Thread: Your Favourite 5 Programs

1. MSN Messenger/Windows Live Messenger
Basically, my everything on a PC. Can't live without it. First thing I do, even before I windows update, is install MSN.

2. Firefox
My favourite browser. I agree with 'Niaz, non-tabbed browsing is hell.

3. WinRAR
Hell yes. Compression software, what can you do without it? Well, tons of stuff. But still, it's one of the first applications I install.

4. Mozilla Thunderbird
E-mail is also an important thing, and I just can't help it - I hate outlook express. I've gotten used to Thunderbird and I adore it now.

5. Winamp
Music. What can I do without my music? Nothing. I need music to be able to move. No, really!

After that, applications such as FlashFXP (FXP/FTP app), iTunes (managing my iPod), Spysweeper (Live/on-demand anti spy and adware app), drivers, a webserver of sorts, IRC, video players and video codecs.

1. MSN Messenger
Pretty much everyone I talk to uses this so it's a must

2. BitComet
Gotta love torrents

3. Firefox
Hate Internet Explorer, I don't know how people can use it, and tabbed browsing of course

4. Limewire
Music Music Music!

5. DAEMON Tools
Small CD emulation software, in my "line of work" I need to mount .iso's a lot

The I'd probably install way too many games. I left out things like WinRar because I deem them programs you need rather than something you use

1) Flash MX
I waste hours a day on MX programming games and making animations.
2) Photoshop
I mainly use it to mod graphics in games, but it's still my second most used program.
3) WinRar
With the amount of crap that I download, I'd be lost without it.
4) Wordpad
Yes, that's right. Again, because I love to tweak with game programming.
5) Windows live messanger
Goes without saying.

NOTE: IPB FlashChat would have been on this list but I don't think it was coded well enough to be classified as a program. Hey, look! I'm Casualtie!

1. Firefox I suppose I could use the IE 7 Beta (Or RC, whichever phase it's at now), but I much prefer Firefox because of 1-Extensions and 2-Themes.

2. iTunes A lot of computers come with it nowadays, even Windows compys. But if they don't, that's the first thing in my grab bag. Yeah, I've tried WinAMP. I wasn't impressed. It's counter-intuitive, annoying to get used to, the display is hard to read, the rating system bites, the library and playlist features are glitchy and even less user friendly than the rest of the program, etc. I use iTunes because it helps me keep my music in order, rated in a clearly visible way, and it is VERY user friendly.

3. Photoshop It really is a necessity.

4. Word Perfect Microsoft Word tries to do the thinking for me, which I hate. AbiWord is glitchy on my computer, and while I like using it for its portability, I prefer something more stable and option-filled for my desktop PC. OpenOffice is...well, ugly. And it tries to emulate Word too much, to the point where OpenOffice tries to think for me as well. Programs that try to predict me or "correct" my work are my number one computer pet peeve.

5. WinRAR Most torrents nowadays involve some form of compression, and WinRAR is unquestionably the one program that can handle any of them.

6. uTorrent I'm a torrent junkie. I LIVE on the things. uTorrent is by far my favorite client--it has more features than any other torrent client save Azureus (and even then, only by a narrow margin that's closing fast). The best part of all is that uTorrent can run as a standalone .exe that's only 174 kB, and at peak useage, only takes up 3 or 4 megs of RAM (Compared with Azureus's 24+)

7. DAEMON Tools Or maybe Alcohol 52 or 120%. DAEMON Tools is usually my first choice simply because it's entirely free and just does the very basics of what I need. Alcohol requires money for the 120 version, which is useful for creating backups of protected CDs, so while I like the functionality, I just don't like spending money. Alcohol 52% is now freeware, but it doesn't rip CDs, only mounts them, which is exactly what DAEMON Tools does.

Probably the last program I'd put on would be a messenger program. Honestly, I HATE instant messengers. They're distracting and I'd really rather just talk to the person in real life, or at the least over the phone. To add to the pile, they're wasteful of system resources. AIM is laden with junk programs that are only half a step away from being spyware (Honestly, AOL is the root of all evil). Windows messenger sucks because of the intense difficulty in getting it off your system--it has a way of weedling its way back in when you aren't watching.
If I HAD to have an IM, I'd get Miranda or Trillian, just to minimize bloat. But I'd rather not even touch that plague-infested hell-house.

Lets see....

1) Macromedia Flash MX

I... I... I just love you so much. What would I do without you?

2) VLC Media Player

A bunch of different formats in one free, fast, and small video player.

3) Adium

Why run so many different IM clients when you can run one, TweaK? Yeah, you lose features, but it's a lot better than Micrsoft MSN Messenger 5 for Mac, and aMSN doesn't run AIM or google talk.

4) Brain Wave Generator

Thanks to this wicked program, I've been able to make a preset which I've been using for the past ~3 weeks that helps me fall asleep in under 15 minutes, VS. my usual 45 minutes.

5) Firefox

Tabbed browsing, themes, extensions (adblock yayyayayayay), small, quick, etc, you're my favourite browser. It's ok, Safari, you're not bad yourself.

(I know I'm supposed to do only 5 but w/e)

6) Photoshop CS2

You'd be rated higher once I figure out how to do more than layers, background erasing, and transparency lol.

7) Mozilla Thunderbird

ADAPTIVE JUNK EMAIL FILTER WOOHOO.

8) Toast Titanium

iDVD doesn't work for me, so you're my best buddy!

9) Sponge Bob Typing

Complete with mind numbing action, it taught me to type in a week.

10) Roller Coaster Tycoon 3

I'm not a big fan of computer games but this one isn't too bad.

Originally Posted by Tsen

2. iTunes[/b]

its quite depressing, actually. iTunes is the best music player out there and it sucks great balls.

Originally Posted by Tsen

4. Word Perfect[/b]

Yeah, I like WordPerfect too. Microsoft Word tries too hard... most of the time it tries to correct when there was no need for correction in the first place, to the point that it takes even more work to correct what word does than it would have if you formatted it yourself. Gah. The new word coming out looks really nice, though, I'll try to get my hands on that if I can find a cheap copy ( education version, perhaps? )

Yeah, iTunes kind of bugs me because it's so HUGE. I really wish there was a freeware program out there that could do rating, GOOD playlist management, and hopefully support album art.

On the new Word, I've downloaded the Beta (If you download via torrent, its free, if you download through Microsoft, it's $1.50 for bandwidth.) Either way, its legal and you can register a torrent version like normal). I kind of like it, but the UI bugs me a bit. It's too graphical and large. I much prefer the 2003 version's UI. Other than that, it's pretty good. Give it a try, I say. (If you do go the torrent route, be sure to get the Beta 2, its the latest version)

It's too graphical and large[/b]

You mean you'd prefer eight toolbars and all sorts of things floating all over the place, as opposed to having an extra 20px or so being used as a sort of 'flat tax'? Oh, the minds of you end-users. Make sure you get the latest version of Office - don't torrent it if you can actually pay the token fee - there's a technical refresh out fixing some things people didn't like with the ribbon.

WordPerfect[/b]

Right. I give up with you guys. Burn in text editor hell for all I care!

Hrm...:

1) Trillian - A universal instant messenger

2) SimpleMU - A client for connecting to MUDs

3) Advanced Browser - A awsome neat browser

4) Winamp - You know what it is

5) Lime Wire - Downloading utility

-Yep, those are my top five. Good programs right there.

You guys I haven't had this much fun since the invention of Smartware..
Let's see here Let me get my thoughts together. Okay here we go.

Winamp: The one program I've installed through the years on every computer.

IE7/Firefox: with extensions makes web browsing a whole different game, and it brings me Lifehacker too

GIMP: it's much easier to use than photoshop, let alone i dot have to worry about buying the few hundred dollar license.

Password Corral: is my favorite of all time. It's a great secure password manager that allows you to export a new encrypted copy of your passwords each time they change. Combined with a quick 'n dirty xcopy script I've written for backups, I use Password Corral to save all kinds of information securely.

OmniPass 4.0: It's a Fingerprint sensor program I manage all passwords through fingerprint recognition.

Slick Run: I used this because it launches stuff quick and easily.

MediaMonkey: for music, life just doesn't make sense without it.

MyphoneExplorer: for all your cell phone needs.

RealVNC: Because I can fix my mom's computer from 1800 miles away. The savings in time and frustration (on both our parts) is priceless.

1by1: It's an extremely lightweight (and free) mp3 player that lists and plays directories of files rather than loading individual songs. It holds a coveted spot on my quick launch bar along with Opera and Atlantis word processor, good contenders for my second and third favorites.

MSN IM, Google Talk, Yahoo IM.

Originally Posted by MSG

its quite depressing, actually. iTunes is the best music player out there and it sucks great balls.[/b]

Originally Posted by MSG

Yeah, iTunes kind of bugs me because it's so HUGE. I really wish there was a freeware program out there that could do rating, GOOD playlist management, and hopefully support album art.

On the new Word, I've downloaded the Beta (If you download via torrent, its free, if you download through Microsoft, it's $1.50 for bandwidth.) Either way, its legal and you can register a torrent version like normal). I kind of like it, but the UI bugs me a bit. It's too graphical and large. I much prefer the 2003 version's UI. Other than that, it's pretty good. Give it a try, I say. (If you do go the torrent route, be sure to get the Beta 2, its the latest version)
[/b]

Are you people dumb, blind, maybe a little challenged?
Have you never heard of winamp, mmd3 skin, minisized?
Yes, it really whoops the llama's ass.

EDIT Wow I just saw a major retarded mistake. "Notice how you it's small and have" or something alike, and I forgot to tell you.. The PL button opens a window with a playlist editor.

Winamp is bulky as hell and the playlist management makes me want to murder small, fluffy animals.
Do you really want me killing small, fluffy animals?

RE Kaniaz--This is the part that bugs me:

I don't like it. I'd prefer it just labeled them like normal.

For those of you who don't like winamp, give foobar200 a go. Sure it looks like crap to start with, but there's 129 pages of examples of how much that can change in the fourms. Check out the wiki as well.

Anyway, my top 5.

1. Foobar
2. Java/IDE - java's bloated api makes assignments easy
3. Ms visual studio 2005 - mmm
4. Mp3 tag - manual tagging sucks when you have ~50gig to do.
5. AVG free edition - good av suite which doesnt hog resources

edit... 6. 7zip. I think its slightly faster than winrar. And no nag screen

Current:
Web Browsing - IE all the way

Multimedia (Playing ripping and burning, DVD, multimedia archive) - MS Media Player can't be beat

Text editing - Notepad

Documents - MS Word

Save My Ass app - System Restore

From the past:
Norton Disk Doctor (The early ones)
PC Stacker
Interdev for all text documents and coding
Kermit Dialer/Terminal
Windows 3.0 Ah, sure beats dos.

Thanks MSG for Windirstat. I've been looking for something like that for years.

Spoon, that reminded me--
MusicBrainz Tagger is what I use for mp3 tagging. Have you ever tried it, and if so, does mp3Tagger work better?

Spoon, that reminded me--
MusicBrainz Tagger is what I use for mp3 tagging. Have you ever tried it, and if so, does mp3Tagger work better?[/b]

Heh, you make me feel dirty just using iTunes to organise my music collection by ID3 tags. It's rather a mess in my music directories, I just rely on the metadata to abstract everything into a nice (supposedly organised) format.

I used "Mp3 Tagger Ultra" or something along the lines of that. It works like a charm.

WindowBlinds
Notebook Hardware Control
BitComet
ObjectDock
Firefox+extensions

And of course all the necessary antivirus/spyware stuff.

Alright, I've been converted. I downloaded Foobar2000, and I'm liking it a lot. Of course, it IS pretty ugly, but its not like iTunes was any better. Could be slightly more user-friendly as well, but I'm still loving it.
Right now it's running on 12 MB of RAM, less than half of what iTunes uses. It's pretty capable, playlist management is MUCH better than WinAMP and far, FAR above Windows Media Player. Not quite to the iTunes level because it lacks a rating system, but other than that, Foobar's playlist management is BETTER than iTunes.
Unfortunately, it doesn't support album art, but with my FoxyTunes plugin for Firefox, I can see all the album art anyway, so that's not a major downer.

Tsen:
The thing I really love about foobar is its easy extensibility. Check out the hydrogenaudio foobar forums for some awesome plugins. Rating systems, fancier GUI's, better layout managers, album art, popup song info, etc. My foobar looks like this atm:



You're right though, its not user-friendly at all. I just stole that layout from a few places on the forum, and it still took me a while to figure it out.

What version are you using, by the way? I downloaded the most recent (0.9.4) but I'm realizing that most of the plugins aren't compatible with it yet.

FoxyTunes plugin for Firefox[/b]

Argh!

Maybe I should stop talking before Kaniaz starts hemmorrhaging some very important chemicals in his brain.