Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: karajorma on July 22, 2006, 01:37:51 pm
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I just got through reinstalling my PC and I'm in the mood to try out some new stuff instead of just reinstalling everything I currently use. I don't particularly want to pay for anything new though so I'm pretty much sticking to what I have unless I can find something better that's free.
Basically I'm asking people to pimp their favourite software for all the major tasks. At the moment I'm thinking of reinstalling the following.
Open Office
Nero 7
7 Zip
Emule (Morph XT)
Trillian Pro
Filezilla
Skype
UTorrent
ffdshow
Quicktime and Realplayer Alternative
Media Player Classic
Irfanview
Spybot Search and Destroy
What's really got me wondering is anti-virus. I used to use AVG anti-virus but I'm not completely happy with it. Any recommendations?
I've already installed Firefox and Thunderbird (I never much liked Opera). I haven't decided on which extensions to add though. If anyone knows anyones better than these go ahead.
BBCodeXtra (very useful. Missing this one already)
Firefox Extension Backup Extension (Backups everything and restores sessions should FF crash).
Save Text Area (Useful when making long posts)
RiteOfTongue (Allows you to spellcheck a single word from the context menu. A little slow though)
And here's some of the extensions I want
A strong password generator. I used Password Maker but I'm a little dissatisfied with it and wondering if something better is out there.
A good tab manager. Tab Mix Plus was the last one I tried. Not bad. Might be bettered though.
A link poacher. I want to be able to copy a link from a website and simply plunk it down in a post. Never come across one that didn't force you to use HTML.
A movie poacher. If a movie isn't streamed I want to be able to save it rather than viewing it in the browser. I've tried a few extensions that should allow me to do that and I've never found one that worked well enough.
That should do me for now :)
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Trillian Pro is free?
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Nope. But if I'm replacing it what I'll use will have to be. :)
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What's really got me wondering is anti-virus. I used to use AVG anti-virus but I'm not completely happy with it. Any recommendations?
You could try http://www.clamwin.com/ if you don't need automatic on-access scanning.
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Trillian Pro - Try GAIM
AVG - Try avast!
My recommendation: switch to linux and keep Windows around in seperate hard drive for gaming. :)
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The only thing I have to add is VLC (VideoLan) and Daemon Tools (for playing all your backed-up games). I have both Media Player Classic and Quicktime Alternative but I end up using VLC most of the time since it's more robust and can play a larger number of formats/codecs by default.
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Firefox Extension Backup Extension (Backups everything and restores sessions should FF crash).
This sounds like just what I need. My Firefox just owned itself yet again this morning, with all the bookmarks, preferences, adblock lists and even the last window size disappearing. I just copied all the configuration files off my other computer but this looks like it should do the job much faster.
Here are some other things I use:
Turbo Navigator (file manager program, has a few bugs but is much better than anything else I have tried)
Foxit Reader (PDF viewer, miles better than the bloated Acrobat garbage)
Winamp (don't need to say much about this, except that the classic interface is better)
nHancer (essential profile utility for any Nvidia card)
ATI Tray Tools (essential profile utility for any ATI card)
Modplug player (plays various mod music files, I use it mainly for Unreal and DX soundtrack)
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http://www.freewarehome.com/index.html - this needs some browsing to get past the fluff.
http://www.digitaldarknet.net/thelist/thelist.php
:)
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I would add/replace something with the Combined Community Codec Pack (it contained just about everything i needed for playing clips and also some players too). And toss is something like SpywareBlaster and Ad-aware for the good measure
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Foobar2000, it plays pretty much all music formats and has awesome hotkeys support.
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**** get rid of media player all together and install winamp. ive been using it ever sence it came out and ive never found anything better. it has the best damn media library of anything ive tried to use before. also id get the serial to unlock advanced features. youl probibly also want the lame out plugin, for transcoding mp3 files.
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MP3? Yuck. dBpowerAMP (http://www.dbpoweramp.com/) can rip to MPC/OGG files (Among many other plugins), a much better open-source file format.
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AVG - Try avast!
Yeah, what he said. :yes: And Sunbelt Kerio for a firewall.
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Soldat.
:nervous:
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Soldat.
:nervous:
seconded.
as for dBpowerAMP... }p
yuck. yuck. yuck. yuck.
open source audio codec != better than mp3
better in sound quality maybe. better in portability? hell no. you can listen an mp3 file anywhere and put it on almost any newer portable device. with most open source codecs, you're lucky if you find 5 people using the same codec. soo, no thank you, i'll stick to mp3.
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MP3? Yuck. dBpowerAMP (http://www.dbpoweramp.com/) can rip to MPC/OGG files (Among many other plugins), a much better open-source file format.
ogg is only usefull if you havent been pirating music for 10 years. also transcoding between lossy formats is a good way to loose even more fidelity. :D the only thing i have against the new formats is id like to keep my archive all in one format, something mp3 player compatable. sence there arent many of those that support ogg, theres no reason to convert.
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AVG - Try avast!
Yeah, what he said. :yes: And Sunbelt Kerio for a firewall.
il use my hardware firewall, the cheapest hardware firewall is better than the best software firewall.
il try that avast scanner next time i format my hard drive though.
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Soldat.
:nervous:
I tried that once. I'm not so sure on the community though. My first experience playing it was horrible. Abused, and booted from games for being a 'noob'. I had a few games of dissapointment and uninstalled and never went back. =/
Ed: Firewall wise I use Sygate Personal Edition. It's free, and far more competent than ZoneAlarm I've found. (less resource hoggish in my experience too). You get a bit more control, basically what zonealarm pro offers for free. I'd recommend that for a firewall.
As for virus scanner. I use AVG free, but I have email and active scanning off. I periodically update it and run full system scans. Or if I think something fishy is going on I'll turn it on. But basically, my computer runs smooth as. without 50+ processes in the background.
I also use a a-squared and Lavasoft Ad-Aware SE Personal for trojan and ad-ware scanning. Again, periodic scans rather than full blown active scanning.
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you forgot mIRC
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Soldat.
:nervous:
I tried that once. I'm not so sure on the community though. My first experience playing it was horrible. Abused, and booted from games for being a 'noob'. I had a few games of dissapointment and uninstalled and never went back. =/
Just stick to the right servers and you'll be fine. I personally recommend those hosted by Leo, 2wai, or eNesce.
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You forgot FSO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
:p
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You forgot FSO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Don't need to reinstall that. It's on a seperate drive. All I need to do is run the launcher again :p
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My recommendation: switch to linux and keep Windows around in seperate hard drive for gaming. :)
I fully endorse this suggestion, on the condition that you can be bothered to set it up. Also, reinstall Windows BEFORE you install Linux, or WinXP will do nasty things to the bootloader.
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Don't use it myself but lots of people recommend GIMP for graphic tomfoolery (if that's yer thing)
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I fully endorse this suggestion, on the condition that you can be bothered to set it up. Also, reinstall Windows BEFORE you install Linux, or WinXP will do nasty things to the bootloader.
I have my main HD on a rack. I've been meaning to install Linux or BSD for a while and have a good play around with it but I need to actually buy a second HD before I do that :)
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you forgot mIRC
Ewww. XChat FTW (http://www.silverex.org/news/).
BTW: OSSWin (http://osswin.sourceforge.net/) is a nice site for this sort of stuff too.
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MP3? Yuck. dBpowerAMP (http://www.dbpoweramp.com/) can rip to MPC/OGG files (Among many other plugins), a much better open-source file format.
ogg is only usefull if you havent been pirating music for 10 years. also transcoding between lossy formats is a good way to loose even more fidelity. :D the only thing i have against the new formats is id like to keep my archive all in one format, something mp3 player compatable. sence there arent many of those that support ogg, theres no reason to convert.
Ripping from a CD to OGG is not transcoding between lossy formats any more than ripping to an MP3 is.
And even though there aren't many MP3 players that support OGG, it's not that hard to find them (http://www.iriveramerica.com/prod/ultra/t10/).
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Powerdesk is the best. get it.
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**** get rid of media player all together and install winamp. ive been using it ever sence it came out and ive never found anything better. it has the best damn media library of anything ive tried to use before. also id get the serial to unlock advanced features. youl probibly also want the lame out plugin, for transcoding mp3 files.
I hope you are aware, that what you said is pretty much shooting through your own foot.
Winamp, AFAIK, simply uses the directshow player; which is the very same thing as Media Player.
Uninstalling media player xx will merly remove the shell from your system.
Media Player classic on the other hand is a very trim and neat way to play files.
If you need a player that plays everything, I recommend the following:
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/
It is the ultimate player in terms of compability (and also has an impressive performance). The downside is, that as it is a 'nix program, the windows port runs only in console not with a GUI. (Though there ARE third party GUIs you can use.)
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MP3? Yuck. dBpowerAMP (http://www.dbpoweramp.com/) can rip to MPC/OGG files (Among many other plugins), a much better open-source file format.
ogg is only usefull if you havent been pirating music for 10 years. also transcoding between lossy formats is a good way to loose even more fidelity. :D the only thing i have against the new formats is id like to keep my archive all in one format, something mp3 player compatable. sence there arent many of those that support ogg, theres no reason to convert.
Ripping from a CD to OGG is not transcoding between lossy formats any more than ripping to an MP3 is.
And even though there aren't many MP3 players that support OGG, it's not that hard to find them (http://www.iriveramerica.com/prod/ultra/t10/).
ripping from cd to ogg, thats not transcoding. but converting mp3 to ogg is and you do loose more fidelity. im not gonna transcode 5000 mp3s to ogg just so i can use ogg, and im not gonna start using ogg cause everything else is mp3.
**** get rid of media player all together and install winamp. ive been using it ever sence it came out and ive never found anything better. it has the best damn media library of anything ive tried to use before. also id get the serial to unlock advanced features. youl probibly also want the lame out plugin, for transcoding mp3 files.
I hope you are aware, that what you said is pretty much shooting through your own foot.
Winamp, AFAIK, simply uses the directshow player; which is the very same thing as Media Player.
Uninstalling media player xx will merly remove the shell from your system.
Media Player classic on the other hand is a very trim and neat way to play files.
If you need a player that plays everything, I recommend the following:
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/
It is the ultimate player in terms of compability (and also has an impressive performance). The downside is, that as it is a 'nix program, the windows port runs only in console not with a GUI. (Though there ARE third party GUIs you can use.)
i dont much mind the direct show api and player, thats just the bare minimum to play files. the shell handles all the display and meta data, and in a couple cases viruses got into my computer through the shell. now the winamp shell isnt as stupid, it doesnt try to execute your tags and just displayes them. and so the winamp shell is much more secure. and i already stated the main reason i like winamp is cause it has one of the best media librarys out there. the fact that its more secure than what comes with windows is just extra brownie points.
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I would also recommend the free version of Sygate firewall. Its not a resource hog like most of the other Friewall apps
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Wasn't there a frick the system thread about somewhere?
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That was years ago. I barely remember it now.
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I would also recommend the free version of Sygate firewall. Its not a resource hog like most of the other Friewall apps
IIRC, Sygate was acquired by Symantec and the free version will only be supported until the end of this year.
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Yep. Sygate is out of the game, actually it has been out of the game quite some time now because it has not been updated since october 2004. That makes it two years old.
Kerio also announced they will stop development of their Personal Firewall, however it was later aquired by Sunbelt and has been rebranded as Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall. The free version of the now Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall offers more limited functionality than the full version, but it is still better than WinXP, ZoneAlarm or Sygate firewalls. http://www.sunbelt-software.com/Kerio.cfm
If you're still using either Sygate or Kerio firewalls, you should get Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall instead.