Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

El D,

I've been using AVG for about two years now, free home edition. Recently when I start up it tells me it's going to expire soon. Is this just BS? Or can I renew it? If not I'll gladly pay the $40 or whatever for their services. I've been very pleased with it.

astro,
I look forward to trying out launcy when I get home. The less mouse the better.

edtoast,
Aren't MATLAB and mathematica really expensive? I used to use MATLAB a ton back in college. Awesome program.

re: google homepage: I just started using it, along with Google Reader (I know I'm a newb). They have some nice add-ons, but it's slow and a bit clunky to load up. And I mostly just use it to get over to my Google Reader. I might just go back to about:blank.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

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edtoast,
Aren't MATLAB and mathematica really expensive? I used to use MATLAB a ton back in college. Awesome program.

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They are definitely expensive. Even the student version of Mathematica (the same thing as the full version, as far as anybody can tell) runs about $160. I bought a copy for my father as a Christmas present a couple of years ago. The non-student version is closer to $1000, I believe.

If you have university affiliations, you can probably get your hands on them somewhat cheaper through some kind of licensing deal. But yeah, they're expensive. Pirated copies of both seem to be fairly common among nerds I know.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

www.ztrace.com

I don't have it, but it was recommended on these forums. In the case of a stolen laptop, when the thieves access the internet, the address is sent to the police(or whoever). Also wipes the hard drive of all your sensitive files, so your information is secure.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

StartupMonitor + StartupCtlPanel : let you control what goes in your startup

muTorrent : best/simplest/non-invasive torrenter

Visual Assist : very nice MSVC enhancer for progammers

allSnap : cuz I'm anal

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

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

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My girlfriend agrees with you. She loves this program more than she loves me and is always saying how amazing it is (She uses it extensively for math stuff). I don't use it at all and just make fun of her for being an überdork.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

Media Player Classic >> VLC

Parallels I've only been using for about a month, but so far it's been fantastic.

Azureus, if that's ok to mention

Cyberduck or Filezilla for FTP and SFTP

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

<3 maya...<3 shake...

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

notepad++ is awesome and I use it all the time now instead of notepad.

Also, CCleaner for wiping your internet cache, history, cookies, etc.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

Eclipse

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

XP Power Toys (free):

Alt-Tab replacement: If you have multiple sessions of the same app open, you get a bigger version of each tabbed session to see where they are different from one another (e.g. multiple Outlook windows open)

Image Resizer: resize multiple JPG's at once by selecting then right clicking them.

Open Command Window Here: useful when traversing many nested subdirectories in Explorer.

enjoy! [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

Crap Cleaner- cleans off all crap from the net (cookies, history, cache, recycle bin)

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

<3 Stata

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

Add another vote for gaim over trillian. Trillian used to always crash, so gaim was better in that area. Plus, it just blends in better with the desktop and it's open source, which I support.

Tag & Rename - for organizing big mp3 libraries this is a must.

Somebody else mentioned keypass, I'll go more in depth into it (and programs like it). If you have any need to keep anything password protected, it's a good idea to use this. You can have it generate random passwords and store them so that when you need them, all you need to do is copy/paste. I've done this for every site and don't even know the password for some sites. Just be sure to back it up.

That reminds me: Portable Apps. If you have a flash drive and tend to work between computers you know how annoying it can be to have two different setups for firefox, etc. You don't need it anymore. Portable Apps.com Lets you download portable versions of programs like Firefox, AbiWord, Gaim, 7-Zip, VLC, and others. They've been shrunk and don't need to be installed, so you can run them straight from your jump drive. So your firefox will always have the same history, bookmarks, and searches no matter what computer you're on.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

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[ QUOTE ]

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

[/ QUOTE ]

My girlfriend agrees with you. She loves this program more than she loves me and is always saying how amazing it is (She uses it extensively for math stuff). I don't use it at all and just make fun of her for being an überdork.

[/ QUOTE ]
MATLAB >>>>> All, losers!

That said, I was pretty surprised to come in here and see Matlab mentioned, and especially Mathematica. Especially since people who like Mathematica for the reasons mentioned so far typically use and like MathCad. Real men use Matlab.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

screw Trillian, meebo.com is where it's at

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

patrick,

so basically its the old spice of mathematical software?

All,

AVG also a free anti spyware software out which is pretty good.

while all are aware of them i think Pokertracker and PokeraceHUD deserve mention as well. great software at incredible value

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

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

[/ QUOTE ]

My girlfriend agrees with you. She loves this program more than she loves me and is always saying how amazing it is (She uses it extensively for math stuff). I don't use it at all and just make fun of her for being an überdork.

[/ QUOTE ]
MATLAB >>>>> All, losers!

That said, I was pretty surprised to come in here and see Matlab mentioned, and especially Mathematica. Especially since people who like Mathematica for the reasons mentioned so far typically use and like MathCad. Real men use Matlab.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't know about MATLAB, but my girlfriend is probably biased towards Mathematica because she worked at Wolfram over the summer.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

I got mad love for Thunderbird and the calendar extension Lightning.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

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<3 Stata

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Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

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<3 Stata

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Anybody else download the IPUMs data set and spend several hours just running random regressions? ("OK What's the effect of private school education on people from Georgia?")

Surely I'm not the only one.

edited to add: I should point out that I don't do applied work at all. I'll have to run regressions on experimental stuff for my research but barring something weird like being given a data set that wouldn't be widely available (which I may actually be able to get through my wife), I won't really use stata much for actual work. None the less, it's quite fun.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

Great Poker Patrick,

Probably 99% of my use of mathematica is either to solve equations (or systems of them) or do (definite) integration. Are these easy to do with matlab? I haven't used matlab much, other than for doing some simple simulation programs. They are very easy to do in mathematica.

Jared

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

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screw Trillian, meebo.com is where it's at

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Meebo is great, I discovered it this summer when my place of employment blocked AIM Express.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

i have just discovered meebo.com


i am mighty impressed.

quick and easy, yet it seems to all work.


next request: integration with IRC.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

jared,

I think that's the main division between the two. I've never used matematica for much (if anything), but from what I understand it's awesome for integration solutions and things like that.

I used matlab a ton on a lot of my signals and systems courses to simulate control systems, look at hi/low pass filters, stuff like that. We even used it to optimize the placement of nodes in a 2D truss in mechanics class. It's a very powerful program for a lot of engineering disciplines.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

i am mostly a mac guy, so some of these are osx specific.

xylescope

this is, without doubt, the best css editor ever. it's insanely fantastic.

xcode

my favorite ide. i can't believe someone upthread mentioned eclipse.

colloquy

a decent irc client for osx. decent is about as good as it gets in this domain, unfortunately.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

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jared,

I think that's the main division between the two. I've never used matematica for much (if anything), but from what I understand it's awesome for integration solutions and things like that.

[/ QUOTE ]

Generally, for symbolic manipulation, Mathematica > MATLAB. For numerical calculation, MATLAB > Mathematica. Though you can definitely do numerical stuff in Mathematica as well. I tend to use MATLAB a lot more than Mathematica these days.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

I know this isn't software ... but I have to mention the Creative Labs X-Mod, which restores sounds quality to MP3 files. I'm not sure how it works, but it's a pretty amazing little gadget.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

taskzip
Very compact, easy archiving for smallish backups <2GB Good for home use, can add encryption and do whole directories with wildcard references.

Samba
for PDC and file serving without the MS client licensing fees

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

www.beamyourscreen.com

basically allows you to let someone see your screen in real time, or vice versa. it's free.

it's OMGawesome for anyone who is a poker coach/getting coached or just if you have friends you talk strategy with. df_newb and i have been sweating each other for the past couple of days with this.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

vi

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

[ QUOTE ]
www.beamyourscreen.com

basically allows you to let someone see your screen in real time, or vice versa. it's free.

it's OMGawesome for anyone who is a poker coach/getting coached or just if you have friends you talk strategy with. df_newb and i have been sweating each other for the past couple of days with this.

[/ QUOTE ]

wow, thats the tiits

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

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notepad++ is awesome and I use it all the time now instead of notepad.

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Thanks dude.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

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vi

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You gotta start on that, though. I was never able to force myself to get used to it after using emacs for a few years. I wish I could, though. Vi's a lot slimmer.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

[ QUOTE ]
i am mostly a mac guy, so some of these are osx specific.

xylescope

this is, without doubt, the best css editor ever. it's insanely fantastic.

xcode

my favorite ide. i can't believe someone upthread mentioned eclipse.

colloquy

a decent irc client for osx. decent is about as good as it gets in this domain, unfortunately.

[/ QUOTE ]
I always liked Adium for all protocols. I tried Colloquy as well, but it's not better enough to rationalize a second program running.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

This is MS, and is in beta, but MS Live Search 3d maps( http://local.live.com/ ) just looks cool when it works. You have to install components for the 3D to work, but you can then do Superman-like navigation through cities.

http://i132.photobucket.com/albums/q...ish/livesf.jpg

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

[ QUOTE ]
Great Poker Patrick,

Probably 99% of my use of mathematica is either to solve equations (or systems of them) or do (definite) integration. Are these easy to do with matlab? I haven't used matlab much, other than for doing some simple simulation programs. They are very easy to do in mathematica.

Jared

[/ QUOTE ]

I consider myself pretty damn good at getting matlab to do things, and use it for almost everything; for either the tasks you mentioned, I turn to mathematica.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

Groove Virtual Office

I'm a consultant, normally working on multi-person teams, and this is the best workflow/project management software I've used. It's main function is to sync files between systems, but you can also customize it heavily to drive project flow, track tasks/deadlines/calendar items, etc. When a project is done, you archive the workspace off (also integrates with sharepoint).

Picasa for photo management on windows. There are probably better, but this works well for me and integrates totally with blogger and Google web albums (and is free).

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

[ QUOTE ]
www.beamyourscreen.com

basically allows you to let someone see your screen in real time, or vice versa. it's free.

it's OMGawesome for anyone who is a poker coach/getting coached or just if you have friends you talk strategy with. df_newb and i have been sweating each other for the past couple of days with this.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is awesome assuming it is not buggy thanks a lot.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

[ QUOTE ]
This is MS, and is in beta, but MS Live Search 3d maps( http://local.live.com/ ) just looks cool when it works. You have to install components for the 3D to work, but you can then do Superman-like navigation through cities.

http://i132.photobucket.com/albums/q...ish/livesf.jpg

[/ QUOTE ]

Meh. Won't work for Sevilla and doesn't give me anywhere nearly as nice a 2D image as this from google maps:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6.../misevilla.jpg

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

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vi

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alias vi 'vim'

Vim is better.