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Useful Apps for First-Time Windows Users?
pauljoyce asks: "I'm a Mac fan who is intrigued by the possibilities of Apple's Boot Camp software. 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? I want to build a list of unique, elegant, can't-do-without apps, so all us new Boot-Camp babies can finally experience some of the great innovation happening over on the Windows platform.
I roughed in a quick blogpage to collect the info, and to house any useful discussions. It'll probably deteriorate into a flame war at some point, but hopefully I can get a few contributions to each category before then. Would those interested please chime in with their list of favorites?"
Asking slashdot for must have windows apps? Nah...
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?
:-P
Java. Because it means that I can move the hell off of Windows and use a Mac instead.
Whoops. Did I just say that out loud?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I'd love to help, but I can't stop laughing from seeing the words "elegant" and "windows" together. And, is it just me, or is the summary itself dripping with sarcasm?
Mac, Windows, its all junk. Get a Palm Pilot and forget about it.
Really - there are all these cool games, that are released *years* before they are available on Macs.
That's the only reason I have a Windows box - to play my games, b/c most of them don't run in WINE.
Why can't I mod "-1 Idiot"?
There's this special type of software called GAMES... >_>
I don't think for one minute a regular Mac user is going to even take advantage of the Boot Camp software. This is really aimed at converting those who use Windows all the time, and now have an excuse to buy a cool Mac machine. You should have instead setup a site for first time Mac users - it would get a lot more attention.
that you try this new application that is out... Linux :-)
Yeah, maybe not that funny, but its required here
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Best app on Windows, bar none.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Cygwin
Now you too can be amazed how fast your mac can turn from a sleek machine into a pop up filled zombie email machine.
Play as many PC games as you like.
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
notepad rocks!
Videolan Website
Total Commander, or Salamander Commander. Both are excellent file managers, and they make WinZip un-needed.
Depends on what you're interested. The only applications I'd rather use over open source counterparts are part of the Microsoft Office 2003 and Photoshop CS. I use windows and linux and those are the only applications I prefer using the windows counterparts. Of course, nobody really uses office unless they have specific work to do, but photoshop is fun and useful.
Solitaire.
Painlessly dip?
"After partitioning their hard drives and installing Windows XP--which seems to work fine--these people find they can no longer boot back into OS X" doesn't sound very painless.
Vmware to run Ubuntu.
http://forchetti.org/tinye/
Can't beat Tiny E.
Theres something most folks will overlook (and I'm looking past the flamewar)
The first couple of stops should be to AVG and Firefox
Being a mac user, you know windows has viruses, and well firefox speaks for itself.
liqbase
Norton, or Mcaffee Antivirus software. 2-3 Antispyware programs. Adaware is a nice free one to start off with. Firefox, Windows comes with this wonderfully secure browser, but its gimped by its incredibly weak security.
Cool! The post is a troll! :)
AVG, Zone Alarm, AD-Aware and Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and you should be set.
I'm agneglectic, too lazy to care if there is a God.
I personally like the ease and simplicity of SDP (plus it's free) for recording various types of streams. -- Dave
If you plan to use it for development, you can't go too far wrong with TextPad and WinSCP.
You might also find Tunebite useful, if you subscribe to any online music services.
First app I'd buy is vmware (hey, it might be free now!) so you can run OS X on it.
No, really, all seriousness aside, I am a big user and fan in XP of:
This is really a tiny partial list. It's a shame I have so many programs I like to run in XP, cuz I always prefer the linux or some variant of unix environment. But, this is a small sample of what gets me through an XP kind of day.
Shouldn't that be "pane-less"?
Sorry...Sorry....
http://news.com.com/2061-10793_3-605969 4.html
I am feeling fat and sassy
If you're willing to hack around a bit, these guys can probably help you with getting a real OS on there.
If you have a single button mouse, like most Mac users, you'll need to:
1. Press Start
2. Select Control Panel
3. Select Accessibility Options
4. Select the Mouse tab
5. Select the check box Use MouseKeys
6. Press ok.
7. You can now close Control Panel.
8. Press the - key on your numeric keypad.
9. Point your mouse cursor at the window or icon where you want to right click.
10. Press the 5 key on your numeric keypad.
At present I'm not aware of any apps that you can get that will convert Apple+click to a right click. But I'm sure there'll be one available from the Apple web site soon, they seem to be doing everything in their power to make running windows on a Mac as painful^H^H^Hless as running it on any other x86 hardware.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I think it's much much better than iPhoto. Sorry, but it's true. I hate the way that iPhoto forces you to organize your photos in a particular style. iTunes has this problem also. Also I think Picasa is a bit more integrated with Gmail (which i use and love) and Blogger (not so good, but what I blog with).
AVG:i on/3000-8022_4-10399602.html?tag=lst-0-10 -8022_4-10401314.html?tag=lst-0-23 79544.html?tag=lst-0-14 -10486084.html?tag=lst-0-1
http://free.grisoft.com/
Ad-aware:
http://www.download.com/Ad-Aware-SE-Personal-Edit
Spybot Search and Destroy:
http://www.download.com/Spybot-Search-Destroy/300
Hijack This!:
http://www.download.com/HijackThis/3000-8022_4-10
Firefox:
http://www.firefox.com/
Trillian:
http://www.trillian.cc/
Spywareblaster:
http://www.download.com/SpywareBlaster/3000-8022_
And just about anything from:
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/index.html
You know all those little goofball utilites that perform some really simple but ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY function and are $25 time-limited shareware on the Mac? There are at least 50 *free* versions for Windows.
Here it is as an actual link, which I was too lazy to do the first time around:
http://news.com.com/2061-10793_3-6059694.html
I am feeling fat and sassy
AVG Anti-Virus
Hijack This
Spybot Search and Destroy
Adaware
Microsoft Anti-Spyware (aka Windows Defender)
SpywareBlaster
KeyloggerHunter
ClamAV
avast!
That should get ya started.
It'll probably deteriorate into a flame war at some point, but hopefully I can get a few contributions to each category before then.
Whereas here on slashdot, a troll like that normally ends with a fruitful discussion and many meaningful contributions.
Okay, I have one for you: SolidWorks.
Get dosbox, then visit websites giving away abandonware.
OpenOffice:
http://www.openoffice.org/
This for good measure:
http://www.officeplayground.com/madball.html
Okay, this is really the stupidest thing I've ever seen grace the front page of Slashdot......not that there aren't alot of others competing for a close second, but seriously.
.....
1) You need to have a reason to run applications. There are VERY FEW COOL applications. Boot Camp was made primarly for the business world and gamers who have programs that aren't ported.
2) If you are a Mac user, why does it even worry you? Have you found your program selection limiting in what you do every day? Once again, most people don't sit and think of cool programs to run, they run a program because they need to get something done.
If you don't have Windows programs, stick with OS X. I've got dual-booting Macs running Windows and OSX, and unless you have a need (and of course, the obvious: a valid windows license), why even bother?
Once again.....
1. Stupid Question + Stupid Editors
2.
3. Profit
Slashdot motto
www.atacomm.com - The Leader in VoIP Product Distributi
If you need to ssh out into the command-line-enabled world of real OSes, Putty (http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty /) will be your best friend.
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? I want to build a list of unique, elegant, can't-do-without apps, so all us new Boot-Camp babies can finally experience some of the great innovation happening over on the Windows platform.
April Fool's was over a week ago.
--R.J.
Electric-Escape.net
all of those viruses you've been hearing about so much. you can even take advantage of the slightly less popular trojans and worms.
welcome to the barrell...
but still important is to run Windows Update immediately after you install Windows.
Once you get used to it, you can't live without it.
MS Paint
I refuse to have a sig... dammit!
Windows® Defender Windows Defender (Beta 2) is a free program that helps you stay productive by protecting your computer against pop-ups, slow performance and security threats caused by spyware and other potentially unwanted software. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?Fa milyID=435bfce7-da2b-4a6a-afa4-f7f14e605a0d&Displa yLang=en
Stay way form starforce games.
As for some good games
Visual pinball + Visual PinMAME
Play and build pinball games
Visual PinMAME lets you play real pinball games on your computer with the roms form the real games.
http://www.vpforums.com/
http://www.pinmame.com/
Stop Computers/Cars Analogies on S
Comment removed based on user account deletion
As far as I know, both cygwin and Services for Unix only runs on Windows :)
All jokes aside, when I'm forced to use Windows for productivity (not gaming which is the only time I choose to use Windows), cygwin is invaluable. I hear the new monad shell is much better than the crappy old cmd.exe
I'm a Mac user myself, and I know macs are supposed to be the shiznit for graphics... but I still haven't found a drawing program I like as much as Visio.
I also find that I have to switch over to my windows box for some of my development & testing. In particular, there are very few mobile device simulators that run on non-Windows platforms. Basic WTKs are it.
Coderz 4 Life
With a lot of hackers and geeks now running OS X these days, it seems that most all of the cool/new apps are coming out for OS X (growl etc (though I am biased on that one)) and Linux...but the only cool windows app I can think of is PeerGuardian (slightly biased on that one too...)
Jisho - A Japanese English German Russian French Dictionary for the rest of us.
FDISK.
Welcome to the world of Windows.
Hands down best Windows software ever.
The Windows XP powertoys WinAmp Media Player Classic Daemon Tools (Allows you to mount ISOs and other images, attempting to defeat copy protections as well) WinKey (Lets you launch applications from Windows Key + WinRAR Some sort of notepad replacement. I use Notepad++ personally. ffdshow (Decodes DivX, XVid and almost everything else you can think of. Not needed if you use MPC) Civilization IV :)
Get UltraEdit-32. Best text editor I've ever used on Windows.
Did you know that gullible is not in the dictionary?
Of course, there are emulators for most game systems on the Mac. But some are still Windows-only, or much better on Windows, or not updated to OSX: 3DO, Atari Jaguar, Neo Geo CD, Saturn, Dreamcast, SegaCD, 32X, WonderSwan, Colecovision, GP32, TurboGrafx...
Circumcision is child abuse.
Right?
Seriously though, there is nothing fun or amazing about the windows world (aside from games that aren't available on OSX). The only 'must have' applications are only 'must have' because my IT department says so.
I'll tell you straight up - If you are using a mac happily now, you probably aren't missing anything.
I think THIS is what you were trying to say :)
Screen Calendar. It overlays a picture of a calendar on top of your desktop picture (Translucent calendar), with every event you've so far set up in office outlook (Integrates nicely). Adaware is second, Kaspersky antivirus, or AVG-Free. Executive Software diskeeper. Limewire Pro, GIMP2, Google Earth. Snood. DVD Decrypter. Quicktime, obviously. 7zip, winrar, Wordweb. Spybot.
Now I'll break it down from most to least used and liked.
Wordweb, use it 30 times a day to look up words I stumble across (Has a fairly large amount of words in it)
Screen Calendar, without it, I'd probably have a 60 average instead of my 95 in college. Helps me make sure I know what's happening and when.
Adaware is as important as
Kaspersky or AVG, your choice (Also AVAST is good)
Executive Software Diskeeper, keep your system defragged. Can be a hellish problem, especially for people who don't understand, you can schedule it to run whenever you'd like, even low-priority background.
GIMP2, Google Earth, Snood, Winrar, all good. I've played 1492 games of snood since August, which is actually kind of sad. Google Earth is great for finding things out about places (Check out the pyramids yo).
Anyhow, number 1, do what you like. Secure your system, review the software, then grab it. Disable JScript, and use Firefox. Firefox has a great extension for JScript enabling/disabling.
Good luck. Seriously.
1. Download a bittorrent client like utorrent.
2. Using utorrent, download the recent security update.
3. burn the image to CD.
4. restart computer to install the update.
For mp3 ripping, encoding, analysis, tagging and gain-normalizing, I like "Exact Audio Copy", "Lame", "EncSpot", "MP3BookHelper" and "MP3Gain". I usually recommend "Audacity", too!
It's strange to see Mac users asking about "amazing Windows software" because aren't mac users mostly Windows converts? Windows PCs have been about half the price of Mac machines for about a decade. I figured the reason people paid that premium for a Mac is for the quality that they have over Windows PCs. Also, the notion of Mac people now wanting Windows software shows that Apple's plan could backfire. Isn't the whole Boot Camp thing so that Windows people can now have an opportunity to switch over to Apple without losing all of the software they've grown accustomed to?
Anyway, to keep this on-topic, some amazing Windows software is
Spybot Search and Destroy - great spyware killer
AVG Anti-virus - self explanatory
iTunes - great software for organizing and playing your music. Also has a built-in store where you could purchase new stuff.
Konfabulator - great widget program with tons of free downloadable widgets online
Photoshop - The industry standard photo editing software, but it's pretty expensive.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
The first thing you should do is pop a nice Sony CD into it to get your rootkit installed as quickly and cleanly as possible.
The most amazing things that exists on Windows is the viruses.
These are things that you cannot live without, in Windows.
Most MS applications allow you to embed viruses into each application document format. This makes for an ideal virus breeding ground. Especially when coupled with IE or Exchange which allow these documents/viruses to be installed with very little resistence.
With later versions of the OS, there a warning that comes up, if you don't have "virus protection" software that helps work around the weak design. I think it pops up a message that says:
"OMG, you are running with like no virus checking software. Are you crazy?"
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!
Let's face it, you're a masochist.
Seeing as certain things aren't Universal, Photoshop, Indesign, etc. Other things that are cross-platform but aren't universal on OS X yet. Those are your best options for Boot Camp usage, aside from the obvious games.
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
I was thinking of the great windows apps I use - Audacity, Gimp, OpenOffice - Are you seeing a pattern here? I'd say most of the best tend to be open source which means they are more than likely already ported to Mac. I'm afraid that you're going to find this brave new world isn't that interesting after all.
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.
Wtf is 7337? Teet?
Why is it that when you believe something it's an opinion, but when I believe something it's a manifesto?
Adaware Audacity AutoGK (DVD --> AVI) AviSynth (Handy for AVI manipulation) Azureus Cain & Abel Cygwin Daemon Tools (Virtual optical drive) DVD Decrypter DVD Santa (AVI --> DVD) DVD Shrink (9GB DVD --> 5GB DVD) Ethereal Firefox FlashFXP Foobar2000 GAIM Hydra IRC Kerio Personal Firewall K-Lite Codec Pack/Matroska Pack Media Player Classic Netstumbler Nero Burning ROM Nmap NVU (open-source Dreamweaver-like app) OpenOffice PHOTOSHOP!!! Putty Quicktime Alternative Quintessential Player (drop winamp) Rad Video Tools (Great for crossencoding video) Real Alternative Spybot S&D TagScanner (lists MP3s) Thunderbird Mail Trillian (Shaft it as you will, I like it) UltraVNC Virtualdub VLC WinRAR
As for suggestions:
These are the "essential" applications (note: I use Linux and MacOS primarily, and I only have Windows around for testing; these are things I miss from "real" operating systems).
:)
* WinRAR. Yup, Windows doesn't ship with a decent compression tool.
* PuTTY. No SSH included either.
* Cygwin. Basics command environment, for working with the rest of your tools in a normal way.
* TightVNC. Windows is not network aware out of the box.
* Daemon tools. Much like MacOS, Windows doesn't have a good loopback tool. Daemon tools fixes this.
* iTunes. Yes, I install it on all Windows installations
* Azureus. How else do you download files nowadays?
* FireFox. IE is not an option.
This will take your basic Windows system, and give you proper text and gui network shells, a decent local shell, loop back, media organization, compression/decompression, and modern file downloading. I keep an NFS/SMB share with the latest version of these tools for when I wipe/restore Windows test boxes.
I see lots of suggestions for anti-virus, keylogger, and spyware apps here. It's a waste of your time if you do not use Windows for anything other than games. The only way you'll get spyware is if you do something stupid like run IE or execute random programs downloaded while websurfing.
I don't watch video on Windows, period, so I don't have applications for it; my Powerbook connects to my TV readily enough, and Mplayer's fullscreen mode looks great. I only use Windows for the rare PC game that doesn't load in Cedega, or testing.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Yes it's true. As a dedicated Mac user, I'm continuously left, errr... interrupted .... as my streaming video freezes. Or worse yet, left trying to imagine what I cannot see because the cool preview turned into a black screen when I tried to play it.
I know everyone thinks the Mac is the machine for the artistic types, but for high quality pr0n, nothing can touch windows. Pr0n and windoze: made for each other.
--Hi. I'm in Portland and it's raining. This appears to be a permanent condition.
Well, I tried.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
I do almost everything on both Mac (home) and PC (work). And I don't game on computers. Heck, I barely game on my XBox.
Unfortately, almost every GOOD piece of software that most people have already pointed out has a Mac version or equivalent that is as good or better.
The one piece of Windows software that I can't live without, however, is Virtual Dub. While QuickTime Pro can do some things that VDub can do, VDub is more elegant and flexible than anything I'd expect on Windows.
I also recommend Microsoft Visio. That's about it. Ugh. Go back to the Mac. Nothing to see here unless you're a gamer.
I don't know if it's a can't-live-without sort of app, but it's a personal/desktop wiki application that comes in handy for jotting down notes:
http://www.gersic.com/zulupad/
Seriously. That's the only reason I still use Windows.
"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." - Bertrand Russell.
fdisk - or some other partitioning tool ;-).
But on a serious note, Google Earth can be fun for exploring!
Cygwin
TXMouse
Virtuawin
gvim
proTeXt
AccountKiller
If you are into development, the MS development tools are pretty nice. Most people can mock up a GUI in no time. It is fun to make pretty pictures. In particular, Visual FoxPro is still a very good tool to rapidly create small and midsize databases, complete with GUI and reporting tools. MS, unfortunately, made it Windows only several years ago, and jacked up the price so that the POS Access would be a viable product.
As most say, the big thing Windows has is games. There are also a few verticle market applications that are mostly available for Windows.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Let's see... what do I put on a new windows box?
:-)
:-)
Unlike linux distro's you have to add stuff to get basic functionality.
It makes you wonder about all that bundling BS... I guess you get calc and IE.
Windows media player? Doesn't have many codecs, you have to add them.
But I digress.
putty - ssh client to get to the linux box
picassa - google photo program, very clean
firefox - browser that doesn't suck
vim - vi editor (obviously a preference, some people like one that starts with e...)
winamp - for playing back those tunes if you want something other than itunes
adobe reader - for those damn pdf's
what else... there are some cool games, of course, but you knew that
I use matlab at work, it's very useful but you wouldn't use it at home much I hope
Avast anti-virus: AVG is becoming a real piece, finding much better results with this program. Firefox: nuff said Thunderbird: again, it sells itself FileZilla: for FTP goings-on Nero: for doing CD/DVD burning OpenOffice: Still wish OO had full Access support, but it's the best we can do. iTunes: But you should know this already 7-zip: handles all your zip/rar/tar.gz/ file needs GoogleDesktop: to do all those widgety type things Acrobat Reader: stock install TextPad: Much richer than Notepad, and will even do some Java compiling, if that's your thing. Paint.Net: Beats the hell out of MSPaint, and you don't have to pay PhotoShop prices.
It's not that I'm asking the big questions, it's that I'm asking lots of small ones.
You Mac Boys tend to be light on your feet so these should be right up your alley (pun intended)
m _lm_fullview_prod_3/103-9330228-0652658?_encoding= UTF8&v=glance&n=229534
m _lm_fullview_prod_17/103-9330228-0652658?_encoding =UTF8&v=glance&n=229534
0 068VBF/ref=cm_lm_fullview_prod_4/103-9330228-06526 58?_encoding=UTF8&v=glance
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00002S8OA/ref=c
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005KG63/ref=c
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00
Very interesting that most of the software recommended so far is anti-virus and anti-spyware software (yes, of course these are unique to Windows) and open source software which is also available to Mac...
The only reason a Mac user should have to run XP would be for the games.
Open source 3-D modeling and boat design software. Or if I decide to pop for it, Rhino commercial modeling software with its boat design extensions.
I've been considering buying a second computer and runnign the Linux version of Freeboat. With BootCamp, I might just buy a new Mac, run windows from Bootcamp with as much isolation from the net as I can manage, and run the Windows version. And if I buy Rhino, I think its only a Windows version, at least for the extensions.
I'm stuck with windows at work, but I cant think of a singe other app that would cause me to consider using windows personally.
These are the first programs I install on every Windows machine I get my hands on. They serve a very simple purpose: to take care of all the Windows quirks and negate the need for any maintenance whatsoever:
n ?SP=1&PN=10&sid=26412) or ZoneAlarm.
1) AVG Antivirus: This is amazing, lightweight and updates almost every day (http://free.grisoft.com/doc/1);
2) CCleaner (Crap Cleaner): Removes all the "crap" that gets stored on Windows machines (unused and temp files) (http://www.ccleaner.com/)
3) Opera Browser: The best browser, IMHO. No need for for any any extensions, lightweight... it simply rocks. Oh, and mouse gestures with simplify you life! (http://opera.com/)
4) Foxit: Simple, no frills, lightweight pdf reader (http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php)
5) Executive Software Diskeeper: Automatically and seamlesly defrags the hard drive and optimizes access time to most used files.
BTW, all of the above programs are free, except Diskeeper.
For me, thats basically it. I personally have no need for a software firewall, but if you do many recommend (Free) Black ICE (http://www.digitalriver.com/dr/v2/ec_dynamic.mai
And before anyone asks, using Opera (rather than IE) I have NEVER had any Spyware problems, so no need for Ad-aware or Spybot S & D.
Using the above, you'll be alright and won't run into any mayor problems using Windows. Just make sure that you don't install any programs that contain spyware (Google for spyware before installing. If it does contain spyware I sure you'll find a suitable replacement that doesn't).
Cygwin :-P
Cygwin, I really can't do without it. I hate windows command line with a passion.
Does this sig remind you of Agatha Christie?
I don't know how to use a PC. Give me OSX or a CLI and I'm fine. But I only used a PC for the only two weeks I worked in a cube.
I worked in a mac-based office (not a design firm, a real office) and have done years of development exclusively on macs. My servers are OS X servers.
I do not know how to use a PC more than basic point and click. I have no idea what a DLL is. I don't know what it means to flash BIOS. Why? Because I have never needed to know, nor have I wanted to know.
As for the atom feed and stuff, that stuff is basic when you setup a blog. Come on.
Maybe this is astroturf, but I am a very tech savvy individual and have hardly any knowledge of Windows or experience using it. And I love it.
-A
I started my career as a Mac guy, and held on to the Mac for as long as I could, but Apple hemmoraged so much blood in '97 that I had to eventually buy/build my first PC.
The great thing about it was all of the A-List PC games that never made it to the Mac, I finally had access to. There were a good ten years' worth of stuff that I wanted, and most of it was in the bargain bins (wahoo!). X-Com:UFO was just so mind-blowingly great that, ten years after it's release, it could still hold its own; there just was never anything like it on the Mac side, and it's a game that I still revisit from time to time.
I'm not entirely sure what he wants to do, but most of these categories are just as mature under MacOS as they are under Windows. A spreadsheet application? Well, you've got Excel, you've got OO, and that's about it, for the big one and the up-and-coming, unless Lotus/Quattro is still hanging around out there somewhere. I don't know what state of the art is for spreadsheets on MacOS, but it's gotta be pretty similar to Windows. It's much the same with graphics programs and online programs, really. Utilities? What are you going to do with them? Why do you need a spam filter under Windows if you're checking your mail under MacOS? Do you actually envision booting into Windows and using it for long periods of time?
The only category that I see here where Windows definitely has a lot of options above and beyond MacOS is games. So go for that. Go down to the local video game store and look for some things on the PC shelf that aren't on the Macintosh shelf, and buy them. Over all, you probably aren't missing much.
This post sounds like the OP has a solution (Boot Camp) looking for a problem. And unless you've got a specific problem that really needs solving with Boot Camp, what's the point in using it?
Burn the Knoppix iso onto a CD and tell the nube that the need to have it in their CD-Rom drive when the boot up. Then when they say, "where's the E that I click to get on the internet", tell them Microsoft changed the icon to a fox humping planet earth. And you're done.
For instance,Adium is, in my opinion, a far superior multi-protocol chat client to Trillian.
I use Quicksilver almost constantly at home. I've got nothing like that at work.
There still isn't a good Exposé solution for Windows. I've tried the knock-offs and they're all pretty pathetic attempts.
There's nothing like Growl that I know of. Each application has to implement its own alert system. This would be great for letting me know when a source control sync or a compile is finished.
The one great app that I've found for Windows is Slickedit, which has pretty decent Emacs emulation, but does the whole intellisense thing better than I've been able to get Emacs to do (yes, I've tried Semantic and ECB).
Since the only game I play these days is WoW, my Mac is fantastic on its own. Bootcamp holds no pull for me. If I want more games, I'll buy a console. For the work that I do, there's nothing that I can do on a Windows PC that my Mac can't do better. (I'm not saying that this is true for everyone, just me.)
So if someone can point me in the direction of apps that are as good as the ones that I mentioned for Windows, I'd actually appreciate that. I'm sick of trying to hit Command-Space and not getting Quicksilver.
Firefox
OpenOffice.org
and for the rest of your software needs...
Azureus
what I use most on Windows boxes is cygwin and knoppix
Slashdot has changed.
and if you like having multiple desktops there is an XP powertoy to manage virtual desktops(up to four) it does the usual, apps open on one desktop do not show up in the others ( saves a LOT of screen realestate) also there is an option to preview all four desktops at once to see wich one the app you want is on ( havn't seen this on my linux boxes, anyone know if this is possible with kde?) and someone mentioned before the "open command window here" shell integration is a nice toy for changing permissions A.K.A "file attributes"
To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
Irfan View- http://www.irfanview.com
o dec_Pack
When I got my mac, I was so sad that there was no equivalent. Preview suffices, but it's still not the same.
Yzdock- http://www.majorgeeks.com/download2790.html
Kindna like osx's dock but not as powerful. Still, it's better than using that unwieldy start bar.
Combined Community Codec Pack- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_Community_C
Quick image viewing wasn't the only thing I was disappointed with... video watching was another. The CCCP gives you all the codecs you'll need in a light package, and it comes with Media Player Classic (which I would much rather use quicktime/vlc/mplayer).
Firefox (lol)
That's it off the top of my head.
I would have said google earth a few weeks ago but that's out for OS X now.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I much prefer Tactile3D :)
Windows itself never ceases to amaze me. That it can somehow coerce an otherwise reliable Linux server to boot into a toyland of colour and light, and remain stable for whole hours at a time!
Oh, but you're coming from OS X. I guess you're used to all those colour bubbles and stuff...
But the constant reboots allow you to thump your computer on a regular basis, which is where Windows really comes into its own. Reinforcing that machines are our slaves (and not the other way around!)
And viruses. Don't forget the viruses...!
With each breath in, a flower somewhere opens; with each breath out, a flower withers away. In between lies beauty.
finally experience some of the great innovation happening over on the Windows platform.
you're setting your expectations way too high. Think solitaire but with crashes every 10 minutes.
Excel for Windows is one of the best software programs ever. Insanely useful--powerful yet supports the sloppiness of real life. More software should be like Excel.
http://www.theopencd.org/ is a great cd of useful/free/fun software that will work under windows.
If you're going to be using Windows, you might want to get these cross-platform apps:
- Cygwin or at least MingW/Msys to drop back to comfortale familiar shell, and not the hell that is command prompt.
- VLC media player: the only media player worth using on Windows because it's 10 MB and doesn't put any files in any places but the install directory.
- Obviously Firefox/Thunderbird or Opera depending on your taste
- Putty: Great ssh client
- Spambayes: Best spam filtering (at least in my opinion)
- Eclipse: One of the most powerful IDEs on the market
Windows only:
- Beyond Compare: the best diff utility I've found. Integrates very cleanly with the shell (not free, but still very very good)
- TextPad: The best and easiest text editor - doesn't get in your way and is extensible like crazy. (Free with nag screen)
- Picasa: Image organization + basic editing
- Google Earth: When you need 3d Google Maps (although it has cool plugins like real-time flight paths)
- Trillian: MSN, ICQ, Jabber, IRC, etc (free and pay version)
- WinAVI: Very easy to use and the fastest video conversion program with great quality (not free)
- BitComet: Very slick bittorrent client
- Microsoft Visual Studio: One of the slickest IDEs around for C/C++ but still lacks in some modern IDE features found in Eclipse/NetBeans
There's plenty other apps I'm sure you'll come across. These are the one's I generally can't live without (except for MS Visual Studio).
And obviously all the games you want to try.
* 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.
The ______ Agenda
Games for the PC can go from $50 to discount bin in the time it takes for developers to put out a Mac port at the starting $50 mark. I've been a Mac user since '01 after years on Windows. If I end up buying a copy of Windows XP (possible) along with an Intel Mac (likely, eventually), it'll be for games.
Alex.
Erm... uhh... first-time Windows user... every anti-malware software on the planet would be a good start I guess. Especially if you're used to not dealing with that crap.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Last I checked, XP Home was $90. Not exactly "painless."
Then again - you do actually buy software licenses...right?
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
Seriously. There's still nothing on OSX that does as good a job at ripping DVDs to ISOs and re-recording them. MacTheRipper is buggy and just not very good. This is about all I use Windows for.
What in the nine hells are you talking about? People use Windows because they have to, not because they want to. There is scant innovation to be found, and no elegance at all.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
Come on... What OSX user is going to be intrigued about running Windows so that they can experience *ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE*? Hello!?!
I'm trying to think about software that is *ONLY* available on Windows that a Mac user would want to use and aside from the obvious *GAMES*, and drivers for hardware that OSX doesn't support or where vendors don't provide a software or a conduit for OSX, what is there?
Google Earth is available on the Mac...
Picasa is cool, but Mac people would probably prefer iPhoto
You can run Windows MCE, but Mac users can run MythTV on OSX
The hacker in me thinks it's fun to be able to run different OSes. I bet many OSX users would like to tool around with the Windows destop, the control panel, and all the cool widget things - that's good for at least a week of fun for a new windows user.
The main thing I can think of that a MAC user would want to use Windows for would be "boring" things like being able to use corporate web conferencing software that uses activeX, being able to use corporate software IP phone, being able to use Visio, Outlook express with calendar plugins, or Microsoft Project. Maybe users would be intersted to use Visual Studio, and something like Nero cd burning software
Oh, and I guess I'd add Internet Explorer to the list... not saying Safari or Firefox aren't good, just that some dumb websites need Internet Explorer and Windows to be seen in their full glory (sic).
Google Desktop; Firefox and/or Opera; OpenOffice and/or AbiWord; and the requisite antispyware/antivirus apps, of course. Oh, and Google Desktop.
I also make heavy use of the following:
ClocX
Windows XP PowerToys (highly useful, especially TweakUI
Notify CD (bare-bones but elegant CD player)
ReadPlease (text-to-speech)
Foxit Reader (a much faster PDF reader than Adobe)
Trillian (multiple IM)
foobar2000 (audio player)
How can a post be modded "overrated" or "underrated" when it hasn't been rated yet?
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=134069&thre shold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=11190469
Now, there are a few other ones not listed:
GIMP for windows
Scribus (recently ported to windows.
Filezilla (FTP windows only)
Inkscape
VLC and Mplayer
Hope you enjoy.
No one mentions Half Life 2?
Be better in bed. Wikiafterdark!
7zip - archiver - handles zip, tar, gzip, etc
CDex - ripper
Audacity - basic audio editor
Crimson Editor - tabbed text editor
Pixie - color picker
Putty - SSH client
Filezilla - FTP client
WinSCP3 - Secure FTP-like file transfer client
WnBrowse - read-only text/hex file viewer
ACDSee, Irfanview - photo viewers
Paint.net - drawing and photo editor
VideoLAN - fantastic media player
Videora - h264/mpeg4 video compressor (for making iPod/PSP video)
Nero - disk burning/authoring/DVD player - bundled as OEM with a lot of new burners
SamSpade - network tools - whois, ping, traceroute, etc
Hidden windows features: Scrap the newer Windows Media Player and use the old one - find the file "mplayer2.exe". Remove MSN messenger and dig out "conf.exe" (i.e. Netmeeting...it's still there)
Get a 3,4, or 5-button scrolling mouse and toss that 1-button piece of shit in the garbage. You can't use Windows or GUI *Nix without at least 2 buttons.
NEVER use an HTML-capable email program or Internet Explorer and you probably won't have virus problems. (I use Forte Agent for email and Firefox or Opera for browsing)
Mac users are nice, polite. A bit dorky. They're the 'nice guys' who drive hybrids, have white guilt, and occasionally think a typeface is too agressive. Take these two sentences:
I want to build a list of unique, elegant, can't-do-without apps, so all us new Boot-Camp babies can finally experience some of the great innovation happening over on the Windows platform. I roughed in a quick blogpage to collect the info, and to house any useful discussions.
My god, it's so sweet I'm almost gagging on my vegan soy latte.
A Windows user on the other hand, would say:
"gimme some warez. i need a proggie that'll hack an adult check id, so i can get pr0n. lolz"
(And, we won't even mention the Linux user, who starts off every explanation with: "Well, all you have to do is simply learn to program in C, then write twenty thousand lines of it")
If you're a mac user (like me) of Comictastic, there's a free alternative with Comic Junkie for Windows (www.comicjunkie.com)
Also AppRocket (www.approcket.com) is a great alternative to LaunchBar.
If you're multi-monitor, you'll also need UltraMon (www.ultramon.com)
For the best free text editor, check out ConTeXT (www.context.cx)
And of course Yahoo Widgets (widgets.yahoo.com formerly Konfabulator) will make you forget all about Dashboard.
Something to remove it with?
Great joke(s), guys! I never would have guessed that a bunch of slashbots would recommend *nix apps and spyware removal tools. To answer the question, Picasa (www.picasa.com) is the best photo app out there - yes, better than iPhoto. iPhoto's only edge over picasa is that it integrates with the other iLife apps. And I'll get flamed for it, but, unfortunately, there is no better fat-client PIM than MS Outlook 2003. Nothing else comes close to the functions it offers (spare the me macro/hijack jokes - hasn't been an issue since Outlook XP). It isn't for everyone, but it is the best.
Knowledge is valuable. Ignorance is dangerous. Censorship is unacceptable. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10
Sorry, I'm a fanboy. It's a great product, and one of the few pieces of software I've willingly paid for.
it's an excellent image viewer, also lets you adjust the images (brightness, gamma correction, contrast) and resize / resample them. Supports all formats known to mankind.
http://www.irfanview.com/
I can't believe you are a virgin.
File management/explorer replacement: Directory Opus
Music: Foobar2000 0.8.3 (iTunes and dumbed down fb2k annoy me)
Video: Media Player Classic with ffdshow
Browser: Firefox 1.5 with ~20 extensions
CD Ripping: Exact Audio Copy (only Windows can rip CDs properly)
Anti-virus: Avast
Shell: Cygwin with puttycyg or a local ssh server
IM: Trillian (needs to be replaced with a Jabber client + aim/yahoo transport)
Python development: Eclipse with the pydev extension
IRC: Chatzilla
BitTorrent: uTorrent
Webserver: Apache 2
Archive unpacker: IZArc
Mail: Thunderbird
Encryption: Truecrypt
JPEG manager: iView MediaPro3
CD/DVD burning: Nero
Hex editor: XVI32
SSH,SCP: PuTTY, WinSCP
Office suite: Office 2003
Calendar: Outlook 2003
Virtual drives: Daemon Tools
Notetaking: Onenote 2003
Batch image editing: Photoshop CS2
Spoken dictionary: Encarta 2006 Dictionary Tools
Audio quality checking: Nero WaveEdit, EncSpot, Audiochecker
Time syncing: NetTime
Firewall: Sygate (needs to be replaced)
Various system tools: Startup, Tweak UI, Filemon, Peerguardian 2, Diskeeper, EVEREST
Symbolic integration: Mathematica
Packet sniffing: Ethereal
This fun game: Typing of the Dead
And I probably missed a few. Foobar2000, Directory Opus, and Firefox are by far the most amazing.
http://www.irfanview.com/ is great for simple image editing.
Download the latest version of Winamp.
Play your favorite tracks and check out the hundreds of presets of the visualization plugin Milkdrop (should be included in your download).
Milkdrop was written by Mr. Geiss, the guy behind the Geiss plugin (created YEARS ago for Winamp ver 2), which is what Apple shamelessly ripped off for the iTunes visualizer.
Milkdrop just plain rules, really puts iTunes' sad excuse for music visualization in its place.
It includes these helpful, excellent, and *free* programs:
After that, I'd go with the real advantage of XP: Games!
games journalism blog
fdisk and format are absolute necessities when it comes to Windows.
Oh, sure, they're DOS throwbacks, but when used properly they will guarantee that you will get absolutely no Windows viruses, spyware, or malware.
(You didn't really expect a lot of serious answers on Slashdot when it comes to running Windows, did you?)
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
Oops, the correct AppRocket URL is www.candylabs.com/approcket/
There is a tiny little shareware app I cannot live without called IrvanView (www.irvanview.com).
This fast little app will display just about any image you can give it, do simple cropping and rotating, save out as various formats, do all sorts of amazing batch conversions, and more, and it is LIGHTENINGN FAST.
It's not a replacement for Photoshop or anything, but it sure beats the built-in Picture Viewer.
I've made it the default viewer for all graphic files, and assigned it a hotkey for launching at will.
-David
So wtf?
you had me at #!
As a matter of fact, if DarWINE ever gets up to snuff, I'll probably go back to using it.
www.pricelessware.org
this is the ONLY app i miss from windows. sure, i use audacity, and have tried peak on os x, but neither of these are as straightforward and stable as soundforge.
For those who don't know, soundforge is a 2-track wave editor that is quick as lightning when you're doing a lot of editing . . .
every other software i've used on windows has been a delicate toy compared to os X.
oh, except firefox -- truly the killer (as in spyware killer) app for winXP.
mr c.
"Physics is like sex. Sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it." - R. Feynman
painlessly dip into the Windows world
Ha! Nice one.
what Windows software amazes you?
Pretty much all of it. I'm amazed that it runs at all.
I want to build a list of unique, elegant, can't-do-without apps
Well, if you must know, http://searchlores.org/tools.htm
great innovation happening over on the Windows platform
WTF? Are you serious?
It'll probably deteriorate into a flame war
Oh, so you are trolling...
Would those interested please chime in with their list of favorites?
I tried, I really did; but I just can't think of any software worth installing windows for that you couldn't also get for OSX.
Some accounting software perhaps?
Maybe a development environment for an embedded system?
These aren't really quality softwares that one would volunteer to use, however.
Read this before installing:
http://www.tweakhound.com/xp/security/page_1.htm
Note that the average survival time for a fresh, unpatched, Windows installation is under 10 minutes, which is less than it takes to patch it via Windows Update. And you can't download the patches from MacOSX before starting the install, you can only patch from the already installed (and activated) system. So you need an external firewall to protect you during the initial Windows Update. (Not a bad idea to have one, anyway.)
Don't surf with windows. When you reboot unplug your ethernet while using windows. Unless you want to follow most of the recommendations for spyware and virus software. If you keep windows as a non networked machine you won't need most of the service packs and patches anyway. I'm not joking I ran a multi-platform demo center for a small R&D company and ONLY the windows machines caused any problems there. My policy for after a demo was to check the *nix machines for changed files and dd a fresh image into all the windows machines. Hey, there's a good idea. once you find your "ideal" windows setup make an image file of it and put it somewhere safe, you will need it.
I recommend these programs to all my co-workers, friends and family.
BlueFrog - Fight spam with the Blue Community
DefilerPak - Video/Audio Codec Pak
FireFox - IE replacement
Foobar2000 - Audio Player
MyUninstaller - ADD/Remove Programs alternative
Nero - CD/DVD burning software
NOD32 - Very fast and accurate Virus Scanner
Thunderbird - Outlook Express Replacement
Treewalk DNS - Local caching DNS
Trillian - Many IM Clients in One
UltraEdit32 - Best Windows Text Editor (check out column mode)
UltraMon - If you multiple monitors this program is great
Zoomplayer - DVD/Media player
Pegasus Mail. When I moved from Windows to Linux (mainly because it's more configurable, and I like that, but also because the Windows versions available at the time had serious stability issues, and I was tired of having to close all my windows and reboot a couple of times a day), Pegasus Mail was the last app from which I had to tear myself away, and the only one I regretted having to leave. I searched high and low for another email application that even came CLOSE be being an adequate replacement for Pegasus Mail, and I never found one. Most people can't name an email app I haven't looked at. I ended up using Gnus, which has _most_ of the features that Pegasus has (plus many that it doesn't), but even that is in a number of ways inferior, and nothing else even comes close. Even Gnus, arguably the ultimate paragon of featurefulness, is missing _significant_ features that Pegasus Mail has, not least in the filtering system. Pegasus Mail also has a very easy learning curve; I routinely recommend it to end users who find Outlook Express too confusing. I would rate Pegasus Mail as the best Windows-only application I've ever seen. Another Windows app worth checking out is IrfanView, a graphics viewer and format converter, which also has a few other features (e.g., color adjustments). It doesn't do a lot, but it's a small download and terribly convenient to have around for quick format conversions, as it supports most of the bitmapped graphics formats I've run into, which is a fair number. It's also MUCH nicer for viewing than the quick-view thingy included in Windows. There are, of course, also various cross-platform applications, some of which are a bit better on Windows than on the Mac, because they integrate better with the rest of the system, in terms of things like the widget set, the system clipboard, and so forth. A lot of the best software for Windows consists of Win32 ports of *nix software. Notably, many GTK applications work quite well on Win32 but have rather rougher edges on OS X. A few years ago I would have said MS Word, but these days that seems less relevant, partly because OpenOffice.org has become so nice (and, notably, OO.o's frames are much easier to work with than MS Word's text boxes), and partly because in any case there is also the OS X version of Word, so if you've got a Mac, you don't really need BootCamp and Windows to get Word. The number one Windows-only application you want to actively avoid is Visual Studio. The pain of trying to get anything done with its terrible interface can scar a man for life. Windows Media Player is almost as bad, and more difficult to avoid, since it is the default association for various common filetypes. You will want to associate IrfanView with the formats it supports, but that's mostly still images, so you'll also need something for audio and something for video, and I don't have good recommendations for those things for Win32. (Is there a Win32 port of xmms? I haven't seen it...)
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Unlike all the useless comments that recommend Adaware and Spybot Search and Destroy, I'll point you towards a thread called "the 'neat application I stumbled across on the web' thread" over on the ArsTechnica OpenForum: http://episteme.arstechnica.com/groupee/forums/a/t pc/f/99609816/m/1400961263
putty
winscp
google earth
firefox
F.E.A.R (game)
you already have photoshop
things that you must install to keep windows working
AVG anti-virus
spybot
firefox
Somethingawful.com, their hardware/software forum has a nice wiki up with a pretty comprehensive list of usefull shareware/freeware/OSS software categorized and with a quick description of each app.
Clicky. Note that since this is somethingawful they may put up a redirect based on referrer because that's what they do with links from slashdot around those parts. You may want to copy the link and manually paste it in or bookmark it for the future to avoid overloading their server or seeing anuses.
I switched to using Mac primarily about 6 months ago. I've been able to find suitable replace for most of my windows apps, except my favorite music player, foobar2000. It can play everything (including oggs, very important to me), it's highly customizable, it uses very little resources, and its freeware. Nothing on Mac comes close to giving the user the options available in foobar, especially the sorry collection of players that play oggs (I know itunes can with a plugin, but it can't read tags, and it's very slow). Get it!
ObjectDock . Gives that mac feel to new Mac to Windows users. Yes I know this may not fit in as "useful" per se but the first thing mac users will be missing by moving to Windows is the prettier look and feel which I think ObjectDock can provide. A Familiar face is usualy good. But configuring the software and looking for pretty icons can be a bitch.
I love humanity, it is people I hate
You know, I've now worked in a couple of environments which have seen Java in real use.
In fact, not just real use, but the real use for which people recommend Java. Database backends. Passing objects around. Network-wide management of distributed computation. Monitoring diverse datapoints and aggregating them. Web interfaces.
You know, Java's home turf.
I'm not impressed. Or maybe I am. Its startup time is impressively long, I suppose. And its memory footprint is impressively large. And its syntax is impressively verbose and messy. And its cross-platform claims are impressively misleading, the moment you stick a toe out of the hallowed sandbox.
Most damning of all, the vaunted OO strategy, far from leading to salutary code reuse turns into a game of guess-what-this-class-does. Because, see, information hiding is great. No, really. It saves us so much time in development that we can spend extra time reverse-engineering these closed classes we've been handed.
In one case, java's delightful approach to namespaces resulted in wasting days writing scripts just to manage the vast, unwieldy file structure we had. Oh, and then a version change. Chinese fire drill on the file system!
In the most recent case, where I'm still mired, the ops team is over budget and under performance. When we do a root cause analysis, the incredible bulk of the Java VM is the culprit. It's fine to have 28 bytes for an integer when you're doing toy problems in class. It sucks when you have terabytes of data you have to throw around.
If I'm ever in a position of decisionmaking authority on a project, and anyone suggests Java, I think I'm firing them (if they're a subordinate) or quitting (if they're not). It's taken a year off my life in stress because of its misbehaviour already, I'm sure.
Oh, but it's so stable! So is anything else sane written by halfway competent programmers, and probably at least twice as fast. Anybody who can't write stable modula-3 (another relatively modern, clean language) won't be helped by Java, and anyone who can handle Java can handle modula-3.
But programmer time is expensive, computers are cheap! That argument falls flat as a bad souffle the moment you remember that for toy applications this is true, but when you're beefing up your environment by millions of dollars in hardware, and tens of thousands in running expenses just to make up for the inefficiencies in your chosen language, you need to change your language as a matter of business common sense. Add to that the fact that Java's development time isn't all it's made out to be, and the programmer time argument only washes when compared to assembler or FORTH.
So no. I wouldn't use Java to attract anyone to anything. I'd use it as punishment for bad programmers.
A little spyware can spice up your Pc life. I know from experience.
I'm a Mac fan who is intrigued by the possibilities of Apple's Boot Camp software. 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? I want to build a list of unique, elegant, can't-do-without apps, so all us new Boot-Camp babies can finally experience some of the great innovation happening over on the Windows platform.
Wow, I'll trade you my PC for the Mac...really, why the hell would you want to trade a Mac for a PC? Minus the gaming aspect..., I think this is a BS question. I'd rather dual-boot mac/linux vs windows any day.
Life was hell, then I discovered Linux...
For file compression, use WinRAR. While Windows XP has built-in .zip support, WinRAR is better and also supports other formats like rar (obviously) and 7zip. :)
For CD burning, Nero is the all-inclusive program, but Imgburn is better for straight image burning.
For CD iso mounting, use Daemon tools (The adware can be removed, see below) or Alcohol 120%.
For productivity, there is the obvious Microsoft Office but the free alternative OpenOffice.org cannot be ignored.
For antivirus, use Avast! or AVG. Both are free and very comprehensive, and don't take over the system like many commercial alternatives do.
For anti-ad/spyware, use Microsoft Antispiware. Ad-Aware, Spybot Search&Destroy, HijackThis, are also good programs. Pick at least 2 of the above. Also, if you have Microsoft Antispyware installed, it will stop Daemon Tools's installer from putting adware on your system.
For web browsing, a mac user will feel at home using Firefox. Look at Internet Explorer too and decide for yourself what you'd rather use
For email, the open source Mozilla Thunderbird is a great (though not Windows exclusive) choice. It's a great alternative to Outlook, which you should also try if you're trying Microsoft Office.
For Instant Messaging, try Trillian, though Gaim is an open-source app that has been ported as well.
For SSH, SFTP, SCP, and Telnet use WinSCP for a gui tool and PuTTY for a comand line app.
For codecs, Xvid will cover quite a bit. It includes divx, without the hassle of divx's official installer. Also get Real Alternative and Quicktime alternative because both real and apple (yes apple!) include less-than-desirable installers which will put processes in the background.
Use the built-in WIndows tools!
Start->run->gpedit.msc Set advanced administrative options here.
Start->run->msconfig Go to the startup tab and disable junk that goes in the system tray.
Best of luck, though I'm not certain how much Windows will impress you.
I'm going to attempt a serious answer to this question... as a developer, the thing I miss most when I'm on a non-Windows system is Microsoft Visual Studio - the form designer, the ever-helpful code editor, and the C# language itself. You can download the Express versions for free.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
That's the only one I can think of, assuming it's not already available for the Mac.
-- Andyvan
Actually, as a longtime user of Picasa on Windows and iPhoto on the mac, I can say that not only does Picasa match iPhoto, it is far superior in usability. The mac is my primary computer and I am an avid photographer and it is only the lack of Picasa on the mac that really drives me nuts about OSX. If you are a mac fan, don't flame me unless you have really used Picasa for some length of time. Here are my reasons:
1. Picasa lets me 'monitor folders', something iPhoto will not let me do. I hate having to 'import' pictures into iPhoto everytime I want to see my new pictures there.
2. Picasa will let me put my photo album anywhere I want, including external drives. There is no straightforward way to change your album location in iPhoto (Yes it can be done, but it's a hack)
3. Picasa will let me add photos to the library without actually copying them to the Picasa storage folder. iPhoto insists on copying all photos to the iPhoto folder everytime you add pictures to it. Why is this important? As a photographer I have tens of gigabytes of pictures that I do not wish to store on the mac hard drive because the storage I have on external drives far outstrips my hard drive size . Also they are organized the way I want them with proper folder names and heirarchies. If I 'import' them to iPhoto, it creates one big lump of a library which I have to organize painfully by hand if I wish to see my original configuration. Also, the folder organization in the iPhoto folder has no connection to the original organization I had.
4. Non-destructive edits. I can touch, crop and do anything I wish to my pictures in Picasa and it doesn't hurt the original picture at all. I can come back later and undo everything I did. If I wish to retain my changes, I can simply export the current state of the picture. On iPhoto, the edits you do are non-undoable once you are done with the edits. Very painful for a photographer who wants to quickly try out some edits before opening up the full-fledged Photoshop.
There are many more, but these are the important ones. As for features Picasa gives almost all the features I expect from a photo organizer (which, to be fair are also available in iPhoto)
"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
Let me start by saying that I am aware that running native packages in Linux is not the same as running their Windows counterparts under WINE. Let me follow that by saying that Pro/E has always been available on Linux, as has Solidworks. Even their latest software packages are available for Linux. It might only be precompiled binaries for Red Hat 7.3, but don't say it doesn't exist just because you haven't been exposed to it.
If you're speaking strictly in terms of OS X BSDs then your statement was accurate, but it doesn't sound like you were, and this comment was in response to one on running under WINE.
Eletronics Workbench doesn't really qualify as an industry standard, at least not in the way that major EDA companies such as Mentor Graphics and Cadence do. And they both offer Linux packages. Or you can work with gEDA which, although not industry standard, is very usable and f(F)ree.
textpad
ultraedit
houdini
PearPC!
If you're planning to watch any sort of movies on Windows, there are a few useful programs (some of which are cross-platform):
FDISK ;-)
Productivity
- Dirkey - Free small utility that enables you to place invisible bookmarks on folders and go back to these bookmarked folders with shortcut key. It runs on startup and can be set to be invisible in your system tray. Works in Explorer and also Open/Save dialogue windows.
- ObjectDock - Free OSX-style dock for your PC!
- Windows Blinds - Skin your OS
- MS Alt-tab Powertoy - Alt-tab across open applications with an thumbnail preview of the open application.
Graphics
- Paint.Net - Free image editing program
Utilities (spam, anti-virus, FTP etc)
- Avast Antivirus - Free and better than AVG
You laugh, but take a look at coLinux (http://www.colinux.org/). Windows runs debian just fine.
Trillian for Instant Messaging
FoxIt! PDF Reader
for starters....
Besides that and games, I'm not sure what else I couldn't do without.
I'm a Book
On the Bookshelf
All Windows software amazes me. I can't believe it even runs on that hunk of garbage OS.
- Ultraedit. Great text editor, sort of analogous to BBedit on the Mac.
- Trillian. Cross-protocol IM client client. Connect to AOL, MSN, and Yahoo with one app.
- Audiograbber. Rip CD's to MP3's, ogg, etc., with freedb lookup.
- Pstart. Not essential, but a nice way to launch your applications, folders, common files, etc without digging through the start menu.
- Dameware NT Utilities. General networking tools: remote control, remote administration, Magic Packet, etc.
- CompuPic. Good photo browser and simple editor.
Enjoy your experiment."Of course life is bizarre. The more bizarre it gets, the more interesting it is. The only way to approach it is to make
Those of you calling this a troll are revealing your own anti-Windows biases. Who's the troll, the one who assumes there's some nice programs on Windows they don't know about, or the ones who laugh at him and say there are none? Sad really.
:-/ Hrmmm... well there must be SOMETHING they've been lucky to have all those years. I'm a bit curious too, as a Mac user with my Mac Book... but I prefer Parallels to dual-booting.
Alright, assume you've used Macs for years and have always heard how Windows is better because of all those thousands of applications you poor Mac users can't run.
Anyways...
Off the top of my head, there's AutoCAD, Outlook, maybe WinAmp or Media Player Classic... I'm using Imtoo DVD to iPod ripper since it lets me pull individual chapters in batch mode and make a different file for each one instead of ripping the whole DVD outright. (Yeah iSquint and Handbrake are nice, but they don't have everything I need yet)
I don't know! I'm not a Windows user... but I know a huge percentage of Slashdot visitors are. What have you guys got? A sweet Usenet downloader? Better DVD ripping / burning software? IRC Chat programs? Emulators? Goodness there's a HUGE section of Windows software on SourceForge, I KNOW some of you guys are using it, enlighten us please.
And it's a serious question, Boot Camp requires a minimum of 5GB Windows partition, so we may as well fill up the left over 2 or 3 gigs with decent software otherwise the space is totally wasted.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
Then once you've got a command prompt you can make directories and delete files and stuff, and they used have this killer file manager app. called Norton Commander, it was great it was just like Midnight Commander only for DOS, and then besides notepad there's charmap and ipconfig and ping and telnet and even more!
Oh, wait, you were looking for something useful that's a windows ap? Well there's autocad and mastercam and my CMM software and a bunch of crap like that, but there's nothing else to recommend windows for, dude this is slashdot. (Although if you telnet to a unix shell you can probably use PICO or VI and maybe PINE or ELM)
The 'ol 3 finger salute, CTL-ALT-DEL. You'll need it LOTS!
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
I run Windows 98, and I use the following all the time. . .
Graphics. . . Photoshop. GIMP just isn't there yet; dumb cross-hairs, and poor screen real estate management. When GIMP figures out the basics of GUI, I'll jump on, but until then, Adobe has my dollar.
Vector Design. . . Corel Draw Old Guard. They've been around forever. Adobe Illustrator always annoyed me.
Layout & Design. . . QuarkExpress. I don't like InDesign. After RageMaker, I just couldn't. . .
Webbrowsing. . . FireFox (It's Free!)
Email. . . ThunderBird (It's Free!)
Music. . . Winamp (It's Free!)
Word Processing. . . AbiWord (It's Free!)
Text Editing. . . UltraEdit and EditPlus Very sweet little programs, and quite inexpensive, for all your HTML and HEX editing needs.
FTP. . . PuTTY (It's Free!)
Video. . . Windows Media Player and VLC and (shudder) Fucking Quicktime (In this world, you need a ton of different players to read everything. Stupid, but it's a stupid world.)
Graphics Viewing. . . IfranView Look at every graphic format under the sun.
Graphics Capture. . . SnagIt! It's cute, and it works.
CD and DVD burning. . . Nero
DVD Player. . . DVD-X Player Professional
DVD Ripping. . . DVD2one (crunches a rented DVD into a file you can put on a DVD-R. Very nice.
Spread Sheet. . . Corel Quattro Pro Not new, but like an old and comfortable pair of sneakers.
Miscellaneous. . . Macromedia Dreamweaver a big bloated piece of shit which has a great global search and replace function for HTML programming which I've been too lazy to look for in other software.
All in all, these programs have suited me well for ages.
Have fun in Windows. When you know every in and out of the platform, when you have all the perfect software, you wonder why you'd ever want to change. . .
Yes, and it is called CoLinux
I'm a software developer. I've worked for IBM. I maintain and develop several Open Source software applications. And I haven't been a Windows user since Windows 3.1.
I always have to laugh when some Windows user thinks that it is simply not possible to exist in the computing world without using Windows. However, it's quite a bit easier to live outside the Windows world than you think.
How did I do it? Long before Windows 95 existed, I used a fine 32-bit, pre-emptively multitasking operating system called OS/2, which I used for most of the 1990's. Towards the late 1990's, when OS/2 was on the decline, I started working for IBM as an OS/2 developer, where I also did a lot of Unix/Linux work. Around the same time frame, I started running Linux at home in parallel to my OS/2 machine as a way of running software through X that I didn't otherwise have access to.
With the serious decline of OS/2 in the 2000's, I moved over to Mac OS X (along with running a lot of Unix systems). For the last number of years much of my paid work has been in Java comsulting, where I get to pick what platform I use.
So I haven't had a Windows machine since 1993 at this point. True, I have encountered them here and there over the years, but I've been able to avoid being assigned to a Windows machine in my home or at any place of work I've held in all that time. The trick is damn simple for the most part: be so freakishly good at what you do that people will be happy to comply with your platform requests, and let them know up from you have no interest in working with Windows. So far, it's worked every time here.
Yaz.
Windows Free since '93.
The only can't-live-without program for windows I can think of (that hasn't been mentioned already) is winamp.
Most windows apps that I would consider "elegant" are all open source and multi-platform anyway (eg firefox, vlc, xchat, etc).
As far as I know, there are NO adult titles released for the Mac. For windows, however, it's a whole different story.
d ex.html (no screenshots or anything, but should get you started)
Artificial Girl, for example, is on it's second release and 3D accelerated! (with very accurate... erm... customizable model)
And there are tons more others that's cartoon based. Most are from japan so if you just look at a torrent site in the adult games section, you should find many.
linky: http://www.gamespot.com/pc/sim/artificialgirl2/in
Porting. The only reason I keep Windows around is to port software to it. It's also the only reason I have a Mac. 95% of my home computer use is on FreeBSD and KDE. I've thought about switching totally to the Mac, but would never consider switching to Windows.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Perhaps the most critical "MUST HAVEs" for a windows box are a set of good Antivirus and Firewall. I use Antivir and ZoneAlarm. Apart from that, here are my favorites
1. Firefox and Thunderbird
2. Openoffice
3. Alcohol 120%. To mount CD images and burn them.
4. Google Talk
5. xplore2 www.zabkat.com. A dual pane file explorer. Comes in really really handy.
6. PowerDVD or any DVD player soft (XP dosen't have a DVD decoder inbuilt)
7. IrfanView image viewer
8. Picasa. Awesome digital photo management.
12 days ago actually...
FDISK.
Seriously, why doesn't anyone mention MS Office?
Visio and Access for rapidly and easily designing and prototyping, powerpoint for presentations. There are other applications that can replace Word and Excel, but they don't support ythe same level of integration. Just drag and drop a table from Excel into a Word document.
Because Office doesn't support exporting to PDF yet, you'll need CutePDF writer: http://www.cutepdf.com/
Bias alert: I mainly use Linux and BSD, and I also own a Mac.
Reading the blog link is incredible. Watch as the Windows users respond with glowing descriptions of software which is simply unimpressive. Someone listed anti-virus and spyware blockers as their killer app. Wait a minute. So, the reason I should use your platform is... Because it has nifty tools which combat its fundemental brokenness and the horrors of everyday use? Get real.
Other than that, people recommend things that exist on other platforms, often in a more elegant way. One person recommended PuTTY. xterm on X11, Terminal.app on the Mac. Another recommended Cygwin. Why have that when you can get the real thing?
I hadn't realized just how bad Windows as a platform is until seeing these recommendations. This thread is a total joke.
I have not used it for years, but have a friend or two who have used Visio and think Omnigraffle has gotten quite good - you can download a free trial.
I have to imagine you've heard of it already as it's really well known, but just on the off chance you had msised it I thought it deserved a mention.
I don't know what you have in mind to do with the program but there are some other pretty impressive design/drawing packages on the Mac, a friend just used one recently on a basement design - sorry I can't remember the name offhand.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
46 Best-ever Freeware Utilities for Windows. Very good list and a good newsletter. Subscribe to the paid newsletter and get more recommendations: Extended list of 81.
--
Before, Saddam got Iraq oil profits & paid part to kill Iraqis. Now a few Americans share Iraq oil profits, & U.S. citizens pay to kill Iraqis. Improvement?
I didn't like iTunes for Windows, it's just too slow. Searches took too long/were too laggy. It's not like my hardware isn't up to snuff: Athlon 2100+, 512 mb ram, nforce board, 7200 rpm ata 133 drive. The ironic thing is that Juk, the iTunes clone under KDE/Linux, works great. Still, I'm kinda stuck in Windows at the moment. I've been using Winamp. The UI isn't as nice, but it's fast.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I'm sure there are some shortcuts I'm missing, but after being a win2k admin for years and now helping out my cousin with her new (used) powerboook there are a few things I've noticed that just slow me down.
1. Running applications.
Maybe I just live with too many utilities, but it's hardly realistic to load up the dock with 50+ shortcuts. The lack of a Windows-Key-R hotkey to bring up a little "run this command" dialog on the mac drives me insane sometimes. Continually going through the "Recent Applications" submenu or navigating through the slow as molasses Finder for programs just really puts me off. Am I missing something? Anyway, that brings me to:
2. File management.
I really, REALLY miss the left-side folder pane of explorer. Moving files around, importing files from flash cards or just navigation are seemingly discouraged by Finder, and I'm yet to figure out how to move files (i.e. copy and then delete, or on windows leftclick-drag-release-"move") between volumes. I was importing mp3s from an external drive to the mac, and the transfer would just die when it hit a file with an unsupported name (some unicode character). Instead of prompting to skip that file, Finder just aborted the copy without telling me the file name, and then when I tried to re-copy the mp3s back from the external drive there was no option to skip already-existing files! Since I couldn't do a move, the operation became extremely elongated. And then there's just the tedium of expanding and collapsing each little directory, creating and ever-longer-and-longer scrolling list of folders and subfolders that are just begging for a summarizing tree-list like explorer's.
Anyway, for some windows programs I miss on the mac, how about:
- the most important: Clockgen / A64Tweaker! (any mac overclocking tools??)
- VirtualDubMod
- Ghost
- QuEnc
- TCPView
- foobar2000
- Media Player Classic (Videolan is an unstable beast at the best of times)
- EncSpot
- UltraISO
- Daemon Tools
- 7-Zip
- Shareaza (what the hell is wrong with mac p2p apps anyway? they're crash-prone, all > 10 MB in size and with interfaces worse than kazaa. I just don't get it.)
Don't Hate, Gestate
You need a Aplle-fanboy lobotomy to live itunes.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I've been considering buying a second computer and runnign the Linux version of Freeboat. With BootCamp, I might just buy a new Mac, run windows from Bootcamp with as much isolation from the net as I can manage, and run the Windows version.
/. and all, but) I'm actually asking without trying to troll or anything, why couldn't you have dual-booted with Linux long ago?
If you were considering buying a second comp and running Linux on it, why wouldn't you just dual-boot your Mac? It's not like Linux doesn't have PPC binaries and compiling and blah blah blah technobabble it'll run on Macs, right? Admittedly I've mainly worked with Macs when it's not an option for me to go seriously screwing around with them, so you might have perfectly good reasons why it wouldn't've worked that I don't know about. So (and I suppose this might be a bit of a shocker, this being
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
If DVD Decrypter can no longer rip/decrypt DVDs (since it's not being updated anymore), the next highest-rated (by videohelp.com users) freeware ripper (that's still being updated) is DVDFab Decrypter.
Two nice sites for information about video tools with guides:
TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
Bonzi Buddy, CoolWebSearch, anything and everything from Gator/Claria. Best of all it's all free!
Eraser is a big must have.
Newsbin Pro is great if you like pulling binaries out of newsgroups.
Nero 7. If you are into digital videos and HDTV stuff, Nero Recode that comes with it will come in useful.
Eudora. The only decent stand alone e-mail program out there.
GIMP, although you can get that for pretty much any platform you want.
OpenOffice, although once again, its available for other platforms
E-sword
Cachman XP
CCleaner
Advanced System Optimizer
SoundForge
SundayPlus, Easy Worship or MediaShout
DVDShrink
As far as games-
Farcry
Call of Duty 1 and 2
Brothers In Arms
Need 4 Speed, all of them
Elite Force 1 and 2 (old, but still cool)
Doom 3
Quake 4
Mahjong Towers II
Bejewled 2
The Windows XP powertoys WinAmp Media Player Classic Daemon Tools (Allows you to mount ISOs and other images, attempting to defeat copy protections as well) WinKey (Lets you launch applications from Windows Key + WinRAR Some sort of notepad replacement. I use Notepad++ personally. ffdshow (Decodes DivX, XVid and almost everything else you can think of. Not needed if you use MPC) Civilization IV :)
;)
Not trying to be a zealot here, but all this is available in linux:
mount iso in linux with a simple mount command
Shortcuts can be changed to use the windows key for any app. I'm not quiet sure what the functionality the GP is talking about (win key + winrar)
Text editors are a dime a dozen in linux, some very powerful ones too..
mplayer plays any file I throw at it without the need of downloading codecs, I've heard good words for VLC also, but haven't needed to try it out yet.
and if you like having multiple desktops there is an XP powertoy to manage virtual desktops(up to four) it does the usual, apps open on one desktop do not show up in the others ( saves a LOT of screen realestate) also there is an option to preview all four desktops at once to see wich one the app you want is on ( havn't seen this on my linux boxes, anyone know if this is possible with kde?) and someone mentioned before the "open command window here" shell integration is a nice toy for changing permissions A.K.A "file attributes"
Virtual desktop have been there since day 1 (if you want them to appear on all desktops, make the windows sticky), preview also, but I'm guessing the mac-like functionality you're talking about exists in xgl. Also you can config the file manager in KDE so it automatically has a terminal following your graphical browsing of folders, just click on the link box down right (if I remember correctly, because I use XFCE). What I haven't found in windows yet, is a utility that lets me shade my windows by using the scroll button on my mouse. Is there such a thing on windows? But Age of Empires II is the reason my windows partition boots up every few weeks! =)
Again, not trying to be a zealot, just discussing!
What can Notepad-plus do better than wyoEditor (http://freshmeat.net/projects/wyoeditor/)?
wyoEditor is also based on Scintilla but runs identically on Windows, Linux and MacOSX. Can you imagine editing in fullscreen mode and not knowing which system you have booted into? Well acutally you just have to look at the window frame but else you won't discover it. Besides does Notepad-plus also have a live class/function browser for C++?
O. Wyss
See http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html
DEL *.*
Works pretty well for me
Works wonders...
foobar2000 - best mp3 player anywhere.
Unfortunately, it's only available for Windows, and although it is 'free as in beer' it's not 'free as in RMS'.
It's one of those endlessly cutomizable pieces of software. It reminds me of the days before GNOME and KDE when any self-respecting unix geek would swear by some obscure window manager like vtwm.gamma and spend hours pimping it out. It was a pain, but it was also the only way to get a decent GUI back then.
foobar2000 is the same way. It can take a while to set up, but you end up an mp3/ogg/whatever player that is actually halfway decent, without the annoyances and incapabilities of itunes, rhythmbox, winamp, windows media player, and workalikes. And you can always cheat by copying a friend's configuration rather than making your own.
Galactic Civilizations II, Transcendence, and Future Pinball are all that come up off the top of my head at the moment. For the latter, you'll want to pick up tables at VP-Originals. A ton of other games can be found at places like Abandonia Reloaded.
Also, Stardock offers the Object Desktop suite if you want to make Windows XP look less... XP-y.
The problem with your idea is that it makes sense.
I've been really happy with the windows versions of the following programs:
-OpenOffice and MS Office. (Both are great suites and I use them BOTH)
-SSH and Putty
-Snort (Snort == IDS happiness for me)
-Eclipse (Gotta program somewhere, and Visual Studio isn't viable for me)
-BlueJ (Good on Windows for beginners Java programming
-PyDev (Python plugin for Eclipse)
-Python and Java (Duh!)
-IIS (I **love** Apache and Postfix/Qmail... but IIS can be happy too)
-Gaim (Good Schtuff)
-Spark Messenger (The Windows version rocks for chatting on Jabber)
-Firefox (Duh! IE and Opera are nice, but I prefer Firefox)
-Winamp (It really whips the llama's ass)
-Quicktime and iTunes (Super Schweet Software)
-Photoshop and Gimp (I use both)
-Norton Ghost (Bailed my ass out a few times!)
-Solitare and Freecell (obvious!)
Navicula hydraulica plena anguilarum est. Omnes castelli tuus nostri sunt. Ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta.
Seriously, Windows can play more video clips than Macs. That plus games = stick with my dual boot.
ACDSee is also really good for organising your "photo collection", though not free and I haven't tried the latest versions. Like GQView on steroids.
Most of you just listed all the virus and malware protection... why? That wasn't the point. (Besides, I've been running my photo/video station without any virus protection for 2 years now - no problems yet. My desktop that my kids also use has F-Secure and it hasn't seen anything bad during the same time. Where is the malware?)
So here are some programs that I have installed and have not been mentioned or are too expensive.(I have left out programs that I know are available from Mac also)
Web:
* Opera (probably for Mac also, but it's the best - except for Gmail, which still doesn't work and has lot's of bugs on Opera)
* Media Player - It does almost all I've ever needed (and shows videos full screen without paying like on QT), not DVD's though. For that something else.
Connectivity:
* Putty and WinSCP (of course SSH is available for Mac, but Putty beats everything)
* Cygwin/X - which I only use for X (I hope somebody will make a small X-distribution of cygwin...)
* If you need Unix-like stuff, check out MS Services for unix. It contains everything else, but Bash (which can be downloaded from somewhere) and X
Utilities:
* Allnetic Working Time Tracker (Old free version) - tracs the time spend on different projects
* everything from www.sysinternals.com (if you like to tinker with stuff)
For productivity:
* TortoiseCVS - integrates CVS to Windows, just great!
* TextPad - text editor that can do it all (color formatting to source, regexp on replace, no problems what so ever in opening 300Mb (or more) files). Nothing can touch in on linux, so I guess it'll best everything on mac.
* ExamDiff Pro - the best diff program out there. Again, nothing on linux matches this.
Games:
* Google Earth - it's a great waist of time, so it must be a game.
How painless can it be to fork over a couple hundred bucks to microsoft? Oh wait, I forgot how it works...
-jdog
I have my own list here, with emphasis on Cygwin, but the single most important tool is [Send To Clipboard As Name] which is a leftover from Win95 tweaks. Essential when doing lots of file manipulations but hard to find. It's an inf file and a dll.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Ok, yes, it runs on Mac, but until you've run it on x86 hardware you've missed it. I'm not sure of its status on the new Intel Macs, but I'm sure the Windows version has a lot more debugging behind it ;)
Beyond that, all of the "must have software" I have runs on Windows, Mac, and *nix... OpenOffice, Firefox, and Mozilla. Honestly, the only reason I still use Windows is because it has the best x86 support (drivers, software, etc.)... and I only use x86 because it's the fastest thing you can get these days, it's cheap, and with Cygwin and a spare Linux box I can pretend I have a REAL OS :)
hth.
Beauty is just a light switch away.
Your using a Mac and You JUST want to know what fun things you can buy?
What? You couldn't get a real job telemarketing?
Age of Empires!!! The mac version doesn't allow me to play network games with windows machines, which is sad, really. :). I haven't found a good open-source MS Project alternative either.
Well, MSOffice of course, and Visual Studio for windows development
Apart from that, Mac software is invariably more innovative and better than equivalent alternatives on Windows.
There are many websites out there that use ActiveX, and some that haven't been tested for compatiblity with Safari or Firefox/Mozilla/Netscape.
These are the only reasons I would ever use windows, really.
The two games I play most often at the moment are Natural Selection (awesome FPS/RTS hybrid for Half-Life 1) and Dystopia (think cyberpunk team fortress for Half-Life 2.) I paid for neither of them. Both were made by amateur teams and are the two most fun games I've played online. This is something that can't be done on a console. I was even impressed enough with Natural Selection that I put a hell of a lot of time into making a map for it. This is also not possible on a console.
If you want to passively enjoy your games then consoles are fine, but half of the fun of games, I think, is building on them yourself and enjoying what others have built on them.
however, applying it to the boot drive is somewhat non-trivial. Right click on your boot drive and select Format Disk... SCNR...
First of all, if you have a windows xp licence (to be nice and legal ;) then torrent a copy of TinyXP. Its a customised version of XP which someone has put together which doesn't come with Internet Exploder or any of the usual windows junk that you would want to get rid of anyway, but does come with some very useful freeware software packages (many of which I hadn't even heard of previously)
:P
Torrent here: http://thepiratebay.org/details.php?id=3437080
Ok, on to software, in no particular order:
-Firefox, plus tabmix extension
-Thunderbird (mail)
-Putty (SSH client)
-Notepad 2
-Lavasoft Adaware SE
-Hijackthis
-AVAST antivirus or AVG antivirus (both are good in my experience)
-K-Lite Codec pack: all the codecs you'll ever need including quicktime (home.hccnet.nl/h.edskes/mirror.htm)
-eMule (p2p)
-Trillian (multi IM client)
-Gmail notifier (if applicable)
-'Royale' XP theme (http://tinyurl.com/6vwkz)
-7-Zip (handles most common archives and is fast, light, open)
-Look 'n Stop firewall (not free but damn good)
-Winamp
-OpenOffice
-K!TV (Tv viewing)
-Paint.NET (replaces mspaint, free, open, powerful,)
-DVDshrink (fit that pesky >4.5gb dvd vid onto a single layer dvd)
-DVD decrypter (rip, decyrpt and burn dvds)
Hope that helps. Maybe you'll even switch away from MAC OSX
--Onymous Hero
That should get you going....
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 remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
The advantage of a windows platform is that there is so much specialty software. For example, when I was a student I looked for flash card (study) software. I used a decent KDE software program, but I wanted more options and features. 99% of the world wouldn't care about a flash card program much less having fancy features on a flashcard program. But I wanted it and I found some Windows-only shareware that suited my needs. Depending on what your focus is, you can find specialized software for the Windows platform.
Unless you're working with graphics/art (where a mac arguably rules) or running a server (where linux/*nix arguably rules), windows is going to have the most software options for your user-end specialty. Ultimately, that's why despite the problems with windows I still use it as my main desktop.
Other than that, I would go to sourceforge.org and look at the top 100 projects. A lot of the best software for windows is open-source (not to mention available for other platforms).
OMFG, are you talking about visual studio? I tried that hidious thing, and now I want to bash out someones brains. That's even worse than the classical reaction to most Microsoft software: wanting to crack someones skull.
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?
TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
You will want TreeAge and Crystal Ball. Both are Windows only.
This is the usual problem. You can find the obvious stuff. Its the non-obvious stuff that is missing. There is, for instance, no boat design software.... But that's just an example. You're fine if all you want to do is office, mail and iLife, don't bother looking, there is going to be no real difference.
Sysinternals Freeware is a slick collection of utiltiy software for Windows from tools I use regularly like FileMon, TcpView and Process Explorer to more trivial tools like BGInfo capable of nothing more than stamping a configurable block of system info onto the desktop wallpaper on boot.
BitTorrent and whatever CD-Burning app comes with the computer.
For prepping whatever Linux boot cd that will eventually wipe the machine.
I would like to see Autocad and Pro/E ports. Not just choosing from UGS Parasolid, Ashlar Vellum, Form-Z, Maya, Modo 3D, Lightwave, Maxxon, Z-Brush, Shade for Macs...the more choices for Mac OSX the better.
At least for many engineers they have IBM C /C++/Fortran compliers (soon to be Intel compliers for Mac OSX), Matlab, Tecplot, AVS visualizer, IRIS Explorer, Mathematica, Maple, CEI Ensight , IDL are already available for Macs.
Well worth the dirty feeling of installing XP on an iMac.
First important app: "How to right-click!" :p :p :P
Check out the Pricelessware 2006 winners; only the "best" (according to alt.comp.freeware) freeware software to be found here, in several categories.
o ryIndex.php
:-p
http://www.pricelesswarehome.org/2006/PL2006Categ
Over there, you should find tips about the usual stuff: Firefox, Opera, OpenOffice.org, and whatever the heck you intend to use Windows for. To answer your specific questions:
Spreadsheet: OpenOffice.org unless you want to become a bit more poor with Office 2003 (that's a really good piece of software; probably a better MS product than Windows).
Graphics: I'm assuming graphics 2D editor here. Adobe Photoshop is really the best IMO, and also exist for Mac. If you want something cheaper, you don't say how cheap, and I'm not so sure I want to recommend The Gimp as it complies to neither the Mac nor Windows UI guidelines. But you may wish to look it up anyway, I hear it's powerful for those who have figured out the UI puzzle to 100%.
Anti-spam: Try Thunderbird with bayesian filters enabled, or any mail client of your choice with an antispam proxy like POPFile or K9.
FTP client: FileZilla?
Antivirus: NOD32, AntiVir, AVG, Avast? Of those all are free besides NOD32, but it's worth your money.
Games: You don't state your game preferences. Check the PC top charts.
Online enhancements (toolbars etc): I don't tend to use "toolbars". Umm... The just released Google Toolbar 2 for Firefox? No idea really, but at least they're reasonably trustworthy and at least tell that they may track your browsing habits if enabling certain features.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
VStudio.net 2005 (minus J# and VB.Net) & MONO & MONAD. - A Pain to configure, but you should be able to write C# for your Mac.
SQL Server(or Express2005).
Media Monkey 2.x - because you want nothing to do with WinMediaPlaya. MM syncs with iPods BTW.
Google Desktop/Google Earth.
ActiveSync4.1, for lack of a better tool.
If you think
I would recommend a couple including:
1) Daemon tools - for mounting ISO's
2) AVG Free Antivirus - a good free antivirus
3)Winamp - a pretty good media player, although very similar to itunes
4) Any DVD & Clone DVD - for copying DVD's
5) Windows updates - not so much of a tool, but it will patch your system and protect you from some security threats
To be honest though, there aren't many essential apps that are overly usefull that a mac currently has. Window's won't be much more usefull unless you have specific apps that you want or need that fit your interests.
As a user who uses linux and windows, and has also had an ibook with OSX you aren't missing a ton. I use my windows box primarily for gaming and multimedia purposes (imagery, my camera, movies, music), and linux for coding / general net surfing.
NASA Worldwind. I think it is amazing and far superior to Google Earth. The only app keeping my fast machine running Windows.
how redundant this is (as I haven't read any posts)
But the most useful program for windows is format.com
*DrugCheese rants*
You'll probably also need these:
:).
Blaster (try Symantec)
Lovesan (not really sure, it's an old app)
Code Red (disable all firewalls and don't apply any pathces, you'll get it for free soon enough)
Zotbot (not sure again).
Then again, get some firewall and virusscanners, or maybe just an Instant restore program if you want to try them out but don't really need them (works for both viruses and firewalls
"Now that I have a chance to painlessly dip into the Windows world [...]". Painlessly? ROTFLMAO!!!
Back when I was mostly a Windows user I put down this list of applications to remember to add to a fresh install. I believe they are all open source, free, cross platform etc. And excellent of course. It also links to similar lists. As for anti-virus, AVG is fine but so is Avast! Regarding the firewall Sygate's ruled but haven't they stopped giving it away for free? An alternative is ZoneAlarm. And don't use Windows without Ad-Aware. At the same time they worked for me as a kind of migration path. I could boot up Linux and use the same programs I was used to without much trouble. Now I use Linux almost exclusively. When Novell did the poll about which applications they should port to have more Windows users migrate, I was wondering about the strange results. Now I'm wondering what Windows needs to innovate for me to migrate back! I can't see it happening.
Besides, Macs have a BIOS, too.
Au contraire. No recent macs use BIOS. And when they did, the overwhelming majority of Mac users had little need to even be aware of it, since . . . (wait for it) . . . . Macs just work.
I switched from Windows 3.1 to Mac System 7 in the early 90s, and I've never looked back. I'm vaguegly aware of DLLs and the Registry, since I've heard so many complaints about them (at places like slashdot). The frustrating issues I had to contend with on Windows, such as IRQ conflicts, have been long since solved I assume, since I haven't heard any complaints about them in years.
I've been able to avoid Windows since making the switch to Mac, although last fall a boss asked me to burn a CD of photos as he headed out the door. After noodling around his computer for awhile, opening the photos in various programs, it occurred to me that, just like on a Mac, a right click would bring up a contextual menu. So I right clicked on the folder of photos and was able to burn a CD. (Of course, if this had been a Mac, I would have been able to burn the CD from within iPhoto. I'm sure that this is also possible in some Windows apps, but I really didn't want to spend the time learning a Windows program that I'd never use again. Even spending the 15 minutes to figure out how to burn a CD was annoying.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Sadly-happily, Windows was the predominant platform at the time I decided to code for a given environment. Luckily today, I can easily rescind that offer. I can even take my Delphi and go Kylix, although I'd rather restart in Python + time-critical native-OS dll's (or equiv - but c++ is too obvious to sidestep). Given the latent predominance of a somewhat-stable "off-the-shelf" (ISO download) free Unix install [Ubuntu], I expect the free OS base to expand...expand...expand. It will never be perfect, in constant flux / enhancement / firefighter mode, but it Is The Way. I capped the verb because I ain't lying. But the so-called "quality" of an OS + runnables derives directly from the amount of money feeding the machine. The machine is bigger than we may suppose - thousands of coders, intra-org standards, in-the-loop-top-feeders, end-product cohesion, and many years of non-individuated consistency. Not to mention a shitload of lawyers. And rule $1, the brains go where the money flows. Think of Microsoft as a Mongolian warlord, who has united a thousand tribes. Enough said. Now let's envision a .org rebuff which offers all that and more (the "more" part is easy). Simply stated, it takes time. Since I'm in it for the money, I'm not done with Winxx yet.
There are many great games that have never run on another platform. Basically start with some top 10 lists (say back to 2000) and go from there. Some games before 2000 might not run on XP but you can often find great older games for a song.
I could also recommend the usual "condom over your head" stuff: firefox, avg, zonealarm, ccleaner, spybot S&D, adaware, ghost if you can get it but I'm sure that's what 90% of the advice will be (reasonable since that's 90% of the "must have" software).
Finally, there is niche software. One thing about Windows is that almost everything runs on it so if you've been despairing of ever finding a really good package for computer-assisted taxidermy, fret no longer because there's gotta be one for windows.
can finally experience some of the great innovation happening over on the Windows platform.
Mod story up +1 Great Satire.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
OpenOffice.org - Open Office 2.02 Word/Excel/Powerpoint Viewer (or you can use Office 2003 Standard Trial for 60 days and then run it in reduced functionality mode) I have access to Windows, Mac and Unix systems. I am happy with all of them, I use them for different tasks/projects. I agree that it would be great to specify what OS you would like instead of accepting the version provided by the OEM be it Linux/MacOSX or XP.
Cygwin is nice. One of the first things I do on a Windows box (and about the only thing I ever use IE for) is go to start, run, and type iexplore "http://www.cygwin.com/setup.exe"/code to launch straight into the current setup program and get myself an xterm, a proper shell and openssh to make my workday considerably less painful. Any OSX fan that spends any time in a shell will probably miss the shell before long, Cygwin provides that in Windows. It's too bad cygwin doesn't ship a win32 KDE...not having my keybindings, having the Start and Menu keys working as advertised instead of doing something useful, lack of multiple desktops and just overall rigidness makes Explorer get in the way more than anything...
Help us build a better map!
cygwin, process explorer, tcpview, hijackthis, filemon, putty.
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
Hey guys, don't forget NOTEPAD.EXE, It's the default editor on Windows just like vi is on Unix. And it gets better every version of Windows. I believe the 32k byte limit is now definitively abandoned. (For me that's just frivolous as I strong believe no C program should exceed 8 screens.)
Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?
They use either vi or Emacs, son, and we use NOTEPAD.EXE.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
I recommend the following software:
1) Quick To-Do Pro
2) Total Commander
3) MS One Note
4) Mozilla Firefox
I can't imagine my computer without these programs.
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.
l'Homme n'est Rien l'Oeuvre Tout: Gustave Flaubert to George Sand
Blood
;)
Duke Nukem 3D
STARS!
Sid Meyers Civilization 2
M.A.X
Alien Vs. Predator.
Oh. And I haven't used windows for a while
Emacs is good operating system, but it has one flaw: Its text editor could be better.
"Now that I have a chance to painlessly dip into the Windows world"
The Windows world is a sea of pain. You cannot "painlessly dip" into it.
Mr Pauljoyce, firstly, it's probably not the best idea to ask /.ers which is their favourite windows apps - it's probably on par with asking a bunch of right-wing Christians what their favourite party drugs are.
Anyway, and now to answer your question...Favourite apps for Windows have to be MS-Office for productivity, Visual Studio 2005 for development (yes, ok, I'm a Microsoft Certified Whore(tm) but I love it), but more than these....
There's a tonne of games which will only run under Windows, and are not available on the consoles! Take WoW for instance; absolutely brilliant game, and PC only I believe. C&C Generals is another classic game. There's loads!
Obviously, if you're not into your gaming, then I too would suggest you're not going to miss much by not using Windows.
Hopefully, this is a little more constructive than the "use linux LOL!!1" posts I've seen by some. Each platform has got pro's and cons over the next; Windows, in my humble opinion is great for Games and development. Get involved, and welcome!
throw new NoSignatureException();
It was published on slashdot ages ago,
http://www.cleansoftware.org/
it is similar to what you are trying to do.
* cygwin, to compile some *nix goddies on windows, like the mdbtools (so you can extract a access to SQL) /cygwin/root/bin in your path, etc, so you can run the gnu tools from a normal cmd.exe cli) /root/myiso.iso )
* Foxit, a light pdf reader
* wget for windows
* autorun from sysinternals
* process explorer from sysinternals
* everything else that sysinternals provide, like tlist and tkill, to list and kill rogue tasks
* Activeperl
* Python
* SciTE or some windows emacs build
* Abiword
* bc a command line calculator (or put
* Apache + MySQL + PHP with XMPP or some "triad" alike lamp bundle
* daemon tools ( something to mount
* nc (netcat)
* firefox (the ULTIMATE hacker tool)
You will NOT install a firewall or antivirus app, because where low level apps, that create instability and hide malware. If you want to fight malware, analize your dawn memory task list with sysinternals tools!
-Woof woof woof!
OmniGraffle came bundled with my last two Macs. It's really a terrific program.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
3D Studio Max
Blitz3D (one day BlitzMax will supplant it)
Ultimate Unwrap
That's about all I can think of. 3D Studio Max is the kicker. It's by far the best tradeoff in ease-of-use versus power in the 3D tools space (which is why it's continuing to gain market share even against its big name rivals despite their having undercut its price). Ironically, its scripting language seems to be inspired in large part by HyperTalk and overall it has a very Mac-like interface.
We'll stand a better chance against those StarOffice Destroyers!
On Window's there is so much software out there for each and every task that even hardened geeks sometimes install crapware just to see if it's worthy.
...then experiment with all the software you like, use your judgement, go on it's fun.
My advice is install Total Uninstall, an install monitor that scans your system both before and after and install and allows you to reverse ALL the changes.
You might like to checkout websites like Pricelessware and similar pages (the top 4 are good) for freeware. Also remember alot of Linux favourites (like GIMP and Inkscape) are available for Windows.
Outlook must be the most amazing load of crap I have ever seen.
http://www.winvi.de/en/
What is a computer without vi???
if your pants fit well, it's not only because of the pants
If you're at all into video you won't be able to do without the sweet goodness of Media Player Classic, VirtualDubMod and FFDShow! Oh, and of course AviSynth!!! They're going to rock your over candied GUI centric video world!
Google has a bundle of Windows software called Google Pack that's a good place to start. For example it includes:
* Firefox
* Ad-Aware
* Adobe Reader
* Google Desktop
and some other good stuff.
Let me also add this. The problem with switching OSs is that it takes a long time to distinguish good software from bad. I expect that if I went OSX and bought Claris Works, I'd be very disappointed and rightfully so. So I would very much respect anyone touring me through that foreign territory and pointing out the better stuff.
UltraEdit32
I regularly do global search & replace where there are something like half a million changes in two seconds. I can easily edit flat files that are over 1GB in size, and it has a built-in FTP client. Wouldn't leave home without it. Yes it's better than BBEdit.
HashCalc
Perfect little utility for MD5 SHA-1 et al.
PasswordSafe
Keeps hundreds of passwords, well.. safe. Originally written by Bruce Schneier.
TrueCrypt
Good stuff. Works as advertised, industry standard.
ProcessExplorer
A must have for complete control of daemons lurking in your system.
TreeSize
Ranks all the files on your disk volumes. Great for determining which files are hogging disk and where.
and basically everything at OldVersion.com is good stuff.
others: Picasa, Ethereal, Putty, SnagIt, Ghost, Thunderbird, VMWare, Pappocom Sudoku, Blowfish Advanced CS, Softprime ASO, Nero, Dreamweaver, WS_FTP, WinRAR, Hamachi. Everything else are games & google, and then fat client business apps & dev tools.
fault-tolerant
The only reason I'd pollute my Mac with Windows is to run FrameMaker 7+, for as long as my writing jobs continue to require it. (Very handy that I can run FM either in Classic or in BootCamp, only one of which would be available on any given Mac...)
Check out this Windows Utility Shootout on Division Two. These are the "must have" apps for increasing productivity and extending the functionality of Windows.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
OK,
Firefox & thunderbird
Filezilla for FTP
Putty for SSH
(insert favorite IM client here, I use MSN messenger)
TextPad 4.3 for a decent text editor.
uTorrent, for downloading legal music obviously
Thats normally what I get put on straight away
Windows software amazes me? Let's see... No. There's not a single piece of software on the Windows platform that amazes me. I can't even imagine what that would be. I am a Mac OS X user, and all the software I need exists for that platform. I must admit, though, that I am intrigued by the developments on the Linux side, and I do use Linux as a server.
I recently bought a Windows notebook, because I couldn't find any good sport diary software for Mac or Linux. In case of Windows I now use http://www.pc-sport.com/info.htm.
One of the most useful things about Windows is the ability to Run cmd.exe, and then type Format C:\ :) Then go ahead and install Ubuntu (Or your fave Linux Distro)
2 apps should be used with bootcamp:
virtualdub - This is by far the most advanced encoding software for digital file formats used by computers. It can encode into nearly any codec installed into windows, and the filters available via the avisynth ancillary program provide superior ability to clean and process videos to it's proprietary counterparts on apple and windows, and to mencoder and other linux counterparts. decomb and advanced telecine options in particular are sorely missing from quicktime, and useful in making music videos from dvd's.
games - yes.. windows has more games, and many game vendors are using d3d because they're cheap and just don't give a crap.
there you have it.. the two reasons to boot into windows on a mac.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
I've been using computers for a couple of decades now, going back to the Atari ST. A mixture of macs and linux on my desk since the atari days (in fact, often linux on macs, before osx).
I've been a professional unix sysadmin for about the past dozen years. Primarily linux, with a smattering of solaris, irix, freebsd, and tru64. I've sysadminned for everything from 15-person pre-VC startups to Yahoo and Google.
I've never used Windows. Why would I?
http://shsc.info/UsefulWindowsSoftware
The only two Windows programs that I missed when I switched to the Mac were Microsoft Money 2002 and Windows Spider Solitaire. I wrote my own Spider Solitaire clone to teach myself Cocoa, but I'm still stuck using Virtual PC for Money. As soon as something comes along for the Mac that can meet my finance-tracking needs, I'll be free of Windows completely!
This account verified sig-free since..., uh, never mind.
Opera.
Safari is a decent browser, and Firefox is a horrible pile of trash on OSX (look at my karma go). OSX doesn't really have an awesome browser, while Windows does. Opera is a great, fantastic browser which I can't recommend enough. It's faster than pretty much any other browser I've tried, and little features such as built in RSS/Atom readers, note-taking, gestures, tabs, mail-client and so forth work better their corresponding extensions.
It's Opera, Foobar and uTorrent I miss most on a Mac.
The good news is that you'll have no problems finding software for Windows. The bad news is that much of it is crap.
Recommendations:
- Cygwin (Bash, SSH, GCC, and other GNU/Linux tools)
- WinSCP (SCP client)
- PuTTY (excellent SSH client with tons of options)
- EmEditor (free version is a great replacement for Notepad)
- vi (if you like vi)
- CCleaner (cleans up temp files, browser cache, etc. for tons of programs)
- Spybot S&D (effective antispyware)
- Mozilla Firefox or Opera (if you don't like IE; I keep all three for testing)
- Mozilla Thunderbird (you are using IMAP, aren't you?)
- Microsoft Office
- PDFCreator (make PDFs by printing)
- iTunes (if you have an iPod)
- K-Lite Mega Codec Pack (every codec you'll need plus Media Player Classic, Quicktime and Real alternatives, and a lot more)
- Daemon Tools (CD/DVD drive emulator with copy protection circumvention)
- Ethereal (for network troubleshooting)
- Nero (CD/DVD burning)
- RMClock (lets you control PowerNow/Cool 'n Quiet/SpeedStep)
- EVEREST Home Edition (excellent system information tool)
- AVG Anti-Virus (Free Edition)
- Adobe Reader 7.0
- Windows Desktop Search (corporate edition - without the MSN crap)
You might also want to install some Windows games - there are plenty to choose from.
Seems no one is giving serious answers so i guess i will be the only one
m li ve.htme rnative.htmo rer.html
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.ht
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_Alternat
14. QuickTime Alternative, http://www.free-codecs.com/download/QuickTime_Alt
15. Process Explorer, http://www.sysinternals.com/utilities/processexpl
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
Most engineering software we use runs in both Windows AND Unix.
Ideas/Hypermesh/Catia/all FEA solvers of interest/Matlab/ADAMS
Most of that list started out as Unix progs, but the Windows ports tend to be faster and are just as stable, comparing my shiny new rather pathetic twin CPU HP w/s with my 3 year old Dell running W2K. Only problem is if you run out of RAM, the HP has 16 gigs.
The only things that don't exist on both platforms, that I use a lot, are Excel and Mathcad. My ancient copy of Mathcad runs under WINE much to my amusement, and there is that weird crossover office thingo, so in theory I could run everything in Unix or Linux.
Windows XP chokes at the number of windows I like to have open, so yes, though that would be cut somewhat if Explorer were tabbed.
I guess the question is intentionally meant to troll, probably trying to proof the point that Windows offers nothing that OS X doesn't.
As everybody should know that a first-time user really doesn't need any Windows-specific software, nor does (s)he need any Mac-specific software or anything-specific software; they tend to need software that is readily available for any OS.
A first-time user would suffice with the applications bundled with whatever OS you choose to install, be it new or 10 years old.
Anybody wanting to use high-end software is likely to choose the OS based on the application (s)he wants to run, since the price of the application will probably make a larger difference than the hardware/OS combo.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
First, the things that you can get anywhere:
Then the stuff that also has versions on the Mac:
then the stuff that is Windows only, but there is certainly an equivelant or better package for Mac
Then the stuff that is Windows only:
Wow. I think I just talked myself into a Mac. My results show exactly what Windows does that Macs dont:
So I'm not sure you're going to find a lot of cool apps.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
Winzip
EditPlus
Teleport Pro
jEdit
SmartCVS
JDiskReport
FileZilla
PDFFactory
Patrick
"I honestly would vote libertarian if their candidates weren't usually total cooks."--slashdot poster
Lastly, they have a freeware version that doesn't feel the least bit stripped down. I was blown away after I tried this program and that was in the first fifteen minutes. It is well worth a look.
"[I]t is a wise man who admits the limits of his knowledge or skill, and that pretending either causes harm." --Terry Go
OpenOffice/StarOffice
Firefox
-:)
Let's take a realistic point of view. We have a computer user who seems to be well experienced. They even have a nicely designed blog online where you can write in your favourite Windows-only applications. Yet they claim that they have never been a windows user before (Making me wonder where they have been for the past 10+ years where windows has been the ubiquitous consumer & business software platform.)
I haven't used Windows since Windows 95 (in 1995, when I briefly worked as a developer, writing some DB interface apps). When I say "use" I of course do not include the occasional use of an internet café or airport machine to get at my webmail or any other temporary, superficial encounter - they could have been OSX or Linux and the experience would have been all but identical.
Windows have certainly been the premier consumer OS, and is the premier business platform. It is not, however, the only, or necessarily even the most common platform for technical and scientific computing. I have worked at three labs so far, and in only one of them did Windows have a real prescence beyond the administrative staff (and Linux was still the most common OS for development).
So, I run Linux at work and at home while my gf uses a mac. I have no need for any deeper knowledge of the Windows platform. I've never shunned it - apparently it's supposed to have become a fairly nice development platform nowadays - but I don't have a need for it and neither am I very interested. And since I don't need it and don't really want it, I don't want to spend the money and time to set a machine up either.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Foobar2000 is the best media player on any platform and the one reason I keep WINE installed. Check it out.
It has an installer and puts a open in Notepad in the right click menu for All filetypes. I find it slightly easier to open a file in a new tab in Notepad, but apparently impossible in notepad to open a file in an entirely new window. I like Notepad's collapsing better, and I just loaded a C file in wyoEditor and got a second pane labeled Class with one entry --homeposition whatever that means. Notepad++ also has a plugin system.
If I'm going to dual-boot Windows on my Mac, it's because I've got some very specific purpose for it. E.g. I used to have Virtual PC set up for a single application (electronic tax filing SW). Why on earth would I want to install 'cool stuff' in Windows?
I do most of my work in OS X, so that's where my cool stuff goes. Windows is just a compromise I'm not planning to spend more time in than absolutely necessary.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Just trying to be informative...
Comparing VersaCAD to ProE, Catia or such is like suggesting a graphics artist to use windows paint. I haven't looked at the other two, but CAD/CAE/CAM-software is actually quite hard to produce. The good ones don't exist for osX.
I'we been drooling over a powerbook since they came out, but as a product development engineer with a masters in material mechanics i cannot work without windows (proE + Ansys works on linux but we use Catia...). I'd like to have a mac, simply because they are appealing in an industrial-design kind of sence.
-KK.
You almost carried that off. But your fatal mistake: just like on a Mac, a right click would bring up a contextual menu. A real Mac bigot would digress for a paragraph to explain why more than one mouse button was unnecessary and inelegant: "Oh, you mean option-click".
Adobe Reader: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/
s ystem_performance/pm80/index.html
:)
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/
I'd like to write a small descriptions for each software but I have busy now so this is just fast reply.
-Seeing the problem is ½ of solution-
I predict that these two things, changing to Intel CPU's & facilitating the running of Windows on Mac's, will prove to be a catastrophic mistake for Apple.
Windows has a broader range of applications available & so as Mac users sample this new universe they will end up spending more & more time there.
Eventualy the penny drops that they may as well use low cost commmodidty Wintel HW instead of expensive proprietary Apple HW to do the same thing...
As an Apple Powermac owner I can attest that there are some great apps written only for Mac's but compared to the vast library of Windows apps... well... I can't see it as a fair contest.
After 'upgrading' our very nice (& expensive) non PowerPC based Mac's to very nice (& expensive) PowerPC based Mac's not so long ago we are not interested in once again 'upgrading' our very nice (& expensive) PowerPC based Mac's to very nice (& expensive) Intel based Mac's to suit Apple.
Instead we have simply given up & just switched to low cost commodity Wintel HW.
I think over time, a lot of others will do this also.
In our household the announcement that Apple had capitulated to Wintel mean't to us that a desktop OS had now been reduced to Monopoly$oft or OSS (primarily Linux).
Ok, there are a LOT of posts here describing how mac is better than windows, but that wasn't the question, stop trolling/flaming/bs.
Here's a list of what *I* like on windows, admittedly, most of it is open source and available for os x, but there ARE still more windows users out there, and more development, and essentially better software, on average. It's just a much bigger group to poll from.
The Gimp
Winamp (with milkdrop)
Nero
Firefox
Thunderbird
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Abiword
Adobe Premiere
Shareaza
Gaim
1964 (The Nintendo64 Emulator)
Sibelius
Nvu
Filezilla
Zsnes (Super Marios at HQ4X is GORGEOUS!)
Audacity
Spider Solitaire
VLC
BSPlayer
K-lite codec pak
real player alternative
Ghostscript/write
quicktime alternative
wordpad
calculator
If you've missed any of these, please feel free to inspect them. Mind if I do a J?
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Battlefield 2, of course !
Linux ! The cheapest OS ! For people whose time is worth NOTHING !
Easy to use/install
Knoppix
SLAX
OpenSuSE
First Time User Tips
The first thing a Windows User should do is find a BootDisk and boot to a Command Prompt. (This the screen is all black and the mouse doesn't work.) You'll need to use that big piece of plastic that came with your computer called a "Key-Board". Type in word 'fdisk' , then hit the enter button and the follow the instructions to 'clean' your hard-drive. Doing this will clean up all of the extra files that computer doesn't need.
OR
Before you start the computer open the cd tray and place the OpenSuSE cd in it. Feel free to use any tools you can find to pry the cd try open. Close the tray and start the computer. Once the application starts it will guide you through Updating the Operating System (The Windows).
Good Luck.
I like-a do-the cha-cha.
Uh, no. It's control-click for contextual menus.
And I didn't think I needed to go into the whole "Apple supports multi-button mouse" thing. I thought that it was a given that I was thinking it, even if I didn't write it. It would have distracted from the purpose of the story, which was to annoy the one-button-mouse trolls. The story is true, by the way.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Civilcad!!!!! I use Linux exclusively except for work - I am thus stuck on a dual boot system.
Basilisk II
SheepShaver
VMware
Duke Nukem Forever
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.
You just got troll'd!
Let me state that I have been in the computer maintenance business for 36 years since I was discharged from the USAF after working on aircraft for 4 years. Granted a lot of the digital machinery was huge compared to the typical desktop system of today. Since retiring a couple of years ago from a FT100 company, I am running my own one man business servicing mostly WinTel machines. I have had only 3 Apple calls and two of those were re-installations. I own 2 Macs currently and all my personal work is done using OSX. Windows pays the bills and puts food on my table. The couple of PCs I own only get turned on and booted when ever I feel the need to update my Anti-Spyware Utility CD I carry for system cleanups or software Utility evaluations. My first reaction when I read about BootCamp from Apple was that the pristine and super clean OS from Apple Computer Co. was going to be violated and contaminated with the very stuff that makes my maintenance business a success. I maybe more sensitive about the 80K versions of spyware, adware and all the slimeware that is currently trying to break into every computer on the InterNet, but I see, on a daily basis, what it can and does do to my customer base. Not a pretty sight I may add. I hate the thought that the Mac environment maybe polluted by Windows.
Agnitum Outpost Firewall Nod32 Antivirus Firefox Thunderbird Snagit Microsoft Office k-lite codec pack with media player classic mIRC winrar emule azureus strongDC flashget DVD decrypter DVD shrink Daemon Tools Nero
On my new hardware, linux kernels 2.6.15 - 2.6.16.* lock with an ata timeout error (sata_sil) when a bit more data is written to the disk (e.g. copying data over a network onto a sync mounted disk). So, for the first time in about 8 years (since 1998) i have to use windows at home. Linux on/with current hardware is still a PITA, so just keep your pseudo-elitist rant for yourself, ok?
I see the OP puts Automator in their list of top ten OSX apps.
Now, I like the idea of Automator. It sounds like its a GUI equivalent of UNIX pipes, and chaining UNIX commands with pipes is easy and useful.
However, *every* time I've thought of a task that might be a candidate for automating with Automator, I've got a certain distance then hit a brick wall.
"for each subdirectory in a directory, add the photos within to iPhoto, putting them in an album with a name based on the directory name" (this was before I gave up on iPhoto)
I found that the automator tasks available just didn't have the flexibility; yeah, I could create a new album, but I couldn't name it based on things that happened further up the workflow.
Even writing shell scripts or Applescript for inclusion in the workflow, I found I couldn't get the right information into them, nor pass it on to the next step.
In the end, I started by trying to write the missing functionality as an Applescript, then realised that once you knew enough Applescript to do that, it was easier to just write an Applescript to do the whole thing.
Develop to standards, test against Safari (which passes ACID 2), and let your users tell you when something's wrong. If something really is wrong, you can give them a Firefox link.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Winamp 5, it kicks the crap out of itunes in nearly every aspect, except having an online music store. its faster, skinnable, uses less memory, has a smaller desktop footprint, etc.
Firefox Thunderbird PHPEdit Tortise CVS It's what I use 90% of the time. Yeah I know that firefox/thunderbird are cross-platform, but the install of those apps are night-and-day between WinXP and Linux. Last night I tried installing Firefox on Redhat - it came up with all sorts of issues and since I was in no mood I let it go and stuck with what I had. It was not a download and go installation. On WinXP it simply click to install and at most a couple of clicks to accept defaults. I assume OSX is similar. What are the must have apps on OSX? The ones that don't exist for XP, or are night and day in their usability? -CF
I work for the RIAA and I'm trying to patent someone elses method that uses Intelligent Design to prove that Linux sucks. What software should I install on my Windows PC to do this?
Did I mention that I fully support the merging of the European Union and the United Nations as a division of ICANN?
~=@:O
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
It's astroturf, dude.
Slashdot user pauljoyce has uid 966868, which means he signed up in the last week or so.
His profile is basically a plug for his services as a marketroid:
He has never commented or submitted a question before this one. Unlike many 'askslashdotters', he hasn't bothered to reply or discuss anything with the people who have given him advice here. Paul, if you're reading this, perhaps you have a plausible explanation as to why a few days ago, you suddenly decided to join slashdot, and ask such a strange, loaded question about Windows software?
my password really is 'stinkypants'
GriSoft (antivirus)
ZoneAlarm (firewall)
Ad-aware (anti spyware)
Windows Defender(anti spyware)
And don't forget windows solitaire!
Pretty cool application
Dude, you're coming FROM the elegant platform TO the popular platform. You're plugging a VHS tape into your betamax. You have found that the tuxedo vest is reversable and on the other side is potato sack. That doesn't mean that it's not useful at times to run Windows. There are some nice games that run only on Windows, but that's not because Windows is elegant -- it's because it's popular. The Microsoft Internet Explorer web browser experience is well supported but, again, only because it's popular.
The Windows world will surely be a disappointment to the Mac users who venture to that side out of curiosity alone. There will be those who are familiar with the platform and need it to run natively from time to time, and for those people it will be useful -- but in some cases, not as useful as Virtual PC. The dual-booting Mac is most useful for those Windows users who have been wanting to try OS X (there's a lot more draw coming that way than going the other) but who need the security blanket of knowing it can also run Windows if they don't like OS X. This is what makes this story so interesting... it's Apple using Microsoft's own OS against them.
RP
Notepad, Paint, Minesweeper ;)
alright, I've made a big collection of freeware once - I'll write down the most important:
Mozilla Firefox (webbrowser)
(also get the tabmix plus, adblocker and Search engine ordering plugins and some good search engines)
Mozilla Thunderbird (mail client)
Mozilla Nvu (web editor)
Open Office
Miranda (instant messenger)
Skype (VoIP)
Daemon Tools (virtual cd-drive)
WinAmp (media player - can play videos, but is mostly used for music playback)
BSplayer (video player)
XVid (video codecs)
Audiacity (audio editor)
blender (3d-modelling and rendering software)
VirtualDub (video editor)
gimp (image editor)
watcom (c++ compiler)
dexpot (great virtual desktop manager)
for security stuff:
AdAware (malware remover)
AVGfree (virus killer)
HijackThis (makes a list of your running applications - on http://www.hijackthis.de/ you can get a good analysis of the logfile) ZoneAlarm, SoftPerfect or SecurePoint (Firewalls)
you see - there is good freeware for any purpose.
for dvd playback and cd/dvd burning I can only say xenorate and AVSDiscCreator, but I haven't tested them myself...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
...these specific cases, as Shake was available on Windows NT - until Apple bought it, killed the Windows version, and drove the cost of the Linux version up. Pro/Logic? Same type of story.
Embrace, extend, destroy - sound like another company we know?
Not quite equating Apple with Microsoft here, but there's certain trais the companies share.
http://www.proxomitron.info/
Best. HTTP filter. Ever.
Seriously, the Proxomitron is the single best Windows app in existance - and a really good reason to install Wine on a Linux box. You can modify both incoming and outgoing headers, replace annoying or broken parts of a webpage using regexp-like expressions... It's essentially Greasemonkey on steroids as a local proxy.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
The grandparent said a BIOS, not the IBM PC BIOS. BIOS stands for Basic Input Output System. It is a ROM (or EEPROM) that is mapped into a fixed location in memory which is the default location of the program counter when the CPU is initialised (usually 0, although it may be re-mapped elsewhere later). In the Intel Macs, the BIOS is EFI (Extended Firmware Interface), which does a lot more than the original BIOS. In PowerPC Macs, it is OpenFirmware, which is an open specification for development of BIOS firmware used by Sun and IBM, among others. OpenFirmware is extendable in FORTH, and very flexible. There is a project to develop an OF implementation for generic x86 PCs called OpenBIOS.
A Mac, just like any other computer, would not boot[1] without a BIOS, since it needs some code to handle the basic initialisation of the I/O systems to be able to read the boot sector from the disk and get into a real OS.
[1] Booting is a contraction of the phrase 'picking itself up by its bootstraps.' This is an apt description of the functionality of a BIOS. A computer is not useful until it is running some code. It can not load code until it is running some code to tell it how to. The BIOS fulfils the rôle of the magic at the start.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
So what you really want to do is be able to run the thousands of applications available for Windows that will never be released for the Mac. My question is, then why use OS X in the first place? For some eye candy? This is just further evidence of how stupid Mac fanboys really are.
If you don't play games, or need specific windows-only apps (autocad, etc) theres no reason to use windows.
if you don't have a reason to use windows, don't, its just not worth it, try linux instead.
just take that copy of windows xp back to the shop (you did buy it, right?) & get your money back.
why on earth would you want to combine the stability of windows with the value for money of apple hardware?
Web Design
The Sysinternals apps for monitoring and understanding windows (particularly Process Explorer) are always the first things I install on a windows machine. After finding these, windows feels less like a black box and more like, well, a bunch of smaller black boxes.
"If you are an idealist it doesn't matter what you do or what goes on around you, because it isn't real anyway."-R.P.W.
Here is list of essential apps that i use:u m=stormtower&act=ST&f=3&t=44&st=0
http://www.invisionplus.net/forums/index.php?mfor
Windows Explorer. And no I kid you not.
;)~ some must have Windows apps (Google for more info, I'm too lazy to start linking them all) are:
It's the number one reason I still use Windows as my primary desktop. The main reason being that I can use the keyboard to perform 95% of my tasks and (once you've configured it a little) the behaviour is always consistent whether you're on the left hand "folders" (or "search") pane or the right hand "files" pane.
And the main reason I like it so much is its consistent behaviour. Selecting objects is always consistent, right mouse clicks behave consistently for each object type, F2 always renames the current object in situ (whether you're in the left hand "folders" pane or the right hand "files" pane), Ctrl & V always pastes into the current folder (even if you've got objects selected - and when the objects are pasted your selection isn;t changed for you either)
It's simply the most usable file manager I've ever used. And yes I have used a multitude of such things on a multitude of platforms.
I do all my file management in it and I launch all my programs using it. I've got a directory of shortcuts which opens in Explorer when I press Ctrl & Alt & S. I then press the key corresponding to the first letter of the program name until I select it then press return. Et Voila. After all, apart from Newbs and mouse potatoes, who needs desktop shortcuts, icons and menus ?
Of all the things I've tried on *NIX the only thing that comes close is Konqueror which does come *very* close to being as pleasant to use (In fact I believe familiarity will amke it just as good). Nautilus on the other hand is utterly unusable. It's the single worst file manager I've ever used and has once again put me off desktop Linux for the forseeable future - I like the stock Ubuntu desktop but simply cannot abide Nautilus.
But to get back on topic
Notepad++
CDEX
VLC
Media Player Clasic
Real Alternative
Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Thunderbird
DVD Shrink
DVD Decrypter
Audacity
Putty
And you'll also notie that quite a few of these are cross platform.
Yeah, I know TiVo has promised it for mac for months (years) but it is not here yet and will be the first thing I install on windows when I get my IntelMac. Other than games and a few little programming apps, I don't know what else I'll need. When (if) Tivo To Go comes out for mac, it will be just games....
I recall Dr. Whatson to be the most informative app.
In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.
snes9x
also Start->Run->CMD for a command prompt so you can use the shutdown command (and boot to another OS).
Karem
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
Don't even think going out in the wild without it.
putty http://www.google.com/search?q=putty
There are a number of reasons this is the wrong sort of question to ask.
1. The desktop fills two mutually-exclusive roles: Productivity & Entertainment. When used as a productivity tool, you want all productivity tools within immediate reach -- you don't want 80% of your productivity tools available under one partition, with the other 20% available after a reboot. This goes for your music library as well if you like to listen to music while multitasking. As an entertainment tool, you might use your system to watch video, or play games -- both of which the typical user will do to the exclusion of productivity, so having to reboot to access 99% of one's productivity software is far less an inconvenience when this is the case. There is also the question of file access. I may be completely mistaken (as these things can change quickly), about this but last I chekced writing to an HFS partiiton from XP, or an NTFS partition from OSX are not vendor-supported activities, and you will spend time either configuring both OSes to enable this kind of file-access (possibly losing data in the process), or living in a world in which various files are only available to one OS or the other.
2. The more time you spend on a given platform, the more that platform stands to benefit from your participation in its ecosystem. If MacOS is generally a better productivity experience, stick with it, and you will be doing more to evolve that platform than you would switching to another platform regularly for a handful of tools. If Windows is a better productivity experience, don't waste your time on OSX unless you have a good reason to sit through reboots on a regular basis.
3. As a gaming platform, XP takes the cake. There are simply too many PC game-devs out there who don't take the time to learn OpenGL, and as a result the vast majority of games are difficult to properly port to non-DirectX native OSes. Your XP partition thus represents at a minimum a gaming partition. In a similar vein, maybe a video system if you can't find certain codecs for OSX. The question you should be asking yourself is: Should your XP partition be used for more than these minimum activities?
The rest of Windows is just support and compatability code to enable Solitaire to run on the many hardware configurations that exist.
You were 80% angel, 10% demon. The rest was hard to explain. - Over The Rhine
"Math in a song is good."-Linford
You have just experienced a sarcasm cramp. In this state, your ability to identify sarcasm and/or irony completely seize up and causes you to take sarcastic and/or ironic statements literally and to spasmatically react to them in an agressive manner. Sarcasm cramps can be brought on by a lack of sleep, lack of caffeine, extreme fanboyism or plain stupidity.
Similarly to female menstral cramps, the female orgasm has been shown to provide a soothing affect, going so far as to release the cramp and allow the sufferer to return to a state of rational thinking. My suggestion? Go watch some pr0n.
The cancel button is your friend. Do not hesitate to use it.
And I don't game on computers. Heck, I barely game on my XBox.
So what do you do when you want to play a video game developed by hobbyists or a smaller firm? Or have you made an informed decision to boycott smaller developers?
> AVG Anti-Virus
:-)
>Hijack This
>Spybot Search and Destroy
>Adaware
>Microsoft Anti-Spyware (aka Windows Defender)
>SpywareBlaster
>KeyloggerHunter
>ClamAV
>avast!
>That should get ya started.
hmm, am I the only one to think that parent post should be modded sarcastic or funny
If you delay pleasure infinitely, the pleasure will be infinite. (YM)
Here are a few "Priceless" Apps that all first time Windoz users "have" to have. Of course all long time Windows users know to stay the hell away from them. 1. Bonzi Buddy 2. Comet Cursor 3. Kazaa Make sure to not have any anti spyware programs installed to get the full effect. For those that don't realize this is a joke, don't even download these spyware infested pieces of crap.
I trust Microsoft as far as I could comfortably spit a dead rat
Sorry. No such thing.
Visit my blog http://www.protocolostomy.com
if you are a CPA for individuals who make less than 2mm per year this software is indispensable - you wont find an equivalent on any other platform.
How about hardware or tools or medicine one needs with MSWIN ?
Something to smash the thing like a huge jackhammer, instead of fdisk a big electromagnet might be usefull...
Medicine ? At least something against headache and something to calm down: Panic because of all the viruses around. (Can I still dare to go online ?) What is a "first time Windows user" anyway ?
For the month of April It Would Have To Be:
01 Apr Saturday: W97M/Twomag, W97M/Kolop, W97M/Ekiam, VBS/Alphae, VBS/Ztin, VBS/Zync, VBS/Aqui, W97M/Alamat, W97M/Change.A, X97M/Hopper.r, W97M/Jany.a, VBS/LoveLetter.bi, VBS/Bhong, W97M/Opey.C, VBS/Count, W97M/Tarap, W97M/Bibdot, W97M/Bablas.aj, W32/PetLil@MM, JS/Gigger.a@MM, W97M/Shore.p, WM/CEEFOUR.A, WM/CEEFOUR.B, WM/CVCK1.B;E, Tribute.A;B, Acid.A (intended), WM/Theatre.A, WM/BADBOY.A;B;C
02 Apr Sunday: Flip, WM/Helper.C;D;E, WM/Alliance.A, VBS/Baracu.A@mm, W97M/Jany.a, W97M/Alamat, VBS/Aqui, W97M/Trugbar.a
03 Apr Monday: W32/MyWife.d@MM!M24, VBS/Aqui, W97M/Alama...
Winamp, VLC Player, MS Office, flashfxp, clonedvd,mirc, daemon tools, msn/icq/skype, Firefox, Nero, Ultraedit. If you need anti-spyware...(heh).. get spybot S&D/adaware/symantecs AV tool.
Nearly any application you choose will run faster and more reliably on a vanilla PC than a Mac. The only question is why would you cripple yourself from the outset?
huh explosive topic. Anyways I was an XP user for 3 years and I have to say that the only thing that could amaze you are all the games that only work on windows cause the other apps are either on mac already (like photoshop) or have equivalents.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
The question is what uniquely good windows software this guy who posted the article should try, not what Mac software can kinda do the same thing. Major CAD packages are definitely in that category.
It's also worth looking through the Adobe site - I was surprised to see that they have some Windows-only stuff, mostly from the Macromedia merger.
-posted from a MacBook
You are confusing the BIOS with the boot loader. In IBM PCs and clones thereof, the BIOS and boot-loader are indeed in ROM, but that comes from the fact that the original IBM ROMs also contained a BASIC interpreter and routines to load and store data from audio casettes (these were carried on as far as the PS/2 line, even though they were completely obsolete by then). CP/M computers on the other hand had only a boot-loader in ROM, and loaded their BIOS as software (i.e. part of the operating system), as did most mainframes and minicomputers, many of which had no ROMs at all, but required their boot sequences to be entered manually via a panel of switches.
So while BIOS == boot loader on IBM PC clones, this is not necessarily the case for computers in general.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
Games are the #1 reason people keep PC's around. I wouldn't worry about setting Windows on a Mac just for sh*ts-n-giggles (it is a $150 - $200 investment ). But if you are a gamer, or want to get into games, then Windows is a must. The only problem then is that the Mac platform isn't future proof, and you won't be able to keep up with PC gaming on the Mac in a year or two.
I think its still a gimmick, to run Windows on a Mac. Unless your developing web or applictions for both platforms, I can't honestly understand why someone needs both.
Having said that, one Windows application you might want to try that really gives iPhoto a run for its money, and is free, is Google's Picasa. It is a slick photo management tool with far better photo correction features then iPhoto. It has a one button "I'm Feeling Lucky" button whicn 9 times out of 10 color corrects and balances the highlights and shadows in a photo very well. What I like about it is rather then consolidating all your photos into one location (thus duplicating pictures) it just manages where photos are on your system. It also features a backup feature which saves to CD/DVD and if you insert that DVD again, it automatically launches the recovery tool.
I don't know, if your getting caught up in the hype of running a dual boot Mac, I think you will either stop using OSX in favour of Windows, or vice versa, but I doubt using both will weigh in heavily in the long run. It is one of those polar things where people either use one extensively over the other, or never consider the other an alternative.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Despite your incredulity, I can honestly say that I've sat in front of a Windows sytem maybe three or four times in my whole life, and never for more than 10 minutes (and in every case this was to try to help a Windows user whose computer was hopelessly kerfocked, who hoped against reason I could help them somehow).
My industry is standardized on Mac. I use a Mac at home. People I do business with use Macs, except for their administrative keepers who use Windows but I never have contact with their computers.
Why would I ever had had cause to use Windows?
I've also never bought a North American car, despite their ubiquity. My head isn't in the sand -- I just prefer cars that don't suck.
I am from a small, grease-loving country in the north called Ca-na-da.
- Nero Burning ROM - Miranda - all in one instant messaging - PasswordSafe - on sourceforge. indespensible - ConTEXT - open source programmers editor - SoulSeek - best p2p client for obscure choons - eMule - PuTTY - secure terminal emulation - WhereIsIt? for cataloging media - Winamp - CDex - nice ripper / encoder on sourceforge - FireFox, ThunderBird - RealVNC - nuff said - WarCraft III - let's face it, the real reason to use windows :)
Looking through the replies, I see you got lots of smart comments but nothing useful. With AVG and the built-in Windows Firewall, you can keep a computer quite secure. Everyone claims to need a dozen anti-spyware programs and a few firewalls and malware removers, but if you keep your computer patched and use firefox, you don't seem to catch any of it.
Maybe this list will help.
www.winamp.com - Anyone who just wants to play some music will know the joy of Winamp. It's light, powerful, and very elegant. A friend of mine who just switched to Mac says that there's no replacement for Winamp on the Mac. iTunes is a pain to work with.
www.trillian.cc - Good all around IM client, nicely built, good interface. Gaim is just a kludge in comparison.
www.pbus-167.com - Notebook Hardware Control is a must have if you have a laptop. I don't think the Mac laptops are intel yet, but when they are...
www.microsoft.com/streets - Microsoft Streets and Trips is a good, clean, pretty navigational software.
www.adobe.com/products/audition - Cool Edit, or what's now Adobe Audition, is a great audio editing tool.
www.inmatrix.com - Dump Windows Media Player and install what I consider the best video playing application out there.
www.shareaza.com - Great P2P program.
You gotta try BSOD. It's the greatest Win app ever. No need to download or buy it, either; it comes bundled free with every version of Windows.
P2P: Soulseek
Real-time Audio Synthesis: Audiomulch
Modular Synthesis: SynthEdit
Internet Explorer - You just cant use the important parts of the internet without it (at least that's what many of the webmasters of sites that refuse to be more compatible say.
Microsoft Outlook - So you can open all those winmail.dat files people send you.
Microsoft Excel for Windows - Exspecially for those sheets with macros using active-x components, they insist thier stuff just would just suck without those gems.
Microsoft Publisher - At work we regularly get .pub documents with the creators getting indignant when we say we can't open it. Of course depending on the sender, they expect you to have the version of publisher THEY have, not always particularly the latest version.
Microsot Access - Here it is the panacea of all data needs, just about every agency with accidental techies have islads of productivityware using access (ignoring the fact there is no easy way to integrate all these these different islands)
Webshots - just about every Windows workstation I see in or office runs Webshots, must be an essential utlity.
The thing that makes smiley icons and patterned backgrounds in Outlook Second to webshots are the outlook emails with all the HTML and embedded gifs, which also advertise the utility that will turn your oulook browser into a similar productive environment.
Turbo Tax, Tax Cut or Quicken Taxes - apparently we can't do our home taxes without them
Besides more vertical market "canned applications" for accounting and such that's about it.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
I onestly can't believe that after nearly seven hundred comments on this topic, there nothing rated 4 or above that actually addresses the question. Sure, there's lot's of snide comments about the inferiority of Windows, but that's a given. What's not a given is what the questioner was originally asking. So, here's a few of the applications that I personally find indispensible for what I do..and BTW, I'm a Mac guy, an OpenBSD guy, and a Linux guy, much more than I'm a Windows guy.
...and that's just off the top of my head. I hope Apple sticks with Boot Camp, and Microsoft updates Virtual PC. I'll happily buy two versions of Windows so that I can have seamless integration of Windows with my Macintosh hardware (one for dual boot for extended usage, and one for virtualization for quicky things), but I have a feeling that Apple will eventually pull the project.
1. Visio. The day Microsoft bought Visio, I was *so* pissed off, because I knew that there was then absolutely no chance that Visio would ever be released for Macs. Yes, there are some similar programs on the Mac side (OmniGraffle, ConceptDraw), but none of them can hold a candle to Visio Professional.
2. Duncan Munro's PSU Designer II and Tone Stack Calculator. Two essential tools for designing electron tube amplifiers that just don't exist on the Mac. Yes, a competent EE could probably figure it out in some horrible version of EDA software on a Mac, but all the Mac EDA packages I've seen are awful. As soon as I free up another machine, I'll try to install gEDA to see if that's any better (Linux or Fink/Mac OS X).
3. A whole host of software for my Amateur Radio hobby. Yes, there's some stuff out there for the Mac, but the majority of it runs on Windows. Another thing that pisses me off. This also holds true for a vast range of command and control products.
4. Ross-Tech's VAG-COM software to replace Volkswagen's scan tools. Uwe simply has no interest in porting, not even to Windows CE. Automotive scan tools are another area where all the software I've ever seen runs pretty much only on Windows, with a very few on Palm or WinCE.
5. TrueAudio's WinSpeakerz. This was originally a Mac program (MacSpeakerz), but development on the Windows side has far outstripped the Mac product. Great for designing loudspeaker systems. Most of the packages for this type of work are Windows-only.
6. Games? I couldn't care less about games, so this is really a non-issue for me.
7. VNC. VNC simply works a thousands times better on Windows (or Linux) than it does on the Mac.
Okay let's talk about 'Windows software'. That's software specifically developed for Windows rather than multiplatform software. So we're talking proprietary software rather GPL software that has been posted in Red Cross boxes from over the border. There are few exceptions (eMule) but Windows is a land of prop. software, and it's sillypocrisy to run all the OSS on Windows (OpenOffice, Gaim, Firefox, Thunderbird etc) to make it as Linux like as possible. Because then you shouldn't be using Windows.
So.
It's expensive. Very expensive (excluding software piracy, an ugly thing). For example, Adobe Photoshop costs £60 from Amazon. Isn't that ridiculous? Excluding my monitor, I scrounged the hardware in my system for less than that. But it comes on CD in a fancy box, you don't download it. Because of this you can get by with a slow or non-permenant net connection And a box is good. You'll never lose it. You can reinstall it on your new system or lend it to your friends . Note that older versions of software are much cheaper, so long as you can obtain then (for they soon go out of production). Quite often recent versions of software will suffice.
Next it comes with megalomaniac installers and will quickly spam up your system if you don't do custom installs.
(karma to burn)
7-zip
gaim
google pack (if running Windows XP)
firefox
openoffice
gimp
blender
nvu
cygwin
Weird that nobody* seems to have noticed this wonderful app : Foxit PDF Reader .
It loads PDF files way quicker than the feature-bloated Adobe Acrobat and is totally free. Actually it's ery close to MacOS X's Preview, imho.
* I must admit that I haven't read *every* post in that thread, partly beacause of many unuseful flameguerilla messages ; nevertheless I learned a few about nice Windows software I didn't know
"I may never prove what I know to be true, but I know that I'll still have to try" Dream Theater "The Spirit Carries on
I have used it for mac and windows and the windows version is so much better and less restrictive IMHO.
It *is* possible if you are doing your own thing. **HOWEVER** if you are, for example, a scientist or an engineer in a niche community it may not be possible. For example one of the things I do pretty regulary is trajectory analysis. There exists no trajectory analysis software for OSX or Linux (except my own codes - which run under Linux and Windows). However the commercial offerings all are built for Windows and due to the limited community are not rebuilt for multiple platforms - there is no reason, with a target audience of a few hundred people and a price tag of $6,000-$20,000 a seat, why go through the trouble of rebuilding the binaries?
So yes for those of you doing your own thing - developing new software, or just setting up office workers, living off the grid is very feasible. For people doing "real" work with software they can't control, in niche markets with few options (this is very real in engineering research) the options are limited and this isn't always a possibility.
It is also quite expensive (several k$), so you are unlikely to use it unless your line of work involves mechanical design.
Directory Opus is a drop-in replacement for Windows Explorer. Has to be the single most valuable piece of software I use. Super configurable, fast, removes the need for a lot of other programs (zip, image viewers, ftp). Has features up the wazoo, too many to list here.
Soulseek is the one program my Mac friends are jealous about. A P2P program that tends towards indie, electronic, and other more obscure music.
I would say process explorer and autoruns, from sysinternals.com, are must-have programs. Process explorer is an incredible upgrade to the windows task manager (which comes up with control-alt-delete) in that shows you everything that is running, and in a meaningful way. Autoruns, similarly, shows you everything that launches when you start the computer, and gives you an easy way to turn off things like the ipod helper, gratuitous video and sound control panels, and the like without editing the registry.
In addition to the antivirus and antispyware software everyone will be recommending, I also recommend crapcleaner, specifically for its registry repair features, which I have yet to find duplicated in a non-commercial product.
As per software, I would recommend Qemu.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Comprehensive? Not as much as I'd like. Subjective? Probably. But it still should help with the original question. And save ya money, too.
Hmmm, Half Life 2, Doom 3....
Friends don't let friends line-dance.
LINUX!!!
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"
w nloads
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=do
...running Windows?
Yech. You bigots make me sick.
This subject is more suitable for the levelheaded masses at digg.com
The subject line says it all, you must install the Cygwin stuff so you can begin to use a Windows box like a "Real Computer".
winrar?
If you're new to Windows, you're used to an honest filesystem that isn't actively trying to hide things from you and take control away from you. Ztree for Windows gives you back some of that control and transparency.(Ob.Disclaimer: no connection other than having bought and used it.)
Back in the DOS days, there was Xtree, XtreePro and then XtreeGold from Executive Systems. This was a character-mode file-manager/navigator-plus-toolbox. Symantec bought it and promptly took it off the market. Today, XtreeGold is memorialized at the Xtree Fan Page; go there to get a feel for the program. The original Xtree programs are now quite dated -- they can't handle FAT32, much less NTFS.
ZtreeWin is a clean reimplementation of XtreePro (actually by now it's most of the way from XtreePro to XtreeGold in that development effort) for Win32. It's shareware (but, hey, it's for Windows, where, FLOSS aside, it's rare that you're not expected to pay for every little thing). In my time using it on Windows (I'm pretty much solely on Linux now), I got quite pleased with how much Windows didn't get in my way because I used it; I considered it indispensable.
It's not really until you get into the professional sector that there's really a big rift in software. And at this level, you buy the software first, then worry about the computer that goes with it. A few that I use are Softimage XSI (can't possibly live without this, nothing else even comes close) and Sonar (about neck and neck with Logic for what I use it for, but ymmv).
I usually remain just a casual browser of topics here, but I just could not help myself this time. I apologize in advance for my soapbox...
/. community were relatively intelligent.
NOT ALL WINDOWS USERS ARE DUMB!!!
Why is it that all non-windows users assume that everyone running windows is just hosting rooted, spyware infested machines? You all need to re-think how you came to that conclusion, or better yet, who led you to that conclusion. While I have no problem with people wanting to promote whatever OS they prefer (I myself am running OSX, linux, and windows), it is just plain ignorant to think that everything else is somehow inferior. Come on people, I always thought the majority of the
Let's face it, just about anyone reading this very article is not likely to be hosting a bot'd windows machine. The real culprit is ignorance. The only thing that then gives the AVERAGE mac or linux user an advantage is statistics. Meaning, more virii are written for windows as they hold the largest market share, by far. Most people, not anyone reading this, could care less about how their machine works so it isn't surprising when they don't bother running updates regularly, or going to suspicious sites and clicking on links they shouldn't be.
So to bring this concept even further. If someone was asking me for advise about what kind of computer to buy (I get this alot, as I'm sure some of you do), etc, the first thing I do is evaluate what they will be using it for, and how interested I think they will be in the operation of said machine. If a person will just be surfing the web, sending email, and playing music/video, I then evaluate how often, and to what extent they will "play" with the machine. If they will be doing alot of playing, and I think they are really interested in learning to do more with a computer, I will recommend a windows machine. I will then follow that with the normal disclaimers regarding spyware, etc. Now if the user is just going to use it for the above 3 reasons, and cannot foresee using it for anything else, I will recommend a Mac. Please don't confuse what I'm saying... I don't mean I recommend Macs for the more ignorant people, I'm saying that I want to reduce the users risk as much as possible based on their requirements. Obviously if the user has other software requirements, which is usually the case, then they don't have a choice, they just get windows.
I have a mac mini intel, and installed the boot camp last night to add more flexibility to the machine. This machine sits in my bedroom along side my tv, and is primarily used for surfing the web, email, and playing media. The only thing that I was missing was VPN. I couldn't get our SSL VPN to work on the mini. Now I still run OS X primary, but if I ever need to VPN to work for whatever reason, I can!
It's all about being able to do whatever you need to do with your machine. Sometimes I wish I could live without windows, but for right now, it's just not in the cards...
I love the fact that Apple has decided to release bootcamp.
Of course not. Between the time you power up a Mac and the time the OS loads, the computer runs on magic !
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
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:
The best thing about Windows is the wide selection of available games.
Google Earth and MindManager used to be the things I liked on the PC that weren't on the Mac. But now they both are. Beside Visual Studio (if you program w/ .NET), I don't know that you're missing much.
Games I guess is the biggest... Steam games, etc.
I know that most cultures have a sweet spot for hyperbole, but I am dumbfounded at how people say such things. Macintosh has always been the most compatible and accessible platform. Any one Mac can access the most operating systems either natively or via emulation than any other machine I've ever heard of. We've always had exceptionally fast emulators and native virtual machines, and for most people, VirtualPC or Qemu are better than a 'real' one. Drag-and-drop desktop-to-desktop integration and undoable filesystems are a lot more than "nice to have" when trying to keep Windows alive.
Well, good luck to ya in finally discovering your own world, Mr. Unfrozen Caveman I.T. Guy! ;-)
"I want to build a list of unique, elegant, can't-do-without apps." There you go. That was an easy one:
- Civilization IV
- Battlefield 2
- FarCry
- Homeworld 2
- Doom III (for the elegance)
I recall WinAmp didn't have as nice a support for multiple playlists. Although there were performance issues with iTunes, I'm not sure what the current states of WinAmp and iTunes are nowadays. However, I'd say WinAmp's Internet TV feature and WInAmp visualizations are worth checking out for new Windows users. I'm wondering if the Mac and Windows versions of iTunes could point to a Library folder located on a third shared FAT32 partition. I know both versions use non-esoteric file names and the same XML format, I just don't know if the non-human-readable binary file that accompanies the XML file is compatible.
For videos, VLC is good, but also one might want to get Windows Media Player. If one needs to play (or stream, for that matter) DRM-ed WIndows Media, they pretty much have to use a Microsoft OS. Also, MPlayer and Media Player Classic with CCCP are worth installing. If some players don't play some files smoothly or at all, just use another player. That's pretty much how it goes. Macs have traditionally been week in supporting WM* files. Now with the switch to Intel, most of the media players don't work on the new Intel Macs. So if you want to play anything without Rosetta emulation, with the exception of a small percentage of media files that can play on QuickTime/iTunes, you'll have to install Windows.
Of course, since probably over 600 comments have been made to this article, I'm sure my comment wil go unnoticed...
Personal favorites: EditPlus2, LeechFTP (if you can still find the installer), Geoshell.
All Windows software amazes me... or rather, I'm amazed that we, as consumers, are willing to put up with it. I use Windows, Mac OS, and Solaris every day. I use Windows at work because I have to. I use Mac at home because I have a choice.
The best Windows software? Obviously, that depends on what you do with computers. Here's my list (from an engineer's perspective):
Remote Desktop Client
Lets me drive my Windows PC at work from my Mac at home.
UltraEdit
This is a reasonably useful and powerful text editor. I don't
use it anymore because I decided not to spend money on the
upgrades when I'd rather be using emacs. I try not to edit
software on my PC and Notepad works just fine for simple text
documents. However, if you have to do programming in Windows,
I highly recommend UltraEdit.
ActivePerl
When you absolutuely have to run perl in Windows.
cygwin
When you'd really rather be using unix.
WinZip
The Stuffit Deluxe of the Windows world.
FireFox
Because Internet Explorer is a non standard piece of...
Internet Explorer (sadly)
Because a lot of people do crazy stuff to overcome the
limitations of IE and a lot of this crazy stuff breaks
other browsers...
TightVNC
For connecting to other computers.
iTunes
I've not found anything better for playing mp3's and CDs
on Windows. Everything else seems to suffer from latency
issues when the load goes up. BTW, I hate iTunes; It breaks
nearly every UI rule Apple wrote. However, if all you want
to do is play music, it's adequate. If you like iTunes on
Mac, you'll like it in Windows. It's the same.
Microsoft Office
I hate it, but I use it all the time. There's nothing better
in terms of features and universality.
Documents To Go
If you've got a PalmOS device, this is a must-have. It lets
you share many 'office' documents with your PDA.
I think the new Ninnle for Windows would do everything that the questioner asks!
Ninnle Linux: The choice of Linus himself!
I think that Sony ACID is by far one of the best music creation programs out there. Since it was created years ago it has progressed far beyond garage band or anything on the mac... Most of my mac friends love it because garage band loops work in it.... The audio filters are all high end. Demo is free for 30 days... Sony VEGAS for editing is as good if not better than Final Cut PRo..(I use both) you can even edit mpeg2. You will need PrimoPDF to print to PDF. It's free.
and if you like having multiple desktops there is an XP powertoy to manage virtual desktops(up to four) it does the usual, apps open on one desktop do not show up in the others ( saves a LOT of screen realestate) also there is an option to preview all four desktops at once to see wich one the app you want is on ( havn't seen this on my linux boxes, anyone know if this is possible with kde?) and someone mentioned before the "open command window here" shell integration is a nice toy for changing permissions A.K.A "file attributes" Virtual desktop have been there since day 1 (if you want them to appear on all desktops, make the windows sticky), preview also, but I'm guessing the mac-like functionality you're talking about exists in xgl. Also you can config the file manager in KDE so it automatically has a terminal following your graphical browsing of folders, just click on the link box down right (if I remember correctly, because I use XFCE).
what i was talking about is a feature in the MS virtual desktop manager power toy, i can click a button and it goes full screen showing screenshots of all four desktops and the apps open on them. i haven't found a way to do this in kde or any other WM in linux yet, but it is a nice feature... i may have to send in a feature request to the kde devels.
in kde 3.5.1 (and 3.4x) you can right click in MOST linux folders and select >actions>open terminal here, or just hit F4
To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
It's more elegant to have to press two buttons on two different input devices simultaneously, to activate a single function? I love my Mac but you'll take my right mouse button over my dead body.
These are the apps I must install everytime when I reinstall Windows...
---shareware / commercial -----
Forte Agent -- The best news reader in the world
SnagIT -- The best screen capture software
WinZip, WinRAR -- Archive handling
Eudora -- Yes, I'm still using it for E-Mail
UltraEdit -- Text Editor for all kinds
Microsoft Street & Trip -- looking for location even off-line
Microsoft Office including Visio -- can't find exact replacement
SQL Navigator -- if you work with Oracle database, you know what is it
NetOp Remote Control -- the FASTEST remote control software I can find
Eclipse IDE -- can't be wrong if you write Java for fun or for living
---Free stuff-----
Putty -- simplest SSH client
BitComet -- the best BT client
FileZilla -- the cheapest FTP/SFTP client
Daemon Tools -- I haven't burn CD/DVD for long time
FireFox -- IE sucks
MS PowerToys -- Windows Tweaking
Winamp -- lightweight mp3 player
MSN Messenger -- All my friends use it, so I have no exception
FoxIT PDF Reader -- Arcobat Reader is too heavy
Default your Oracle EBS with success !
Rhino3D (NURBS modeling)
I love this app, which is only available on Windows, as it is the most intuitive and powerful app with advanced capabilities, and is fairly priced.
tone
Now that we've heard from every single fucking person who hasn't used windows since blah blah fucking blah..... I think South Park could have used Mac users in place of Hybrid car owners in the 'smug' episode. Sheesh. There is only one thing I have against Mac's: Listening to FANBOYS. Christ it's revolting. I'm sure there are multiple times more Windows FANBOYS out there and I guess they would be even more annoying, but fuck, give it a rest. WE KNOW, your OS is the BEST!!!!
(and other games). I'm serious. I've got several Macs at home... and a collection of Windows&Linux boxes, some dual boot. The newest of the Windows boxes is adequate for Oblivion, but marginally so. I'm darned tempted to get a new Intel iMac (in addition to the G5 iMac I already have) just because it looks like a decent piece of hardware to run Windows games on. In particular, I like the way that Apple too a fairly decent graphics card and underclocked it enough so that it can run fanless. The result obviously won't match to top-of-the-line cards, or even the fannned versions of the same basic card, but it appears to nicely beat most anythnig that you can get fannless off the shelf. The "off-the-shelf" part is important there; one of the nice things about the Mac is that the system integration work is done, and done well. I've built enough of my own boxes from components to appreciate that system integration is nontrivial. And I despise noisy fan with a passion.
I basically have 2 things on my Windows boxes.
1. Games.
2. Quicken/TurboTax. There is a Mac version of Quicken, but it sucks. It sucks worse than using Windows, which is saying a lot. And there is nothing else that interfaces with my financial institutions as well as Quicken. There are rumors that the next Mac version of Quicken might be based on the Windows one and thus be half decent. We'll see. The current Mac Quicken shares almost nothing but the name with the Windows version; it is actually of unrelated vintage.
All that you really need to know is that Valve makes a great product called Half-Life 2 Game of the Year edition. It comes with some great games including Day of Defeat and Counterstrike:Source. Especially if you are running one of those pretty iMacs or the MacBookPro that will be sufficient. Otherwise don't download spybot (it's spyware in and of itself). Unfortunatly I have a copy of Windows Defender which surprisingly is the only quality product out of Microsoft to date (unless you speak of Halo or Age of Empires)
Don't surf the web with your windows partbox either it's not worth it. You are better off just downloading the OSX version of Firefox or Camino and using them instead of Safari. I can see that Internet Explorer (don't get me down here guys I use primarily firefox on all computers Mac, Windows or Linux)would be a good thing for you as some apps and so forth, won't work in Safari and Firefox (sometimes not in OSX at all) so you have an advantage there. And IE 7 is shaping up. Somewhat.
DVD shrink is another good program to use in Windows. Google for it and you will find it. Don't download Ad-Aware it's pretty useless and eats up resources. You don't need office if you already have a copy of it on OSX. If you use anything you can use Openoffice.org or other opensource variants of office utilities.
Hell get The Elder Scrolls : Oblivion and just be done with it.
My short list:
d ownloads/default.asp
r ms.html#interix
p -pkgsrc/
Anything by VanDyke software. This stuff just bleeds "professional": http://www.vandyke.com/
Now, how to turn Windows into a fully armed and operational battlestation:
Download Microsoft Windows Services for UNIX, aka Interix:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/sfu/
Install using the NetBSD pkgsrc guide for Interix:
http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation/pkgsrc/platfo
Now patch it (a necessary step):
http://www.duh.org/interix/hotfixes.php
Now, download and install the latest Interix bootstrap binaries from ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/packages/bootstra
Grab pkgsrc-current from ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/current
Now go to town!
(Just don't forget to ALT-ENTER your C Shell terminal, with green on black text, natch)
This *was* Win98SE - it's worked pretty well for most of what she wants to do, and upgrading to XP would mean giving $100 to Bill Gates and $50-100 to memory chip vendors, and she hasn't felt motivated to do that as opposed to waiting until she gets a job and then buying a more current machine. But she and I don't expect that XP reinstalls would be that much cleaner.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
If the poster is really interested in switching the other way, here is the list that I will install for someone "not INTO computers":
Firefox
AVG Free
Any anti-spyware utility
Google Desktop Search
Google Toobar for IE (or for Firefox, if you use it)
Picasa
Miranda
Skype (only if you has someone to chat with...)
OpenOffice (only if an office suite is REALLY needed...)
Flash and Shockwave players
Mega Codec Pack
Adobe Reader (or Foxit if the box is old and slow, but he's talking about Boot Camp so it's irrelevant...)
Alt-Tab Powertoy
PDFCreator (okay, depends...)
FilZip (7-Zip is better IMO functionality-wise, but FilZip's interface is simpler)
Gmail account (I mean a shortcut on the Start Menu)
BTW, these will be the things I uninstall:
Outlook Express (I know you can't REALLY remove it without some hacks, but just remove the shortcut will do...)
MSN Explorer
Windows Messenger
what i was talking about is a feature in the MS virtual desktop manager power toy, i can click a button and it goes full screen showing screenshots of all four desktops and the apps open on them. i haven't found a way to do this in kde or any other WM in linux yet, but it is a nice feature... i may have to send in a feature request to the kde devels.
Something like kompose?
If that's what you are looking for, it can be found here.
EAC is the best CD-ripper out there, and it is only available on PC. It is the only "secure" ripper out there, to my knowledge (with the partial exception of Plextools, which only works on Plextor drives). Secure mode works by reading everything twice and compares the results. If the results do not match, it slows down the drive and re-reads each erroring sector 10 times.
EAC can even compare the result to the online accuraterip database, to compare your results to others. Usually bit-perfect rips are possible (except with some new copy-protected discs, but at least EAC can read them!).
Jeremy
Without starting a war, I would say a good AV program (i like NOD32) Trojan/malware (Ewido works for me) and a clearner type program like CCLEANER (darn cookies :)
Please, on a daily basis I use (incomplete list):
MS Visual Studio 2005
Enterprise Architect
MS Visio
MS Word
XMLSpy
I am sure one or more of these is available on Mac, but why would I want a mac? Talk about a lesser OS. Expensive hardware, limited upgradeability, unix 'like'. Every single machine I use, home or work, dual boots into XP and 1+ linux distros (usually Redhat AS 4 and/or Gentoo). If I need a CLI, I have cygwin or a linux box next to my windows box! If I want to use any one of the number of tools/games exclusive to Windows, I have it.
~nate
Au contraire. No recent macs use BIOS.
Actually, Apple pushed out a firmware upgrade, and now all Intel Macs have a PC-Compatible BIOS CSM. How would it boot Windows otherwise?
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Mac OS X has been able to use the right mouse button since the beginning. Mac OS 9 and below sees both buttons of a two button mouse as the uni-button. This was useful for the times that a button would stop functioning on a mouse. Not so useful when you wanted to do contextual menu stuff. But how long has it been since Mac OS X started being useful and you stopped booting into Mac OS 9? At least since Jagwire.
Yeah, the trackpad on a Mac laptop only has a single button. Boo hoo hoo. You just whip out Mr. 2-button mouse/trackball and you are good to go. The Logitech Marble Mouse has been my standby for years and years and years, since they were beige instead of that smoky grey metallic color.
Next Windows whine...I've got a nice wheel of Gouda here that will enhance that vintage whine of yours.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
wow guys, less talking, more suggesting apps:
audio apps:
- flstudio
- reason
- nuendo
- sonar
- ableton
- plogue bidule
- buzz
- renoise
- reaktor
- and the plethora of VST synths available (waldorf attack, izotope trash, quad frohmage, guitarrig, moog modular, minimoog, absynth3, etc...)
music - http://www.subatomicglue.com
yes, something like that :-) thanks for pointing this app out. i am going to try it out.
To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
As a windows user, I'd say that the must-have applications have good Mac versions. What really keeps me on windows are the little nitch applications that will never get ported to Mac.
No, I will not work for your startup
Not my Windows. Windows 2000 does not have any archiving tools, nor does it have remote desktop support out of the box. That's why you need WinRAR and TightVNC. The Windows XP and up GUI terminal client doesn't seem as flexible as TightVNC, although I have used it.
:)
Windows 2000 is the Windows I use for those games that don't work (yet) in Cedega. I use it with Daemon tools. It works great with all my Blizzard games (although these are well behaved in Cedega), and also work with other games like Alpha Centauri, Civ 3, SimCity 4, etc. I can use the same network share of ISOs for Linux loop back and Windows daemon tools loopback. I've never bought any game with asshole copyprotection, although the intentional corrupted sectors on Civ3's install disc meant that I'm not buying an Atari title again.
I look forward to putting Galactic Civ 2 into my share once I order the game online.
You mention a lot of things in WinXP+ that I simply don't use, because those newer versions of Windows have that activation bullshit attached to them. I get them for "free" because I'm an upper-year CS student, but it's not worth the hassle.
As for IE: any program that isn't dangerous if you use it "for only a few websites" is a program too dangerous to run on machines with access to my network. FireFox tends to get security updates with a day of there being an issue, and it's rarely used for browsing on the Windows machine anyway -- Unix exploits are much rarer than any other kind, giving me further protection
I'm not sure why you don't like iTunes. Although replication of playlists/data is not so good (because my Powerbook goes with me, it's not always around the network, but I would like the network to have a duplicate of that data), it is a great ripper, playlist organizer, and also handles streaming well (either from other iTunes sources, or to my Airport Express). I can also copy music from other people when they bring their shared iTunes to the same subnet. I don't think WMP has that support.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
No Problem. Glad it was helpful! =)
I've spotted a pattern, in fact. If a game uses the brain, it's better played with a mouse.
Troll, flamebait....
What do you want your computer to do, expect it to do? Fun, porn, build a business, record music, draft a manifesto, stalk people? Only with such answers could software be suggested.
What can you do with Windows that you can't with a Mac? What can you do with Linux that you can't with Windows? What can you do with a Mac...?
What can you do?
"Humans are considered to be primitive, the third smartest species on Earth"
...so you can write some must-have programs for the hordes of Windows users.
Seriously though, "must-have" is relative to "must-do". If you've never needed Windows before to do something, there can be no must-have apps.
You proved me wrong and I learned something (something that in retrospect seems obvious, but isn't it often that way?).
Thank you!
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Uproariously funny concept.
These are the basic things I would require regardless of what kind of project I was working on. There are probably another half a dozen or so programs I would almost always install (Process Explorer, Firefox, Putty, KeePass), but these are more likely to be subject to individual preferences.
Steven N. Severinghaus
"free" MS software is not site licenced. It's a one-to-one licencing deal, with all the software requiring activation.
I don't "continue to use Windows 2000" -- I use it on the order of once every 4-6 months. No Windows 2000 machine is hooked directly to the Internet. All applications run on it come from a known-good repository on the network, which I verify in a VMWare environment before it gets run on my test machine. As I said, it's rare that games don't work with Cedega, and (due to school) it's rare that I play games which require a reboot (as well as games in general, but that's another story).
Internet Explorer is not secure, nor is it designed to be. Windows Vista is the first Windows since 95 that might be more secure due to the change of approach to integrating an insecure binary like the IE blob into the system. You can't patch shit into a good design. Sendmail proved that decades ago (I did giggle about the recent remote root in Sendmail). There are some very good SE principles and also algorithm correctness reasons why this is, but I'm going to assume you know them, and are just being insouciant about IE.
As for iTunes, it's not the interface, it's the features. Most of the time, I use it on my Powerbook. The rare (2x times a year) time I use it on Windows, it's close enough, and supports the same playlists, streaming radio, streaming to AirTunes enabled speakers, etc, that I use. Again, you're totally ignoring my use case in favour of your view of what the world Should Be (TM). I expect such arrogance on Slashdot, though, so I'm sure I can forgive you.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
"My computer is not working"
"oh sorry, I don't know anything about Windows, you'll have to ask someone else"
Day to day I'm sure I could function using a Windows computer, but nothing more than that. It's a point and click GUI, there is not that much mystery.
-A
If you are developing or writing text files, then use the command line version of svn everywhere for version control, and TortoiseSVN as a front end in Windows.
For comparing files and directories and merging, use
Beyond Compare.
Nice big ones, with the poles opposed to give a 1/2 inch gap?
hawk
Ha, those don't exist buddy. Painlessly get into the Windows world? You obviously have been living in a cave for the last 20 years.
-- 4 8 15 16 23 42
Great question. There are some things you absolutely must install right away, before you connect to any other computers or networks. As a Windows newbie, this might all seem bewildering, but please, please trust me on this. I don't care how much you paid for your computer or for MS Windows or whatever. These things are almost certainly missing and are critical to your computer safety.
1. Windows Update
2. Firewall
3. Anti-Spyware
4. Anti-Spyware
5. Anti-Virus
These things must be installed right away to make your Windows computer even semi-safe to use. They all must be updated regularly (perhaps 1-4 times a month). Oh, and yes, Anti-Spyware is listed twice. Just one probably won't suffice.
OK, now your computer is almost up to where your Mac was out of the box. Now you can start talking about productivity/entertainment applications. Carry on...
Interestingly, it seems to me that Win 95 wasn't so much a rip off of the MacOS of the time as everyone seems to think, but it took a lot more from NeXTstep: Gray 3D windows; square buttons; each open document appearing at the bottom of the desktop; etc. The taskbar seems to have a lot in common with the NeXT Dock.
http://www.evernote.com/en/
First learned of it on the Wacom drawing tablet mailing list and now could not survive without it. Endless stream of virtual paper with auto-dating and auto-categorization, all searchable. Plop in pictures, typed notes, swaps from clipboard, live weblinks, quoted text or images from websites which retain the connection. Pony for the quite reasonable paid version and write directly into it with your drawing tablet or tablet PC and get that converted on the fly to searchable text.
http://grc.com/spinrite.htm/
Spinrite has been the most amazing hardware maintainance ap bar none for...gosh. Pushing two decades. I'll never forget watching it change my RLL drive's interleave w/o formatting in ~1988. Now that Mac users are on commodity hardware they can use it for their disks without yanking them from the boxes. Not free but worth every last cent. Sales of Spinrite also pay for all the free security aps its creator offers.
Me, I'm waiting for easy OSX on non-Apple hardware. Somehow I don't see Apple helping us with that....
Feeling so good natured I could drool
Nero - If you want to do anything that has any remote connection whatsoever to CDs, this program will do it. It handles everything from bit-for-bit copying for all your pirating needs to making bootable CDs, authoring DVD menus, burning BluRay, editing audio, playing DVDs, compressing video, and a whole host of other functions you will never use in this lifetime. The installation package is about the size of some operating systems.
Adobe Audition - Formerly CoolEdit, this is hands-down the best audio editor anywhere, as well as an excellent multitrack recorder. This totally owns Audacity or anything else.
Sonar - This is the ProTools of the Windows world. At its core, it's a MIDI editor/sequencer--but it seemlessly blends with audio and video editing and multitracking. This is what the big labels write the accompaniments in for the next big hit.
Finale - The best music scoring engine ever. Play in the music, out comes the page. Think of it like OCR for music.
Visual Studio - All you slashdotters are going to have to forgive me, but VS 2005 is quite possibly the best IDE ever invented, even if it is a bit bloated. Think of it like Emacs for Windows. VS handles a huge array of language editing, as well as being able to edit embedded resources, etc. Like Eclilpse on steroids.
Vegas - This is a video editing app similar to Adobe Premier, except I find it to have about 95% of the power and about twelve times the usability. Excellent for putting together indie films.
DVDDecryptor + DVDShrink - Subvert the RIAA. 'Nuff said.
UTorrent - I wish they had this for Linux. It is so awesome. It's like Azerus, except it's small and fast.
And I prefer Windows Defender to AdAware. But here's the thing: I run three windows servers and ten clients here at home. All of them run firefox and are behind a W2k3 server that handles all of the routing (it runs IIS6 and RDP, by the way) and I haven't had a security/virus/spyware issue (let alone had to reformat the box) in at least a year, and I run no AV and no antispyware (and just the standard RRAS firewall at network-level). It's just a matter of watching what you install.
I really love Window's default text editor. It has a small footprint. It refuses to open anything that doesn't have a small footprint. It hasn't been updated in at least 10 years because it obviously doesn't need it. But the thing that I like best about Notepad, like many other MS products, is how it sticks those nice ^Ms at arbitrary places throughout any file you happen to open.
Could someone please port Outlook Express to Mac? I can't read my emails cause I can't find the paperclip.
Yo fattie? Don't lie and tell me you can't use a PC because you're just too conditioned to MacOS. PC has an extra button on the mouse and you click stuff, just like your elitest mac. The best program on windows is everything, that is when compared to the mediocre offerings from Apple. You wouldn't know when you're served polished turds but hey, your ignorance is my bliss.
Hey, mac dud,
You have to try ie (Windows Internet Explorer.) It is so cool I could shit my pants. No other software can pick up viruses so quickly. If you have a death-wish (tm) you will love it when your computer goes down from the weight of every known piece of fucking malware known to man.
free
n
http://www.7-zip.org/
http://www.cdburnerxp.se/
http://www.mozilla.com/firefox
http://djlizard.net/software/dial-a-fix
http://www.yamipod.com/main/modules/home
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html
shareware
http://www.steganos.com/?product=safe8&language=e
http://www.agnitum.com/products/tauscan/index.php
http://www.kaspersky.com/antihacker
The full story is a little more complex:
Code sections of the library are generally not instanced. There are special cases where they can be, but not usually. Generally it only happens when they are packed with a run-time executable packer that marks all sections as read-write. Data sections, however, are instanced in most cases, for obvious reasons. Again, that's not the way it is in every case, you can, in theory, have shared data and use that for communication, but it creates a security hole and shouldn't be done.
Now the other side of this is that Windows does version tracking on system DLLs. If software installs an older DLL, Windows will grab that copy of it for just the reason you noted (potential legacy code). It will then load that version for that software, but the new system version for other software. So you can have two complete seperate instances of the same DLL, because they are different versions. Of course a program can also do this itself, simply ship the DLL it wants in it's directory and use that instead (at least for most DLLs).
So I suppose it's a bit too simplistic to say each program gets it's own copy, but what I mean is they aren't totally shared like they were in 3.1. Orignally the consideration of DLLs was mainly reducing memory usage. These days it's modulatiry and interoperability. If I make an audio processor that conforms to the DirectShow standard as a DLL and register it on a system, any app that wants to use it can. So my plugin will work in Wavelab, Sonar, Vegas, all form one version. That kind of thing. The concern is making it work easily with all the software, not with saving the 2MB of memory that my plugin needs.
"iTunes' features aren't enough to justify its horrible interface on Windows."
That's your opinion, not mine. We don't agree.
The OP wanted to know what people would suggest on the Windows platform. I suggest iTunes because I use it. The rest of your post is, frankly, a waste of both our times. Don't worry, I didn't read it.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Umm, OSX uses DLLs. See this link for details http://0xfe.blogspot.com/2006/03/how-os-x-executes -applications.html
Notice the section where they talk about dynamic libraries???
Open Firmware and EFI both serve the same function as 'PC-BIOS'. They both provide the Basic Input/Output System to load the OS.
Firefox, thunderbird, gaim, xchat, vlc, itunes, freeciv... wait... er... windows specific, huh...
Norton Ghost Before 10.0 10.0 is pure crap.
Ghost allows you to make a backup image of your windows partition that can be saved onto a DVD and later restored if you mess up your windows or get a virus etc. that trashes you windows install.
Partition Magic 8.0
Great little partitioning program that's non destructive IE doesn't delete the content of your drive if you resize the drives to create, shrink, grow or merge the partitions. Their are other partitioning programs out their but PQ is the one that came out with the first non destructive one.
Paragon Partition commander is another one that claims to be able to guarentee it wont destroy any data in the event of anything unforseen like a brownout during the paritioning. Seems to do it by having data recovery which is also in partition magic so i don't see the advantage
Sagetv
It's like tivo for the PC and doesn't charge monthly fee's for the guide data. It also works with almost every Hardware tuner card out encluding HD tuners and. It will work with as many tuners as you can fit onto your system. Sagetv is written in java so you'll need suns java to run it. If you use this you will need a mepg2 decoder their are many out their just about any software dvd player program will have a mpeg2 decoder in it.
VLC media player
This is a media player that can do streaming video and plays just about any video format that's out so it's well worth it's price Free.
I like alpha XP it gives you glass like transparencies in XP for the taskbar and windows apps. THeir are others out their that do the same thing but Alpha is the only one i have seen that makes the taskbar transpearent and brings it back into solid when you move your mouse over it like Vista does.
Theirs also the Vista transform pack for XP but you may want to hold off on trying that as it's a work in progress and does some major changes to XP to make it more Vista like.
Winrar or Winace or both
Winrar and Winace are compression programs to compress and decomepress files in windows like Winzip. Both winrar and winace will unzip winzip archives but im not sure if winzip will do that for rar files or ace files. A large number of compressed files on the net for windows are in one of thoughs three formats or in compressed exe's (which decompress themselves) so a compression program is advisable, I would get one of these no matter what else you get.
Games
DO i really need to explain this one? The kinds depend on what type you like FPS, RPG, RTS, MMO, MMORPG you get the idea. Look online for game demos to see what you like.
That's my list late.
Coward? Coward! Thems fighten words!!
The other program I was thinking of is ConceptDraw, might be worth a look if as well.
I guess if nothing else you could use virtualization on a new mac to use Visio while in Windows....
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
First, replace the filebrowser with a dual pane one, I use a commercial app, so no link :p
... Juste like you do on a mac but without the i, no ifoobar2000, no iMediaPlayerClassic ... :)
Sec, do not forget to have some ftp client, oh "ftp" works fine, but any FXP enabled client is better
Third, you _must_ be able to watch pr0n^M^M^M documentaries, so Just install the filters and a player [http://yatoshi.com/ a great pack, read almost everything]
Then, you must find the software that fits your needs, listen to music, edit movites
When fiction hits reality, dreams have no air-bag.
http://jult.net/warez
Actually, that's control click. Although I prefer a one button mouse, I have also used a five button mouse with all of my expose' features programmed in. So even when I did that, I still used control click.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
MiniAim I mean, seriously. How can you go wrong with an 80Kb aim client?
uTorrent - Works better then the normal BitTorrent client.
ABAGames - Pretty much any one of these shooters is worth playing.
And it looks like all the other really obvious stuff has been mentioned. I also reccommend checking out an Ubuntu LiveDisk... As soon as Dapper hits the streets, this laptop will be booting Linux.
Oh, wait...
Really, I'd sooner put Bonzi Buddy on my desktop than that piece of shit. Mod me -1 troll all you want, but the system resources it hogs are easily more than the resources it'd take to just load AIM, Yahoo, and MSN (though ICQ is almost as bad, ever since Mirabilis got rid of it it's become hoggy as hell).
-1 Troll here, speaking on behalf of all those who are too impatient to relax and let their opinions be expressed eloquently:
:(
Trillian is a horrible piece of shit, and the system resources it takes are ridiculous. AIM + MSN + Yahoo < Trillian in terms of system resources (though ICQ is just as bad these days), and really, unless you're not a native English speaker (in which case the built in hyper-linked dictionary option seems good), I can't think of any reason to bother with Trillian.
-1 Offtopic now: How the hell can I get rid of those awful new AIM 5.0 smileys? I tried googling for "gold smileys AIM" and got nothing but spyware. Some of my accounts default to the old school yellow ones, but one of my accounts - my main account, at that - refuses to change the default. I can only disable graphical smileys altogether, and THAT'S NOT VERY USERFRIENDLY.
So yeah, I think it's pretty safe to say that KDE and Gnome developers were trying to rip off Acorn with their taskbars. Anything to try to increase familiarity with for all the millions of dedicated Acorn users. What a dipshit.
300+ Freeware solutions to common Windows needs
Format C:\ is the first command I teach all new Windows users.
:-)
They learn early about backups and how hard it really is to install an OS if their vendor doesn't do it for them.
+++OK ATH
The real reason to run Windows is for SAP.
;)
If you are not using SAP then you are not fully tapping out your hardware. There is no software out there (bar a few viruses and disk defragmentors that really cew up the processor, disk and memory of your computer.
Personally, I had an Apple II, then a II+, then a IIe and a Mac... Then I decided I wanted to be a programmer for a profession and... Yes you can survive on programming Macs for large companies... oh, wait, not really. Maybe small companies or the very medium sized firms, but if you want the flexability to move around and the ability to work virtually anywhere. I have enjoyed my now 16 years as a developer on the Windows platform. I had an Apple from late '76 through '90 and do not regret the switch.
Sometimes I long for coding in Apple Basic with the low res and high res graphics, but I suspect that is nostalgia and not a rational reasonable thought.
Slowly waving my hand - "This is not the sig you are looking for."