Excellent Freeware

[Petra]

Bring it on!


I'm kinda in a hurry 'cos I'm going to a party in a couple of hours and have some things I need to do first, but...


We've already discussed Anti-Virus Software (http://www.freethought-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1141), so now look at some other useful free utilities.


I'll throw in dB Power Converter (http://www.dbpoweramp.com/). It'll convert MP3's into Wav and back again, and more. Very handy little program for someone like me, and you can download extras, too.



Your turn...

[Skep]

IrfanView (http://www.irfanview.com/) - Graphics viewer. Supports tons of formats. Edit, resize, convert images. Slideshows, much more.

Meazure (http://www.cthing.com/Downloads.asp) - A utility for measuring, magnifying and capturing arbitrary portions of the screen.

Metapad (http://liquidninja.com/metapad/) - Feature packed text editor replaces MS Notepad.

Atomic Clock Sync (http://www.worldtimeserver.com/atomic-clock/) - Synchronize your system clock with NIST time servers. Works great right out of the box; no configuration necessary.

TClockEx (http://www.rcis.co.za/dale/tclockex/index.htm) - TClockEx enhances the standard lame Windows taskbar clock. Highly customizable.


This is all I have time for at the moment. I'll post more later. :)

[livius drusus]

I'm enjoying TClockEx even as I type. :1thumbup:

[squian]

I've stopped looking at any other time software programs since I found SymmTime (www.ntp-systems.com/symmtime.asp). How else am I going to know what time it is in Phoenix and St. Petersburg at the same time?

Of course there's Firefox (http://www.mozilla.org/).

Other than those, I'm not sure if the other free apps on my box count as "useful" to most people. I like FileZilla (http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/) for FTP. I am truly grateful for the GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/) so I don't have to shell out for Photoshop. And NetStumbler (http://www.netstumbler.com/) for sniffing out WiFi spots.

And then there's the whole Linux world but that's probably a digression.

[dave_a]

Of course there's Firefox (http://www.mozilla.org/).

I am using it, but I am kind of disappointed by 1.0. It changes the cookie handling options and no longer allows me to choose to accept or deny like it used to. Now I either block all cookies or accept all by default. This makes it about as useful as IE which is sad.

Other than those, I'm not sure if the other free apps on my box count as "useful" to most people. I like FileZilla (http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/) for FTP.

I use WSFTP which is also free and does what I need it to.

I am truly grateful for the GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/) so I don't have to shell out for Photoshop.

Well I guess I am greatful for the free peer to peer clients that let me upgrade my free photoshop 7 to photoshop 8 for free. :P

And NetStumbler (http://www.netstumbler.com/) for sniffing out WiFi spots.

I have that too. It says my neighborhood has 2 unsecure networks that I get better signal strength to than from my own network. Go figure. Part of me thinks I should cancel my ISP if I can surf for free.

And then there's the whole Linux world but that's probably a digression.[/QUOTE]

[dave_a]

Of course there's Firefox (http://www.mozilla.org/).

I am using it, but I am kind of disappointed by 1.0. It changes the cookie handling options and no longer allows me to choose to accept or deny like it used to. Now I either block all cookies or accept all by default. This makes it about as useful as IE which is sad.

Other than those, I'm not sure if the other free apps on my box count as "useful" to most people. I like FileZilla (http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/) for FTP.

I use WSFTP which is also free and does what I need it to.

I am truly grateful for the GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/) so I don't have to shell out for Photoshop.

Well I guess I am greatful for the free peer to peer clients that let me upgrade my free photoshop 7 to photoshop 8 for free. :P

And NetStumbler (http://www.netstumbler.com/) for sniffing out WiFi spots.

I have that too. It says my neighborhood has 2 unsecure networks that I get better signal strength to than from my own network. Go figure. Part of me thinks I should cancel my ISP if I can surf for free.

And then there's the whole Linux world but that's probably a digression.

I have become too old to monkey with installing stuff to make other installed stuff work. No Linux for me.

[Sycophant]

Of course there's Firefox (http://www.mozilla.org/).
I am using it, but I am kind of disappointed by 1.0. It changes the cookie handling options and no longer allows me to choose to accept or deny like it used to. Now I either block all cookies or accept all by default. This makes it about as useful as IE which is sad

In Firefox, visit "about:config" and find "network.cookie.lifetimePolicy" and set it to "1" and bingo, all back to normal.

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/netlib/cookies/cookie-prefs.html

[freemonkey]

Of course there's Firefox (http://www.mozilla.org/).

I am using it, but I am kind of disappointed by 1.0. It changes the cookie handling options and no longer allows me to choose to accept or deny like it used to. Now I either block all cookies or accept all by default. This makes it about as useful as IE which is sad.

I hated that about Firefox when I upgraded from Firebird. Download this Cookie Button extension. (http://basic.mozdev.org/cookiebutton/) It doesn't work quite the same as the old version, but you get used to it.

I'm too lazy right now to track down links to some of my other free favs, but of those already mentioned I enjoy IrfanView, FileZilla and the various spyware stuff.

[seebs]

Well, for the absolute best... NetBSD (http://www.netbsd.org/). It's like Linux, only without the suck. Full-featured Unix, good reliability, good performance, totally free including source.

Let's see. Arachnophilia (http://www.arachnoid.com/arachnophilia/) is a free HTML editor. Used to be Windows-only, but the guy found Java, and now it's available for everybody. Not strictly free, I suppose; read the CareWare (http://www.arachnoid.com/careware/index.html) license.

[Corona688]

Well, for the absolute best... NetBSD (http://www.netbsd.org/). It's like Linux, only without the suck. I figured this would be the one forum I could get away from dumb flaming like this on. Oh well. :yawn:

[Skep]

I'm enjoying TClockEx even as I type. :1thumbup:
Yay! :)

Here are a few more I use:

Process Explorer (http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/procexp.shtml) - Task Manager replacement, especially for Win9x and Me but also for WinXP. Download from bottom of page.

Clipboard Magic (http://www.cyber-matrix.com/cmdownloads.html) - A Windows clipboard enhancement and archiving utility. I couldn't live without this one.

VirtuaWin (http://virtuawin.sourceforge.net) - A virtual window manager for Windows 9x/ME/NT4/2000/XP with up to nine desktops. It’s quick and easy to use with no fancy graphics, just an icon in the system tray indicating current desktop. Another one I couldn't live without.

Aida32 (http://www.majorgeeks.com/download183.html) - Extract information about your system and its components. Comprehensive.

StarCalc (http://www.m31.spb.ru/StarCalc/main.htm) - A professional astronomy planetarium & star mapping program. Tons of plug-ins available to suit your needs. Highly customizable. I love this program.

[Corona688]

http://xmms.org/files/icons/xmms-port001.png (http://xmms.org/) -- the X Multi-Media System, a winamp2-lookalike for the UNIX world that really whips the llama's ass. Supports audio input and output plugins, control plugins, effects plugins, visualizations, winamp2 skins, the whole 9 yards.

OpenOffice (http://www.openoffice.org/) -- open-source Ms Office equivalent. Buggy? Very yes, but it's getting there. Looking forward to the upcoming 2.0 release.

[dave_a]

In Firefox, visit "about:config" and find "network.cookie.lifetimePolicy" and set it to "1" and bingo, all back to normal.

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/netlib/cookies/cookie-prefs.html

Thanks for that information, unfortunately I am not clear on how to make this change. What do I edit?

[Farren]

http://xmms.org/files/icons/xmms-port001.png (http://xmms.org/) -- the X Multi-Media System, a winamp2-lookalike for the UNIX world that really whips the llama's ass. Supports audio input and output plugins, control plugins, effects plugins, visualizations, winamp2 skins, the whole 9 yards.

OpenOffice (http://www.openoffice.org/) -- open-source Ms Office equivalent. Buggy? Very yes, but it's getting there. Looking forward to the upcoming 2.0 release.

I'm using OpenOffice on a daily basis at work (where I'm a Windows outcast in a Linux temple) and it works like a charm for me. My only tiny complaint is that it won't read password protected MS Office docs, but its easy to get clients to rather send password protected zip files with unprotected docs in them.

[Corona688]

In Firefox, visit "about:config" and find "network.cookie.lifetimePolicy" and set it to "1" and bingo, all back to normal.


http://www.mozilla.org/projects/netlib/cookies/cookie-prefs.html

Thanks for that information, unfortunately I am not clear on how to make this change. What do I edit? In the address bar of firefox, type about:config. It'll bring you to an enormous list of tiny fiddly options. Use the search bar at the top of the page to narrow it down to the relevant ones -- for instance, type network.cookie and it'll only display the options starting with that. Select the option you want and double-click on it, it'll ask you for the new option for the value. Change the value, click OK, configuration changed.

[Sycophant]

I'm using OpenOffice on a daily basis at work (where I'm a Windows outcast in a Linux temple) and it works like a charm for me. My only tiny complaint is that it won't read password protected MS Office docs, but its easy to get clients to rather send password protected zip files with unprotected docs in them.

Yeah, I use Open Office regularlly too. In fact I do all my invoices and stuff on it. I have very few problems. It even exports PDFs natively, that's really handy.

[dave_a]

In the address bar of firefox, type about:config. It'll bring you to an enormous list of tiny fiddly options. Use the search bar at the top of the page to narrow it down to the relevant ones -- for instance, type network.cookie and it'll only display the options starting with that. Select the option you want and double-click on it, it'll ask you for the new option for the value. Change the value, click OK, configuration changed.

Neat, thanks!

[Ray]

MinGW (http://www.mingw.org) : A bourne shell and set of utilities that runs under Windows. (All the flexibility of Unix without that pesky stability and efficiency.)

Internet:
Opera (http://www.opera.com/) : A good web-browser with a small, integrated email client. The free version does have an ad in the corner, but it's not bothersome at high screen resolution.
ZoneAlarm (http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/company/products/znalm/freeDownload.jsp) : Small, efficient, functional firewall. There are also a few commercial versions, but the free one works fine.

Programming:
jEdit (http://www.jedit.org/) : modular editor. I use it most large projects: Java, Perl, HTML, etc.
Dev-C++ (http://www.bloodshed.net/dev/) : C/C++ IDE, uses the compiler from MinGW. I've been using it for years. A few stability issues I wish were resolved, but still better than a commercial package.
Insight GDB (http://sources.redhat.com/insight/) : Graphical frontend for GNU's debugger. A nice complement to Dev-C++. Designed for Unix, but there's a Win32 binary here (http://devcpp.everfloyd.com/packages/bin/insight5_win32.zip).
Tinn (http://tinn.solarvoid.com/): A nice lightweight programmer's editor. I use it for most small projects or quick edits.

Games:
Battle for Wesnoth (http://www.wesnoth.org/) : Turn based tactical game; quite fun and challenging.
Dark Disciples (http://www.users.bigpond.com/lafebre/index.htm) : An RPG, more puzzles than the average hack&slash. (I know the website's poorly written; the program is better. Win32 only, unfortunately.)

Misc:
Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) : An audio suite. I haven't gotten into all the features yet, but I used it to convert some old cassettes to mp3, and was quite impressed.

[ceptimus]

Programming:
Crimson Editor (http://www.crimsoneditor.com/) : An excellent free text editor for Windows. It does syntax highlighting for lots of languages: Java, PHP, C, HTML, etc. and has many nifty features, while still being fairly small and quick to load.

Games:
Chicken Invaders (http://www.interactionstudios.com/chickeninvaders.php) : A stupid but fun game. See if you can beat my high score of 1308500 There is now a Chicken Invaders 2 sequel, and also a Christmas special, but the original deserves to be played first.

(thanks to Ray. I totally copied his layout :) )

[livius drusus]

Audacity is exactly what I need for a little project I'm looking into. Thank you, Ray.

Thank you also for the gorgeously tidy formatting. It's not only a good influence on the ceptimi of the world, but flawless, attracting, well-organized formatting is one of the things that gives me profound, genuine pleasure. :thankee:

[ceptimus]

Operating systems:
KNOPPIX (http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html) : For those of you who've not used Linux, and would like to try it out, KNOPPIX is the way to go. But you need a CD Burner, and ideally a broadband connection as you have to download a big ISO file and burn it onto a CD.

KNOPPIX is a bootable CD with a collection of GNU/Linux software, automatic hardware detection, and support for many graphics cards, sound cards, SCSI and USB devices and other peripherals. KNOPPIX can be used as a Linux demo, educational CD, rescue system, or adapted and used as a platform for commercial software product demos. It is not necessary to install anything on a hard disk. Due to on-the-fly decompression, the CD can have up to 2 GB of executable software installed on it.

[Adora]

I'm just going to put in a second vote for Irfanview. I could not live without this prog.

[Corona688]

I'm just going to put in a second vote for Irfanview. I could not live without this prog. *facepalm* Right, Irfanview. How could we have all forgotten Irfanview? Shame on us.

Windows users:
I'd like to reccomend TIGraph 2.0 (http://www.fbeit.htwk-leipzig.de/~rdoss/homepage.html), a freeware TI-85 graphing calculator emulator that works really great. So much so that I've kept it with me even through moving to linux, then linux-amd64.

UNIX users:
I'd like to reccomend GNU nano (http://www.nano-editor.org/), a text editor that's simple and pretty just like pico -- in fact a good drop-in replacement for pico; but has additional, powerful features like search-and-replace, smart configurable syntax highlighting, regular-expression searches, spell checking via external libraries, per-user configs for all these tasty options, and more.

[Petra]

Wow, you guys are bringing in so much cool stuff. Y'all rule. :bow:

[Godless Wonder]

(Linux stuff) I've used Ardour (http://ardour.org/) rather than Audacity (which I haven't tried) for multitracking stuff, and for simple stereo editing, there's one called Rezound that's cool. Lots of cool audio stuff at Planet ccrma (http://ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/software/) Mainly I like Ardour better than Audacity because Ardour supports ]ack (http://jackit.sourceforge.net/) connections, so I can record, for instance a drum track from Hydrogen (http://hydrogen.sourceforge.net/) just by making a Jack connection between the two programs.

Having said that, Ardour does have a bit of an "unfinished" feel to it, to say the least.

For photoshop type software, I like the Gimp (http://gimp.org/).

[Corona688]

For photoshop type software, I like the Gimp (http://gimp.org/). I'd like to point out that the Gimp(aka Gnu Image Manipulation Project) isn't just for linux people, there's perfectly good windows (http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/) versions of it too.

Another interesting piece of artistic freeware is sodipodi (http://www.sodipodi.com/), a vector-based drawing program similar to Adobe Illustrator® or CorelDraw®. It exists in unix (http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=4054) and windows (http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=4054) versions, as well as pure source code.

[Shake]

Convert (http://www.joshmadison.com/software/): which does as its name implies. Take one sort of unit and convert it to a host of others. Categories are speed, time, distance, energy, light, power, area, etc.

Also, from Jetico (http://www.jetico.com/) is BC Wipe, which securely deletes files from your system. I think they may have changed, but there used to be a freeware version for individual users.

[Corona688]

Oh yeah. My favorite free Game:

Armagetron (http://armagetron.sourceforge.net/). A free openGL 3d tron-clone that can be played single-player, as a multiplayer LAN-game, or an internet game with people anywhere in the world. It runs under windows (http://armagetron.sourceforge.net/download_windows.html), linux (http://armagetron.sourceforge.net/download_linux.html), and mac osx (http://armagetron.sourceforge.net/download_macosx.html) interchangably -- I once had a netgame between myself, using my weird 64-bit linux, and two friends who use mac osx and windows respectively.

[Ray]

I'd like to reccomend TIGraph 2.0 (http://www.fbeit.htwk-leipzig.de/~rdoss/homepage.html), a freeware TI-85 graphing calculator emulator that works really great. So much so that I've kept it with me even through moving to linux, then linux-amd64.

There's also Virtual TI (http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/84/8442.html), which will emulate any TI calc from the 82 to the 92, as long as you have the calculator and a graphlink with which to upload the ROM.

[Skep]

Another great calculator - GraphCalc (http://www.graphcalc.com/). 2D and 3D graphing, make animations, scripting, more... Versions for Windows and Linux.

[Corona688]

UNIX users:
PFAedit (http://pfaedit.sourceforge.net/oldindex.html) is a freeware scalable(truetype) font editor. It's name suggest it only edits postscript fonts, and that might have been true once, but it has matured into a full-featured editor capable of reading and saving a wide variety of font types.

[flufeemunk]

Well, for the absolute best... NetBSD (http://www.netbsd.org/). It's like Linux, only without the suck. Full-featured Unix, good reliability, good performance, totally free including source.


And on that note, Mac OS X: You get the Mach kernel, and it is ever so pretty. It is free if you get a good computer. *cough* For you fellow mac geeks, try Quicksilver (http://www.blacktree.org), which defies definition in its awesomeness. For everyone, since you guys were mentioning open source stuff, just trawl SourceForge (http://www.sourceforge.net/) for goodies. One of my favorites is BZFlag (http://www.bzflag.org), which is a cross-platform OpenGL first-person tank game. Excellent game.

[RedFox]

3d space simulator:
Celestia (http://sourceforge.net/projects/celestia/)
The best of its kind.

Raytracer:
POV-Ray (http://www.povray.org/)
The program reads script files and renders pictures. There are freeware programs out there to model stuff for it.

[ApostateAbe]

I didn't know I was missing out on so much. I can't believe I have been on the web so long without it all. Redfox, your suggestion of Celestia will be making my investigations of the cosmos many times more thrilling.

[wade-w]

Raytracers are cool. In the "Intro to Computer Graphics Algorithms" course I took once, the course project was to write a raytracer.

[Corona688]

I don't want this excellent thread to die. C'mon, there's gotta be more than that. Here's two Games:

Critical Mass aka Critter (http://criticalmass.sourceforge.net/critter.php) -- your basic shoot-em-up, very smooth and very pretty. Somewhat difficult. Versions for Windows (http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/criticalmass/CriticalMass-Windows-0.9.10.zip?download), Macintosh OSX (http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/criticalmass/CriticalMass-0.9.10a.dmg?download), and Linux (http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/criticalmass/CriticalMass-0.9.10.tar.bz2?download) are available. BlobWars -- Metal Blob Solid (http://www.parallelrealities.co.uk/blobWars.php) -- a nice platformer. Combines the awesomeness of 2d duke-nukem with the hostage-rescuness of rambo with the roundness of pacman. The simplicity of the characters belies the complexity of the game, it's half-puzzle half-action. Currently there are only Macintosh OSX (http://www.parallelrealities.co.uk/download.php?file=blobwars-0.99-1.mac.dmg&type=dmg) and Linux (http://www.parallelrealities.co.uk/download.php?file=blobwars-1.02-1.tar.gz&type=zip) versions publicly available, but I've personally ported it to Win32 and hope to have it available soon. Just need to fix the little matter of savegames. :doh:

[livius drusus]

Good bump, Corona. I've got to rebuild my daddy's spyware infected nightmare today and there's lots on this thread which will come in handy.

P.S. - I had to answer you because I dreamt that you were so upset vm and I hadn't responded to some posts of yours that you asked for your account to be disabled. :giggle:

[seebs]

A friend of mine recommends Art of Illusion (http://www.artofillusion.org/), a rendering and modeling program written entirely in Java, and yet fast enough to be useful.

[Ray]

I've used that a little. It's no AutoCAD, but for basic modelling, it works reasonably well.

[ApostateAbe]

A friend of mine recommends Art of Illusion (http://www.artofillusion.org/), a rendering and modeling program written entirely in Java, and yet fast enough to be useful.What do you use it for?

[Petra]

Wow. I'm pleased this thread isn't dying either. Thanks for the heads up on what's out there, y'all. :yup: :cool:

[Soubrette]

Window Washer (http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,6136,00.asp) will clean out your cookies, recent file lists from things like Media players, start menu, temp files, etc...

Avicodec (http://avicodec.duby.info/) will identify the video and audio codecs you need for any .avi file that you can't seem to play properly on your chosen media player. If you ever get your video files coming up green, or without sound, try this one out and it will tell you what codecs are needed and if you have them already or not. Then you can just pop that codec name into google, find it and download it.

Adam

[slimshady2357]

Does anyone have any freeware that can detect your fingerprints from your mouse and then tell you:You're logged in as someone else, numb nuts!!Because I know a couple of people who could really use it :paperbag:

Adam

[livius drusus]

Here's a free ware from me: why don't y'all just log out of all your sites and log back in without the "remember me" box checked?

Alternatively, you could just start a new thread for every numb nut event. Like a kind of penance, you know? I'd be down for that.

[Corona688]

BlobWars -- Metal Blob Solid (http://www.parallelrealities.co.uk/blobWars.php) -- a nice platformer. Combines the awesomeness of 2d duke-nukem with the hostage-rescuness of rambo with the roundness of pacman. The simplicity of the characters belies the complexity of the game, it's half-puzzle half-action. Currently there are only Macintosh OSX (http://www.parallelrealities.co.uk/download.php?file=blobwars-0.99-1.mac.dmg&type=dmg) and Linux (http://www.parallelrealities.co.uk/download.php?file=blobwars-1.02-1.tar.gz&type=zip) versions publicly available, but I've personally ported it to Win32 and hope to have it available soon. Just need to fix the little matter of savegames. :doh: :news: The Windows (http://www.parallelrealities.co.uk/download.php?file=blobwars-1.02-1.win32.zip&type=zip) port of blobwars is now available!

[Sauron]

So what's up with IrfanView?

I tried to download it - but it seems to want me to download Spware Doctor first. Any program that tries to get me to download something *else* first just sets off my alarm bells...... :chin:

[Sauron]

Oh, and favorite downloads:

iTunes
FireFox
Unipad - mostly for work: http://www.unipad.org/main/

[Skep]

So what's up with IrfanView?

I tried to download it - but it seems to want me to download Spware Doctor first. Any program that tries to get me to download something *else* first just sets off my alarm bells...... :chin:
It's not IrfanView asking you to download Spyware Doctor. It's Tucows (the primary mirror site for IView) trying to get you to download it. If you just ignore the those pleas, you can get IrfanView free and clear. Or you can try downloading it free from Nonags. http://www.nonags.com/files/redirect/?http://irfanview.tuwien.ac.at/iview395.exe

[JoeP]

I keep well away from tucows. It used to be the best site for downloading (many years ago) but the experience is more like two cows' rears now.

[beyelzu]

bumpity for the public good.

[ceptimus]

Foxit Reader (http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php)

This is a free replacement for Adobe Acrobat (pdf viewer). It's much smaller and faster to load than the Adobe product (no annoying splashscreen advert) and it doesn't keep nagging you to upgrade to the latest version every second time you use it.

[Petra]

ArtRage (http://www.ambientdesign.com/artrage.html)

Designed by Kiwis (the same Kiwis that designed Kai's Power Tools before selling it to Corel) and given away with love.

It's a neat art package, and if you're good at that kinda stuff it'll paint some lovely pics as shown here in their gallery: http://www.ambientdesign.com/artragegallery.html

:)

[ceptimus]

Autoroute SMTP (http://www.mailutilities.com/ars/?fars_11) sets up your smtp server (outgoing email) automatically so that you can use email on your portable computer from several locations without having to manually reconfigure the smtp settings each time.

Slightly fiddly to configure the first time, but once it's set, you never again have to mess about with smtp settings when you take your laptop between home and the office.

[BracesForImpact]

I got tired of multiple zipping programs. A great and stable archiving and unzipper program with a multitude of functions is Izarc (http://www.izarc.org/). I haven't found a file type that it won't unzip yet...

Oh yeah don't forget about Ccleaner (http://www.ccleaner.com/). It cleans all the temporary files, URL history, cookies, Autocomplete form history, index.dat. etc. from IE and Firefox. Scans and repairs the registry, removes temp files and recent file lists (MRUs) from many apps. It's fast too.

[viscousmemories]

One of my favorite extensions in Firefox is mouse gestures, so now that I'm playing with Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2, I went looking through their add-ons for something similar. What I found was a little freeware program called StrokeIt (http://www.tcbmi.com/strokeit/), which enables mouse gestures in a bunch of different apps. It works perfectly in IE but I can't imagine I'll have much use for it in other programs.

[Bella]

*bump*

Got anything specific for us Mac geeks (which I am, unapologetically)? I saw a few things here-and-there, but am looking for more.

Any Widget recommendations? The only Widget I actually downloaded to my machine was an SMS messaging one, so I could send texts for free. Then I upgraded my Sprint plan to 500 messages a month for $8, making the Widget unnecessary. I'm looking for something new.

[ImGod]

I use Media Player Classic (http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Media_Player_Classic.htm) for most audio/video files and XnView (http://www.xnview.com/) and GIMP for photos. XnView has a windows bug or design flaw and doesn't open if you associate an image with the program. But it has a good browser built in and allows tabbed picture editing. It also opens lots of different things including PDFs, and text files.

I use CutePDF Writer (http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp) to create PDF's from anything and Foxit Reader to read them. CutePDF Writer shows up as a printer option in the Windows environment.

I've used open office in the past, but it doesn't support any of the tools I've developed in MS Office.

[Corona688]

It'd be a shame not to mention 7zip (http://www.7-zip.org/). Free open-source alternative to bloated nagware winzip crap. What I appreciate most about it is the right-click "extract here" option. It doesn't waste 2-3 windows asking if you want to REALLY extract it, where you want to extract it, or whether you want to register right now. It extracts the goddamn zip file, right there, right when you tell it to. What a concept.

It only creates zips, 7z's, bzip's, or tars, but it can extract nearly anything.

[MonCapitan2002]

One of my favorite extensions in Firefox is mouse gestures, so now that I'm playing with Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2, I went looking through their add-ons for something similar. What I found was a little freeware program called StrokeIt (http://www.tcbmi.com/strokeit/), which enables mouse gestures in a bunch of different apps. It works perfectly in IE but I can't imagine I'll have much use for it in other programs.
How is it that you have IE 7?

[spot]

Well, people have covered a lot of what I use. Here's some that haven't been mentioned.

Mp3tag (http://www.mp3tag.de/en/index.html)
I use this on a directory of mp3 files to clean the tags. It lets you type in or replicate your prefered value in any of the fields to a block selection of files, deconstruct filenames into fields intelligently and rebuild filenames from fields. Oh, and it builds playlists too. Cleaning tags before uploading to a player makes the indexes so much easier to handle.

Trillian (http://www.ceruleanstudios.com)
This keeps me logged in to MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, AIM and IRC from the same system-tray program, and gives me the same small-footprint interface to all of them. I use the Microscope 2 skin which looks cut to the bone. The whole thing gives me lots of conversation room on-screen.

USAPhotoMaps (http://jdmcox.com/)
There's a place for NASA's Worldwind and GoogleEarth, but this is a valuable third way. There's an extension that lets you build poster-sized 600dpi JPGs which I've done several times.

TreeSize Freeware (http://www.jam-software.com/freeware/index.shtml)
I'm not sure how people get a feel for what's taking up their diskspace, without a graphical indication of comparative directory space used.

Heatsoft Clone Cleaner Lite (http://www.clonecleaner.com/HCCdownload.html)
flags up files matched by name, size and/or content, in any directory tree, and allows flagging manually or by rule and deletion.

Network query swiss army knife (http://www.samspade.org/ssw/)
It's not bad at tying the basic query tools into one place.

Colour Picker (http://www.iconico.com/colorpic/)
I need a colour picker now and then - this one suits me.

Tree-based information manager (http://www.tranglos.com/)
Where do you jot your notes? I've used a Lotus Organizer or Sidekick for years, but this is a neat alternative tree-based outliner. It's neat.

NeoMem allows you to store and organize (http://www.neomem.org/)
Like the one before but different. Finding what you're comfortable with is important with an information manager. I liked this too. Actually, I still use Sidekick, but that's just a refusal to drop the familiar. Either of these must be better really.

Free open-source disk encryption (http://www.truecrypt.org/)
This year's alternative to PGPDisk. Either you feel the need to secure some files or you don't. This is a good tool if you do.

Computer Profile Summary (http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html)
The simplest piece of software on the planet - it builds a webpage detailing your computer, and views it in your default browser. I've no idea how else to keep track of what's installed, hardware and software.

Yahoo! Desktop Search Beta (http://desktop.yahoo.com/)
There's times when I need to find a file on my hard drive based on what I remember of its filename or data content. This is the way I do it. Once it's bedded in and fully indexed, it's invaluable.

[JoeP]

TreeSize Personal
I'm not sure how people get a feel for what's taking up their diskspace, without a graphical pi-chart enabled subdirectory viewer.
Pie-chart enabled? The version I have doesn't do pies, and the version you linked to is not freeware. Unless I'm missing something.

[spot]

Pie-chart enabled? The version I have doesn't do pies, and the version you linked to is not freeware. Unless I'm missing something.The confusion is mine entirely. The version I pointed to is the lite version and does pie-charts. It never came into my head that they have a Pro, a Lite *and* a freeware version. The Freeware one is on the same site at http://www.jam-software.com/freeware/index.shtml and you're quite correct, it produces a colour-coded bar comparator instead of a pie chart. I've taken the liberty of changing the original hyperlink and text from what was wrongly there prior to JoeP's query.

[JoeP]

Still, it's an essential piece of software, even without a slice of pie.

TrueCrypt is quality stuff as well.

[viscousmemories]

How is it that you have IE 7?
Oops, sorry. Missed this question. It's actually ie7 beta 2 (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/IE/ie7/ie7betaredirect.mspx), but so far it runs fine. Of course being a MS product it sinks it's tentacles into every nook and cranny of your computer. It won't even install until first verifying the authenticity of your Windows version, and it later asked me if I wanted to register my installed copy of Office 2000. (Which I didn't, since I got it from a jobsite years ago. :tiptoe: )

But anyway I like it. I made it my default after a day or two and haven't looked back.