Lkr Posted February 7, 2010 Report Share Posted February 7, 2010 (edited) The programs here are meant for Windows users. Some programs are also available for OS X. IM Client - Pidgin (All-In-One messenger program, compatible with AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Gtalk, Facebook, Myspace, etc. Much nicer than the official AIM client) Web Browsing - Firefox Office Suire - OpenOffice (Very good equivalent to Microsoft Office) Torrenting - uTorrent (Fast, lightweight, and not banned on private trackers) Anti-Virus - Avast 5 (NOTE: I used to recommend AVG although Avast was always a better program. The reason I didn't recommend it was because of the non-friendly interface of Avast 4. The Avast 5 interface makes it more user friendly, and the best choice for anti virus) Media Playing - Media Player Classic - Home Cinema (Able to play most video formats without any extra codec downloads, has hardware DXVA acceleration) Updated Drivers - These will vary. If you know you the model of your device, you can get them at the company website. If you have a laptop, you can get the latest drivers at your manufacturer's website. Latest drivers fix bugs and errors, as well as provide stability to your hardware. Unraring and Unzipping - 7Zip Post software you use and suggestions, and I'll update the list. Edited February 7, 2010 by Lkr Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cobb Posted February 7, 2010 Report Share Posted February 7, 2010 and you told me to download AVG. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reno Posted February 7, 2010 Report Share Posted February 7, 2010 Add to the list.. Spybot Searcn N DestroyAd-AwareSpyware Blaster With These three I 99.9% sure you will never run into malicious spy ware problems again. For those who like everything nice and close together, Download Auslogics Disk Defrag, currently the best freeware for def-raging your hard drive. CC Cleaner is also a must and good way to clean your systems registry files, add an easy one button to delete all your web browsers cookies and history =gg One last thing, if you use firefox, Download the Free Mcafee site advisor, its a nice security, shows you whether the site is known for viruses or if its safe. All these downloads are free and require low resources. IF you like to keep your systems memory clean, download the program "Cleanmem", it basically helps prevent certain crashes and memory leaks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lkr Posted February 7, 2010 Author Report Share Posted February 7, 2010 Add to the list..Spybot Searcn N DestroyAd-AwareSpyware Blaster With These three I 99.9% sure you will never run into malicious spy ware problems again. For those who like everything nice and close together, Download Auslogics Disk Defrag, currently the best freeware for def-raging your hard drive. CC Cleaner is also a must and good way to clean your systems registry files, add an easy one button to delete all your web browsers cookies and history =gg One last thing, if you use firefox, Download the Free Mcafee site advisor, its a nice security, shows you whether the site is known for viruses or if its safe. All these downloads are free and require low resources. IF you like to keep your systems memory clean, download the program "Cleanmem", it basically helps prevent certain crashes and memory leaks.These 3 don't really pick up anything if you run avast. site advisor is nice, although it does report sites that are perfectly fine as bad. ccleaner is nice, but is pointless at time. cleanmem is only worthwhile in the long run if you have 1gb ram or have complete PC OCD. defragging isn't going to improve performance either. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reno Posted February 7, 2010 Report Share Posted February 7, 2010 These 3 don't really pick up anything if you run avast. site advisor is nice, although it does report sites that are perfectly fine as bad. ccleaner is nice, but is pointless at time. cleanmem is only worthwhile in the long run if you have 1gb ram or have complete PC OCD. defragging isn't going to improve performance either. Mind explaining how the three programs I listed for spyware does not work well with avast? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lkr Posted February 7, 2010 Author Report Share Posted February 7, 2010 Mind explaining how the three programs I listed for spyware does not work well with avast?If you read, that isn't what I said. What I said is that these programs are pointless if you have avast. They don't pick anything else up. Ad-Aware is also a resource hog and sucks up resources in the background, making it very annoying. Spybot is also full of false positives, making it horrible. The only reason it was good 5 years ago was because it was very easy to run Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reno Posted February 7, 2010 Report Share Posted February 7, 2010 If you read, that isn't what I said. What I said is that these programs are pointless if you have avast. They don't pick anything else up. Ad-Aware is also a resource hog and sucks up resources in the background, making it very annoying. Spybot is also full of false positives, making it horrible. The only reason it was good 5 years ago was because it was very easy to run o rly that isn't what i said?... Anyway my ad aware uses about 124k of memory uses, I wouldn't call that a resource hog. 0.o It has detected some spwyare in several cases that was not picked up by avast, I don't see any problem running it. Spybot is meh, im not a big fan of it but haven't ran into any problems running it. Spyware blaster uses zero resources, since it only helps prevent from spyware from installing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lkr Posted February 7, 2010 Author Report Share Posted February 7, 2010 124k is a lot for a background program. firefox is considered a memory hog and it doesn't even use that much. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reno Posted February 7, 2010 Report Share Posted February 7, 2010 No no;p Just 124 k of memory, that's it. Not 124,000 k -_- My firefox goes crazy at around 146,696 k, but I have many tabs open /shrug. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cobb Posted February 7, 2010 Report Share Posted February 7, 2010 Also, why not just use Winrar for unzipping files? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fly3rs18 Posted February 7, 2010 Report Share Posted February 7, 2010 is Media Player Classic - Home Cinema better then VLC? and 7zip over winrar? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lkr Posted February 7, 2010 Author Report Share Posted February 7, 2010 is Media Player Classic - Home Cinema better then VLC? and 7zip over winrar?MPCHC is much better than VLC. VLC doesn't have any hardware acceleration, so it sucks for playing HD files 7Zip is free unlike Winrar. 7Zip is also superior imoand bears, adaware runs at 124000k Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fish7718 Posted February 7, 2010 Report Share Posted February 7, 2010 Firefox over Chrome? I love both but considering Chrome is faster what make FF better? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lkr Posted February 7, 2010 Author Report Share Posted February 7, 2010 Firefox over Chrome? I love both but considering Chrome is faster what make FF better?Extensions and the fact it can be customized. Firefox is a much more powerful web browser, but of course you're going to need more power to run it than a slim one like Chrome. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cobb Posted February 7, 2010 Report Share Posted February 7, 2010 Ok, well I'm set. I've got everything on the except the Open Office thing since I already have Microsoft Word and what not. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OldChili Posted February 9, 2010 Report Share Posted February 9, 2010 (edited) I like using Revo Uninstaller when I need to uninstall something. Edit: Rainmeter is also a pretty cool program. Not really "essential," though. Edited February 9, 2010 by OldChili Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cobb Posted September 23, 2010 Report Share Posted September 23, 2010 Any updates or are these still the best around? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SRV Posted September 24, 2010 Report Share Posted September 24, 2010 Is Open Office really good? Cause for some reason, the free Office my college gave me was only a 30 day trial, and it runs out tomorrow and I have an essay due next week. Also, can it open Word documents? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dzy Posted September 24, 2010 Report Share Posted September 24, 2010 I use Open Office and yes it can open Word documents. Its pretty good imo only problem is you have to tweek the settings a bit for like 1 inch margins and stuff. Also I'm pretty sure theres no way to put a header on it like on Word, you know the Last Name Page # at the top right unless I haven't figured it out . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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