Software products that you think are really good

[kidcolin]

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.

[gumpzilla]

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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.

[sledghammer]

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.

[cbloom]

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

[TiK]

[ QUOTE ]

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.

[wayninho]

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

[thirddan]

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

[mmbt0ne]

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

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

[fnord_too]

Eclipse

[olliejen]

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]