Essential Software

[amp88]

This is a common topic in a lot of forums. People list what software they "couldn't live without". It's a good idea because reading through a list of what other people use can get you thinking about the software you use. Alternatives to packages you use or new things altogether.

When you reply please add some detail. A link to a relevant website and/or a description of what the application does and why you use it would be appreciated. Thanks.

Operating System
Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bit - I need a Windows platform for my main computer to support all the hardware I have and because this PC is used by other members of the family.

Security
Nod32 - All in one security suite. Anti virus, firewall and spyware protection. Very easy to use, fast scanning, low resource footprint.
Spybot - Search & Destroy - Anti malware tool. Constantly updated, fast scanning and fairly comprehensive.

Productivity
Windows Office - The almost ubiqutous office suite. It's basically the standard so you're almost forced into it. Open Office is a very good alternative but it doesn't have 100% compatability with Office.
Eclipse - Java based IDE (for programming). Massively powerful, easy to use and setup. Provides great aids when programming (especially with mundane tasks).
Java 1.6 JDK - Necessary for programming in the Java language.
RealVNC - VNC client used for remote adminstering or problem solving of remote machines. An invaluable tool.

Other
LFS - ...
Mozilla Firefox - No explanation necessary.
Quinnware QCD Player - MP3 player. Very lightweight, many features and non obtrusive.
K Lite Codec Pack - Codec pack containing codecs and tools for almost every file format you could care to mention.
Media Player Classic - Included within the K Lite Codec Pack but worth a mention anyway. Very lightweight version of Windows Media Player - no media library or built in browser clutter.
VLC (VideoLan) Player - Powerful media player with inbuilt codecs. Plays anything MPC doesn't and has better seeking facilities for incomplete/corrupted files.
Filezilla FTP Client - Full featured FTP client. Reliable, easy to use and good for exporting/importing host details across machines.
mIRC - IRC client for Windows. It's good to talk.
Newsbin - Binary newsgroup client. Takes the hassle out of binary newsgroups.
AutoGK - Tool to convert DVD video to AVI. Easy to use, hides the complexity behind the scenes.
TeamSpeak - For speaking to the team
NERO Burning ROM - Most powerful tool for burning/converting media.
Recuva - Useful tool for recovering files when you accidentaly delete them.
WinDirStat - Gives a quick picture of what is taking up room on HDDs.
Logitech Profiler - Without this my G25 wouldn't work.

[UncleBenny]

For anyone with multiple monitors: UltraMon: Adds a lot of functionality for handling multiple monitors for Windows: allows for dragging fullscreen windows between monitors, separate desktops for each monitor, a seperate windows taskbar for each, etc.

Pidgin: Nice free, open source(?) chat program, handles all your major messaging networks.

[Scatter]

Computer Maintenance:
Smart Defrag - Defragments and optimizes your HDD by organizing files by how often you access them. Also auto-defrags and schedules defrags.

Ccleaner - Thorough disk cleanup, registry cleanup, and software uninstaller.

Audio-video software:
Cole2k Codec Packs - A large codec pack that lets me play almost everything, encode into other things, etc. Ffdshow is my favorite because it allows me to play almost everything and does frame capturing for whatever I play in any media player that uses ffdshow.

Guitar Pro - Score-writing software and in my opinion, the best one. Cousin's gift to me. Cost = $60. A free alternative is Tux Guitar.

Audacity - One of the most powerful recording software I've laid my mouse on, considering that it's free.

Games:
America's Army - A "simulation" of what it is like to be in the US Army. Made by the US Army, for the US Army and public, and it's free. I'm currently signing up for the Version 3 beta.

Counter-strike - If America's Army is LFS, then Counter-strike is NFS. Fast, easy-ish, fun, and popular.

[chanoman315]

Games:
F1 Challenge



Security:
Any


Music:
iTunes
Limewire

Other:
MSN
Mozilla FF
BitComet

[dawesdust_12]

BitComet sucks, get uTorrent.

[Becky Rose]

iTunes - Music is my life, and my iTunes libary is the only thing in Beckyworld that is organised

MSN Messenger - Chatting occupies the rest of my life

Paintshop Pro - Photoshop just does not work for my brain, I keep meening to write an art program that works the way I want it too, but I never will

Firebug - Debugging web pages, the gospel of web development

SVN - File versioning for developers, how did I ever manage without

Deep Exploration - I keep trying not to use it because my lifetime update licence got bought out by new owners and is frozen on an old version now, but I keep failing

BlitzMax - Rapid development, powerful, versatile, multi-platform, fast

Xampp - Web server, mySQL server, php support - all made nice and easy. Makes installing Apache almost tolerable.


Software I could do without

Internet Explorer - The bain of my life, impossible to debug

Opera - It might conform to CSS standards, but if nobody else does and 0.6% of the market use it then it's not a standard

Windows firewall - turns itself on when I fiddle with my system, it should know by now that I dont need it

Linux - Pain in the smegging smeg recepticle, how can it be the future when it's based on a 1970's concept of an OS? Why do [other] techies like it? Why are there arguments over pronounciation when I speak like the Queen, dammit. Why does compiling an app on Linux involve acts of wild desperation, googling, and random guess work via trial and error and still result in inexplicable failure.

[Bob Smith]

Originally Posted by amp88

AutoGK - Tool to convert DVD video to AVI. Easy to use, hides the complexity behind the scenes.

You know I've tried this and hate it. Even the most basic functions are buried in hidden menus and without doing the comperessibility test, how do I know what filesize is best to use? Automatically reducing resolution down from DVD levels seems so backwards in a world going hi-def. While not as user friendly, with the original GordianKnot I can actually get done what I want, how I want it, and it's still a thousand times easier than doing it all manually.

Originally Posted by amp88

NERO Burning ROM - Most powerful tool for burning/converting media.

You should make a note it's become massive bloatware the last few versions. I gave up after trying out the 7.x range and I've heard 8 and 9 are worse still. I recently switched back to 6.6 and I'm loving how clean it seems in comparison.

[The Very End]

Thanks for this topic, I find it really usefull
Sorry I have nothing to contribute with, everything I could possible think of is allready used, or not helpfull for others

[Stefani24]

Originally Posted by The Very End

Thanks for this topic, I find it really usefull
Sorry I have nothing to contribute with, that isn't allready listed.

Same here.

[BurnOut69]

Useful topic, would be even better if someone classified tools, like in the first post.

Recording
nero
Alcohol 120%

Video
bsplayer
powerDVD

Development
Visual Studio 2008

Internetz
Firefox / Chrome
azureus
soulseek

Security
nod32

Music
Winamp 2.80

[Hoshimodo]

I can't live without the nice and lean system tools from Sysinternals, which are now hosted by Microsoft
Autoruns
Process Explorer
Process Monitor

[danowat]

Music

Mediamonkey (far, far better than itunes)
MP3gain

Media
AnyDVD
DVD Decrypter
XtoDVD

FTP
FlashFXP

Internet
utorrent

[Jakg]

Music:
XMPlay

Screenshot:
Grabby

[pb32000]

Personally for me:

For OS X

Work
Photoshop
Coda
Firebug
FireFTP
MAMP

Other
iTunes
Newsfire
VLC

[jimaxx]

Games:
Counter Strike Source

CS 1.6

LFS

COD4 Once in a while

...WoW

Software:

Ultramon

Chatzilla (Dont like Mirc)

Firefox

Noscript

Photoshop

Vegas

After effects

[Mp3 Astra]

Audacity - basic if you need it to be, and more complex if you're getting some mad skillz. Slightly buggy but the best free audio recorder I have found!

Ventrilo - Projects my voice around the world whether you want it or not.

Sony Vegas - My Movie Making buddy. Cheaper than Adobe and around my skillset.

Sony DVD Architect - It makezors custom DVDs! It's very basic but good for some tasks.

More later when I don't have to go to school in 5 minutes....

[kingfag]

Pidgin
Free MSN replacement

OpenOffice.org
Free office suite

VLC player
Free video player

CDBurnerXP
Free cd/dvd burn software

Eclipse
Free C/Java (and more) development environment

paint.net
Free paint replacement

Audacity
Free audio editor

Mumble
Free Ventrilo alternative

7Zip
Free file compression tool

Synergy
Free tool for sharing keyboard and mouse on two pc's

Notebook Hardware Control
For controlling power profiles on my laptop

Image resizer powertoy
Easy image resizing

Opera
Browser

[mr_x]

Music
Windows Media Player - I like the layout of it, plus it goes into the taskbar
WinAmp - Better organised library than WMP, use it just as much
Last.fm - Music tracker, lets you know how much you've listened to

Security
Kaspersky Internet Security - Best Internet Security I've used - I get it free from work too.
Malwarebytes Anti-Malware - very good anti-malware program

IM/Chat
X-Chat (IRC) - used for IRC on #liveforspeed and also for dSRC too.
Windows Live Messenger - I like it, better than any of these WLM imitate programs
Ventrilo - Used for playing games mostly

Web
Mozilla Firefox - There is no better internet browser out there
uTorrent

Games
RACE07 + STCC Addon - on a full 25 car server in an organised community there is no better sim apart from one listed below.
rFactor - see above
Football Manager 2009 - I am a football fan
Left 4 Dead - Brilliant after a stressful day at work.

Other
Photoshop - Very powerful, and CS4 is by far the easiest to use.
WinRAR - File archiver - can extract pretty much any archive with it.

[pb32000]

Originally Posted by mr_x

Photoshop - Very powerful, and CS4 is by far the easiest to use.

Out of interest, how much does CS4 differ from CS3? As I use CS3 on a daily basis and would rather not relearn the entire thing for a few more features I may never use.

[jimaxx]

Originally Posted by pb32000

Out of interest, how much does CS4 differ from CS3? As I use CS3 on a daily basis and would rather not relearn the entire thing for a few more features I may never use.

I'd like to ask the same thing, but in relation from cs2 upwards.

How much different are CS3+4?

[Syfoon]

Winamp;
IMO the best audio player about.

FL Studio 8:
MIDI-based DAW/Sequencer. I do all my audio creation in it. Rate it higher then the other Windows DAWs like Cubase or Logic 5.5.

WaveLab:
High end audio editor with VST support...

Waves Diamond:
High end, high quality VST based FX and mastering package. Never thought I'd need 4 different types of limiter!

B-Glitch:
"That" effects unit. Anyone who's into electronic music would have heard something that's been twisted up by Glitch in the last 2 years or so.

V-Station:
Pads, saws, basses, donks, sweeps and lasers. Definitely top of my VST generators list.

PES6:
Can't beat a bit of football. Much prefer the way it plays compared to 08 and 09. Even better with up-to-date transfers, high res kits and hundreds of extra stadia

Pidgin:
I like to harass people. Superb little MSN/AIM/whatever you want client.

Firefox:
Do I really need to explain this one?

Jakes Alarm Clock:
... my bed is far too comfortable.

[Ian.H]

For PHP devs (on windoze): NuSphere PHPEd

For Perl (primarily, but others too I guess) devs (multi-OS): Komodo (IDE == commercial, EDIT == free)

Windoze Perl itself: http://www.activestate.com/activeperl/. Invaluable IMO, far better than VBS or BAT scripting.

General (windoze) text editor: UEdit

DOpus (Directory Opus).. was _the_ filemanager to have on the Amiga, and now shining on windoze too (I find it hard living with a box without this): DOpus

VMWare. Comes in _very_ handy for development purposes and as a sandbox for picking apart viruses and the likes if you have an interest. I use it a lot for testing Unix config setups too.

FreeBSD. Personally I much prefer to compile a "LAMP" environment within VMWare than using some "WAMP" type setup.. much less restrictive, IMO.. and can use the PHP mail() function properly!

Firefox / Thunderbird. No introduction needed.

For Unix shell access from a windoze box: PuTTy and PuTTy tray.

Handful of personally developed software too, such as Columbo.. a windoze based Whois / NSLookup / Dig / DNSBl scanner etc app.. great for spam tracking.

Not many of the above are free, but most I use on a(n almost) daily basis.



Regards,

Ian

[Toddshooter]

I live in Adobe Lightroom

Recently moved from AVG to Avast because of bloat on AVG's part.

[G!NhO]

TubeTilla - You can download everything from youtube and convert it too FLV, MP4, MP3 and WMV. Thanks to AMB

[majod]

Winamp - as I'm used to it (using for more than 5 years) and it is capable to play all my FLACs, AC3s and DTS' with special plugin

Media Player Classic - small and powerful media player

Miranda IM - very small, extremly powerful IM client

Mozilla Firefox -

Total commander - using all the time, when you know keyboard shortcuts its much faster than explorer

ApexDC++ -DC client

uTorrent - torrent client

Abyss X1 - light and free http server

Bulletproof FTP - ftp server

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom - Powerful software, using to post processing RAW photos (jpeg just sux )

Notepad - html & php designing

[AjRose]

Originally Posted by chanoman315

Games:
F1 Challenge

WTF?!! The cheapest I can find this for PC is $89.99usd!!

[J.B.]

Directory Opus: Get used to it once and you won't believe all the stupid things that Windows Explorer does, like not display full file names, remove file extensions when renaming, abort a complete file move batch because of one error, change drag and drop behavior depending on type of drive, not allowing a dual view, no tabs, no wildcard filter, no folder size display, err, I could go on and on.

[Mp3 Astra]

Originally Posted by J.B.

Directory Opus: Get used to it once and you won't believe all the stupid things that Windows Explorer does, like not display full file names, remove file extensions when renaming, abort a complete file move batch because of one error, change drag and drop behavior depending on type of drive, not allowing a dual view, no tabs, no wildcard filter, no folder size display, err, I could go on and on.

This one looks interesting. I'm totally fed up with Vista forgetting how I want to view my folders when I close a window. For instance, I want my "Movies" (aka my own home-made videos) folder to display file details such as size, type and date. However, if I re-visit the folder tomorrow, I know that it will display the following in "big thumbnail" view: "Name", "date taken", "tags" (WHAT?) and "rating". Or sometimes it might go down the music route with useful information such as "contributing artist" or "track #", even when none of the files or folders contain such information. I will give this Opus thing a try...

[chanoman315]

Originally Posted by AjRose

WTF?!! The cheapest I can find this for PC is $89.99usd!!

LoL

[Chrisuu01]

IMO
CS4 master collection if your in to graphical stuf and website making