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Windows 7
nearly 10-year-old Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop with SSD
Mozilla Firefox web browser,
AutoIt scripting language,
SciTE and TextPad tabbed text editors with regex support,
IrfanView
FinePrint virtual printer for N-up printing, combining print jobs, univeral print preview, saving without printing, etc.
and VPN client to connect to work.

I second Microsoft Power Toys and add some more:

* AutoIt for simple automation tasks and creating small programs with graphical user interfaces

* Firefox, of course. Opera is also a good choice.

* Daemon Tools for mounting ISOs as virtual CD/DVD drives

* Trillian--AIM, ICQ, IRC, MSN, and Yahoo messenger client


* QuickTime Alternative

* RealPlayer Alternative

* IrfanView--small, free, fast image viewer



* SysInternals utilities--useful for admins

* Scanner--shows hard drive usage as stacked pie graph of files/folders

* 7-zip: similar to WinZip or WinRAR or StuffIt

* Foxit [PDF] Reader--a lite alternative to Adobe


Following ones aren't free but are very useful Windows-only programs:

* FinePrint--n up printing, universal print preview, etc.

* MaxiVisa--use a networked computer like a secondary display

* TextPad, though I opt for the open-source and FREE SciTE

Right on! FinePrint is a great utility. I just printed the 110-page book A Byte of Python on just 7 letter-sized pages! This is just too cool to not have. I know that everyone here has large print jobs on occasion and small print jobs that need tricking out. So... you must go to http://www.fineprint.com/ and download a copy. You'll be glad you did!

An excellent program if you're into printing manuals yourself is http://www.fineprint.com/products/fineprint/index. html It is a virtual printer that allows some cool options. My favorite being the ability to fit multiple pages onto a sheet thereby saving time, ink and paper. Here's a list of the feature from the website: Print Preview: Universal print preview with editing capability. Easily add blank pages, delete pages, and re-sequence jobs. Ink Saver: Provides options to convert colored text to black and skip graphics. Multiple Pages on a single sheet: Print 2, 4 or 8 pages on a single sheet of paper. Watermarks Headers and Footers: Watermark, header and footer option allows documents to be marked with the date, time, system variables or custom text. Forms and Letterheads: Allows the simplified creation of electronic forms and letterhead. The preview feature shows how output will appear before you print it to ensure correct alignment. Combine Print Jobs: Allows multiple documents to be combined together as a single print job. This is useful for creating booklets based on web pages, etc. File saving: Save pages and jobs to TIFF, JPEG, BMP, text and FP formats. Clipboard Support: Any printed output can be copied to the clipboard in text, bitmap or Double Sided Printing Support: Booklet making and double sided printing are supported with all documents and printers. Booklets create a professional touch to all documents and are easy to read and carry. Double sided printing cuts paper use in half and reduces travel weight. Paper Scaling: Allows large pages to be scaled to that they fit on standard paper sizes such as letter or A4. Adjustable Margins: Margin adjustment allows for increased text sizes for better readability, by using more of the printable area on the page. Gutter Support: Gutter capability provides space for binding documents. Multiple FinePrinters: Multiple FinePrinters can be created. This allows the creation of "virtual printers" that have different pre-defined settings. For example, you could have a "booklet printer" that automatically prints a booklet or a "letterhead printer" that prints on your letterhead without the FinePrint dialog box appearing. Easy server deployment: Install on a server as a shared printer for easy group or enterprise deployment.

I'm sure there is some wisdom to the idea of just sending books, but you might also consider checking out a program called FinePrint. FinePrint can print 2, 4, or 8 pages per sheet of paper and can also streamline the process of duplex printing (giving you up to 16 pages per sheet). I use it all the time just to save paper, but it might suit your purpose as well. I know that there are similar programs for processing text files under Unix, but I can't recall the name(s) at the moment.

You might also want to be aware of another good resource of free online books, The Online Books Page. It includes Gutenberg Project texts as well as lots of others.

If you run Windows, you can install a virtual printer driver, that will print any file as a pdf document and continue printing as many files as you wish and then create a new pdf from all the files that have passed through the virtual pdf printer. Check out http://www.fineprint.com/

1) 7-zip. Like WinZip but Open source!

2) Mozilla. 'nuff said

3) SciTe. Excellent text editor. Open Source

4) AutoIt. Scripting/automation language for Windows, also open source.

5) FinePrint. Best shareware Ever. N-up printing, universal print preview, extract to image, text, metafile

6) rjhExtensions Add "Copy Path to Clipboard" and "Command Prompt" to right-click menu.

7) IrfanView good freeware image viewer

8) Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.1--because I hate 6.0 and GSView is not quite good enough yet :(

9) Microsoft Office.... yeah I know, I know

10) TweakUI

and it's not "finbe print": check out the fine print

As much as I try to adhere to this philosophy, I end up printing out a good deal of material almost every day. For one thing, I'm in school... but aside from lab reports and such, I'll from time to time print out, for example, an article from the New York Times that I want to read at lunch when I would have no additional reason to lug my Inspiron to the dining hall.

In most Linux-based operating systems (those with Ghostscript) it is of course easy to "print" just about any document to a postscript or PDF document... for Windows users I would recommend the basic version of Fineprint's pdfFactory, a commercial program that will install itself as a Windows printer and save documents as PDF files. It's not very featureful, but is good for the price (college kids, email them for the student discount). You can download a free trial version from their web page if you want to give it a shot.

There's an inexpensive shareware program called "FinePrint" which works as a fake printer driver between your applications and your actual printer. This program was originally created to save you paper, by printing up to eight pages on one side of one sheet, but over time it has gained a lot of nice features.

One of the features that I've used for my online transactions reciepts is the option to Save the print job(s) to a file or a bunch of files. It will save in the following formats:

• fp (FinePrint)
• bmp
• emf
• jpg
• tif
• txt

When I save as a TIF, I am given the option of monochrome, 4-bit, 8-bit, or 24-bit, and a resolution 72-1200 or "custom". There is a checkbox for "Create a separ4ate file for each page", so that solves the multi-page problem as well.

I really like this program, as I've been a registered user since nearly the beginning, and I've used nearly all of it's features at one time or another. And I don't get anything for mentioning it either, so =P

FinePrint

FinePrint pdfFactory also uses a virtual printer paradigm to "print" to a pdf file, and it is also very slick.