Grouse's Essential Software List of Doom
These are all my favourite programs for Windows, from XP to Win7. These are just my essential pieces of software--you might prefer different ones, and there are tons of programs that work just as well or better, so these are just my personal picks. I've found all of these pretty damn useful. I've also tried to link to older, less bloated versions on oldversion.com as much as possible. This list will probably continue to grow and/or change, but I thought I'd put it up as a handy guide of links because I am hopefully getting a new computer soon and will be needing these myself. Hope this list will be of use to some of you:).
Internets:
Mozilla Firefox: *duh*.
Favourite Firefox extensions:
AdBlock Plus: 'tis God. I have managed to disable so many annoying LJ icons, banners, ads and even the bigot box (i.e. the reader comments box) on the biggest Finnish newspaper's website because you can block complete frames and annoying widgets and chatboxes and shit and and and ohhhyess. It's such a relief. Also, and this is a bit naughty... depending on your version, it might help you find a picture on a page that doesn't necessarily want you to download that picture, like on Flickr:P. It can flash the borders of each element on a page, so you can find which link corresponds to which item, and that elusive image can finally be yours.
Tab Mix Plus. Helps save your tabs.
Greasemonkey, which in turn allows you to execute Javascripts like these:
LJ Killfiles. You can finally hide comments from annoying people. This has its glitches, but it's still great.
Disable Blogger Content Warning. Hallelujah! You can finally get rid of the nagging piece of crap whenever you want to check out your favourite nude art photography blogs and all sorts of stuff.
And here's one I modded: LJ Twitterless modified. So you don't have to look at people's inane Twitter feeds on your friendslist.
Antivirus, malware removal, system care:
Spybot-Search & Destroy. Great system protection tool and great for ridding the system of malware and other rubbish. Protects your computer pretty damn well with its teatimer.exe process constantly running in the background, not a system hog or a nag like some other applications.
Advanced System Care. System tweaks, cleanups, malware removal, fine-tuning the computer's performance, speeding your system up. Get the Pro version if you can. Current versions may have glitches when it comes to your internet connection settings, but those can be remedied easily. Has handy features like a game optimiser that turns off all unessential programs as you play.
Image browsing and editing:
Paint Shop Pro 9. I use it mainly as an image browser, since it's fast for that sort of thing and allows you to organise your image collection well, batch rename files and do other sorts of handy stuff. It's old and small and lovely and doesn't take up much RAM. Also handy for v. simple image editing, great for basic family use.
Adobe Photoshop (duh). Adobe Creative Suite in general.
VueScan. Versatile scanning program that supports just about every scanner *ever*. Handy now that you can't scan stuff in in Photoshop if you're on Win7 64-bit (TWAIN are, apparently, arses about this). Has a really cool Line Art setting which is perfect for b/w doodles, and you can even rotate your selection of whichever part of a page you're scanning. Lots of goodness.
Video fiddlage and video/DVD players:
CoreAVC codec+K-Lite Mega Codec Pack: will play almost everything, best setup for .mkv (Matroska) vids. Uninstall all other codecs, including Matroska ones before installing these.
Media Player Classic. Note that Media Player Classic Home Cinema (the same program, but with extra awesome) gets installed with the K-Lite Mega Codec Pack. Versatile and invaluable, great for screencapping, less of a memory hog than VLC Player.
VLC Player: plays everything ever. Shit for screencaps (the pause button may take a second or two to obey so it's likely you'll miss the shot you wanted), good for DVDs and any video files that you can't get to play on other players.
VirtualDub: great, simple video editor that works with many formats. Great for grabbing short clips and animations/image sequences for animations and so on.
And you'll need the right plugins for VirtualDub, so it can open all sorts of video files.
Any Video Converter Pro: will convert any video into just about any other format. Including .mkvs. Is a huge system hog, obviously, since it's a hardcore video thingy, but it's *awesome*.
DVD Decrypter will crack region codes so you can burn a new disc for yourself in your own region's code.
MakeMKV basically like DVD Decrypter, but for DVDs and Blu-Rays. Great for ripping BR for screencaps.
DVDShrink: great utility for squeezing a regular DVD into a format that can fit on a burnable disc. Also good for finding hidden files, such as Easter eggs.
WinDVD (older editions work well, I like 6.0):--good DVD viewer and good for screencapping, especially if you work with old BBC DVDs low on saturation (such as B7 or Who)--they have a video enhancement setting that'll help saturate the images better. Newer versions of the software are bloatier, though.
SubRip: for ripping subtitles from DVDs.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/subrip/
Subtitle Workshop: For making subtitles.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/subworkshop/
Miscellaneous:
Adobe Acrobat Professional : allows you to edit PDFs in numerous ways, and also combine multiple PDF documents into one file. Invaluable.
Open Office Suite: for all your office needs. Fantastic, and much much better than Microsoft Office.
WinRAR: unzips various formats, including .cbrs back into jpegs for comic fans)
BulletProof FTP: great, light FTP program for transferring files.
Winamp Lite: nice basic mp3 player, go for the old basic versions to avoid bloatware. 5.24 has been fine for me for years.
uTorrent: The loveliest, lightest, easy-to-use BitTorrent program ever. I ♥ it muchly.
Trillian: a simple all-in one chat program of epic win--it connects to Yahoo, MSN, AOL and so on so you don't have to keep separate programs open. I love it muchly. The free version is on the bottom right.
Books:
Calibre, for organising and reading your ebooks--but I don't actually use it for that much, but something else (see below):
https://sourceforge.net/projects/calibre/
...with this patch for Calibre, you can remove DRM from ebooks, and I use it all the time with The Open Library/archive.org's copy-protected PDFs. Works like a charm.
https://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/2012/09/10/calibre-plugins-the-simplest-option-for-removing-most-ebook-drm/
And what with the amount of scanned books out there that have been scanned as two-page spreads, making it a serious pain in the arse to read them that way--Briss will take care of splitting those two-page spreads into one-page-at-a-time documents. And unlike other software for this sort of thing, it's free.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/briss/
***
And last but not least, the very application I am using to write this post:
Livejournal: Semagic. Invaluable client. Makes posting soooo easy, especially for crossposting and uploading images to Scrapbook and stuff.
P.S. don't ask me where to get free versions of some of these. Thanks. I am also not looking for software recs/pimps or comparisons at the moment (I have enough trouble handing all of these!), but hope you'll enjoy the ones I've listed. Good luck!
Internets:
Mozilla Firefox: *duh*.
Favourite Firefox extensions:
AdBlock Plus: 'tis God. I have managed to disable so many annoying LJ icons, banners, ads and even the bigot box (i.e. the reader comments box) on the biggest Finnish newspaper's website because you can block complete frames and annoying widgets and chatboxes and shit and and and ohhhyess. It's such a relief. Also, and this is a bit naughty... depending on your version, it might help you find a picture on a page that doesn't necessarily want you to download that picture, like on Flickr:P. It can flash the borders of each element on a page, so you can find which link corresponds to which item, and that elusive image can finally be yours.
Tab Mix Plus. Helps save your tabs.
Greasemonkey, which in turn allows you to execute Javascripts like these:
LJ Killfiles. You can finally hide comments from annoying people. This has its glitches, but it's still great.
Disable Blogger Content Warning. Hallelujah! You can finally get rid of the nagging piece of crap whenever you want to check out your favourite nude art photography blogs and all sorts of stuff.
And here's one I modded: LJ Twitterless modified. So you don't have to look at people's inane Twitter feeds on your friendslist.
Antivirus, malware removal, system care:
Spybot-Search & Destroy. Great system protection tool and great for ridding the system of malware and other rubbish. Protects your computer pretty damn well with its teatimer.exe process constantly running in the background, not a system hog or a nag like some other applications.
Advanced System Care. System tweaks, cleanups, malware removal, fine-tuning the computer's performance, speeding your system up. Get the Pro version if you can. Current versions may have glitches when it comes to your internet connection settings, but those can be remedied easily. Has handy features like a game optimiser that turns off all unessential programs as you play.
Image browsing and editing:
Paint Shop Pro 9. I use it mainly as an image browser, since it's fast for that sort of thing and allows you to organise your image collection well, batch rename files and do other sorts of handy stuff. It's old and small and lovely and doesn't take up much RAM. Also handy for v. simple image editing, great for basic family use.
Adobe Photoshop (duh). Adobe Creative Suite in general.
VueScan. Versatile scanning program that supports just about every scanner *ever*. Handy now that you can't scan stuff in in Photoshop if you're on Win7 64-bit (TWAIN are, apparently, arses about this). Has a really cool Line Art setting which is perfect for b/w doodles, and you can even rotate your selection of whichever part of a page you're scanning. Lots of goodness.
Video fiddlage and video/DVD players:
CoreAVC codec+K-Lite Mega Codec Pack: will play almost everything, best setup for .mkv (Matroska) vids. Uninstall all other codecs, including Matroska ones before installing these.
Media Player Classic. Note that Media Player Classic Home Cinema (the same program, but with extra awesome) gets installed with the K-Lite Mega Codec Pack. Versatile and invaluable, great for screencapping, less of a memory hog than VLC Player.
VLC Player: plays everything ever. Shit for screencaps (the pause button may take a second or two to obey so it's likely you'll miss the shot you wanted), good for DVDs and any video files that you can't get to play on other players.
VirtualDub: great, simple video editor that works with many formats. Great for grabbing short clips and animations/image sequences for animations and so on.
And you'll need the right plugins for VirtualDub, so it can open all sorts of video files.
Any Video Converter Pro: will convert any video into just about any other format. Including .mkvs. Is a huge system hog, obviously, since it's a hardcore video thingy, but it's *awesome*.
DVD Decrypter will crack region codes so you can burn a new disc for yourself in your own region's code.
MakeMKV basically like DVD Decrypter, but for DVDs and Blu-Rays. Great for ripping BR for screencaps.
DVDShrink: great utility for squeezing a regular DVD into a format that can fit on a burnable disc. Also good for finding hidden files, such as Easter eggs.
WinDVD (older editions work well, I like 6.0):--good DVD viewer and good for screencapping, especially if you work with old BBC DVDs low on saturation (such as B7 or Who)--they have a video enhancement setting that'll help saturate the images better. Newer versions of the software are bloatier, though.
SubRip: for ripping subtitles from DVDs.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/subrip/
Subtitle Workshop: For making subtitles.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/subworkshop/
Miscellaneous:
Adobe Acrobat Professional : allows you to edit PDFs in numerous ways, and also combine multiple PDF documents into one file. Invaluable.
Open Office Suite: for all your office needs. Fantastic, and much much better than Microsoft Office.
WinRAR: unzips various formats, including .cbrs back into jpegs for comic fans)
BulletProof FTP: great, light FTP program for transferring files.
Winamp Lite: nice basic mp3 player, go for the old basic versions to avoid bloatware. 5.24 has been fine for me for years.
uTorrent: The loveliest, lightest, easy-to-use BitTorrent program ever. I ♥ it muchly.
Trillian: a simple all-in one chat program of epic win--it connects to Yahoo, MSN, AOL and so on so you don't have to keep separate programs open. I love it muchly. The free version is on the bottom right.
Books:
Calibre, for organising and reading your ebooks--but I don't actually use it for that much, but something else (see below):
https://sourceforge.net/projects/calibre/
...with this patch for Calibre, you can remove DRM from ebooks, and I use it all the time with The Open Library/archive.org's copy-protected PDFs. Works like a charm.
https://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/2012/09/10/calibre-plugins-the-simplest-option-for-removing-most-ebook-drm/
And what with the amount of scanned books out there that have been scanned as two-page spreads, making it a serious pain in the arse to read them that way--Briss will take care of splitting those two-page spreads into one-page-at-a-time documents. And unlike other software for this sort of thing, it's free.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/briss/
***
And last but not least, the very application I am using to write this post:
Livejournal: Semagic. Invaluable client. Makes posting soooo easy, especially for crossposting and uploading images to Scrapbook and stuff.
P.S. don't ask me where to get free versions of some of these. Thanks. I am also not looking for software recs/pimps or comparisons at the moment (I have enough trouble handing all of these!), but hope you'll enjoy the ones I've listed. Good luck!