Rays of LightThe musings of Ray Trygstad: IT guy, professor, Naval officer, world traveler and sometime preacher.
|
|
| Rays of Light The musings of Ray Trygstad: IT guy, professor, Naval officer, world traveler and sometime preacher. |
|
|
November 14, 2008
Free Software I Install on a New Windows Vista System
What I put on my daughter's new notebook PC (running 32-bit Vista Ultimate): 7-Zip Version 4.5 http://www.7-zip.org/ Allows you to manage compressed files like .zip, .rar., .arj, .7z Adobe AIR Version 1.0.1 http://www.adobe.com/products/air/ Cross-platform runtime environment for building rich Internet applications using Adobe Flash, Adobe Flex, HTML, or Ajax, that can be deployed as a desktop application. Basically, AIR lets you run cool programs others have written with Adobe tools. Adobe Reader 9 http://www.adobe.com/products/reader/ Good ol' Adobe reader for reading PDF files. Apple Inc. - iTunes Version 7.6.0.29 http://www.apple.com/itunes/ NOTE THE VERSION: Old version installed at my daughter's request; it allows drag-n-drop to the iPod and more features no longer supported by the current version of iTunes. I set it to NOT auto-update so this version will stay put... Apple Inc. - QuickTime 7.4 http://www.apple.com/quicktime/ Quicktime Viewer. Belarc, Inc. - Belarc Advisor Version 7.2x http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html Generates COMPLETE hardware and software profile of your system. Used to come up with this software list. CDBurnerXP Version 4.2.3.1062 http://cdburnerxp.se/ CDBurnerXP is a great CD/DVD burning tool. CutePDF writer http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp Allows printing to a PDF file from any application; useful if you want to save a Web page as a PDF. EditPadLite Version 6.4.3 http://www.editpadpro.com/editpadlite.html A much better text editor than Notepad; free for personal use. FreeSSHD Version 1.2.1.14 http://www.freesshd.com/ Allows remote command-line login and uploading/downloading files securely via the Internet from a remote location. Google Chrome Version 0.0.0.0 http://www.google.com/chrome Fast and easy Web browser from Google; seems to always let me watch YouTube when Firefox chokes. HandBrake Version 0.9.3.0 http://handbrake.fr/ DVD "ripper" allows you to copy DVDs to your harddrive; optimized for creating iPod compatible video IrfanView Version 4.20 http://www.irfanview.com/ Graphics viewer/converter/printer Mozilla Corporation - Firefox Version 3.0.3 http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/ Firefox Web browser. muCommander http://www.mucommander.com/ A cross-platform file manager that will run on any operating system which supports Java. It features a Norton Commander style interface to allow easy manipulation of files with many keyboard shortcuts. Also does FTP and SFTP. OpenOffice.org 3.0 Version 3.00.9357 http://www.openoffice.org/ Create and edit drawings, flow charts, and logos by using Draw. PowerMenu Version 1.5.1.0 http://www.abstractpath.com/powermenu/ Adds some extra menu items to the windows control menu in addition to the standard "Close", "Maximize", etc options. The extra menus are: Always On Top, Transparency and Minimize To Tray; get to them by clicking the icon at the LEFT side of the top bar of a program. PureText Version 2.0 http://www.stevemiller.net/puretext/ Allows you to paste text and elimate any formatting; same as copying it to notepad, then copying from there to the destination. Use it by pressing the Windows key and V insted of Control-V. Skype Version 3.8 http://www.skype.com/ Online videophone program. Call PC to PC for free worldwide. Adds more choices when you right-click on a file; lets you change the date & time on a file, for example. TweakVI Version 1.00.1081 http://www.totalidea.com/product.php Lets you set ALL kinds of things in Windows Vista; I used it to elimate the little arrows on shortcut icons and to do a cool list on the desktop. VLC media player Version 0.9.6.0 http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ VLC media player - better and more powerful than ever. The only media player you ever need. I did not install freeware for CD-ripping, audio editing, paint/bitmap graphics, draw/vector graphics or harddrive search as commercial software was installed for these purposes. I didn't put on Thunderbird, because like many college students all of her email is Web-based. What I add on my systems on top of that stuff: Audiograbber 1.83 http://www.audiograbber.com-us.net/ Audiograbber is a program that copies music and stores it on your computers harddisk. Its main purpose is to copy music from CD's. This process copies the music digitally and thus you will get perfect copies. It includes functions to check that the copies made are true to the original. Audacity http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ A digital audio editor application A free sequential image viewer utility for Microsoft Windows used to view images one at a time in the style of a comic book. Everything for Windows 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista http://www.voidtools.com/ Harddrive search utility locates files and folders by name instantly; uses NTFS native indexing, so it has no index of its own. Exact Audio Copy http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/ A free proprietary CD ripping program for Microsoft Windows. FLV Player is a program to play Adobe Flash Video (FLV and H.264 / MPEG-4) files with Windows 2000, XP and Vista, supports both local and internet streaming content, has full screen mode and it’s free. Format Factory http://www.formatoz.com/ A multifunction media converter, converting between most popular video, audio, and image formats. Can reduce multimedia file sizes and supports iPhone and iPod multimedia file formats. Also acts as a DVD ripper, allowing transfer of DVD video to your hard drive. HTTrack Website Copier 3.43 http://www.httrack.com/ "Offline browser" allows you to download an entire Website to your local harddrive ID3-TagIT http://id3-tagit.pluemper.name/ ID3 TAG Editor for MP3-Files; downloads album information from online Inkscape 0.46 http://www.inkscape.org/ Freeware vector graphics/drawing program. Input Director 1.1 http://www.inputdirector.com/ Allows you to control multiple Windows systems using the keyboard/mouse attached to one computer; very handy if you set your notebook PC up next to your desktop. Jarte http://www.jarte.com/ Quick and easy full-featured word processor built on top of Windows Wordpad Link Shell Extension http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/hardlinkshellext.html Provides for the creation of Hardlinks , Junctions , Volume Mountpoints , and Vista's Symbolic Links, (herein referred to collectively as Links) and a Folder Cloning process that utilises Hardlinks or Symbolic Links. LSE, as its name implies is implemented as a Shell extension and is accessed from Windows Explorer, or similar file/folder managers. Mozilla Thunderbird http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/ A free, open source, cross-platform, full-featured POP and IMAP email and news client. Video viewer providing access to many channels of online hi-definition video Paint.NET http://www.getpaint.net/ Reasonably full-featured FREE bitmap graphics/paint program. A free implementation of Telnet and SSH for Win32 and Unix platforms, along with an xterm terminal emulator. Allows login to remote hosts using SSH (Secure SHell) Scribus 1.3.3.12 http://www.scribus.net/ A desktop publisher. An open-source program that brings award-winning professional page layout to Linux/Unix, MacOS X, OS/2 and Windows desktops with a combination of "press-ready" output and new approaches to page layout. Underneath the modern and user friendly interface, Scribus supports professional publishing features, such as CMYK color, separations, ICC color management and versatile PDF creation. Sun xVM VirtualBox http://www.sun.com/software/products/virtualbox/ Full-featured virtual machine system; turns a PC into an easy-to-use virtualization platform. Free and open source software that runs on all major operating systems Super (C) http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html Audio/video format converter: simple, yet very efficient tool to convert (encode) or play any Multimedia file Easy to use, customizable application helps you copy, move, rename, delete, and synchronize files between folders and computers. VMware Viewer and/or Server http://www.vmware.com/ Allows running of VMware Virtual Machines; Server allows creation of VMs as well. Requires registration for download (xVM VirtualBox does not...) Full-featured GUI FTP/SFTP client. XRECODE 2.33 http://xrecode.com/ Drag-n-drop audio file converter. Converts to/from ANY digital audio format. I use commercial Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware apps but you may want free software: AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition http://free.avg.com/ww.download-avg-anti-virus-free-edition Good, solid, free anti-virus protection for personal, non-commercial use. Sunbelt-Kerio Personal Firewall http://www.sunbelt-software.com/Home-Home-Office/Sunbelt-Personal-Firewall/ If you feel you need more firewall than the Windows firewall or you're concerned about monitoring outgoing applications, this should work for you. SuperAntiSpyware http://www.superantispyware.com/ The best-tested anti-spyware software out there. Shareware I will pay for... SftpDrive for Windows http://www.sftpdrive.com/ Map your SSH server as a Windows drive letter over SFTP with SftpDrive. Your SFTP drive is a mapped network drive or network file system that gives all you full normal Windows access to the files. SpaceMonger http://www.sixty-five.cc/sm/ A treemapping tool for hard disks and file systems; a tool for keeping track of the free space on your computer. Displays files and folders as boxes, with sizes relative to space taken on disk. Textpad http://www.textpad.com/ Powerful, general purpose editor for plain text files. Best.Text.Editor.EVER. Also make sure you see my earlier entries on Essential Firefox Plugins and Essential OpenOffice.org Extensions (I actually did them later but they totally screwed up this entry in Internet Explorer if I put them above it). 04:18 PM | TrackBack (5) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
