Software products that you think are really good

[TiK]

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).

[kipin]

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)

[PITTM]

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

[PITTM]

kipin. media player classic>VLC player?

also, imo, foobar2k>winamp

[traz]

I'm a big fan of mpc

[kipin]

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.

[onthebutton]

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.

[Josem]

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

[astroglide]

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.

[edtost]

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.