My little list, as the other programs were already mentioned...

CoverXP
X-Setup Pro
XP-AntiSpy
HijackThis
RenameFiles

Bulk Rename Utility is mirrored at
http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_desc...id,22983,00.asp
though the author's site was down when I just checked.
This is the kind of little program that awes me because it required such incredible attentition to little details. I'm very grateful that there are pernickety people making tools like this.
I've not found anything else offering so much control.

I am not using any of the soft listed in the original post. Don't know why I am living though...

Seems everyone got their faves here

So here's my non-multimedia-related tools, in no particular order (actually, in order it appears in my Start Menu):

• Advanced PDF Password Recovery Pro -- Cracks open those finicky protected PDFs.
• CPUidle Extreme -- Cools down your CPU.
• HASHcalc -- Freeware graphical drag & drop hash calculator, MD5, SHA1, CRC32, you name it.
• 4NT -- CMD.exe replacement.
• Spybot Search & Destroy -- Free anti-spyware. Join the forums for updates & bugfixes.
• TreeSize Professional -- Freeware tool to Find out the sizes of folders of a selectable tree. A much more commercial version available.
• InfoRapid Search & Replace -- Free multi-file search & replace tool, regexp support, handy for those webpages.
• JDirPrinter -- Freeware. Does a nice directory dump direct into a text file, recursively if need be, and choose just what info you want to dump.
• AllWaySync -- Freeware. Synchronizes files between drives real quick.
• avast! Antivirus -- IMO the best AV.
• Daemon Tools -- Freeware CD image mounter.
• EditPlus 2 -- Best text editor with amazing powers.
• DOSBox -- Open source DOS emulator for playing DOS games (yes, I have a whole bunch of them)
• SCUMMvm -- Free Win32 SCUMM interpreter, for playing LucasArts games and more under Windows.
• GetRight -- Shareware Download manager and resumer
• Firefox -- Freeware browser with extensions
• Thunderbird -- Freeware email client
• MUSHclient -- Shareware MUD/MUSH/MUCK client
• uTorrent -- Freeware BitTorrent client, only 160KiB!
• IrfanView32 -- Freeware image viewer, converter, manipulator, etc.
• Norton Utilities - ONLY the Norton Protected Recycle Bin and Norton UnErase. Other components are horrid! <-- this is replaced with the next one:
• Executive Software's Undelete -- From the makers of Diskeeper (next entry), an undeleter that can capture all deletes and saves them to a temporary holding (configurable size/age-limit), and also search the disks for uncaptured deletes.
• Diskeeper -- Best windows defragmenter.
• InternetPal -- Freeware connection timer and also email checker.
• WinRAR -- One of the most widely used compression. Can also decompress others, e.g. .zip, .7z, and .ace.
• HardCopy Pro -- Screencap capable of auto-saving (i.e. capture several screencaps in a row, and it automatically give a sequential filename).
• Trillian -- Freeware messenger, connects to Yahoo!, MSN, ICQ, AIM, IRC, Rendezvous at the same time with one program.
• ZoneAlarm -- Free firewall.

Edit: Links and short descs now provided.
Edit2: Scratch Norton, add Undelete, more info on WinRAR.

Too lazy to do the links, but I noticed some of my favorites were missing!

• MediaMonkey - fantastic for music organization, tags from Amazon, tons of features just in the free version
• PhotoFiltre - an extremely small and versatile image editor
• EasyCleaner - similar to CCleaner, but has a few more system maintenance tools that I find handy; useful to keep on a flash drive
• Restoration - easy undelete tool
• 7Zip - zips and unzips most archiving formats
• EssentialPIM - Personal Info Manager; takes care of your calendar and contacts with a smooth interface
• Maxthon - basically an IE shell, but it has many features that I can't live without anymore; has a small memory footprint

fb2k, fb2k, fb2k, fl studio, opera, 7-zip, keepass pw safe, pspad editor, totalcmd, truecrypt+tcgina, pgp, hamster mail/newsserver, forte agent...

Camino, Adium, Colloquy, iTunes, Max, VLC, HandBrake, QuickSilver, SeaShore, 7zX, Smultron, Xcode Tools, ...

Edit: Added links.
As pointed out by CiTay

Links, my people, links. Nobody's gonna enter all that in Google.

Media player no one mentioned so far - xine with two cool frontends - amaroK and Kaffeine. Supports external Win32 codecs as well.

Foxit Reader. Replaces that aweful Adobe Reader.

http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php

More for OS X:

Abiword (also Win, Linux) word-processor
Cog audio player
Flip4Mac Windows Media Components for QuickTime (also available direct from the ISV: Flip4Mac)
Google Earth (also Win, Linux) 3D interface to the planet
HexEdit hex editor
TinkerTool GUI for access to additional preference settings
NetNewsWire Lite RSS reader
Vienna RSS reader

AccuConference offers free conferencing with powerpoint and recording (no charges) via AccuTalk.net.

The web conferencing works with Mac: Article

small guiless ftp server for windows with bandwidth limiting abilities? (other than slimftpd or filezilla)

I happened upon EverNote, a nifty free note taking program.

It's basically a freetext database. Its capability to integrate with FireFox is really wonderful: Just select, click, and the selected text (with its formatting and links intact) are copied into the database, complete with a link to the source page.

I also use it to consolidate my personal notes. Up to now I kept them in .txt files, with the unavoidable result of inevitable duplicates. I have been moving them into EverNote. Nicely categorized (it supports multi-categories per note), and there's a quite smart hot-search function to prevent duplications.

This is quick becoming an indispensable tool for me.

MyIE is a great ....

MyIE is now known as Maxthon Browser

Putty, Filezilla, Firefox, Foobar, Electricsheep screensaver, Xfire, Msn, RealVNC, Battlefield 2142, mplayer, blackbox, mirc, winrar, utorrent, foxit reader
Always installed upon every format.

Must checkout EverNote.
Im tired of storing notes in text files named "New Text Document.txt", "New Text Document (1).txt". Bah

Ha, you're like me then By all means, try it! Even Walt Mossberg (of WSJ fame) praised this nifty tool.

It can not only store notes, it categorizes them, secures them (optional encryption). You can search all of them really fast, plus it has this nifty feature called "Time Band", which enables you to quickly see notes you created since a certain time in the past (just drag the Time Marker, the 'tape' scrolls accordingly).

It has passable to-do list template -- heck, helps me when at home I remember I have to do something at office. Just open EverNote, find the To-Do list for the day (or create a new list), type the thing to do... voila!

I also rarely save webpages now. I just select the interesting text, click the "Add note to Evernote" button (installed when you install the Evernote extension)... done. The note even contains a live hyperlink pointing to the source page.

My Evernote database is now 9 MiB and counting... heck, there's this blogger who called herself GTDwannabe (spelling?) .. her database (she claimed) is 80MiB and counting. She used Evernote not only for taking personal notes, but also as a note-taking tool for her doctorate research.

I found the free version of Evernote good enough for my need. Since I don't do digital ink (no tablet PC nor wacom pads) I don't need its advanced ink recognition. And for synchronization, I found Allway Sync to be good enough to synchronize the database to/from a flash disk.

Disclaimer: I have no relation to the maker of Evernote beside a very satisfied user. And they don't pay me in any way, nada.

I played with it a bit and can't really see what the killer feature or two are.

What, in particular, grabbed you and pulled you in?

-brendan

What grabbed me in? Let's see... (in no particular order)

1. I consolidated all my electronic .txt notes that previously were lying around in my hard disk.

2. I do not need to save web pages anymore, with its related "..._files" directories. Furthermore, saved snippets also have links pointing to its source. And saved snippets need not be whole web pages; they can be mere selection in the webpage. The selection (and any images selected) gets saved with formatting.

3. Everything I saved in Evernote can have multiple categories. Prior to Evernote, I must think carefully where to put a .txt note. And when I search, I will inadvertently (more than 50% of the time) search in the wrong place first, and finally resort to Inforapid Search & Replace.

4. I can search all my notes really quick, e.g. if I want to find a certain joke regarding genie, I just click on the "Jokes" category, and type the search word. Or even if I am not sure of the category, I will just click "All Notes", type the search word and I'll find the note I'm looking for.

5. Nice To-Do template. I usually use .txt files to jot down things I plan on doing on the office, or back home, or etc. Now I just use Evernote. Even better, Evernote clearly (and automatically) indicates which To-Do's are finished and which ones are "in progress".

6. Custom categories. For instance, I add "@unsent" to denote notes that I want to send using my email, "@URGENT" (boldfaced and red) to indicate things that must immediately be handled upon arrival at office or home, etc. ("@" sign optional, just my way of indicating 'state' instead of mere 'category')

7. I can easily replicate Evernote between home and office by copying mere 4 files.

Well, Evernote is much more functional than just the 7 points above, but those 7 are the reasons that really grabbed me

Too bad EverNote doesn't have the same editing keys and functions as Emacs. If it did, I'd jump on it right away...

EDIT: Looks like the encryption associated with it is really weak! I guess I'll just stick with Emacs+GnuPG for now...

i uninstalled it after figured out that the plugin for ff is not working at all (after the ico).

The plugin works like a charm for me.
I have some doubts about the screen capture tool though.
Evernote has been added to my list of standard software.

Other things are:

AVG free - a good free antivirus program
Kerio firewall - free and good
Cyberhawk - free, monitors the behaviour of your software
SuperAntiSpyware - free and very good
Adaware - free antispyware scanner
Unlocker - free, solves those "cannot remove ****, is being used by who knows what" annoyances
Diskeeper - very good and fast defragmentation tool
Winrar - file extraction/compression
Fineprint - pre-print formatting tool, because we love the trees

Firefox - free and very good browser
Proxomitron (patched and with grypen filters) - free, web filter
IP-Tools - to solve those annoying connection related problems

Rainlendar (Moderna skin) - good, discrete calendar and todo utility
YZdock - free, good lightweight object dock (and probably the oldest windows dock)
A wallpaper from studiotwentyeight

VLC - free, best? media player
EAC - no comment, free, best CD rip app
Winamp , free, I've been using it for almost 10 years and I still use it as my main music player.
EditPlus - free, good, lightweight, text editor

Wireshark - free, sniffing tool - formerly known as Ethereal
Araxis - compare and merge code, documents, etc.

http://www.updatepack.nl/ - Nero Lite & Micro

totalrun
http://www.totalcmd.net/plugring/TotalRun.html
(making total commander (and bunch of my scripts) portable)

EditPlus is not free. It's cheap, though. And if you have low moral fiber (like moi ) you dismiss the registration reminder with a click and no functionality is gone.

With all this talk of text editors, I'll throw in my favorite:

evolvEd

It's 100% free and has context highlighting for several languages.

I'd also suggest this font to make reading your code easier:

Proggy Clean Slashed Zero Bold Punctuation (the 8th font on the page)

Here is a description:



Enjoy!

Ahhh, speaking of monospaced fonts, here's a thread dedicated *just* for that subject:

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=47855

HA is truly the resource center for... pretty much many things

I love this thread! Here is my list of software that I am running on my Vista box:

FREE/OSS/Freeware:

Firefox (Web browser)
7-Zip (Compressor)
Paint.NET (Graphics)
Mame (Arcade emulator)
ImageMagick (Command line image manipulation)
Curl (Command line tool for transferring files)
Notepad 2 (Text editor)
Foxit Reader (PDF reader)
CCleaner (Windows maintenance tool)
Putty (SSH)
Imgburn (CD burning software)
Media Player Classic (Video player)
K-Lite Codec Pack Basic (Video codecs)
Foobar2000 (Music player)
Wavpack (My preferred lossless codec)
Exact Audio Copy (Ripper)
MP3Tag (Tag editor)
CheckWavpackFiles (Wavpack tool)


COMMERICAL:

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom (Photography)

http://www.faststone.org/FSMaxViewDetail.htm minimalitic image viewer, very fast (it seems to do precaching of files like for example Picasa...but I want my images to be associated with lightweight image viewer, not album organiser)

update: after a month of usage I came to conclusion that, while FSMaxView has interface that I like more for fast image viewing and when loaded diplays images very fast (thanks to caching probably), starting of Irfanview is still noticeably faster...

http://www.cccp-project.net/ Combined Community Codec Pack, seems to cause much, much less troubles than "old" codec packs (background: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_Community_Codec_Pack )


PS. Why so many people seem compelled to add to this thread software that was mentioned many times and is generally widely known?...

Here's my very essential Windows toolbox:
ACDSee Classic 2.44
Crap Cleaner
foobar2000
Foxit PDF Reader
Miranda
HijackThis 1.99.1
ImgBurn
McAfee AVERT Stinger
Mozilla Firefox
ProcessExplorer
TLCP (FFDShow & MPC)
Unlocker
WinRAR

The others:
Any Video Converter (last freeware v1.2.1)
Burrrn
CDex
DAEMON Tools
Microsoft Office ($)
Mp3tag
Nero Micro 7.x.
NOD32 or BitDefender Standard
VLC or GOM or MPUI
LockNote
PhotoFiltre Studio ($)
UXTheme Multi-Patcher



Updated: 29 May 2007

I have been using Comodo Firewall Pro, it's great! As good as ZoneAlarm Pro, but far far far lighter on resources, and free!

http://www.comodo.com/

Oh, and for a (moderated) list of freewares (and freewares only, no shareware, etc.), see this thread on Comodo's forums:

http://forums.comodo.com/index.php/topic,1731.0.html

Because we are listing what we are using on our PC. And apparently, many of us thought uniformly

Well...no, this thread is "Essential Software, Software that you shouldn't live without", not "Software you're using on your PC". Yes, the post by thread starter was essentially the latter...but for some reason at the beginning people didn't duplicate much (and it was much easier to read/sort through recommendations that way)

Avisynth

.. the real reason I'm not using linux

I don't know how people can survive without it.

Some of my favorites that haven't been mentioned are:

FastStone Capture, a very powerful screen capture utility, saves to BMP, PNG, JPG, PDF, GIF, custom delay time, several capture modes (full screen, active window, any other window, custom selection, freehand), and is one of the very few screen capture utilities that can correctly capture third-party window effects like YzShadow.

Taskbar Shuffle, manage your taskbar buttons in the same manner as your firefox tabs, drag-n-drop to rearrange, close with middle-click, etc.

Cream, Vim with a modified and more user-friendly UI.

and a runfast replacer;
http://launchy.net/

ok, it did not replace the file manager, but everything else. It does beat similar launchers thanks to fast config, since it has internal spider.

Just a quick FYI... The newest version of FastStone Capture is no longer free for home use. I was SO disappointed to come to that realization. Do not run out and upgrade!

I did notice that, so for your screenshooting pleasure, here's FastStione Capture 5.3 (the last free version)

BTW, Another miscellaneous app I like is Pitaschio, it offers some cool desktop tweaks like small icons, custom icon text color, per window transparency (via scroll wheel, awesome feature) and loads of customizable mouse+keyboard shorcuts.

Delphi and a lot of imagination... the rest doesn't need

recently switched to apple macintosh os x:

I won't link firefox, thunderbird, skype, the iLife stuff, adiumX (multi-protocol IM), VLC, StuffIt and the like, because I consider those standard apps for OS X


other software I like most:

Fan Control: system preferences extension for customising the fan speed ( > a lauder but colder mac or a quieter but hotter mac) (free)

colloquy: teh irc-client for the mac (free)

uApp: you think dragging an app to the trash deletes it completely? well, that's not the case. (free)

TinkeTool: hidden system-preferences; a nice little app (free)

SyncTwoFolders: guess what. (free)

ProVoc: helps you learn foreign languages . (free)

pdfLab: split and join pdfs. (free)

GoPod: circumvent the loudness restrictions of EU-iPods. (free)

rename4mac: batch rename several files. (free)

Neooffice: OpenOffice for the mac (doesnt require X11) (free)

MenuShade: a little application enhancer to dim the menu bar. (free)

SuperDuper!: easy Backup utility. (free)
CarbonCopyCloner: replaces SuperDuper! because it lets you do a backup as soon as the external drive is attached which is very convenient for laptop users.

senuti: copy music off your ipod. (free)

MainMenu: OSX maintenance tool. (free)

transmission: bittorrent-client (free)

cleardock: to alter the dock (free)

anacron OS X: to run the repeating maintenance script even when the mac isn't up 24/7 (free)

Coolbook: a tool to undervolt the CPU > reduces heat and therefor fan noise. (around 10 EUR) TOP!

DeLocalizer: to remove unnecessary language files; safes much disk space! (free)

folderglance: browse folders by contextual menu. (free)

quicksilver man, u need that. way more than simply a launcher. (free)



software for audio, video:


handbrake: a tool for ripping DVDs compressed to your harddrive. (free)

Max: a ripper, transcoder. check out the other apps on that site. (free)

flip4mac: windows media codecs.

GimmeSomeTune: fetches artwork and lyrics for songs played by iTunes in the background and displays the artwork. (free)

iScrobbler: scrobble current iTunes played songs to last.fm in a unoptrusive manner.

MediaRage: sadly the only tagging app which can compete with windows applications. (around 24 EUR) (of course there is tag.app and tritag.app but neither of them has all one needs.)

iVolume: sadly the only ReplayGain implemention for the mac. (12 EUR)

airfoil: stream any system sound to (multiple) airport express stations. (around 25 EUR)





edit: added more applications.

anything wrong with the itunes implementation?

it's fast but it is not as accurate as ReplayGain. even I can tell the difference. sometimes you will have to adjust the loudness of a song manually to get equal loudness to other songs. and the SoudCheck function doesn't know AlbumGain or something comparable.

I've used taskbarshuffle for a while. I tried to stop using it... started goin nuts after 2 minutes

gif optimizer
It sometimes even beats pngout in filesize .. and it's instant-fast.
There seems to be a small bug where it removes completely transparent frames from animations.

I have Pitaschio setup to minimize windows with a middle-click on the titlebar, and taskbar shuffle to close windows with a middle-click on the taskbar button, after a while it feels these are native Windows functions! I also disable the minimize/maximize animations for a "quicker" feel.

http://avisynth3.unite-video.com/

I guess you can switch now


essential if you want to learn neo or dvorak or any other layout: http://ktouch.sourceforge.net/ ; http://klavaro.sourceforge.net/

Hollunder; this is not in the usefull state right now and also the plugins are incompatible with version 2.5x (so keep your xp install...)

I have to say, I've been using this for 2 weeks now based on Smok3's recommendation, and it's darn useful, but not necessarily for launching programs. I point this at my music collection (which is semi-organized) and I can just type something part of the title or artist, and *boom* it finds it.

(Yes, I realize that other music players incorporate this feature, but it's never really felt this elegant before).

The beauty is that you don't have to start your music player first that's what makes it elegant



Ah, you're comparing apples to oranges ... GIF's with only 256 colors (8-bit) will most of the time be smaller than a PNG with 16.7 million colors (24-bit).

You have to ensure that PNGOUT will output an 8-bit PNG, and thus the result should always be similar, most likely smaller.

Also if the GIF's got some colors thrown out, e.g. reducing it from 8-bit to 4-bit, you must also make sure PNGOUT outputs 4-bit (which I'm not sure it is capable or not).

Abakt - an excellent lightweight backup tool that can act as a front end for 7-zip. Highly recommended.

HOT DAMN! I'll experiment more with this later. Looks really interesting from the screen shots. I typically run everything from the Run dialogue box. Notepad, IExplore, msconfig, services.msc, gpedit, taskmgr...cant be bothered to use the mouse or startmenus