modification for XP...surprisingly it runs slighty faster than default xp for me.

Best software i can give: NHML

Released as freeware, the Nascar Heat Mod Launcher combines the core NH engine, to support any and all mods for NH, Currently there is over 100 mods and 200+ tracks.....From F1 at Nubering to Power boat racing, NHML is anything but a nascar racer....simply put...best freeware game i've ever seen...even today we're still working on different mods!

Get it at: www.TheModSquad.uni.cc


Cheers

Ryan
P.S. someone move this to the comp section!

 

Maybe, but only mods can move thread you know...

 

He put this in "Off-topic" because it's something a larger number of people might want to discuss. It's not a troubleshooting thread, like what the computer support forum is for.

To contribute, I use Launchy (www.launchy.net). I've eliminated desktop icons with this program. Type in whatever program you want to execute and Launches finds it (as long as there's a link). Newer versions can pull up websites, do Google searches, etc. It uses relatively little RAM as well; much less than Slickrun, which loved to gobble my laptops memory.

 

My contribution:

SIW - System Information for Windows

Does what it says, brilliantly. Doesn't need installation, works off a usb device, ...

The home version is freeware. Download here: http://www.gtopala.com/

 

im all for freeware and open source software, especially anything to relive from the bloatedness of MS

a few favorites of mine are

Openoffice
Process explorer
Firefox / Thunderbird
QCD mp3 player
Gimp Photo editor
VLC for movie playback (although also use mediaplayer classic)

 

VLC is pretty good but its giving me troubles lately, and thunderbird is the best but I dont use POP3 mail since I got gmail in early 2004 (a friend of a friend worked in google and got me an invite).

Honestly I gotta install ubuntu and beryl, that thing is light years beyond windows.

Too bad I have nearly 500GB of data and no way to make backups, unless I get a truckload of DVDRs and spend an entire week burning 'em...

 

Gmail invites were easy to find when it started, there were websites dedicated to it. And you can still pull the mail into Thunderbird..

Instead of buying DVDrs, just buy another HDD ;P

 

Yeah I know, but what the heck, Gmail's UI is pretty good nonetheless...

About the HDD, I was going to get a couple external ones but I'm outta cash. I may get enough money next week.

 

I know i'm getting off-topic, but anyone knows if those USB Portable HDDs are any good?

Like this one, WD Passport:
http://www.wdc.com/pt/products/Products.asp?DriveID=317

I'm planning on getting a 120GB to do backups of all my stuff.

 

The secrets section in that software just scared the crap out of me...

 

I use a bunch of them for just that purpose. I hook 'em up to NAS boxes & run automated backups over my network. What's really nice is that it's pretty easy to periodically swap out the HDDs (for a further backup & when you need to use bigger HDDs).

The things I tend to check for are:
Cooling - will the case dissapate heat well?
Max supported HDD size - many of the earlier cases had (often unpublished) limitations on the size of HDD supported - which was particularly nasty, since you wouldn't know about the limitation until you exceeded it & your FAT got mangled...

Since I believe that the Passport is a 2.5" laptop drive & it comes with 120Gb prefitted, neither of these issues should affect you, though.

 

Get an external one, either firewire or RAID.

USB is slow, and those portable ones are mostly laptop ones with 5400RPM or less, which only makes it slower...

 

As long as both drive & PC are USB 2.0, the speed should be fast enough for archiving purposes. 5400 RPM drives also have the advantage of usually generating less heat.

 

Opera Browser - http://www.opera.com/
Thunderbird - http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/
uTorrent - http://www.utorrent.com/
Audacity - http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
CCleaner - http://www.ccleaner.com/
Paint.NET - http://www.getpaint.net/

Theres lots of awesome stuff!

 

I recommend you just buy an enclosure and a laptop hard drive. I'm pretty sure it comes out cheaper, and if something messes up you can replace the drive instead of having to replace the enclosure as well.

Of course buying an already-made external drive may be more convenient for you, so whatever works best for you :nod:

More thread-related goods: I use foobar2000 to play and organize my music library. It uses very little memory (right now it's using 4,000kb minimized to the taskbar, while playing music), although it is quite basic. There are plugins to customize the program to your heart's content.

ZoneAlarm works very well for me. I'll admit I don't have any experience with other firewalls (save for Window's built-in option), but I haven't really felt like my firewall "experience" was lacking in any way, so there's been no reason to change.

I really don't understand why a lot of people pay for software when the (legally) free alternatives are usually superior.

Edit: PhreQuencY's post was awesome (except I don't use Opera or Thunderbird). The Paint.NET suggestion reminded me of ArtRage (link). Think of oil painting but with your mouse cursor, or tablet if you happen to own one. I've spent plenty of hours just messing with this one. One thing though; the "free" version is limited in some ways, but nothing that really hinders the program too much. If you like the program you can pay for the full version which is ridiculously cheap ($25).

 

The only thing I would pay for is a good antivirus, since the free ones like AVG, while better than the likes of Norton, are no match for more advanced ones like kaspersky or Nod32.

About firewalls, I stopped wasting memory on those when I got a router with one built-in.

RAID is very fast, and Firewire is faster than USB, so I cant think of a better option for making fast backups.

Unless of course you have all the time in the world:lol:

 

Well, I recommend Irfanview any day of the week. I remember using ACdsee, and then I found out it was shareware, and I needed something simple and easy (and something I could use all the time). And then I saw irfanview on a CD I had, and began using it. And well I have never looked back to any other program ever since when I wanted a viewing program of pictures.

IrfanView - Official Homepage - one of the most popular viewers worldwide

 

i recomend Portableapps for any usb memory device as there are lots of useful progams like thunderbid Pidgin IM and such which cn be run from any computer without installing them or leaving anything on the HDD

great for checking my normal non web email in college or at friends or having firefox with my bookmarks and stuff

http://portableapps.com/