Programs you cant live without Thread

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

This is a thread where I want people to post the programs they cant live without
I dont mean an alternate browser or something, but whats the first programs you install after a format, or when building a new machine, what do you absolutely need, what are you attached to enough to make sure it works on an OS upgrade?

This is primarily for the less heard software that some of us use to make our lives easier every day, and i thought perhaps we could share these programs for all
please post in a format similar to below, and lets keep this on topic so perhaps a mod will see fit to pin it


Serence KlipFolio
From: http://www.klipfolio.com
KlipFolio is a powerful rss aggregator that is based on 'klips' rather than just an RSS file, this affords it alot more powerful features, such as aggregating mroe than one feed into a single klip, as well as its own language (identical to javascript i believe), I couldnt live without this program, and it helps pull information from about 30 websites directly to my desktop, so I can coose what to read and dont have to visit all 30 websites every 10 mins a great find, and its actually the very reason i found certforums whilst i was browsing the fast repository of klips for a cert based site

Googles Picasa 2
From: http://www.picasa.com/
Googles picas is a very clean, well thought out image management program, thats ofcourse, free, its wonderful and inovative, and has an interface that does google proud, its fast and lets me keep track of the 200'000+ images scattered across my hard drives so i can manage them a little better lol

 

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

Off the top of my head it has to be:

Daemon Tools www.daemon-tools.cc/

Enables me to mount CD/DVD Based images such ISO, BIN etc on to virtual drives without ever burning them onto real media! I've been using it for about 3 years now and must have saved hundreds of pounds in media by avoiding dodgy image burns

 

Webroot Window Washer.
One of the first programs I bought when I first got my computer. Every time I shut down, it springs to life and erases all my temporary files, Internet cache, cookies etc. You can set it to automatically delete whatever you want whenever you want. Highly customisable, saves manually deleting stuff and in the 8 months I have had it on my laptop it has deleted a total of 11gb of un-needed files. Very useful program. www.webroot.com

 

SemTop
http://www.semargl.com/products/semtop/
For a long time, this was the one program I couldn't live without. However recently someone recommended I try...

Actual Title Buttons
http://www.actualtools.com/titlebuttons/
... instead, as it has a few more features. Both of these utilities allow you to set windows 'always on top'. ATB also adds rollup, minimise to tray and transparency buttons to every window. After a while I guarantee you'll wonder how you ever managed without this functionality!

 

Ok, I'll chip in a suggestion.

Get lots of spam? I had MailWasher recommended by a friend and I have never looked back.

Superb utility that's free for one mail account, but you need the Pro version to manage multiple accounts. This program pre-scans all the mail headers of your account in a very easy to use interface, and matches each email against their own database of known spammers, and also against your own local database (which you build up over time) and also any filters you want to put in.

Once you have categorised any dodgy mails, hit process, and it deletes and blacklists them (can even send a bouncebacl message to them) then launches your regular mail client, and you don't have to wade through any spam in there at all.

 

Here's a couple that end up on all of my systems straight away.

Beyond Compare

Resplendent Registrar the best registry tool bar none.

Another one that I'm setting up now throughout the company is Palm One organiser. We are starting to use it more for the calender functions and with a couple of simple scripts you can syncronise your stuff with everybody else's.

 

I have a few fave programs I cant do without. One of them being DVD Shrink, DVD Region-Free (which allows you to watch DVDs from any region), for music I recently downloaded and purchased a program called dBPowerAmp, it allows one to convert all types of audio format to whatever other audio format you want, so for instance my phone is an MP3 player and some of the songs I wanted on my phone were in WMA format but after getting this program I have never looked back and am happy with it. Cos I like to watch movie clips on my mobile I also downloaded a Nokia Multimedia Converter which I have to admit really is great program...It can convert a 15MB clip to about 600KB for the .3GP format for the mobile. sweet. I recently downloaded a film and after downloading it I started to watch it and to my horror there was no sound so I searched and searched for a video/audio converter program and finally found one called A4 Video Converter...very very pleased with it. It can convert to avi, mpeg, wma and rm (real player) and even the audio can be converted...in fact whats better it can rip the audio so if you wanted just the audio just select which format you want and away you go...like I said there are a few more but if I put them all down it will take until Xmas to explain them all...


Admin Edit (J): Removed reference to downloading of copyright materials

 

I posted previously about NetMeter, a fabulous little piece of freeware that lets me keep track of my ADSL usage (capped)

Also, not so much a program, but a great online resource, try Cooltext

 

Can't remember if Ive mentioned this before but one prog that I use fairly regularly now is WindirStat a program for finding out where all your hard drive space went. Its Sequoiaview on steroids.

 

guys..I would like to apologise about my post earlier...I cant even remember what I wrote to be honest...but I promise it wont happen again...right now back to the topic...

 

how can u not do it again if you dont remember what u wrote
lol
check ur pm, we told u what bits we didnt like ;)

 

Moving on ....

 

I always use Belarc Advisor (http://www.belarc.com) on any PC's I work on. Lists all the hardware & installed software and fits on a floppy.

 

1. webroot spy sweeper, i havent gotten a single popup since i installed it, also removes all scumware.
2. dvd decrypter, best prog for decrypting dvds, and its free.
3. bitcomet (heh).
4. regmon from sysinternals, selectively view real-time registry queries, read/write, etc.

 

Just an idea but how about putting links to the software recommended here in the Resource Directory?

Edge

 

Software I couldn't do with without....

OK. I have I've been running software for more than a year now that makes it possible for me to not use adaware, spybot s&d, HijackThis, antivirus programs, and has stopped all bsod's. It saves me hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in software costs. I get to actually spend time using my computer rather than just maintaining it. It's called it Debian.

Sorry, just couldn't resist on a thread dedicated to good software....

 

I definitely used to use Daemon Tools the CD Image mounter, however Novell ruined that by running its network mappings to where Daemons drive mappings went so I shall say Nero Imagedrive, and more importantly PSTOOLS from sysinternals.

Where do I begin with this fab free set of tools, to begin with, it can remotely shutdown/reboot machines (psshutdown), I pass out reg changes with it, install programs remotely with it etc etc..

But now the thing that makes this kit great is that it can also be used just to wind any annoying workmates who think they are great up. Run pslist on their machine and view their active processes, such as iexplore.exe, make a note of the PID number, then open pssuspend, and suspend the PID right there! BANG Internet Explorer is completely dead..!! Then, just when they get annoyed, unsuspend it!!

 

ERD commander from winternals has helped me out with problem PC's that wont boot. Great boot CD thats much like using knoppix to recover a system: http://www.winternals.com/

Also DameWare NT Utilities is one of my favourite apps for use a work, it has most of the tools I need for remote administration: http://www.dameware.com/

 

Software that is really useful, ive been using KeyText for years and it is the simplest keyboard macro program around, the registered version has loads of extra features!

CD List Creator, this program produces a text file of the entire contens of a folder or cd, its just easier than doing it the comand route.

CKrename, great little program, good features for renaming files, make sure you take a copy of the files before you rename them, if you do it wrong theres no going back.

Hope these are usefull.

 

I'm posting here not to say something about my favorite software, but to post a warning here. I ran across this on another tech forum I post on and thought I'd remembered reading here about someone who uses Daemon Tools.

The problem on the other forum was caused by software being installed over the network without any type of user action, and it involved Daemon Tools.

Here is what I found and it's rather scary. The follow quote comes directly from the Daemon Tools homepage: