Unqualified Offerings

Free Software for Your New PC

27 Responses to “Free Software for Your New PC”

1. Comment by Brett —
   January 16, 2006 @ 9:53 pm

   IrfanView and 7Zip are both really, really good.

   I would also recommend PDFCreator to print to PDF, and the TweakUI PowerToy to take control of XP’s behavior.

2. Comment by Jim Henley —
   January 16, 2006 @ 10:16 pm

   Hi Brett: I’ve installed 7Zip, though not IrfanView yet. Probably should.

   I notice that Paint.NET requires installing the .NET framework, which apparently doesn’t come with XP by default and which I was under the impression one should shun. Reactions, anyone? Am I misremembering?

   Be cool if there was a lightweight video player to complement Foobar.

3. Comment by Mike Kozlowski —
   January 16, 2006 @ 10:43 pm

   There’s no reason at all to shun the .NET Framework. You’re probably thinking about Hailstorm, which was Microsoft’s Passport-on-steroids online identity system that got pushed a lot as part of the original, confused .NET marketing push.

   As for the other entries:

   I really, really hate Foobar. It’s everything that detractors stereotype open-source software as being: A technically rich and full-featured piece of software that’s insanely customizable, but hideously ugly and actively user-hostile.

   For Zip files, if you only use Zip (and not rar or .tgz or whatever else), XP’s built-in facilities are better than any third party program.

   And I don’t get FoxIt. I installed it, but it looked really ugly and wasn’t faster enough to matter to me.

4. Comment by mikej —
   January 17, 2006 @ 7:54 am

   shun the .Net framework at your own peril, for it heralds a new age… of .Net WinApps, anyway. (like Rails, a computerized version of all the variations of Crayon-Rails! http://bretm.home.comcast.net/rails.html )

5. Comment by Dave Adams —
   January 17, 2006 @ 10:02 am

   As others have said, .NET is nothing to worry about. It’s just a library that makes programming easier and programs (marginally) safer to run. Unlike most MS stuff, it stays totally out of your way.

   To add another item to the list, depending on your definition of ”free”, Google’s Picasa is the best photo organizer I’ve found, and it’s totally free. Importing, touching up, printing, cropping: all no-brainer simple. And it doesn’t save over the original so you can always revert your changes. My Mac friends tell me it’s better than iPhoto.

6. Comment by Dave Trowbridge —
   January 17, 2006 @ 10:56 am

   I agree about Picasa–a real honey of an application.

   And if you have to have a word processor with all the bells and whistles, OpenOffice.org’s Writer is wonderful. A virtual clone of MS Word, but faster.

7. Comment by Eric the .5b —
   January 17, 2006 @ 2:03 pm

   I’ve been a longtime fine of Opera for browsing on PCs. I’m quite torn between it and Firefox (once I’ve set up extensions so that I can use gestures and tabbed browsing in a similar manner to Opera).

8. Comment by Ryan —
   January 17, 2006 @ 6:49 pm

   I’ve been using Foxit for a while for PDFs. So streamlined — I’ll give up the snazzy Adobe look any day to avoid the bloated loading and update check.

   I highly recommend installing the PDF Download extension for Firefox to pair with Foxit. Catches PDF links, shows you file size, lets you simply download or can configure to open directly with Foxit (or any other reader).

9. Comment by Dustin —
   January 18, 2006 @ 3:11 am

   Re: Adobe bloat

   You can actually remove the all the acrobat reader plugins that cause the overhead issues with reader.

   Just move everything from the acrobat x.x\reader\plug_ins\ directory to the reader\optional\ directory. If you don’t have a reader\optional\ directory, just create one.)

10. Comment by Dustin —
    January 18, 2006 @ 3:34 am

    OK, I actually downloaded FoxIt and tried it out.

    It had assumed that it just loaded faster. As it turns out, it actually renders the PDF much faster when you are scrolling.

    Ignore my previous post and download FoxIt.

11. Comment by Jeremy Osner —
    January 18, 2006 @ 9:30 am

    Do any of you guys use PixWizard? I don’t do a lot of image manipulation type of stuff; but PixWizard serves admirably for what I need. It loads and renders quickly and it is cheap.

12. Comment by Jeremy Osner —
    January 18, 2006 @ 9:35 am

    Also: I’ve been using WinZip (plus WZZIP) and TextPad for a long, long time. Is it worth switching over to 7Zip and Notepad++?

13. Comment by Realish —
    January 18, 2006 @ 1:27 pm

    Jeremy — I don’t have strong feelings about text editors, as I don’t use them much. Textpad is probably fine.

    But in my experience, 7zip is WAY better than Winzip. It’s faster, can deal with more file extensions, and is more intuitive to use. Highly recommended.

    Perhaps I’ll send Jim a list of must-have firefox extensions soon …

14. Comment by Jeremy Osner —
    January 18, 2006 @ 2:10 pm

    Thanks, Realish. I’ll download 7zip and try it out. I had started getting annoyed at Niko Mak about a couple of things anyway.

15. Comment by Craig Ewert —
    January 18, 2006 @ 5:19 pm

    Another text editor you can try is SciTE; I use it with satisfaction.

    Also, you might want an FTP client for lofting images and whatnot to your web server. I like Filezilla.

16. Comment by Jeremy Osner —
    January 18, 2006 @ 11:11 pm

    Is Filezilla better than CuteFTP? Cause I’ve been pretty satisfied with that.

17. Comment by Mike Kozlowski —
    January 18, 2006 @ 11:47 pm

    Thanks for the Notepad++ pointer, incidentally. I’d been waffling between Emacs (familiar, powerful… but not very Windowsy) and TextPad (straightforward, reasonably powerful… but not free), and Notepad++ seems to combine the best of both. Nifty.

18. Comment by McDuff —
    January 19, 2006 @ 1:12 am

    I switched from Trillian to Gaim about eighteen months ago and, after a brief transition curve, have never looked back. Powerful, simple, clean, no bloat at all. It doesn’t support voice and video, if you want that, but then neither does the free version of Trillian.

    Also, I’ve switched over to Foobar2000 after years and years as a WinAmp user, and while there are a few things that were easier on WinAmp there are a whole lot more that are far easier with Foobar. It’s not *that* hard to learn.

19. Comment by Barry —
    January 19, 2006 @ 9:40 am

    A question, probably due to my lack of reading comprehension on the list that started this whole thing.

    I’m looking for software to write CD’s – I have a CD writer/DVD player on my computer. The software which came with it was ’Drag and Drop CD+DVD’, which should be read as ’throw your CD at the wall after incomprehensible errors’.

    Any suggestions?

20. Comment by Jeremy Osner —
    January 19, 2006 @ 10:05 am

    Barry — are you writing audio cd’s or data? RealPlayer seems to work pretty well for the former though I have done it only once. Wait no — it wasn’t RealPlayer, it was Windows Media Player. And it worked pretty well. For writing data CD’s I have been using the default Windows tool for that and disliking it because I cannot specify where it should keep its working data. Anyone know a good free replacement for this?

21. Comment by McDuff —
    January 19, 2006 @ 3:48 pm

    audio cd’s what?

    Oh, you mean audio CDs! As in the plural.

    Tell me, Mr Osner, what would your English teacher think if she saw you using an apostrophe to denote a plural, hmmm? Is that what you want, to bring an old lady to tears?

22. Comment by Barry —
    January 19, 2006 @ 4:20 pm

    Lead on, McDuff! She’s probably dead by now – and if in hell has too much else to worry about. If in heaven, she’ll be to happy.

23. Comment by Barry —
    January 19, 2006 @ 4:21 pm

    I’d like to do both audio and data CD’s, but my short-term need was for data CD’s, to back up some work.

24. Comment by Jeremy Osner —
    January 19, 2006 @ 7:12 pm

    Well if you find any solution which is not the built-in Windows tool for writing data cd’s and you would be so kind as to let me know about it, I’d appreciate that.

25. Comment by Ben Regenspan —
    January 20, 2006 @ 2:29 pm

    CDBurner XP looks promising.

26. Comment by buermann —
    January 21, 2006 @ 6:01 am

    Barbarians.

27. Pingback by Free 2B Software 4UR PC § Unqualified Offerings —
    January 22, 2006 @ 12:35 pm

    [...] 20;LouPak,” which makes an interesting comparison with the list that Realish started here and which has been amplified and modified in comments. Speaking of useful freebi [...]

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