Must have computer programs.

[Dave Lehnert]

When you buy a new computer what are the must have programs you install. I'm not talking about Microsoft office and such. But the little ,often free stuff ,you like to use. I like AVG, Word Web, PDF 995.

[Bruce Page]

I dread buying a new computer. I have 4 expensive programs: Photoshop, AutoCAD, SolidWorks, & MS Office Pro that run fine on my dinosaur XP machine (2 years old) but are incompatible with the newer OS’s.

[John Coloccia]

For the longest time, it was Frhed...

I wonder if more than 5 people out there will know what I'm talking about.

[Leo Graywacz]

Why would you want to use a hex editor. An assembler is much better LOL But I can't get my MASM 6.1 to work on windows.

[Matt Meiser]

7-zip, IrfanView (quick tool to rotate, crop, and resie images), iTunes
Also, I always set up a keyboard shortcut ctrl-alt-k for the calculator. Ctrl-alt-c isn't possible.

[Larry Browning]

The list is endless. Try going to gizmo freeware reviews. They are legit. I have gotten lots of good advice there.

[Ted Calver]

Irfanview for photos, sketchup (although i run the pro version), google earth for a start

[Dave Lehnert]

7-zip, IrfanView (quick tool to rotate, crop, and resie images), iTunes
Also, I always set up a keyboard shortcut ctrl-alt-k for the calculator. Ctrl-alt-c isn't possible.
Will check out Irfanview. Have been looking for a photo program.

[Curt Harms]

Will check out Irfanview. Have been looking for a photo program. It might be overkill/overly complex for what you want but do you know about GIMP? Freeware program that is sorta comparable to Adobe Photoshop/Photoshop Elements. the name stand for Graphic Image Manipulation Program. It's what I use to resize photos for uploading. It will do a lot more. http://www.gimp.org/windows/

[Matt Meiser]

It might be overkill/overly complex for what you want

That's why I like Irfanview. I can resize and rotate photos opened off the camera's card and save them to my desktop with just a few easily remembered keyboard short cuts (r-rotate 90 degrees, ctrl-r resize, s-save as) and it does it fast with no fuss. Or if I need to resize a whole folder of photos, there's a second piece for batch processing but its slightly fussy.

[Harry Hagan]

Audacity for audio editing

[Jim O'Dell]

Another for Irfanview. Super easy to use. I also use Real Player, Avast, Super Antispyware, CC Cleaner, a couple speaker building programs, and Open office. I do have the Google SketchUp 8, but haven't played in it much. Guess it's owned by someone else now. I have a few others, but these are the ones I actually use. Jim.

[Eric DeSilva]

Besides MS Office and the Adobe Suite... off the top of my head...

Google Sketchup
Mozilla Firefox w/a bunch of add ons
TrueCrypt
Notepad++
iTunes
MS Security Essentials

[paul cottingham]

Spybot
7-zip
openoffice
avast
irfanview
Firefox
Thunderbird
These went on every machine we built. There are more, but I can't remember them right now. All free, mostly opensource.

[Kevin Gregoire]

Wolfenstein is a program right??

[Jeff Hallam]

Office: Open Office
Windows Compression: 7-Zip
Photo Viewing: Picasa
Photo Editing: GIMP
3D Design: Sketchup
Windows Burning: CDBurnerXP
Antivirus: Microsoft Security Essentials
Glary Utilities
Calibre (ebook management)

[Tim Morton]

i buy apple's, so everything i need comes pre-installed.:cool:

[David Weaver]

AVG
Ad Block Pro
Spybot S&D
Malwarebytes

[curtis rosche]

i hate avg,,,,, hitman pro, super anti spyware, or ad-aware

deffinatly need auto pager for firefox.

[Chuck Wintle]

Wolfenstein is a program right??
yes it is!

[Larry Browning]

for photo organization and a little bit of editing, Picasa is hands down the best one going, and it is FREE! I have thousands of pictures and I can find any and everyone of them in seconds. Also, but sure to checkout Gizmo's freeware review. (http://www.techsupportalert.com/) It has tons of recommendations and reviews. It is legit.

[David G Baker]

Microsoft Security Essentials or Charters protection software, Photoshop, Word, Pandora, Carbonite (full version), Amazon Cloud Player, Ad-aware,

[Kevin W Johnson]

i buy apple's, so everything i need comes pre-installed.:cool:

Yeah, ANYONE but Microsoft can do that and not get sued.

[Art Mulder]

i buy apple's, so everything i need comes pre-installed.:cool:

I call shenanigans on this one...

I also have macs at home and at work, and depend on or use regularly:

Google Chrome for the browser
Skype
iPhoto Library Manager
Google Sketchup
LibreOffice (branched from OpenOffice)
Gimp (advanced photo editing)
Fugu (FTP/SFTP client)
VirtualBox (a Virtualization tool so that I can run Windows and Linux _under_ MacOS)


- I also use a VNC client
- I've also used Inkscape (a Vector Graphics program)
- Sometimes Google Earth
- I used to use OpenOffice

[Kevin W Johnson]

Audacity for audio editing

+1 for Audacity. I have my computer setup as such that if it goes to my speakers, I can record it. Ring tones made easy for example.

One of my all time favorites is Total Commander, a very simple file management program. Makes copying/moving files from drive to drive or folder to folder, or computer to computer, etc., a breeze. I have family members that also use it to upload/download files to my FTP server as it also has a built in client. Zips and unzips many different compression methods, and has many plugins available to allow opening .ISO files, creating .ISO's, opening .MSI files, unpack and create .GIF's, and alot more.

Imgburn -- for burning .ISO's

SandBoxie -- for opening questionable files or visiting websites with questionable/compromised security. Like a satellite tv forum with hacked ad streams that refuses to admit they have a issue.

IExif -- shows the Exif data for digital pictures.

[Steve Meliza]

Regardless of OS I install GVim as a text editor, GIMP to edit images, Open Office, Firefox, Thunderbird, Adobe PDF Reader, and VirtualBox for running virtual machines.

For a Linux machine I'd add "bless" the hex editor, pidgen for IM, OpenSSH for ssh, gftp for FTP and SFTP, sshfs for secure remote file system mounting, and grip for ripping music CDs. Some of that gets installed by default depending on the distribution being used.

For Windows it depends, so much of the freeware is crippled that I'll either use the built in software that comes as part of Windows or just do the task on a Linux machine. But free software I like to use includes Miranda for IM, iTunes for my iPod, Daemon tools for emulating drives and mounting CD image files, 7-zip for unzipping, AVG for anti-virus, FileZilla for FTP/SFTP, ImgBurn for burning/copying CDs and DVDs, and PDFCreator for printing to PDF files.

For a Mac I guess I'd just open the lid and start using it.

[Chuck Wintle]

for photo organization and a little bit of editing, Picasa is hands down the best one going, and it is FREE! I have thousands of pictures and I can find any and everyone of them in seconds. Also, but sure to checkout Gizmo's freeware review. (http://www.techsupportalert.com/) It has tons of recommendations and reviews. It is legit.

i tried picasa and then faststone. Picasa is good but my preference is for faststone

[Jerome Stanek]

I like Gimp to some of my picture files.

[Jerry Thompson]

Just when I have started to figure out Windows 3.1 all of this rears its ugly head.

[Larry Browning]

i tried picasa and then faststone. Picasa is good but my preference is for faststone

Hmm, I went to their website, and unless I missed it, Fastone is not a photo organizer. It has some nice features, but photo organizer is not one of them. Just not sure how these two program are similar.

[Larry Whitlow]

Ouch. Just had to remove unwanted programs and put back my defaults because of the crap that was downloaded with PDFCreator. Guess there really aint no such thing as a free lunch.

[Chuck Wintle]

Hmm, I went to their website, and unless I missed it, Faststone is not a photo organizer. It has some nice features, but photo organizer is not one of them. Just not sure how these two program are similar.
you are right...it does not organize them but does everything else though

[Curt Harms]

Ouch. Just had to remove unwanted programs and put back my defaults because of the crap that was downloaded with PDFCreator. Guess there really aint no such thing as a free lunch.

I'm not sure what PDFCreator does, but it it's just a PDF printer, cutePDF seems to work quite well and doesn't come with any crapware AFAIK.

[Phil Thien]

CutePDF installs the Ask toolbar, even if this option is unchecked. It (toolbar) can be uninstalled, but...

I'm not sure what PDFCreator installs.

[Steve Meliza]

Ouch. Just had to remove unwanted programs and put back my defaults because of the crap that was downloaded with PDFCreator. Guess there really aint no such thing as a free lunch.

Are you sure you got the correct software? PDF Creator is an open source project hosted at SourceForge, there should be no other software, tool bars, ads, or any other "crap" to mess up your system.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
(http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/)
Edit: My bad, apparently it does install a tool bar if you're not careful -> http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/sourceforge/ticket/19639 Still, once installed without tool bar it has worked very well for me.

[Dave Lehnert]

I use PDF 995. It makes creating a pdf file as easy as sending a page to your printer. Every time you use it you do get a pop up on the free version.
I have never used another PDF program but this one works well for my needs. ( I save on-line receipts as PDF's instead of printing them out)

[Larry Whitlow]

Are you sure you got the correct software? PDF Creator is an open source project hosted at SourceForge, there should be no other software, tool bars, ads, or any other "crap" to mess up your system.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
(http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/)
Edit: My bad, apparently it does install a tool bar if you're not careful -> http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/sourceforge/ticket/19639 Still, once installed without tool bar it has worked very well for me.

Steve, Curt, & Phil -- thanks for the info. I have not tried it yet, but PDFCreator is supposed to allow you to print to a PDF doc. When I downloaded the software, I said no thanks to pop ups but found that my home page was changed, some kind of weather monitoring program was on my start up, and there was some kind of web tool that I didn't take the time to really check out. I was not really paying attention to where I went to download PDFCreator. That may have been why I got this stuff. As far as I can tell, no damage done.

Take care,

Larry

[Larry Whitlow]

Dave,

I downloaded PDF 995. Looks good.

This is really a great thread. I've wanted to print to a PDF for a while and now have a few options. When I get a chance, I'm going to check out some of the other software listed.

THanks.

Larry

[Curt Harms]

CutePDF installs the Ask toolbar, even if this option is unchecked. It (toolbar) can be uninstalled, but...

I'm not sure what PDFCreator installs.

That's new, then. I haven't installed it for a couple years at least. This was from cutepdf.com?

[Greg Portland]

Secunia PSI -> http://secunia.com/

It keeps track of the versions of all your programs (including windows patches) and will tell you if the version has any known security vulnerabilities (based on their database). In many cases it can update the program in the background. IMO, this is an excellent way to keep the software updated on a PC.