Software products that you think are really good
 

List some software that you think rocks. It can be any application, music, email, enterprise stuff. You name it. If you have time describe why you like it.

I'll start.
Rhapsody's music service - Granted I havn't compared it to competing products, but it offers a wide variety of music on a subscription basis. It also offers a device that creates a fairly seamless integration from music selection to portable listening.

YouTube - the site has gone downhill a bit but I still like the crazy variety of video and the ease with which other websites can publish YouTube videos.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

Boris,

Google Reader (http://www.google.com/reader/) - This lets me organize and stay on top of tons of feeds

Firefox (cue astro's list of extensions)

Trillian (instant messaging) (http://www.ceruleanstudios.com/) - I like the ability to have multiple accounts open in one client across Yahoo, AIM, and MSN.

AVG Anti-spyware/anti-virus (http://www.grisoft.com/) free and pay versions. free home use version is great.

OpenVPN - For anyone who needs to set up a VPN to the office or wherever, this is super easy to setup and use.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

Although we're 98% resigned to top-posting e-mails thanks to M$ setting the standard of putting the cursor above the header so long ago (as well as so many people choosing HTML as their default format), if you're a geek or wannabe geek who uses plain text format and likes to reply below the quotes (as is our standard in these forums, for example), here is a free download you may enjoy. I've used it for years. It automatically "fixes" the headers in Outlook when you hit reply, and you can also customize them to your liking. Note that this has no effect on HTML e-mails.

Not sure many will benefit from this, but for the few that will they'll find it pretty cool.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

Pandora when I could use it at work. Streaming music all day and it makes suggestions based on my choices.

Firefox, as mentioned before.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

TypeIt4Me

You set up a list of abbreviations for common words/phrases. Then, any time you're typing in any program it replaces the abbreviation with the word/phrase you defined.

Only for Macintosh though. If anyone knows of a similar program for Windows I'd love to know about it.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

Emusic is a great music package. It's easy to use, provides fast downloads, and the Mp3's have no DRM. it's a lot of indie/ambient stuff, not a lot of GnR and U2 to be found.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

LAUNCHY

want to open paint? alt-spacebar, type 'pa', and hit enter.

want to open notepad? alt-spacebar, type 'no', and hit enter.

want to calculate 467823 * 463? alt-spacebar, enter the expression and it's calculated inline.

it indexes your start menu by default, but you can make it do other things. i added my documents to its directory list and pdf as a filetype. now if i want to pull up my nutritional data pdf from subway i hit alt-spacebar, type 'sub', and hit enter. this will work for any type of file that can be executed/opened: word documents, excel spreadsheets, etc. it can also index ie and firefox bookmarks.

http://umn.dl.sourceforge.net/source...hySetup103.exe

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

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Pandora when I could use it at work. Streaming music all day and it makes suggestions based on my choices.



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very good one

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

keypass - Great for organizing all my passwords and very secure, and its free.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

spybot search and destroy - free

Ad aware SE personal - free

both are free, very easy to use and effective

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

Google Notebook

It's like notepad, but you can access it from any computer. You can save links, etc., with a couple of mouseclicks. I find it very convenient for saving web pages, random quotes on a webpage (you can highlight the text, right-click and save it to notebook, along with the url).

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

gmail - I love gmails interface and constant refreshing of your inbox.

photoshop - I don't really think this needs any explanation

winamp - stable, non bloatware mp3 player

Media Player Classic - This builds off the UI of the old school windows media player (before MS bloated it up) and is very sleek and non resource intensive. This is what I watch all my video files with. (Including quicktime files after I installed the quicktime alternative plugin)

Foxitreader - Very sleak, fast loading freeware pdf reader. It loads in less than a second which compared to Adobe's bloatware is amazing and it renders everything I have ever thrown at it flawlessly.

As others have already mentioned: AVG antivirus, Spybot S&D, and trillian are also very useful.

ffdshow - This is a video rendering engine that will render pretty much all avi files regardless of the codec they were encoded in. (Works flawlessly with Media Player Classic)

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

hijackthis!-lists processes, autostarts and internet buttons and lets you manually remove them. i use this a lot at home.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

kipin. media player classic>VLC player?

also, imo, foobar2k>winamp

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

I'm a big fan of mpc

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

RJ,

In my opinion yes. I like the controls MPC gives me when it comes to audio/video settings. For example it is very easy from within MPC to resize a video file (zoom in/out) change the aspect ratio, change audio speed etc.

I also started using MPC before VLC became popular so I am used to all the keyboard command shortcuts and I see no reason to switch.

MPC + ffdshow + AC3 codec = best for video playback.

One other program I forgot which I use all the time is
utorrent - very sleek fast loading highly customizable bitorrent client.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

I seem to have a real problem with VLC player---lots of times there's really bad pixelation and lag, which takes 20-30 seconds for the player to "catch up" to. I'd be interested in hearing more about other video players. I can't get the new Media Player to play anything (almost)....tons of codec errors, etc.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

google homepage - www.google.com/ig - email, news, weather, rss, etc., all on my homepage. i love this.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

i use mpc, and i like it a lot better than vlc. the non-native look and feel as well as the imprecise slidebar bother me.

i prefer winamp to foobar2k though. i like winamp's dead-simple operation and ability to right-click a folder and queue up all of its contents.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

everything non-nerdy I use even remotely often has been mentioned, so here goes:

Mathematica - whenever I need a symbolic answer to something. it's like magic.

MATLAB - for everything else. data analysis, simulations, etc. plus a well-designed and simple c-style programming language that makes it easy to learn.

Excel - just an awesome all-around product. easy to use, and also very powerful for those (not so much myself) who are really good at manipulating it. one of the few microsoft products I really find superior to any competitor.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

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i prefer winamp to foobar2k though. i like winamp's dead-simple operation and ability to right-click a folder and queue up all of its contents.

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i think my love of foobar comes from the fact that all of my mp3s are there and sorted, i just scroll to where i want and start playing.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

Strong preference for GAIM over Trillian.

2nd ED on Excel. So many people at work and in their personal life get silly products they don't need instead of just using Excel, which is super versitle.

I'm a fan of rocketlaunch, which is a util that basically lets me run the os10 toolbar on my pc, just a faster, better looking way of launching aps.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

Josem,

I don't use a personalized homepage, but a lot of people I know love this one: http://www.netvibes.com/

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

dids, have you checked out launchy?

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

"On the Job" is a beautifully simple time tracking and invoicing program for Mac. Unfortunately, I don't have any business. So if you want some PowerPoints made, call me up so I can use this damn software.

I know none of you use Macs, so the rest are web-based:

Netvibes for custom start pages... Much better RSS integration than Google homepage and it's just prettier overall.

Wordpress.com for free hosted blogging. I like the interface more than Blogger, plus the search engine results are RIDICULOUS.

Slideshare.net is kind of a YouTube for PowerPoints and other slideshows. I'm not sure if I'd say it's "really good," but it's the best of its kind.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

i still use aim 5.9 with deadaim and prefer it to gaim or trillian. i think i need to give gaim another look though.

i use fire for instant messaging/irc'ing on my mac and i wish they had fire for pc.

3rd the excel, excel rulz!

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

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dids, have you checked out launchy?

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I haven't. That said, the way I use my computers is more mouse heavy than typing, so your initial description turned me off a bit. I used to be MUCH more keyboard heavy back when we ran a dos based db at work, but since we lost that in 2001, I'm a mouse slave now.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

One other google service is use all the time are the advanced search functions such as the calculator function (Just do a google search with your equation (Ex. 16x3+(4+5) ), the converter function (Ex. 16 pounds in kilograms), and the english dictionary which returns definitions from multiple sources (ex. Define: Marsupial).

Anyone else have some handy google services they use that are offered through their websearch?

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

i keep my browser window at fullscreen. if i wanted to open up my ruby pickaxe book pdf, i would have to grab the mouse, click the start menu, go to my documents, go to tech, and double-click the pdf. using launchy i can hit alt-spacebar, type 'pick', and hit enter. it's WAY more efficient.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

If you've ever wanted to know what type of motherboard you have or other hardware info without having to open up your machine, siw scans your machine and provides a comprehensive list of all hardware and software components. It's very useful if you've formatted your computer and need to find a driver for some hardware component but the list of hardware devices through windows my computer properties doesn't bring it up.

I'm also a big fan of google's online calendar and spreadsheet software for collaborating with remote groups of people.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

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keypass - Great for organizing all my passwords and very secure, and its free.

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oh damn, thats another good one. I have a couple USB flash drives with my keypass database on them. One by my computer and one on my keychain.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

I've got a laptop with a giant screen and a dual monitor desktop, my rocklaunch is never obstructed. Part of this also is that I just like clean, so I have zero icons on my desktop.

I do agree that the start menu is a horrible idea.

This reminds me that TweakUI is something everybody should have.

Re: Software products that you think are really good *DELETED*
 

Post deleted by Tron

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

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i keep my browser window at fullscreen. if i wanted to open up my ruby pickaxe book pdf, i would have to grab the mouse, click the start menu, go to my documents, go to tech, an

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Tron's software needs:

Better message board posting software.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

Well, while we are prattling off Google apps, I'll give Google Desktop a mention. I use it mainly at work, but it useful for home users too.

My favorite feature is the quick-search window that can be popped up by tapping control twice. It searches files, emails, etc, on your PC and/or any network drives that you choose to index.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

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[ QUOTE ]
i keep my browser window at fullscreen. if i wanted to open up my ruby pickaxe book pdf, i would have to grab the mouse, click the start menu, go to my documents, go to tech, an

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Tron's software needs:

Better message board posting software.


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The Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California's hardware needs:

Better wireless [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

Tron,

You just had an unclosed quote tag. It foiled me at first too.

Let's just both blame UBB software.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

Dids,

Please. I don't make typing errors. My wireless cut out while it was sending the post. Once again, the wireless provided by the communication school I am sitting inside of. Communication. Hmmm.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

Excel (entire (very profitable) career's are spent using this app)
Google Earth
DBConverter
TVUPlayer

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

this thread inspired me to order a new 160gb hd to replace my macbook's current 60gb one. i think im gonna start dual booting vista once i get the bigger capacity. holla.