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There's a small set of apps that I usually install on any Windows machine I use. I don't consider all of them to be "great apps", but they fill gaps that are missing in a default XP install. Most of these are pretty well known, but here you go:

1. Acrobat Reader
2. WinZip
3. Winamp
4. Quicktime Player
5. Gaim for Win32
6. TeraTerm Pro + TTSSH
7. Hijack This!
8. UnixTools

http://www.otakusoftware.com/topdesk/
http://smallwindows.sourceforge.net/

I didn't like either of them. They're much slower and flicker a lot. The second one was still pretty new, but at least it was free.

I use the Wonderful Icon in conjunction with a virtual desktop manager called DeskWin. It's also open source, and it works really well.

I've done a lot of looking for an FTP client that lets me do everything I want and found it as an open source project called "FileZilla"

http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/

Also, check out the current and pas "project of the month" at sourceforge
http://sourceforge.net/potm/

and the most downloaded projects at sourceforge:
http://sourceforge.net/top/topalltime.php?type=dow nloads

I've done a lot of looking for an FTP client that lets me do everything I want and found it as an open source project called "FileZilla"

http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/

Also, check out the current and pas "project of the month" at sourceforge
http://sourceforge.net/potm/

and the most downloaded projects at sourceforge:
http://sourceforge.net/top/topalltime.php?type=dow nloads

I've done a lot of looking for an FTP client that lets me do everything I want and found it as an open source project called "FileZilla"

http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/

Also, check out the current and pas "project of the month" at sourceforge
http://sourceforge.net/potm/

and the most downloaded projects at sourceforge:
http://sourceforge.net/top/topalltime.php?type=dow nloads

lack of multiple desktops

I'm so tired of people saying this. Have you even bothered looking? If you have an ATI or Nvidia card then you have multiple desktop capability built into your video drivers. They're a damn sight faster than any software based virtual desktops.

There's also software solutions, in case you're stuck with an archaic video card or a crappy Intel video card. My preferred one is VirtuaWin, but I've also used DeskWin. They're both OSS under the GPL.

Yes, MS has a PowerToy that does it as well (but it sucks). And even if you have ATI/Nvidia cards you may want to take a look at VirtuaWin -- it's extremely configurable and has a bunch of plugins available.

Get Miranda for IM (free + open source + customisable as hell), like a more experimental version of Adium that's less stable but can do more.

Get MediaPlayerClassic + RealPlayer Alternative + QuickTime Alternative + Combined Community Codec Pack for a fast and minimal setup that plays most video formats with excellent softsub support that you won't see in OSX.

WinAMP is pretty good but if you find it lacking and want to do more or you want to really customise it, try foobar2k. Steep learning curve but very rewarding and does many things iTunes can't.

Get uTorrent for fast and powerful bittorrent client with DHT, header-encryption, file-selection, etc. Again, nothing you can find for OSX.

Get xplorer2 lite for a tabbed double-pane file browser. Soft of like Path Finder but with two panes and much faster.

Lastly, if you have cygwin installed for the command line and you want something prettier and more customisable than xrvt, try console - you can use it with cmd.exe, bash, zsh, etc.

No wait... seriously, if it weren't for games, I'm not sure but I think I would have switched to FreeBSD 6.0, and even upgraded my box to a Mac OS X capable box with an ATI card.

Adobe Reader: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/
Sun Microsystems Java: http://www.java.com/en/
Azureus: http://azureus.sourceforge.net/
iTunes: http://www.apple.com/itunes
Winamp: http://www.winamp.com/
AudioScrobbler: http://www.last.fm/
Mozilla Suite: http://www.mozilla.org/
Opera: http://www.opera.com/
GIMP: http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/
GAIM: http://gaim.sourceforge.net/

I also suggest to get:
B's Recorder gold: http://www.bhacorp.com/products/gold8/index.html
Corel Painter IX: http://www.corel.com/
Powerquest.. sorry Norton Partition Magic: http://www.symantec.com/home_homeoffice/products/s ystem_performance/pm80/index.html

I'd like to write a small descriptions for each software but I have busy now so this is just fast reply. :)

Adobe Reader: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/
Sun Microsystems Java: http://www.java.com/en/
Azureus: http://azureus.sourceforge.net/
iTunes: http://www.apple.com/itunes
Winamp: http://www.winamp.com/
AudioScrobbler: http://www.last.fm/
Mozilla Suite: http://www.mozilla.org/
Opera: http://www.opera.com/
GIMP: http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/
GAIM: http://gaim.sourceforge.net/

I also suggest to get:
B's Recorder gold: http://www.bhacorp.com/products/gold8/index.html
Corel Painter IX: http://www.corel.com/
Powerquest.. sorry Norton Partition Magic: http://www.symantec.com/home_homeoffice/products/s ystem_performance/pm80/index.html

I'd like to write a small descriptions for each software but I have busy now so this is just fast reply. :)

Adobe Reader: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/
Sun Microsystems Java: http://www.java.com/en/
Azureus: http://azureus.sourceforge.net/
iTunes: http://www.apple.com/itunes
Winamp: http://www.winamp.com/
AudioScrobbler: http://www.last.fm/
Mozilla Suite: http://www.mozilla.org/
Opera: http://www.opera.com/
GIMP: http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/
GAIM: http://gaim.sourceforge.net/

I also suggest to get:
B's Recorder gold: http://www.bhacorp.com/products/gold8/index.html
Corel Painter IX: http://www.corel.com/
Powerquest.. sorry Norton Partition Magic: http://www.symantec.com/home_homeoffice/products/s ystem_performance/pm80/index.html

I'd like to write a small descriptions for each software but I have busy now so this is just fast reply. :)

Seems no one is giving serious answers so i guess i will be the only one

Freeware or open source software:
01. Firefox, http://www.getfirefox.com/
02. Winamp, http://www.winamp.com/
03. Miranda, http://www.miranda-im.org/
04. Media Player Classic, http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli
05. ffdshow, http://www.free-codecs.com/download/FFDShow.htm
06. CDBurnerXp Pro, http://www.cdburnerxp.se/
07. Daemon-tools, http://www.daemon-tools.cc/
08. uTorrent, http://www.utorrent.com/
09. XnView, http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pierre.g/xnview/enhome.htm l
10. ExactAudioCopy, http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/
11. Dev-C++, http://www.bloodshed.net/devcpp.html
12. 7-zip, http://www.7-zip.org/
13. Real Alternative, http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Real_Alternati ve.htm
14. QuickTime Alternative, http://www.free-codecs.com/download/QuickTime_Alte rnative.htm
15. Process Explorer, http://www.sysinternals.com/utilities/processexplo rer.html
16. Uniform Server, http://www.uniformserver.com/
17. nLite, http://www.nliteos.com/ (sp+hotfix+driver slipstreaming and ability to remove almost anything from the windows installation disc, including wmp, ie, drivers, services, etc, you can get your windows install disc down to 180MB with a 70MB RAM footprint after boot).

Commercial/Shareware software.
01. NOD32, http://www.nod32.com/ - simply the best antivirus software out there
02. Cinema4D, http://www.maxoncomputer.com/ Great modelling/rendering program (also available for OS X)
03. mIRC, http://www.mirc.com/ not the best irc client, but it has a tiny memory footprint/feature ratio
04. Directory Opus, http://www.gpsoft.com.au/ replace Explorer with a far better file manager.
05. UltraEdit, http://www.ultraedit.com/ great editor for many textbased formats
06. Visual Studio, http://microsoft.com/
07. Nero Burning ROM. http://www.ahead.de/ my burning program of choice

Now that I have a chance to painlessly dip into the Windows world, what I'd like to ask you is, what Windows software amazes you?


http://osswin.sourceforge.net/
http://www.theopencd.org/
http://osscd.sunsite.dk/
http://www.winlibre.com/en/index.php



Enjoy.

If you need to find a specifc pic, fire up Picassa (Windows only sadly) and scan through for the picture.

gqview on Linux/UNIX will do just fine for this. Flip through the pix (it'll do the flipping for you in slide-show mode), then right-click the chosen cluster to "edit in the GIMP" to crop down to just the one you want.

Music: Foobar2000 0.8.3 (iTunes and dumbed down fb2k annoy me)

Video: Media Player Classic with ffdshow

If you are using an iMac or MacBook Pro, then you might be interested in the Windows-only software that enables the ATI Radeon 1600's GPU-accelerated H.264 playback and video transcoding. For GPU-accelerated H.264, I think you need to purchase CyberLink's H.264 decoder. ATI's Avivo Video Converter is integrated into the latest Catalyst Control Center, which I'm not sure is included on Apple's Windows driver disc image.

Does anybody know if GPU-accelerated H.264 playback and video transcoding is enabled on OS X yet?

I'd say more along the lines of mplayerc; well, that's what I call it, I suppose it's actually Media Player Classic. Sometimes it feels like that's half the reason alone that I still boot into Windows so often; it's not like there aren't video players for Linux, it's just that none that I've ever tried work so well and elegantly.

Especially if we pretend that the article/blog isn't a fake, someone that's likely to have been stuck with Quicktime for their computing history, upon discovering programs like mplayerc.exe . . . well, it's gotta be a bit of a "halleluiah!" moment. I'd place the UI and functionality way over VLC as well, and it certainly fits the "Windows only" criteria here.

Speaking of video, Virtualdub (or better yet, Vdubmod) is quite the tool. Sure, Final Cut Pro may easily make things that look fancier, but VirtualDubMod is so excessively useful that I tend to use it for almost every bit of video editing I ever do. Some things are a bit harder, but nothing is really impossible and you get much finer and more precise control over it all. That's another program that I desperately wish had a Linux equivalent.

(Sidenote: I'm sitting here crossing my fingers and hoping that some Linux zealot will correct me and point out some marvellous video app for Linux. No, I'm serious, I'd love to be able to do more in Linux but I'm ignorant of any real ways to escape from Windows for how I work and play with video. Audio isn't a problem as much; you have xmms and amaroK for play, and audacity for work (though I haven't used it nearly as much as SoundForge for Windows, so I'm being a bit optimistic here; justifiably so though, I'd suppose). But video alternatives? The bases just don't seem to be covered.)

I'd say more along the lines of mplayerc; well, that's what I call it, I suppose it's actually Media Player Classic. Sometimes it feels like that's half the reason alone that I still boot into Windows so often; it's not like there aren't video players for Linux, it's just that none that I've ever tried work so well and elegantly.

Especially if we pretend that the article/blog isn't a fake, someone that's likely to have been stuck with Quicktime for their computing history, upon discovering programs like mplayerc.exe . . . well, it's gotta be a bit of a "halleluiah!" moment. I'd place the UI and functionality way over VLC as well, and it certainly fits the "Windows only" criteria here.

Speaking of video, Virtualdub (or better yet, Vdubmod) is quite the tool. Sure, Final Cut Pro may easily make things that look fancier, but VirtualDubMod is so excessively useful that I tend to use it for almost every bit of video editing I ever do. Some things are a bit harder, but nothing is really impossible and you get much finer and more precise control over it all. That's another program that I desperately wish had a Linux equivalent.

(Sidenote: I'm sitting here crossing my fingers and hoping that some Linux zealot will correct me and point out some marvellous video app for Linux. No, I'm serious, I'd love to be able to do more in Linux but I'm ignorant of any real ways to escape from Windows for how I work and play with video. Audio isn't a problem as much; you have xmms and amaroK for play, and audacity for work (though I haven't used it nearly as much as SoundForge for Windows, so I'm being a bit optimistic here; justifiably so though, I'd suppose). But video alternatives? The bases just don't seem to be covered.)

Dictionary:
http://wordweb.info/

Search to replace Windows crippled search, though Desktop search may be better:
http://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack/

New to me, but have been wanting since before XP:
http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/hardli nkshellext.html Video editing:
http://www.virtualdub.org/
Notepad replacement:
http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/

And of course Firefox and OpenOffice, but those are available for other systems, oh and VideoLan Client (VLC)
For programming: (also available for Linux)
http://www.freebasic.net/

You also may want to check out my learning japanese apps post:
http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=182351&cid =15073257

Java is too slow for OS today imo... Its performance being interpreted is why... you may wish to look up SINGULARITY by Microsoft

Good God. You're an idiot and a Microsoft fanboi. Is there anything worse?

Still, are drivers doable in java?

Lemme see. If you write an operating system in Java, it just might come with device drivers. Maybe? You think? But you go right on thinking that device drivers can't be written in Java. Moron.

Try pulling your head out of Visual Studio's ass long enough to learn a thing or two about other Operating Systems and Execution Environments. Then you might actually be able to register a nick around here without getting tagged as a know-nothing Microsoft-lover.

If you're planning to watch any sort of movies on Windows, there are a few useful programs (some of which are cross-platform):

• VLC media player - a nice all-purpose media player that works with DVDs in addition to many other formats.
• QuickTime Alternative and Real Alternative - free versions of the QT & Real codecs that allow you to play those formats without the need for a separate movie player for each. Also includes browser plugins and Media Player Classic, another free media player similar in appearance to old versions of Windows Media Player.
• ffdshow - a codec that allows Windows Media Player to play videos encoded with divx, xvid, and a bunch of other stuff.
• MPlayer, of course, also exists; I haven't tried it on Windows myself, though, so I can't say how well it works compared to its incarnations on other OSes.

PearPC!

Norton and Mcaffee both suck. I mean, they're both terrible, poorly written, resource-intensive programs. The best anti-virus software I've found is AVG Free Edition. Though, realistically, you only need AV software if you open email attachments and download stuff from websites that aren't obviously trustworthy.

For antispyware software, the only ones to use are Spybot and Ad-Aware. Again, you only really need those programs if you use Internet Explorer. Don't. Get Firefox instead.

What else is good and useful? VLC has been mentioned, it's the best media player. Some of these Powertoys are useful, especially TweakUI. For Instant messaging, Trillian is the best, though GAIM gets better all the time.

Other than that...games. I don't have any recommendations for those, you'll just have to find what you like. Have fun.

* Crimson Editor An amazingly powerful freeware text / script editor.

  * uTorrent Is there an open source Torrent Client in under 200k? Does it have RSS searching, bandwidth scheduling, automatic resume, and trackerless support? Yes? Oh, good then.

  * As -U- Type. Spell check anywhere. It's a great piece of software, if you can get over the fact that the author barely speaks any english.

  * 3 Plane Soft Screensavers. Ok, they're screensavers. And they're a rip off. But damn they're nice.

  * Trillian. 'nuff said.

  * The Bat! The second best mail client created, behind only KMail.

  * IZarc If there were need for zip clients anymore, this would be the one to have. Also handles about 50 other file standards, integrates really well with explorer, is small and efficient, and did I mention free? Best unzipper out there, including the pay options.

  * Folder Size Shows you how big your folders are. If explorer were made by Apple, it would do this by default.

  * True Crypt Data so secure even it doesn't know if there is more to be found in a file.

  * Thumbs Plus Arguably there are a lot of good applications in this space, and there are ones out there with better interfaces. But it is the only thumbnail application I've ever used that can handle upwards of 20,000 files in a single directory. If you take lots of pictures, this is the one.

  * DVD Decrypter Recently bought out by Macrovision to shut down it's decryptey goodness, DVD Decrypter is really a no-nonsense, no-fuss DVD ripper and burner. Want to rip a movie from a DVD so you can watch it later? One button. Want to rip it back to a DVD? Another button.

  * Microsoft Power Toys Nifty stuff from people who both hate and make the operating system.

And remember to use an antivirus, a firewall, and two anti-spyware suites. My personal favorites are AVG Antivirus, Kerio Personal Firewall, Spybot, and Ad Aware.

Firefox
OpenOffice.org

and for the rest of your software needs...

Azureus

Cygwin
TXMouse
Virtuawin
gvim
proTeXt

1. TextPad is a must.
2. The Windows Power Toys are worth taking a look at (I personally like the 'Open Command Window Here' tool).
3. Azureus for BitTorrent.
4. Windows Grep comes in handy for searching files (No thanks Google Desktop).
5. And of course, Visual Studio Express to get your hands dirty with some code.

Foobar2000 - An audio player that is a painful reminder how heavy iTunes feels. Has 10x the functionality, and brutally enforces good practices in keeping a media library. 0.9 just came out a few weeks ago.

Media Player Classic - The only media player you'll need. With ffdshow, it handles just about anything I can throw at it, audio works, subtitles work, and its one exe.

uTorrent - Everything you'd want from Azureus, in a 150k self-contained exe. Makes it almost manditory to leave it open all the time because its just that slick and efficient.

BurnAtOnce - A cdrdao based burner with an amazingly simple interface. Who needs Nero with this around?

Exact Audio Copy - THE cd ripper. cdparanoia works fine in most cases, but doesn't leave you 100% sure your rip is 100% perfect like this one. And this fits in almost any audio workflow with its advanced tagging, and command line support.

More apps like these on other platforms please!

AviSynth: Frameserver, scriptable non-linear video editing.
VirtualDub/VirtualDubMod: Video capture, linear processing. Use in conjunction with AviSynth.
Isobuster: CD/DVD data recovery
ExactAudioCopy: CD ripping even from badly scratched CDs.

The problem with Lyx is that it's basically a frontend for latex, which is a frontend for Tex.

Too many frontends. The markup elegance gets lost somewhere. You'll have to convert Lyx to latex before sending it to some journals, and the conversion is horrible, and a mess for mass printing (using \overrightarrow instead of \vec and so forth).

Better to stick to a simple environment for latex, like kile (http://kile.sourceforge.net./ Worked for me so far.

Get kile (Latex frontend for KDE) from http://kile.sourceforge.net/ . It's latex rendering is clean, and you can look up latex markups from the menus (instead of having to break out Leslie Lamport's book every time you forget how to include well-indented graphics or whatever).

I saw your post on Ekiga 2.0 when I googled for other stuff, but it was to late to replay and I can't find a function for sending private messages so I'll answer here instead. Sorry for beeing off topic.

Regarding SIP and Ekiga I'm not sure if there are any chances to use SIP behind a NAT without any forwarded ports (in that case using STUN but I doubt it.)
What ports are used are application dependant, but this is what I use and I have no troubles with any application or provider so far:

5060 TCP/UDP (SIP UAS, I think this should be enough.)
5000-5100 UDP (But with only the ports above I could only use my other account, not the Ekiga.net one, with these both works.)
3478-3479 UDP (STUN service)
49152-65535 UDP (RTP, RTCP multimedia streaming)

I _think_ that port 5060 (or 5000-5100) is used to say "hi, you got a phone call", but the actual voice data are sent over port 49152-65535 (valid for SJPhone, might be application dependant). I think you only need the STUN ports open if you use STUN, STUN seems to be a service which helps the application to figure out what kind of firewall it is behind.

I've covered this with screenshots in my blog but it's written in swedish so I don't know how much help that gives. Atleast you can look at the images?
I know for my "real provider" I had to tell them if I where behind NAT or not, doesn't seem like anything like that is needed for the ekiga.net account for whatever reason. Maybe with STUN + NAT enabled user you don't have to forward any ports at all?

Another alternative is to use Asterisk or Asterisk@home somewhere outside the firewall and have that handle the SIP account and use IAX for your clients instead. There is a nice (atleast screenshots says so) client available for UNIX called KIAX.

Ekiga is a nice client, for whatever reason it crashes all the time now when I upgraded to Ubuntu Dapper, but I've got noone else to blame than myself for that one. SJPhone isn't open-source but it doesn't cost anything and is very competent aswell. For Linux linphone is less good and kphone is even less good ;), I would rate X-ten X-lite(is that the name?) as just beneath SJPhone.

I saw your post on Ekiga 2.0 when I googled for other stuff, but it was to late to replay and I can't find a function for sending private messages so I'll answer here instead. Sorry for beeing off topic.

Regarding SIP and Ekiga I'm not sure if there are any chances to use SIP behind a NAT without any forwarded ports (in that case using STUN but I doubt it.)
What ports are used are application dependant, but this is what I use and I have no troubles with any application or provider so far:

5060 TCP/UDP (SIP UAS, I think this should be enough.)
5000-5100 UDP (But with only the ports above I could only use my other account, not the Ekiga.net one, with these both works.)
3478-3479 UDP (STUN service)
49152-65535 UDP (RTP, RTCP multimedia streaming)

I _think_ that port 5060 (or 5000-5100) is used to say "hi, you got a phone call", but the actual voice data are sent over port 49152-65535 (valid for SJPhone, might be application dependant). I think you only need the STUN ports open if you use STUN, STUN seems to be a service which helps the application to figure out what kind of firewall it is behind.

I've covered this with screenshots in my blog but it's written in swedish so I don't know how much help that gives. Atleast you can look at the images?
I know for my "real provider" I had to tell them if I where behind NAT or not, doesn't seem like anything like that is needed for the ekiga.net account for whatever reason. Maybe with STUN + NAT enabled user you don't have to forward any ports at all?

Another alternative is to use Asterisk or Asterisk@home somewhere outside the firewall and have that handle the SIP account and use IAX for your clients instead. There is a nice (atleast screenshots says so) client available for UNIX called KIAX.

Ekiga is a nice client, for whatever reason it crashes all the time now when I upgraded to Ubuntu Dapper, but I've got noone else to blame than myself for that one. SJPhone isn't open-source but it doesn't cost anything and is very competent aswell. For Linux linphone is less good and kphone is even less good ;), I would rate X-ten X-lite(is that the name?) as just beneath SJPhone.

From what I've seen, Parallels is just VirtualPC without the CPU emulation. Maybe like VMWare on Windows. And, honestly, as an I.T. person of over 15 years, VMWare is only good for testing configurations, software, etc. It's not really good enough for real work.

I agree that the ideal is to be able to run Windows and OS X apps in OS X without having to boot Windows. That's why WINE is the best solution for people like us, maybe even Codeweavers Crossover Office, once they come out with it for OS X.

We've been using CXOffice Pro for a few months in SuSE Linux, and it is very nice -- makes it so the user can hardly tell they're not using Windows.

There is the complication of application compatibility in WINE (or CXOffice, which is based on WINE), though. I can run quite a few Windows apps directly in OS X using Darwine right now:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/darwine/

Lotus Notes 6.x compatibility is broken in it again, though (damnit!). That's really the only Windows app I need to run that I can't run in Mac OS X (Notes Admin/Designer).

Pretty cool to install and run WinZip in Mac OS X, though.

For compatibility and speed, though, dual-booting Windows XP using Apple's Boot Camp on my Mac Mini is the best way for me to get my work done for now...

Grab yourself a $40 USB scanner. Stick it on an old PC, and install your favorite GNU/Linux distro. Then use SANE and scanbuttond to bulk-scan your photos. Here's how I am doing just about the same thing:

I inherited my grandfather's QSO cards (W3FFZ) from the 50's. I figured I'd scan 'em and put 'em on the web. For the scanning process, I have scanbuttond run my script to scan a postcard size from the scanner, and toss it into a directory. So what I do now, is I go over to the scanner, put a QSO card in, close the lid, and press a button. The scanner scans the card and I can then flip it over and press the button again.

It is difficult to bulk-scan things in general. You really need to apply meta-data to your images, whether you populate any comment fields, the way you name your files, etc. I find it best to go through and rename my images as I take them out of my camera/phone.

Mentifex was the original author of Mind.Forth, Mind.html and the AI4U ISBN 0595654371 textbook of artificial intelligence.

Mind.Forth was a primitive artificial mind written in Win32Forth for robots and based on a Theory of Cognitivity for artificial intelligence. AI functionality was developed by Mentifex first in Mind.Forth and ported subsequently into the Mind.html Seed AI for propagation throughout the installed user base.

Mind.html was an artificial intelligence coded by Mentifex initially in JavaScript for Web migration and in Forth for robots, evolving towards full civil rights on a par with human beings and towards superintelligence beyond any human IQ.

The AI4U textbook was reviewed falsely and viciously but found its way into libraries at such prestigious universities as the University of Hong Kong, North Carolina State University and Texas A&M University.

Technological Singularity was launched almost single-handedly by Mentifex against all odds and in the face of desperate opposition from the FAQ-writing AI Establishment and the Singularity wannabes whose revenue stream was threatened by the free Open-Source AI software released into the Web Wilds by Mentifex.

Of course they're dual-booting windows - how else are employees supposed to play the latest games?

Rather than throw old PCs into the trash and fueling the waste problem find new uses for them.

For example, old PCs 386 or later, can be reused as a router/firewall. They provide excellent security for your home LAN while keeping it out of the waste pile. Being floppy based, Freesco does NOT require a hard disk! Install the software and reuse the PC or give it to someone who will. See:

http://www.freesco.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FREESCO/

Later PCs, such Pentium 400 MHz or later, can be reused as MythTV PVRs by adding an inexpensive TV tuner ($20-$30) I have gotten PCs as old as P2 266MHz 128 MB to have some limited PVR functionality. (contact me if interested in old PC PVRs)

http://amicus.sourceforge.net/

Practically any PC, 386 or better, can run lightweight Linux distributions such as DSL or Debian for general purpose computing.

http://damnsmalllinux.org/
http://debian.org/

These are just three low cost methods I have personally used to recycle old computers. Use your imagination and Google, and you can see there are many other options too. Don't throw it away, make the old PC into something useful reuse it or give it to someone who will!

Andrew Lynch

1. Drivers - Windows 2000/XP uses a different architecture for drivers.
2. Anything requiring direct hardware access. Windows 2000/XP requires all programs to use drivers and kills off programs that attempt direct hardware access.
3. DOS programs. Sound emulation for cmd.exe is iffy. Combined with the previous point, DOS programs are hit or miss. DOSBox is your friend in both *nix and Windows.
4. Programs that explicitly look for NT DLLs and refuse to run if they are located

Even though I only mentioned compatibility back to Windows 3.1, I mentioned DOS here because Theme Park is a DOS program.

On top of that, you can search for drivers for hardware. Google turned up something when I searched for Miro. It may help, or it may not. I can't tell, because I don't know which Miro model you have.

If your issues are less related to the specific instrument and more to sight-reading and general theory, I'd recommend notation software. Coda's Finale Notepad is a free, someone limited version of the Finale notation package. I prefer Noteworthy Composer which is very accessible for people less versed in theory, while Brahms is a good Linux package. I've found that writing music is one of the best ways to learn how it works, and being able to play it back quickly, either through ALSA, a MIDI keyboard or Windows software synth allows you to experiment easily with notation and theory.

...on whether Negreponte is a novice or not. If he is, then yes, he's very possibly out of luck, since software designed for novices needs more functions by definition, and thus, has to be bigger.

If on the other hand he already knows a thing or two, (or isn't afraid of learning) then he will find that minimalistic systems are actually one of Linux's primary strengths, at least in my observation. He could probably use this as a base, and then for X use apt-get to install ROX Filer, metacity, (as a background for ROX) and fbpanel as his start menu. Or, if he wants most of that done for him, he could install FVWM instead of metacity and fbpanel, and still use ROX as an explorer clone. Mind you, this is only one possible option, and most people reading this would probably think I'm insane and ask why I don't simply advocate fluxbox/xfce etc. This is a problem with myriad possible solutions.

He'd probably also need to install gtk for Abiword etc, but that doesn't necessarily have to be a problem. There are also any number of lightweight image viewers around as well...he should check freshmeat. For web browsing, there's also dillo.

Hence, what he wants is more than possible. He might have to do a bit of surfing, but then again, with the magic of apt-get, he probably doesn't even need to do that.

...on whether Negreponte is a novice or not. If he is, then yes, he's very possibly out of luck, since software designed for novices needs more functions by definition, and thus, has to be bigger.

If on the other hand he already knows a thing or two, (or isn't afraid of learning) then he will find that minimalistic systems are actually one of Linux's primary strengths, at least in my observation. He could probably use this as a base, and then for X use apt-get to install ROX Filer, metacity, (as a background for ROX) and fbpanel as his start menu. Or, if he wants most of that done for him, he could install FVWM instead of metacity and fbpanel, and still use ROX as an explorer clone. Mind you, this is only one possible option, and most people reading this would probably think I'm insane and ask why I don't simply advocate fluxbox/xfce etc. This is a problem with myriad possible solutions.

He'd probably also need to install gtk for Abiword etc, but that doesn't necessarily have to be a problem. There are also any number of lightweight image viewers around as well...he should check freshmeat. For web browsing, there's also dillo.

Hence, what he wants is more than possible. He might have to do a bit of surfing, but then again, with the magic of apt-get, he probably doesn't even need to do that.

Now, if they were able to brute-force decrypt 1000 IPSec connections in real time - this would be something to worry about.

DES cracked in less than 3 days (circa 1999 public knowledge technology).

One of many IPSEC crackers, IKEcrack.

Who knows what is possible with a budget of... oh wait, that's classified, although we do know it was over 70 Million in 1972 ($319,277,570.21 of today's dollars or 1277 of the EFF's 1999 machines.)

I'd say they can.

Well, Wikipedia is licensed under the GFDL so there has never been any problem downloading the database for it. There are even many different versions for mobile platforms and XP (including search functionality). And the ipod of course.

I'm still awaiting an Access port

You wanna read MS Access files in linux? Done: http://mdbtools.sourceforge.net/

You wanna port that data to an F/OSS db? Done: http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/gagn e_access.html

You want an MS Access equivolent for linux? Done: http://software.newsforge.com/software/04/04/20/18 23249.shtml?tid=150&tid=72&tid=82

Yeah, it was a joke, I know, but beleive it or not, there are those for whom MS Access is a working requirement who might be interested in these links.

Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/programming.html

I'm sure you mean this in jest. However, the folks at mdbtools are working on it.

Alex

I've been a amateur drummer for 25 years, and have tried a few software packages, but here are the ones I actually find useful.

Under Windows, for overdubbing wav and midi I mostly use Cakewalk (warning: link contains annoying self-playing music). I use the cheaper Home Studio. They have a real product differentiation problem as Sonar is the expensive product, and then they market or bundle cheaper versions that may cover your needs just fine (its hard to tell from the product descriptions which features are grayed out). I use Cakewalk because the Windows drivers can be used in a very low-latency mode, and I always have a Windows laptop kicking around. I have not liked the scoring side of Cakewalk.

Also under Windows, I have used Sibelius (version 3 and 4). It is a phenominal scoring program that produces great looking sheet music. This is the only thing I do with a PC that I think is really better than without the PC. If you score with a program that plays back what you've written via midi, you can correct many mistakes on the fly. Sibelius is unfortuately still phenominally expensive for my uses, and I've never purchased it (nor has anyone I know).

Under linux, the equivalent of Cakewalk is Rosegarden. It is very impressive at the moment. Building it is a royal pain for me. It doesn't use your standard autotools driven make, it uses Scons (not in my distribution). Scons requires a Python module that's not available in the stable version of Python. Hey, people writing free software can use whatever they want, its just a shame some people won't try their product because of the barrier to entry. I've had latency issues with Rosegarden + JACK which I think can be sorted out but I have to decide if I want to run the tools as root or pull in the whole SELinux overhead + realtime module (no different than Cakewalk in Windows -- it does not work well as non-admin). Rosegarden's scoring is coming along but not quite there for me.

For scoring under Linux, I'm using Lilypond. Lilypond is phenominal, but many won't like it because its markup-based (like writing Latex). You have to go through the compile cycle to view what you've written, and dump midi to hear it. Fortunately for me, rythym section music is very repetitive. The quality of printed music it can produce is unmatched. I'm sure more programs will start using Lilypond as a processing back-end.

I've used opera and I just didn't like the UI. Even though Firefox is not necessarily lightweight, it one of my main applications; it doesn't last a minute closed. I have my Gmail notifier in the corner, my adblock extension removing all banners and ad squares, I have my slashdot extension providing alternate links to sites. If I go to a site with an embedded wmv, avi, or whatever, I have MPlayerPlug-in which will play it for me. If there is a site where it disallows me because I'm not using Internet Explorer, I can switch what firefox identifies itself as. Pages load plenty fast, I've never thought of it as being slow. So, as someone above said, even though firefox has its faults, it fits my needs. Perhaps opera suits your needs better.

That being said, coral cache, google cache, mirrordot and the original link all seem to not be working for me, so I can't comment on TFA. :/

Would you prefer 1 Flash plugin or 4 seperate video plugins?

I invite you to slashgeo.org. Quite smaller than slashdot (and only 6 months old), but it reach thousands of geospatial professionals and has over 8000 daily hits right now. It has an active GPS section that will undoubtly interest you and of course, the usual Ask Slash section.

"As a side note, I already purchased Microsoft Pocket Streets 2006"

Stories in other sections, such as web mapping, might also interest you since it includes stories such as Open Source Alternatives to Consumer Map Programs. A part of the story: "Open source tends to be lacking in consumer map programs ala Microsoft Streets and Trips and Delorme's Street Atlas. There are several efforts to repair that situation. GMap, Roadster, and RoadNav are three examples. [...]"

I invite you to slashgeo.org. Quite smaller than slashdot (and only 6 months old), but it reach thousands of geospatial professionals and has over 8000 daily hits right now. It has an active GPS section that will undoubtly interest you and of course, the usual Ask Slash section.

"As a side note, I already purchased Microsoft Pocket Streets 2006"

Stories in other sections, such as web mapping, might also interest you since it includes stories such as Open Source Alternatives to Consumer Map Programs. A part of the story: "Open source tends to be lacking in consumer map programs ala Microsoft Streets and Trips and Delorme's Street Atlas. There are several efforts to repair that situation. GMap, Roadster, and RoadNav are three examples. [...]"