Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

Here is a list of stuff I really like:

Newsleecher (http://www.newsleecher.com)
The Best Binary news reader on the market, it has an integrated binary search, and it just added the ability to parity check and extract from archives within the program automatically. It's just sick.

Ultramon
Dual monitor program, best one I could find.

Movie Collector
For cataloging the DVD collection

The Portable Apps Suite (http://www.portableapps.com)
It is a bunch of free apps that run off your USB Drive and leave no trace on the PC.

RSS Owl
I like it for reading Newsfeeds at this point, though it would not surprise me to find something else I liked as much.

C-Dog

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

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anyone know a user friendly stats program? By user friendly, I mean not R.

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stata.

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I should have specified that it must be free.

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How big of a dataset? I think you mentioned excel - if you are doing anything on your own I trust it isn't much data and can just use excel.

Pretty much everything like STATA is going to cost and arm and a leg because they're commercial products. We use SAS here at work and I think it's a LOT better than STATA, more "project friendly" but it also costs a lot.

For any gifted developers an open source stat analysis package seems like a cool idea. If anyone is interested my statistics knowledge is vast, though I can hardly say the same for my programming skills.

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SAS is about the most user-unfriendly programming language I've ever seen, though the GUI may be good/useful (I've only ever used it through a unix shell, so I have no idea). It is, however, very useful for merging data sets.

R is open source, and almost as weird/un-useful as SAS, though its about the most powerful thing out there. S-Plus is a commercial version that's slightly more intuitive to use, though the big problem with either one is the design of the language itself.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

Microsoft Visual Studio is pretty much my favorite piece of software ever. It gets better with every release and allows me to program much more efficiently; just about any place I want to use a type/variable/whatever I can just type a couple characters and hit enter and it will fill in the rest; it does a ton of automated stuff as well, like fill in 'case' statements in a switch block, rename a variable/type/whatever in every spot in a project where it's referenced, it's just so [censored] cool and fast. One of my friends once described it by saying "You're like 'void main' and it's like 'Boom! Here's 50 lines of code' and you're like 'YES, that's the exact program I wanted to write!'" Plus, Express editions of VS for each .NET language are free.

Also, Skype is a voice chatting program which I've been using recently and works really well. It works similarly to an IM program, except that instead of sending messages you're usually 'calling' people on your buddy list. The quality is like 10x better than AIM voice chat; it does a really good job of stripping away background noise, for example. I've only started using it recently to sweat people playing poker but it works really well and I like it a lot.

Lastly, UltraMon is an awesome program for multi-monitor users. It lets you use multiple desktops on different monitors, or span one desktop across all of them; its most useful feature (imo) is the addition of a button on every window which allows you to quickly move a program between different monitors. I use that function at least 20x per day.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

Some of these will be ubber geek but alas that is what I am...

Any case

Dameware - remote access tool - I am an IT dorq for a living and this makes my job super easy. From my PC I can remote into any machine on my network with a few clicks and a service install. It's also fairly light weight and has file transfer abilities. It also doesn't screw up video drivers like RDP and PC Anywhere does.

Spysweeper - Anti Spy ware - One the few that seems to get every piece of new spy ware and stays pretty up to date - sucky part is you need to pay but I fell its worth it.

Roboform - password keeper auto form filler - This is a siq program plugs into Firefox and IE saves your passwords and will auto fill forms with nae/CC info address etc. Highly recommended for those who login to lots of websites

utorrent - I care NOT to elaborate on this one [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

lastly

VMware - Virtual PC's - this is really cool. I use this at work on servers mainly but what it does is allows you ro run multiple systems at once on one PC. Thus and under utilized File server I can install a Virtual machine on and use it for a front end application server with out disturbing the existing environment simultaneously. Also you can use it for say running Vista and XP at the same time and switching back and forth with out having to reboot into it.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

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Open Office is really really good, at least for a casual user.

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Very much so. The only reason I got away from it is because it didn't have (at least I could never find) the Excel Solver function.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

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I'm a budding ecologist. There's loads of stuff Excel doesn't do, e.g. GLMs.

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You're just going to have to get Stata or SAS. I don't know as much about SAS, but Stata has a lot of built in biostatistics capabilities. Check to see if you can get student pricing through your school. It still won't be cheap, but it should be affordable.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

For online chess I like 2+2 TimM's
Xboard or Winboard interface.

I am sure there must be something else that has come along
in the 15 or so years I have used a version of it, but it seems perfect.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

Private label Gmail -- basically Gmail but with your own domain. It's free right now because it's still in beta (click on "Business Solutions" on Google's main page to find it).

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

The imageshack toolbar is absolutely awesome for these boards.

Agent Ransack - for searching through files. XP search sucks, and ignores certain kinds of files. This thing does so much more, including display the line that the text is found on, so you don't have to always open the document. Essential for coders, great for searching through HHs too.

Ultra Edit - sweet text editor for coding and pretty easy to customize to rapidly scan through HHs. I can go though one in about 30 sec. now on average. Also if you email support they get back to you in 5 min.

Synergy - allows you to mouse and keyboard across X # of computers as if they were one. Also saves text in the clipboard across computers. Awesome program.

HT Track - website scraper. Comes in handy sometimes. I've made a few grand archiving websites for people.

Pivot Pro - to rotate your monitors.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

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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.

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UltraVNC?

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

Taskbar Shuffle

Love this thing. I usually keep lots of tasks open and this lets me relocate the taskbar buttons next to each other to be able to flip back and forth efficiently.

Great little tool.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

A few of my favorites have already been mentioned:

- Launchy - a friend recommended it and I ignored him. A few days later he pestered me to try it again. I installed it. I'm now in love. Once you get used to using this, it's SO nice to find a program or song. (alt-space, 'osca') pulls up all oscar peterson mp3's in 2 seconds.

- Excel - I live and die by this program. Pretty damn solid all around.

- FlashFXP - I haven't found a better FTP client yet

- TextPad - nice lightweight color-coded editor that instantly loads unlike other slow IDE's. I can't believe I used to code without color highlighting.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

any cygwin fans in the house? there must be around here. Probably the one program that has improved my life the most. If you're a linux/unix guy trapped in a windows environment you really should be using it.

I'm also a huge vi fan. I wish someone would come up with a program to allow vi type editing in every program in windows (for example this text field in Firefox).

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

Process Explorer

Process Explorer shows you information about which handles and DLLs processes have been opened or loaded.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

TuboTax

I can do my taxes in about 30 minutes. It really shines if you use it year to year, because it saves you from having to enter repetitive data. And it will ask you, "Last year you had income from xyz, do you have that again this year?"

The beauty in it for me is that I don't have to spend hours scouring tax docs in fear that I missed something or filled out a form wrong. I simply answer every question it asks me, and my work is done. I usually have my refund in my bank account before most of my friends have even sent theirs in.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

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any cygwin fans in the house? there must be around here. Probably the one program that has improved my life the most. If you're a linux/unix guy trapped in a windows environment you really should be using it.

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If getting it set up wasn't so miserable, I might have listed it. Over a year later, I still sometimes have trouble getting X forwarding to work right.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

Great thread topic! I seem to go through a billion software products trying to find quality free ones.

I'm going to start with a fantastic bookmarklet that everyone on 2+2 should use:

Form Text Resizer - Allows you to change the size of forms in webpages. GREAT for entering posts on 2+2.


Obvious / Repeated ones that I use:

Picassa Firefox AutoHotKey KeePass Paint.NET AllSnap PDFcreator MPC uTorrent Word XL PowerPoint


Major awesomeness that you might not have heard of:

MiniAIM - Incredible AIM program, microscopic (81K), standalone, all the important features, AIM only tho.

MWSnap - Great little tool for screen capture. Lets you select a section of the screen. Customizable, feature-laden, and relatively small

Driver Collector - Collects your currently installed drivers for easy reformatting of your computer. Lifesaver! Esp for pain in the ass Dell laptops with difficult to find drivers.

Back up email - Puts "Backup to email" in the right-click menu for windows. Quickly and painlessly sends the file to your gmail account. Will chop up files over a certain size so gmail will accept them.

DarkRoom - If you ever just wanted to write without distraction, this is for you. Completely Black screen with green text - just like the good old days [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Comodo - My new fave firewall software (better than ZoneAlarm IMO)

Tugzip - Support for all the various compression standards and disc images

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

If you're a vi fan, you should try vim (VI Improved) http://www.vim.org. It works like vi, but with many added features. You can split your window vertically or horizontally and have multiple files open. You have history and editing for colon commands and searches. This feature alone makes it a huge improvement over plain vi. No more retyping your entire complex regular expression substitution command because you got one character wrong. Just hit the up arrow and edit it and try again. The gui version has menus and graphical file open and save dialogs (or you can use the command line like regular vi--the best of both worlds). It also has syntax coloring for a variety of programming languages and config file formats, can be set up to process compiler/syntax checker errors and take you to the line with the error, and is available for Windows, Linux and most varieties of UNIX (you can build it from source if no binary is available), and can be run in either GUI or terminal mode.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

AIM Ad-Hack: Removes those damn ads from AIM.
TurboNote: (the freeware version) Let's you make desktop notes. I think there's a Post-it program that's similar, but something about it used to bug me.
DefilerPak: A large codec pack.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

For most of my day-to-day computing I use OSX on Macbook Pro, so I definitely consider OSX to be one of the top programs that should be included in this.

Additionally, I'd add:

Ecto - Great tool for publishing to multiple blogs, if your'e into that sort of thing.

Textpad - Similar to, but better than, EditPlus for Windows. Great syntax highlighting built in and shortcuts for coding/writing in a number of languages ranging from Ruby to CSS.

Quicksilver - Tray app used to speed up productivity in OSX. Freeware. Good stuff.

AdiumX - Basically similar to Trillian, but better. Combines AIM+Gtalk+YahooM+other messenger clients for me. Definitely have a lot of [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] for this product.

Skype - I'm amazed at how many people aren't aware of how awesome Skype is. I use it for conference calls frequently.

Rob

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

just got my pcmagazine in the mail yesterday. cover story is "78 best free softare for 2007"

just one stand out from from the article:

www.gimp.org - photoshop knock off. i started using it last night. im quite pleased so far...and lost.

there are a lot mroe stand outs. just depends on what your interests are.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

Gimp is fantastic. It's slow loading, but given that the price of photoshop is so prohibitive, gimp's a great choice.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

I tried gimp years ago and what I really disliked is that the interface seemed really obtuse. Or maybe it was just me being obtuse. In photoshop it always seemed really easy to figure out how to do stuff, but in gimp, I think I had a hell of a time drawing a circle.

Has the interface improved over the years?

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

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If you're a vi fan, you should try vim (VI Improved) http://www.vim.org. It works like vi, but with many added features. You can split your window vertically or horizontally and have multiple files open. You have history and editing for colon commands and searches. This feature alone makes it a huge improvement over plain vi. No more retyping your entire complex regular expression substitution command because you got one character wrong. Just hit the up arrow and edit it and try again. The gui version has menus and graphical file open and save dialogs (or you can use the command line like regular vi--the best of both worlds). It also has syntax coloring for a variety of programming languages and config file formats, can be set up to process compiler/syntax checker errors and take you to the line with the error, and is available for Windows, Linux and most varieties of UNIX (you can build it from source if no binary is available), and can be run in either GUI or terminal mode.

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I think I need a moist towellette. I had no idea this was available for Windows. You just made my day dude.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

Borodog,

GIMP's interface is pretty confusing, but from my limited use of photoshop, not demonstrably less so that ps. There's a pretty steep learning curve, but if you're not an idiot, you can figure most of it out.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

just to clear things up. openoffice files can be opened with microsoft office products and used interchangeably right?

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

Memento - great little post it prog - very small footprint

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

RJ,

openoffice can write to microsoft office formats, though i have seen a few spreadsheets not open correctly in excel afterwards.

i have no idea whether MO can open OO formats or not.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

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Memento - great little post it prog - very small footprint

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thanks for replacing the 4390203473 stickies on my desk at work.

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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I was gonna say that I use Miranda but after checking out Meebo I switched. Great stuff!

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

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Memento - great little post it prog - very small footprint

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thanks for replacing the 4390203473 stickies on my desk at work.

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I just downloaded this and I can tell it's going to change my life. Thank you.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

XXClone After pokertracker (no need to list) I think this is the first software I ever paid for. Makes a bootable clone of your xp system on your back-up hard drive (or whatever media). I'm not very tech advanced, but apparently msft doesn't like cloning your system b/c it facilitates piracy. generally a clone of xp won't be bootable. xxclone was designed to do it. now if my drive fails, I shut down, pull and trash the drive, and boot off the clone, which replicates everything since my last back up. hardly a hiccup. no extraction, no restore, no boot discs. maybe this just appeals to me b/c I'm tech retarded.

MSFT Streets and Trips. I'd spent my whole life never having given money to msft (pirated office, bot refurb'd computers). Then on a plane trip the guy next to me whips out his laptop, sticks a gps sensor on the window, and tracks our flight on a map. I was sold. since then I've navigated all around the country (and canada) with my old TP 650e laptop in the passenger seat. (gives audio directions too.) delorme has a competing product but reviews say it's not good. msft isn't perfect (some addresses are a block off), but it has never caused me a problem in many trips. and it's under 100 bucks.

open office. better I use this to fight msft than pirate it. I decided to make the step when a reviewer said office 2007 docs wouldn't be readable in old offict. f u msft. Calc (spreadsheet) doesn't do somethings as well as excel. but it does them. I'm kind of a medium power user, not a super power user, though. Writer does a lot of things better than Word. You can save in the msft formats for compatibility, and you can save to pdf too. (I'm not sure if msft reads open formats itself, though. but apparently they have caught on in some countries so...)

Bitpim. freeware. I've used it to make back ups and move files on and off of (and hack) my last 2 phones with verizon (an LG from 2 years ago and a new Razr). VZ locks them down. Bitpim picks the lock. (also for more advanced you need a seem editor.)


re the above: I'm interested in a universal remote. I now have 4: TV, CD/DVD, Squeezebox (which I only use for internet radio), and amp. I'm concerned they won't cover my amp. (PS Audio GCC 100 (Class D), not something you're going to find in Best Buy.) Maybe they do. Maybe they will as soon as you ask.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

mosta,

Head over to astro's thread for universal remote recs.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

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just to clear things up. openoffice files can be opened with microsoft office products and used interchangeably right?

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a word of warning. last year, i started a project at work in powerpoint. brought it home and worked on my computer in openoffice and everything was fine. brought it back to work tried to open it in powerpoint and the file was not fine. (it's been too long to remember exactly what was wrong).

im somewhat handy w/ a computer but couldnt do anything w/ it. one of the IT guys at work was able to fix the file after quite some time.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

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I tried gimp years ago and what I really disliked is that the interface seemed really obtuse. Or maybe it was just me being obtuse. In photoshop it always seemed really easy to figure out how to do stuff, but in gimp, I think I had a hell of a time drawing a circle.

Has the interface improved over the years?

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try paint.net. it's been mentioned, but not hyped. i only do simple crap, but i like it a lot better than gimp.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

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Textpad - Similar to, but better than, EditPlus for Windows. Great syntax highlighting built in and shortcuts for coding/writing in a number of languages ranging from Ruby to CSS.

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Have you tried TextMate? I don't know if you're a programmer by trade, but I code in Ruby (specifically a Rails environment) all day, and I love this damn editor...

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

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any cygwin fans in the house? there must be around here. Probably the one program that has improved my life the most. If you're a linux/unix guy trapped in a windows environment you really should be using it.

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i love cygwin, but i think the nt terminal sucks. luckily, the unknown-but-amazing puttycyg lets you use putty as a local shell window!!

i love vi and i hate emacs, but i am not a fan of vi mode on the command line.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

Launchy is the bomb. Once you've used it for a day, using a computer without it is like going back to DOS.

It's that good.

For GNOME users, Deskbar is very similar.

Metapad is the best win32 barebones notepad replacement I've seen.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

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any cygwin fans in the house? there must be around here. Probably the one program that has improved my life the most. If you're a linux/unix guy trapped in a windows environment you really should be using it.

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i love cygwin, but i think the nt terminal sucks. luckily, the unknown-but-amazing puttycyg lets you use putty as a local shell window!!

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yeah the default terminal is a disaster. I use rxvt which is pretty good - I'll have to check this out.

Re: Software products that you think are really good
 

Here's a cool site with a bunch of freeware reviews.
46 best freeware utilities