My Hard Drive Died and Now I Have an Empty Windows Machine

just some basic security bits

by Ahniwa - 07/27/2006 - 15:03

I like ZoneAlarm as a firewall, instead of the built-in Windows firewall. I've been meaning to check out Comodo Personal Firewall as well, which is also free, but haven't had a chance yet.

AdAware has been mentioned, and is well-loved, but I couldn't do without Spybot S&D as well.

Not security related, but I use Exact Audio Copy to rip mp3s, which it does marvellously.

Media Player Classic as a nice, non-bloated way to watch/listen to your AV stuff. Awesome because it supports a ton of file formats.

FileZilla is a handy ftp client.

Azureus is a handy bittorrent client.

AVG was mentioned previously, and is excellent virus protection.Â

Buckle in.

by Rick - 07/27/2006 - 10:24

Rainlender -- A great calendar application that includes to-do list and reminders. It's completely customizable, easy-to-use, and my favorite feature is that it can attach itself to your desktop wallpaper. Really neat.

Startup Control Panel and Startup Monitor -- Two very useful programs by Mike Lin. Startup Control Panel is a small program that lets you easily control which programs your computer runs when it starts up. Startup Monitor is an invaluable security tool that prevents programs from adding themselves to your startup list without permission. This prevents everything from spyware to viruses to rude-but-otherwise-legit software from clogging up your system with dozens of useless (or even malicious) programs when your machine boots up.

Folder Size -- A useful utility that replaces the "Size" column in Windows Explorer, which only shows you the size of files, with one that shows you the size of files and the total size of folders as well.

Wampserver -- WAMP stands for Windows, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. (The Linux version is called LAMP, and sometimes the "P" stands for Perl). This guy has put together a great all-in-one, standalone program that will install a fully-functional webserver on your Windows PC. The latest version has Apache 2, MySQL 5, and PHP 5, all rolled into one very easy-to-use system, with a little system tray widget that allows you to control everything about it. It even comes with PHPMyAdmin (to manage your MySQL databases) and SQL Lite pre-installed. Excellent tool for web-development in Windows, and I highly recommend it. Note: The website is in French, but there is an english translation -- just click the flags. The program itself is in english.

PSPad -- a great freeware text editor that supports syntax highlighting for about a million programming languages, including all of the ones used in web-design. Actually, it's sort of a cross between a tabbed text-editor and a full-fledged IDE. But really easy to use and very useful and consistently updated with new features/fixes.

Drive Image XML -- A "Disc Image" utility. Easy to use, very powerful. Also, it is free. Basically, you make a complete duplicate of all the data on your hard-drive, burn it to disc (cds or dvds), and if you ever have another catastrophic hard-drive failure, you just get a new disc the same size (or bigger) than your dead one, and copy the data back onto it. It copies everything, including the operating system, and can restore your system to the exact state it was when the copy was made.Â

And if you're using Firefox, you should check out these extensions:

MR Tech Local Install - An all-in-one admin plugin that makes FF a lot nicer to use. It also works in Thunderbird. Install this one first and configure it before you install any other extensions. It makes everything much more user-friendly.

Adblock - blocks ads.

Adblock Filterset.G Updater - Automatically updates AdBlock's lists of what sites to block.

Bookmark Duplicate Detector - warns you when you are about to bookmark something already in your Bookmarks.

Download Manager Tweak - makes the FF download page more user-friendly.

Flashblock - blocks Flash on websites until you allow it. (Take that, MySpace!)

GooglePreview - Puts little thumbnail preview images of websites and amazon products in your Google and Yahoo search result pages.

NoScript - blocks Javascript using whitelists. This, plus Adblock and Flashblock, make Firefox very secure.

PDF Download - lets you choose how to handle PDF files (view in the browser as PDF or HTML, view outside the browser with your favorite pdf-reader, or download it).

Screen Grab! - Allows you to save an entire webpage as an image. You can save the entire page, just the visible portion, or the browser window. Very neat.

Tab Mix Plus - adds a lot of functionality, including things like re-opening closed tabs and automatically loading tabs that were open the last time you used Firefox.

Web Developer - a ton of customizable tools of use when developing web sites, etc.

IE Tab - lets you view a page in Internet Explorer, as a tab inside of Firefox.

Enjoy!

Free Stuffs

by Tyler Martin - 07/26/2006 - 12:22

OpenOffice
Office suite similar to Microsoft's.

Trillian
Connect to all the messengers and IRC with one app.

Firefox
A web browser that is fast and conforms to CSS.

Firefox Web Developer Add-on
Handy tool for developing sites, especially the ability to change CSS on your website in realtime.

PSPad Editor
Nice text editor color coded depending whether you are working in HTML, PHP, ETC and helps catch some errors.

Thunderbird
For POP mail accounts and a great RSS reader.

Wallpaper
The best wallpapers on the web for making your desktop scream happy.

Must... resist... snarky Mac

by Iain Hamp - 07/26/2006 - 12:02

Must... resist... snarky Mac snob comment....

Everything I use on my PC laptop is sort of obvious. Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, Notepad, Calculator, IE for testing, Firefox for regular surfing...

I like Ad-Aware and the free version of AVG virus protection. And the most used piece of software is Scrabble Complete, because I'm trying to go pro.