A (sweet) collection of Windows programs

[Mrkvonic]

Hello,

I have written an article that compiles a wide range of tools and utilities for Windows, which you might find useful. The list includes free software, mainly open-source, including security programs, but also everyday media, office, archiving, image manipulation, diagnostics, and more.

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/collection.html

I would appreciate any feedback - as well as any links you might have. I might have missed something.

Enjoy.

Mrk

[BlueZannetti]

MrK,

Nice collection for the masses with some on-target commentary.

I absolutely agree on the Tweaking, and nicely done Second Law analogy for memory optimization (of course, technical niceties such as fundamental thermodyanamic constraints never stopped anyone who really thought they had a perpetual motion machine...).

Blue

[SSK]

Thanks Mrk! A big

[Mrkvonic]

Hello,
Thanks guys.
Did you listen to Frankie while reading?
Mrk

[BlueZannetti]

Originally Posted by Mrkvonic

Did you listen to Frankie while reading?
Mrk

Yup (-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPLrXFw76Qg-)

Blue

[Longboard]

Hey MRk; That website of yours is becoming a great go to. Kudos.
Lots of work !! Guru status confirmed.
Keep it up: "Google buys Youtube for $2bill": heh; light at the end of the tunnel

@Blue

technical niceties such as fundamental thermodyanamic constraints never stopped anyone who really thought they had a perpetual motion machine.

you oughta see my 2yo: what second law ?? LOL

Regards

[Bubba]

Originally Posted by Mrkvonic

I would appreciate any feedback

Nice addition

[Mrkvonic]

Hello,
The rules of physics state that you cannot have 100% efficiency. This means that there is no device that once it gets going works forever. Such a device could exist if it gave no information to the external world, that is remain contained like a black box. But to make use of it, its entropy would have to change and efficiency would go down below 100%. Unless you could invent negative temperature (below absolute zero), in which case energy would be free.
Mrk

P.S. Bubba, didn't notice that! What a pleasant surprise!

Nice List Mrk

---------------------

I'd add a couple of things ...

Privacy privoxy & tor, also the Vidalia Bundle -- and JAP.

P2P ... Frostwire, Azureus, Amule, and uTorrent (even though it isn't open-source it is the best bittorrent client) ... also moblock is available as an alternative to Peerguardian for Linux users. I realize the list is geared towards Windows users, but as peerguardian isn't under development for Linux, it'd be worth while to mention.

IRC - xChat

Network Monitoring / Diagnostics -- Wireshark formerly Ethereal

---------------------

Regards;

Steve

[ErikAlbert]

Mrkvonic,
Nice collection !!! I learned something new here and there.

[Mrkvonic]

Hello,
Thanks, dog. I will take your suggestions and check these programs. Truth to be told, I have used most of them, but not very extensively. Give me a few days and I will add them to a users' recommendation sub-category in that article.
I got a few more off SpywareWarrior.
Nice additions, thanks.
Mrk

[WSFuser]

some additions (some open-source; some just freeware):

p2p - shareaza

antispyware - superantispyware and (depending on your paranoia) spyware terminator

antivirus - antivir classic

diagnostics - Notebook Hardware Control, pc wizard

graphics - paint.net

media players - media player classic

codecs - combined community codec pack (see my sig)

btw excellent list Mrkvonic. keep it up

Originally Posted by WSFuser

antivirus - antivir classic

I couldn't agree more.
---------------
& Three More for the List

Password Managers -- Password Safe ... and Keepass (Keepass is the better of the two - The ability to have both a password and a Key File puts it above Password Safe) - both are open-source.

Privacy GNUPG plus the Enigmail Extension for Thunderbird. Everyone should sign and encrypt there emails.

EDIT: Also worth note here is CACert -- http://www.cacert.org/ -- Free digital signature(s)

Also while I just found Lightning for Thunderbird yesterday (Thanks to Tommy's Thread ) ... it combines Sunbird into Thunderbird making a rather nice PIM (sunbird isn't required -- it's a standalone extension - developed by Mozilla) -- this thread

[iceni60]

hi, i like frostwire too - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FrostWire

democarcy player is a really good video feed reader, it's worth trying out even if you don't put it on the list - http://www.getdemocracy.com/

CustomizeGoogle is a good privacy extension https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/743/

PC WIZARD is a great program to find out about system information http://www.cpuid.com/pcwizard.php

Austrumi is a useful livecd, it's only 50MB, it loads completely into memory so you can take the cd out and put a blank one in to copy things on. it has the Enlightenment desktop environment and really useful programs. here's a review - http://www.tuxmachines.org/node/6800

xchat is great, but if you search for the windows version this one comes first - http://www.xchat.org/windows/ it's shareware, i think this is the free one - http://www.silverex.org/news/

there's so many programs though, if your list gets too big people might not use it!

More ... The Openoffice Conversion Utility - http://opendocument4all.com/content/view/18/35/

And ... while I haven't give this a whirl yet, but I am extremely happy about the news, as it'll give us the ability to get past the limitations of most MP3 players and allow us to utilize a free codec rather than a proprietary and also provide lossless quality. -- That's something to get excited about - Sweat.

MP3FS

Originally Posted by Newsforge

Get your FLAC on with MP3FS
Thursday October 05, 2006 (08:01 PM GMT)
By: Nathan Willis

I don't know if the folks at Xiph.org can live day-in and day-out using only the free Vorbis, FLAC, Speex, and Theora codecs, but the rest of us routinely run into consumer devices that don't recognize and support them. But with a little help from Filesystem in Userspace (FUSE) and MP3FS, you cross one incompatibility off that list. MP3FS lets you mount a directory hierarchy of FLAC audio files and transparently present them as MP3s to software and hardware devices alike.

- Full Story

Sorry, everyone I don't mean to take over this thread at all.

Regards;

Steve

Originally Posted by iceni60

there's so many programs though, if your list gets too big people might not use it!

You're right and a very good point, Best to limit it to the preceived Best of Class. ie. Top Three

[djg05]

A couple of suggestions for bits I don't think you have covered yet.

Iconid http://www.sillysot.com/ for managing your desktop. In 2k it enables transparent icons

Synergy http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/ a virtual KM for using two computers with one keyboard and mouse

[Notok]

A few more to consider:
Mozy - www.mozy.com (online backup program, 2GB free, great program and service)
CDex - http://sourceforge.net/projects/cdexos/ (MP3 ripping, open source)
Paint .NET - www.getpaint.net (graphics app looking to someday replace Photoshop)
The Godfather - http://users.otenet.gr/~jtcliper/tgf/ (mass renaming/organizing tool for MP3s, excellent freeware program)
Dimension4 (D4) - www.thinkman.com/dimension4/ (time synchronizing program, pretty much "the original", freeware)
Trillian - www.ceruleanstudios.com (multi-network IM client, like GAIM but more features, freeware)
HD Tune - www.hdtune.com (a hard drive "toolkit" with everything you need for checking up on your drive periodically, freeware)
PCI File Recovery - www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm (freeware file recovery)
Karen's Power Tools (all of them)
xplorer2 - www.zabkat.com (I like it better than free commander)
Process Tamer - www.donationcoder.com (has helped me a lot in the past)
Azureus - http://azureus.sourceforge.net/ (p2p BitTorrent client, lots of open source projects use torrents to distribute their software, open source)

I personally really like the OCC section

I have to disagree about spam, however. Spammers will also find a domain and spam every combination of letters, numbers, words, etc., until they hit something. You could also need to give your email address to a company that you trust, but maybe they get hacked or infected, etc etc. It's not always the person's fault that they have a spam problem. Personally I like MailWasher (they have a free version), but there are lots of spam solutions out there.

[Devinco]

Hi Mrk,

Thanks for the sweet collection!

For checksums, HashTab (originally posted about by Tommy), has excellent ease of use. You simply copy the checksum on the website for the file to download, download the file, right click the file/properties, paste in the checksum and click compare. It checks if they match automatically.

For AxCrypt, it can only encrypt files not folders.
If you try to encrypt a folder, it will encrypt all the files in the folder individually, but not the folder itself.

From member Moore, I found an encrypted IM / chat called TrilogyEC. It works peer to peer with up to 5 people simultaneously and requires no middleware in between. And it's free!

[Tommy]

Nice collection!
A very good unerase application if not the best out there. Formaly Unerase from Datapol, now free for personal use at AVIRA.
AVIRA Unerase

[Mrkvonic]

Hello,
Thanks all for the ideas - you got me working overtime now.
However, I would appreciate if you could link to these programs (those not linked). I don't wish anything lost in translation.
Mrk

[Notok]

Links now added to my last post

[Mrkvonic]

Hello,
Devinco I should have been more accurate, I guess.
When you right-click on a folder and select encrypt, the entire contents will be encrypted - but as individual files, I know. I'll think of a better phrase.
Mrk

[WSFuser]

ive edited in links to my post as well.

[Mrkvonic]

Hello,
The collection has been updated.
Mrk