Software I use
by Kwong
Every now and then I’d get asked this question and I’d casually recommend something. For some reason I’ve become the goto-guy for windoze software recommendations. In light of that, I thought I might as well post a list (non-exhaustive) of stuff that I’m using that other people might find useful.
Browsers:
Chromium (Chrome without Google’s crap) : I find the nightlies good enough (bar the occasional bugs which shouldn’t be much of a problem since they get fixed so quickly)
Firefox : I use it as a backup to Chromium but it’s starting to win me back with its smaller memory footprint
Editors
emacsW32 : Just a personal choice
Notepad++ : I don’t use it often but I quite like the XML tools (offered as a plugin) which I use to test XPath queries
Microsoft Office 2010: Would be using LibreOffice if it weren’t because of school requirements.
Google Docs : Team project collaboration. Online storage means I can access documents pretty easily as long as i can haz internets
MediaPlayers:
foobar2000 : without any customizations
VLC : just works plus I quite like the small step video playback speedups whenever I need to watch my webcasts at 1.5X speed
Media Player Classic + KLite Mega Codec : Backup to VLC, but I never seem to have to use it
Instant messaging/IRC
GTalk with Psi configured to use the MSN protocol
Pidgin: Multiprotocol IM (my old favorite)
XChat 2 : Just works, mIRC just doesn’t cut it for me anymore.
Security
Microsoft Security Essentials: good enough
Windows firewall : good enough
Truecrypt : Encrypted virtual disks
Readers:
Sumatra PDF : Lightweight, very fast. My only gripe is that it has rubbish print support.
Net Utilities:
Tixati : Torrent client, been using it since uTorrent sold to BitTorrent
WinSCP : for FTP, SFTP
PuTTYTabs: putty with TABS!!!
OpenVPN: VPN Goodness
Efficiency boosters/System Utils:
7zip : For extracting compressed files
Flux: Great for late night laptop usage, reduces stress on your eyes.
CCleaner: Good for cleaning up / freeing up disk space and also removes useless registry entries.
Daemon Tools Lite: for mounting ISO files
Launchy: Quiksilver for windows
deskview: declutters desktop icons by giving you the option to view icons as lists
Everything: Very fast search tool
Dropbox: Online storage, access files from anywhere with internet
Teracopy: File copying on steroids
Misc.
VirtualBox: Free alternative to VMware workstation
Eclipse : For Java projects large enough to require the use of an IDE
AutoHotkey : Awesome tool for repetitive tasks