[karajorma]

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

[Goober5000]

Trillian Pro is free?

[karajorma]

Nope. But if I'm replacing it what I'll use will have to be.

[Kamikaze]

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.

[Fury]

Trillian Pro - Try GAIM
AVG - Try avast!

My recommendation: switch to linux and keep Windows around in seperate hard drive for gaming.

[Rictor]

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.

[CP5670]

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)

[Flipside]

http://www.freewarehome.com/index.html - this needs some browsing to get past the fluff.

http://www.digitaldarknet.net/thelist/thelist.php

[Wanderer]

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

[WMCoolmon]

Foobar2000, it plays pretty much all music formats and has awesome hotkeys support.

[Nuke]

**** 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.

[WMCoolmon]

MP3? Yuck. dBpowerAMP can rip to MPC/OGG files (Among many other plugins), a much better open-source file format.

[Geezer]

AVG - Try avast!

Yeah, what he said.    And Sunbelt Kerio for a firewall.

[Deepblue]

Soldat.

[pecenipicek]

Soldat.

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.

[Nuke]

MP3? Yuck. dBpowerAMP 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. 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.

[Nuke]

AVG - Try avast!

Yeah, what he said.    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.

[Grug]

Soldat.

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.

[Turnsky]

you forgot mIRC

[Deepblue]

Soldat.

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.