| RegEx Coach
| Very cool little tool that lets you experiment with Perl regular expressions in real-time.
|
| Ditto Clipboard Extension
| Excellent replacement for the unexcusably limited Windows cut-and-paste mechanism.
|
| AutoHotKey
| Automate almost anything in Windows using this mouse and keyboard macro language.
|
| VLC Media Player
| Incredible video player. Has all of the codecs built-in for playback of almost any video format. Very powerful and intuitive keyboard commands that no other player seems to have figured out as well. Sweet and simple GUI. The best!
|
| SlimFTPd
| Best little Windows FTP server out there. Lean. Mean. Simple. Most recent version has a false positive with most Virus Scanners, need to decompress the .exe with UPX.
|
| Irfanview
| Best image viewer out there. Can also do nice screen grabs (I used to use ScreenHunter for this, but Irfanview has it built in).
|
| TinyResMeter
| Great little app that reports vital system stats (cpu %, disk use, etc.)
|
| StreamRipper
| Saves online radio stations to separate mp3 files.
|
| HarddiskOgg
| Records microphone or line in on laptop/PC and saves to Ogg Vorbis file.
|
| Alcohol 120%
| Mount .isos and other CD-ROM images as virtual drives.
|
| SharpReader
| The best Windows-based RSS aggregator I've found (I've tried dozens).
|
| Locate32
| Finally, a Windows-version of the Unix "locate" and "updatedb" commands. This is the only way to go to quickly search for files on your Windows box. The abominable Windows file search should be put out of its misery as soon as possible...
|
| Lookout
| Super fast, Google-style e-mail searching for Outlook.
|
| USAPhotoMaps
| Outstanding!
|
| Memtest86
| Great memory tester for debugging your system or when you buy new RAM.
|
| Photoshop CS2
| The king of all graphics editors; it takes a lifetime to master, but once you learn it, you can do anything
|
| KaZaA Lite
| My favorite peer-to-peer file trader. Not the most feature laden, but seems to be the most reliable and generates the most search hits.
|
| Mozilla Firefox
| This open source browser just gets better and better. It seems to render 99% pages of out there and has a lot of nifty features that IE doesn't. Opera users won't be that impressed, but on the other hand, Mozilla can display more pages than Opera can. Check out these plugins: PrefBar, LiveHTTPHeaders, GoogleBar.
|
| Ethereal
| Freeware Ethernet packet sniffer, essential for monitoring network traffic and debugging or troubleshooting.
|
| AP Guitar Tuner
| Use this program and your soundcards microphone in to easily tune your guitar.
|
| DU Meter
| I absolutely love this little app, which sits in your tray and graphically monitors your upload/download network throughput.
|
| FileSync
| This is a simple app that lets you painlessly synchronize two directories. Essential for copying a lot of data or for seeing which files have changed.
|
| Flash MX (Author)
| Hand-in-hand with Photoshop as must-have software for anyone doing web development.
|
| UltraVNC
| Remote control of any networked computer. Works great even over slow connections! Must have. (Also check out TightVNC and rdesktop.)
|
| DVD Decrypter
| The easiest way to rip the VOB files from a DVD
|
Gordian Knot
| Awesome all-in-one DVD-to-xVID package.
|
| Add-Remove Pro
| A million times better than the "Add/Remove Software" program that Microsoft provides
|
| VirtualDub
| Awesome freeware video editor. Not as fancy as Adobe Premier, but way cheaper, way easier to learn, and it does pretty much everything that you need it to do.
|
| Eraser
| Freeware file shredder. Makes sure that when you delete a file, it's really gone!
|
| Putty
| One of the best, cleanest, and most elegant SSH clients is also completely free! Has proxy and tuneling support too.
|
| Winrar
| Hands down the smallest file compressor available on Windows and Linux, it is also the most fully featured. Does everything that Winzip does and more.
|
| BSPlayer
| A simple breath of fresh air amidst a sea of overengineered video players.
|
| Nero Burning ROM
| Not as essential as it used to be (thanks to built-in support in XP), but still an excellent CDROM burner
|
| Nut Chords
| Guitar/piano chord playing software recommended by Jim.
|
| World Time Clock
| Great app that shows you the time in 5 time zones simultaneously. A must for any world traveler.
|
| Sound Control
| Awesome replacement for the crappy default Windows volume control. I especially like how this program does on-screen overlays whenever you change volume and how you can bind hotkeys to raise/lower/mute the volume.
|
| WinLAME
| Excellent GUI front-end to the best MP3 encoder around. It also
supports Ogg Vorbis. I have switched over to using variable-bitrate
LAME encoding for all my digital music needs (instead of MP3Pro and
WMA).
|
| Spybot Search & Destroy
| The best spyware remover out there! Tons of options, catches
everything, frequent updates, completely free.
|
| PDF995
| A virtual printer driver that lets you print direct from any app
(using File->Print) and have it saved directly to a PDF file. Very
useful. Free version does not put a watermark on your file.
|
| Agent
| If you read newsgroups or get binaries from them, Agent is a must have.
|
| Regcleanr
| Purge your registry of unnecessary junk.
|
| Exact Audio Copy
| Freeware MP3 ripper. Use in conjunction with LAME to produce the highest possible quality MP3s when you are ripping from original CD. These guys have done all the work for you so that you just click and go.
|
| Diskkeeper
| One of the most essential tools out there for maintaining the health and speed of your system. Offers automatic background defrag of regular files, the page file, and the MFT.
|
|
Emu48
| Replace that lame Windows calculator with a virtual HP48 calculator! Awesome. Don't forget to get the Emu48 service pack as well.
|
| Filezilla
| The best open source FTP client out there. Supports proxies and SFTP.
|
| Trillian
| Instant messenger client that lets you log in to AOL, MSN, Yahoo, and others all at once.
|
| GVim
| Vi users of the world unite! Gvim is pretty much the only editor I use... and it has Windows and Linux versions.
|
| Palm Apps
| Mirror, Launch'Em, Big Clock, AvantGo
|
| EggTimerPlus
| Perfect desktop stop watch/countdown timer for Windows. Clean, simple, and free.
|
| TClockEx
| The Windows default clock sucks (I guess Microsoft can't find the time to improve it with all the security fixes they're always working on). This little freeware gem gives you complete control over how the date/time are displayed in your tray.
|
| Nessus
| Security audit tool (aka portscanner) extraordinaire.
|
| jv16 PowerTools
| Awesome Windows tool for cleaning your registry, fixing startup problems, removing pesky add/remove programs entries. etc.
|
| tomsrtbt
| Tom's Root Boot - best of the single disk Linuxes! Bootable floppy disk with almost every utility that you need... great for emergency situations!
|
| NetStumbler
| On the road and in need of an 802.11 AP? NetStumbler to the rescue...
|
| Zoe
| Very cool e-mail management software. Like Google for your e-mail. Zoe uses POP/IMAP and doesn't replace your existing mail solution.
|
| SysInternals
| Awesome freeware low-level system tools. Should have been included in Windows, but Microsoft is too dumb to include them. Check out Process Explorer, BGInfo, and Filemon (among others).
|
| BlackICE
| Fairly effective software firewall. Easy to get running. Use in conjunction with a hardware gateway (Linksys) and Virus software for pretty good protection.
|
| Eclipse
| This is one serious coding environment. Written entirely in Java. Plug-ins for everything from CVS to Python to Perl.
|
| Fport
| Shows active port mappings and the processes that own them
|
| OpenOffice
| I get Office XP for free from work, but it isn't worth paying for when Open Office is pretty darn good and available for free!
|
| Win2VNC
| Dual screen hack for Windows using VNC ... very cool!
|
| ISO Recorder Power Toy
| Add quick and easy CD ISO reading and writing to WinXP! Highly
recommended.
|
| WinImage
| Great way to make a self-extracting floppy disk image.
|
| Blat
| Great and tiny tool for sending SMTP mail from Windows.
|
| SpaceMonger
| Shows disk usage in easy-to-read graphical layout.
|
| TClockEx
| Taskbar Clock Enhancer, an awesome replacement for the lame default Windows clock.
|
AlternaTIFF
| Sweet TIFF viewer plug-in for Mozilla/IE.
|
| McAfee Security Products
| My latest Dell system came preinstalled with McAfee's VirusScan, Personal Firewall Plus, and Privacy Service. They looked nice, but they prevented several of my apps from running without any notice whatsoever. I immediately switched back to my old standbys, BlackeICE and Norton AV and haven't had a problem since.
|
| Morpheus
| Used to be great, but total scumware (adware) now. Use Kazaa Lite instead.
|
| Pop-up Stopper
| Blocks too many legit pop-ups. Use Mozilla instead (or Google Toolbar on IE)
|
| Ad-Aware
| Used to be good, but Spybot catches more stuff, is more
configurable, and is completely free.
|
| Zone Alarm
| Free software firewall, but it's too chatty! It will sit in your tray and pester you incessantly. Recommend using BlackICE instead.
|
| TurboTax
| No longer installs spyware on your machine, but they've lost my trust now. I've been using TaxCut for 2 years now and it seems to do the job just as well as TurboTax.
|
| Webshots Desktop
| Nice pics, but it's spyware and may make system unstable.
|
| Huminity
| Personal contact manager, sends spam to your friends' e-mail without permission!
|
| Winamp
| Not a bad program, and this used to be my favorite audio player, but I have switched to VLC for quick and dirty playback and iTunes for more substantial listening. Also AFAIK Winamp has been officially EOL'd by its authors.
|
| Dbgview
| Displays debug trace of kernel and user applications on Windows. Debug that code!
|
| TrayIt
| Takes any Windows program and runs it as a tray app.
|
| Fire Daemon
| Takes any Windows program and makes it run as a service.
|
| Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer
| Make sure your Microsoft-based system is as secure as it can be.
|
| ActiveState Perl
| If you are going to do Perl on Windows, ActiveState is the only way to go. Far superior to CygWin Perl. Features a nice package management system that makes installing Perl modules a breeze.
|
| Win32::GuiTest
| Great module for driving Windows from Perl.
|
| Knoppix
| Self-contained Linux-on-a-CD distribution -- cool!
|
| Samurize
| Rec'd by Greg, not sure what it is ... www.samurize.com
|
| Darik's Boot and Nuke
| Boot this floppy, hit enter, and it will wipe all of the system's hard drives in a secure fashion so that data recoery is impossible. You must use this when you're done with your computer before donating/selling it!
|
| Avast Antivirus
| Free AV solution. Haven't messed with it much, looks promising!
|
| Chord Pro Manager
| Takes songs in Chord Pro format and prints out a pretty slick guitar tab.
|
| R-Project
| GNU language and environment for statistical computing and gfx.
|
| Audacity
| Open source audio editing program
|
| File2File
| File encryptor
|
| PartImage
| Linux-based efficient hard disk partition imager (save/restore)
|
| KDevelop
| Visual IDE for Linux
|
| Windbg
|
Free kernel driver and user application/dll debugger.
|
| Project URL Snooper
| Haven't really used this much, supposed to sniff network and print out all of the HTTP requests.
|
FeedbackBy Preston Hunt, 19 November 2002