Ten Windows Apps You Need
I have a soft spot for well written Windows apps, especially when they’re small and free. Let’s raise a cheer for the legions of hackers struggling to make the world’s most popular OS usable. Do yourself a favor and install the following:
- AutoRuns - list (and potentially turn off) applications that run at startup. Take that Quicktime and RealPlayer!
- AutoStitch - stitch multiple photos together into a panorma. You might want this if you visit places like Mt. Rainier, Sydney, etc.
- Console - an excellent command line “console” for windows in which you can run cmd.com (or tcsh, or bash, or whatever). Supports tabs, transparency, wild color schemes, and any monospaced font your heart desires.
- DVD Decrypter - turn DVDs into ISOs and vice versa. I believe development ceased because this is considered illegal according to the DMCA. Luckily, the current release is almost perfect.
- Easy Thumbnails - batch image processing. You can easily resize a bunch of photos for inclusion on a web page. For some reason I have to do this quite often.
- Ffdshow - play all video codecs on Windows. Also, get Media Player Classic and expunge Windows Media Player forever.
- Mp3tag - clean up the tags in your mp3 files, then reimport into iTunes. You’ll thank me later.
- Notepad++ and Notepad2 - two great options for quick edits. They’re tiny, start instantly, and highlight lots of different file formats.
- Picasa - for organizing and fixing up photos. Better yet, try the recently released Picasa Beta, which finally includes a Save Changes button for when you’re done retouching. Incidentally, if you’re interested in graphics hacks you should google Michael Herf, who used to be Picasa’s CTO before they were bought by google. His stereopsis page is fascinating.
- Taskbar Shuffle - drag and drop the buttons in your taskbar. Where have you been all these years?
I’ll be discussing Bash on Windows (and MSYS) in a future post.
Thursday, August 24th 2006 at 3:54 pm
Adam always ribbed me for using Notepad2 in addition to the One True Editor (Emacs), so I’m glad to see he’s broadened his views.
Tuesday, August 29th 2006 at 4:38 pm
- DVD Decrypter has not been updated in several years now. Good luck burning ANY SONY disc. I perfer AnyDVD.
- Media Player Classic is a componet of Windows Media Player (at least as of 9.0 fer sure). You can find it in the install directory.
- Autoruns - can be replaced by the command line: msconfig. And you do not have to install anything.
I don’t know about the rest of your apps as being a “need”, maybe eye candy?
Tuesday, August 29th 2006 at 4:41 pm
-ffdshow is not all codecs. You need some codecs packages such as ACEMegaCodecs pack or better yet, K-lite.
- Again on Media Player Classic, yes it is in the install direcotyr or a windows directory, but I perfer open source player VLC Player.
Tuesday, August 29th 2006 at 5:22 pm
AC : Thanks for the comments.
- AnyDVD isn’t free.
- Media Player Classic is a separate project that has nothing to do with Windows Media Player, except that they look similar.
- Autoruns is much easier to use than msconfig, and will show other startup apps not included in msconfig.
- I linked to a version of ffdshow that includes most of the useful codecs, though others may be necessary for some users.
- Someone else recommended VLC as well. I’ll check it out.
Tuesday, August 29th 2006 at 5:29 pm
[…] Ten Windows Apps You Need (tags: windows apps) […]
Friday, October 6th 2006 at 10:10 pm
When I find myself working on a Windows project these are some of the tools I keep handy (mostly free with a couple of cheap items that I found worth the registration fee) …
Keyboard Remapper: allows you to ditch the “Scroll Lock” functionality of recent keyboards (particularly useful if you use a KVM as these sometimes toggle the scroll lock state).
http://www.softarium.com
Speed Limiter: a proxy that simulates different connection bandwidths.
http://www.maxxdownload.com/Speed_Limiter.html
I Hate This Key: disables the “Windows” key so you don’t end up with the Start menu while trying to find the control key.
http://www.bytegems.com/ihatethiskey.shtml
Putty: free SSH client (if you don’t use Cygwin).
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/
Resource editor: edit the resources in executables.
http://www.wilsonc.demon.co.uk/delphi.htm
SysInternals (DebugView, Regmon): monitor debugging output and registry API calls.
http://www.sysinternals.com/
Notepad++: seconded!
http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/
Send To Toys: adds things like “Send to Clipboard” to the context menu to quickly put a file’s path on the clipboard.
http://www.download.com/Send-To-Toys/3000-2347_4-10484833.html