Nameless Voice on 3/6/2009 at 10:45
(
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffdshow-tryout/) FFDShow and no codecs for playing videos.
I actually think mIRC is one of the least bloated online communications programs, considering its light footprint and uncluttered interface compared to everything else. Plus: scripting <3.
Seconding the suggestion of CDBurnerXP - I also had enough of Nero's ridiculous levels of bloat.
Macha on 3/6/2009 at 11:25
CCleaner is a must methinks. Gets rid of all the clutter at the click of a button.
(
http://www.ccleaner.com/)
Dia on 3/6/2009 at 13:22
Quote Posted by Shug
I've given up on the horribly bloated (
http://www.nero.com/ena/index.html) Nero Suite - basically when I discovered their SmartDrive emulation didn't work on x64 Windows, it was the end of a rocky relationship. Good options for burning software?
I'm still looking myself. Last year I bought a Memorex dual format DVD recorder & was having a blast editing all my home movies & burning them to discs, etc. Problem was, the recorder came with the Nero Suite program and guess what happened 30 days after I installed said recorder & corresponding Nero Suite? Yep. My free trial ended. So now I have the recorder which is basically rendered useless since every option uses Nero Suite & in order to use it I have to buy it. Wasn't all that impressed with NS in the first place. Talk about a royal rip-off!
I also got fed up with Windows Movie Maker; no matter how many different 'fixes' I used, the program managed to screw up, hang up, & just plain quit. So I tried as many 'free' video editing programs as I could find, ended up trying Cyberlink Power Director and loved it!! Unfortunately, this is another 30-day free trial program. Haven't found any other decent programs for burning/editing since.
Oh yeah; I found this 'suite' for free youtube downloading, as well as video/ audio conversion. So far, it's the best 'freebie' I've found out there. (
http://www.dvdvideosoft.com/free-dvd-video-software.htm)
june gloom on 3/6/2009 at 17:46
Anybody who uses torrents is doing them a huge disservice if they don't use (
http://phoenixlabs.org/pg2/) Peerguardian2.
Where Daemon Tools doesn't work, I use (
http://www.poweriso.com/) PowerISO. I rarely use it so I'm not bothered by the "BUY ME" whine every time I start it up.
(
http://www.eset.com/) NOD32 is my antivirus and I couldn't be happier.
Winamp 2.95- 10 years and still going strong. Never needed anything else for music.
R Soul on 3/6/2009 at 18:47
Quote Posted by Shug
Speaking of bloated, I still have (
http://www.mirc.com/) mIRC and I'm looking to turf it for something a little cleaner for the occasional time I spend on IRC servers. Any other decent options besides (
http://www.xchat.org/) xchat?
Firefox has a ChatZilla plugin, which I like.
Neb on 3/6/2009 at 18:59
I'm learning to program in a language called Ada with the GPL version of the GNAT compiler at the moment, just for fun. I recently found out that a company called Intermetrics worked on the language along with the 1995 revision, and that's the same company that merged with Looking Glass Studios in 1997.
:eek:
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermetrics) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermetrics
demagogue on 3/6/2009 at 19:03
For security and maintenance stuff, I took from the top recommended items on (
http://www.majorgeeks.com/page.php?id=20#allinone.txt) this list -- in particular Glary Utilities, Avast for viruses, Spybot S&D, Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, CWShredder, CCleaner, Iobit SmartDefrag, WinAudit, Xteq X-Setup.
Other standard stuff:
- Skype, Mozilla Firefox & its ChatZilla, uTorrent, Hamachi, Fraps
- Had to re-get Word 2007 because stupid Vista put on that absurd word processor Works.
- Also been playing with Celtx for documents; or GoogleDocs sometimes.
- YBook for reading E-books.
- Audacity and Cakewalk for music stuff; RealPlayer to play it
- Sony Vegas for video stuff; just plain WMP or DivX to play it (guess I should get VLC).
- Still using PaintShop 5.
- Vixy for ripping YouTube type videos (into any format you want, including MP3).
- Daemon Tools, and MagicISO
- WinZip & Winrar (forgot to reinstall 7zip with the new computer; should do that now...)
- PFE32 for editing code (except for programming IF with TADS3, then I use Imaginate)
- Lightwave for hobby modeling (though I like ZBrush, just don't know how to use it so well yet), Motion Builder (& playing with the demo version of Endorphin).
- Stuff I mod with, if it counts, TADS3, Dark Radiant, Dromed lol, Vassal, Adventure Game Studio.
As for computer languages, I studied Basic, Pascal, C++, and Lisp ... I haven't programed too much for a while; still not sure the best software to use to compile and run programs in the different languages on a modern computer. So if anyone has any recommendations let me know, especially for C++ and Lisp. I wanted to do a short program for a task recently, and for fun I did it in Basic on my C64 emulator, haha.
Educational stuff I like to play with, either something I've studied (the language stuff) or curious about:
- LKB, pretty obscure, for playing with natural language parsing and generation
- WAG - Systemic functional natl language parsing/generation
- PowerLoom for logic parsing
- Diction (Quantitative text analysis)
- SPSS statistics analysis
- Calc98 for a calculator
- KanjiGold for learning Japanese
- Roots of English, fun for studying etymology
- International Futures (sort of a "world economic/geopolitical sim")
- Digital Universe, Universe Sandbox, and Orbiter
- E-Cell
Poesta on 3/6/2009 at 19:44
- Firefox for browsing, I've given Opera and Chrome a try but I keep coming back.
- uTorrent for torrents, first I used Azureus (Vuze) until it became bloated.
- Office 2000 for documents. :o I've used Excel 2007 before to make some nice diagrams, but I can't get used to the whole ribbon thingy.
- MadEdit for simple text editing, I'm mainly using it as a hex editor but also for files with LN only linebreaks which notepad can't handle.
- Foxit Reader for PDF files.
- VirtualDub and Audacity for video/audio editing.
- I rarely listen to music on my pc, but when I do I use foobar2000. I switched from Winamp.
- Daemon Tools for media emulation. I use the old v3.47, which doesn't seem to be available anymore from the site. I'm not missing any features here, and last time I checked the new version had banners and icons and more of that crap, so I'm sticking with this one.
- ImgBurn as burning software. Free and a simple interface. I only used it a few times but I like it.
- Media Player Classic 1.4.9.1 and VLC for videos. VLC doesn't support all video codecs, so I've got MPC as a backup.
- 7-zip for archiving, maybe I'll give PeaZip a try.
- AVG Free antivirus.
- SpeedFan to prevent my pc from sounding like a jetfighter taking off.
- Launchy as application launcher. You just type a few letters and it shows you the program you want. I can really recommend this one, it has completely replaced the start menu for me.
Neb on 3/6/2009 at 20:19
Quote Posted by Poesta
- uTorrent for torrents, first I used Azureus (Vuze) until it became bloated.
Haha, me too. It got to the point where every new update would make me angry in some way. I'd heard of uTorrent before so I checked it out.
Azureus was the first torrent app I used, and good riddance.
