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?"

Comments

VLC Media Player

[Chanticrow]

VLC Media Player is a fantastic media player for Windows. It plays just about everything without worrying about codecs or plugins.

Videolan Website

Re:Not needed

[jcr]

I don't think for one minute a regular Mac user is going to even take advantage of the Boot Camp software.

Guess again.

A whole lot of Mac users have one or two apps that they have to use for work, that aren't available for the Mac. Also, anyone designing a web site pretty much has to test it with Internet Exploder. Boot Camp is the alternative to wasting desk space for a Dell.

-jcr

Must have

[LiquidCoooled]

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.

Depends on what "useful" means.

[Kent Brewster]

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 thing I'd get

[yagu]

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:

• Photoshop Elements. Make sure you're looking at version 4 at least. I'm quite sure this is also a Mac product, so if you're already playing with that in OS X, never mind. PSE is a light version of Photoshop for about 1/4 the price depending on where you purchase. It has most of the digital manipulation functionality I need, and interestingly has some features VERY useful not found in Photoshop.
• AVG Anti virus for antivirus. I'm using the free version -- so far I've found it excellent, and haven't had any problems with the machine at all (note: it's a good idea to ensure you have de-installed all of the commercial products in the meantime -- aside from not working very well, they can step on other running anti-virus programs).
• the Ubiquitous OpenOffice, and it's free. It can be a resource hog, but I've not had any Office product installed on my XP boxes for years now and never had a need, and OO just keeps getting better.
• The OpenCD which includes browsers, all kinds of cool and fun free software. Pick and choose, these'll take you a long way.
• Picasa for organizing and sharing and printing (and minor editing) pictures. I wasn't much of a believer in this one, but because of its simplicity I recommended and installed and consulted this for friends and family. And finally was hooked -- it really does a great job for all of the organizing I need. (I believe it's probably on the OpenCD). It may not rival the iPhoto (or whatever OS X has), but it's a sweet product.
• MoodySoft Screen capture software. I do a lot of work requiring quick and easy screen captures. This one's not free, but it's not expensive either, and I've tried about a gazillion different products, so far this has been the best for me.
• Any combination, or even full suite of cygwin software. If you have ANY scripting needs, to get real work done and already know shell and unix utils, this is ESSENTIAL (and, it has an excellent X Server).

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.

Most important (mini)app for you Mac users

[QuantumG]

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.

Re:Most important (mini)app for you Mac users

[3) profit!!!]

At present I'm not aware of any apps that you can get that will convert Apple+click to a right click.

What about this?

Re:Most important (mini)app for you Mac users

[MustardMan]

Uh... this is only relevant on the MacBook. The iMacs all ship with the two-button mighty mouse, and the mac mini is BYOKDM. And, as another poster pointed out, there are workarounds available. The software is BETA.

Must-have software?

[crossmr]

AVG:
http://free.grisoft.com/
Ad-aware:
http://www.download.com/Ad-Aware-SE-Personal-Editi on/3000-8022_4-10399602.html?tag=lst-0-1
Spybot Search and Destroy:
http://www.download.com/Spybot-Search-Destroy/3000 -8022_4-10401314.html?tag=lst-0-2
Hijack This!:
http://www.download.com/HijackThis/3000-8022_4-103 79544.html?tag=lst-0-1
Firefox:
http://www.firefox.com/
Trillian:
http://www.trillian.cc/
Spywareblaster:
http://www.download.com/SpywareBlaster/3000-8022_4 -10486084.html?tag=lst-0-1
And just about anything from:
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/index.html

Off the top of my head:

[Russ Steffen]

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.

Re:Off the top of my head:

[omeomi]

I also enjoy format c:

Which is something Windows users get quite familiar with too I hear.

I've been using Windows since v3.1. I've had to re-install Windows twice. Both times were because of a failed hard drive. You can't easily blame Windows for that. The idea that Windows needs to be frequently reinstalled is a myth perpetuated by the folks who will install whatever spyware/adware crap they see online. It's not the operating system that makes it necessary to frequently "format c:", it's the malicious software that people are willing to install on their systems.

Re:Off the top of my head:

[NutscrapeSucks]

Just for the Mac users out there, this obcession with having a "clean" Registry is the equivilent of "rebuilding the desktop" or "repairing permissions" -- it might have some psychosomatic effects, but it really doesn't make a bit of difference.

Re:Games.

[Tyler Eaves]

Until you get into any sort of industrial work...

AutoCAD? Nope...
Solidworks? Yea right...
Pro/E? Didn't think so...
Electronics Workbench? Nope...

and the list goes on and on...

Re:How about...

[MikeFM]

My favorite Windows apps:

Firefox
Thunderbird
Gimp
OpenOffice
Putty
Filezilla
Inkscape

Other than that about it's good for is games.

After setting up Windows for a test.

[Inoshiro]

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.

I have used a PC for 2 weeks

[mogabog]

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

Re:I have used a PC for 2 weeks

[Sycraft-fu]

Well since you mentioned it on Slashdot, you are going to get told anyhow:

A DLL is a Dynamic Link Library. Basically it's a collection of executable code that's not meant to be executed directly, but rather to be called by programs. Orignally the idea was to cut down on resorce usage as you only needed one copy of the code on disk or in memory. These days all programs get their own compy in memory (for stability reasons) and programs often include their own copies on disk to ensure they get the version they want. Their primary uses today are:

1) To allow the easy use of 3rd party code. Say I want to encode MP3s or something, but don't want to write it all myself. Instead, I can just get LAME complied as a DLL, and put calls to that with my software. That also allows for the MP3 encoding section to be upgraded without messing with the main executable.

2) To reconsile incompatible licenses. In my previous example, you could use a LGPL program (LAME) that requires source release without releasing your entire source wince it's called as a library. To link it in your own code would require opening up that code. Conversely, an OSS program can make calls to non-OSS software, with no problems. It never needs access to the code, just calls the library.

Flashing BIOS is much simpler, it simply means to update the system BIOS. The BIOS is what loads when you first turn your system on. Some comptuers call this boot ROM, firmware, or a host of other names. Regardless, on the PC it's what loads when you turn the power on. Sometimes, computer makers with to put out fixes or improvements for that. To flash your BIOS is to apply the new update. Generally these days you just download and run a Windows program and it takes care of it.

Re:I have used a PC for 2 weeks

[Creepy]

really?

I didn't know Windows always creates copies of DLLs for stability reasons... that kind of defeats the purpose of dlls, but I can see if the library itself was unstable there may be some advantages to that. There is actually another legacy reason for DLLs - the code can be loaded or unloaded as needed, so a large app could use a much smaller memory footprint (and load much faster) since all functions of the app don't have to be loaded when the program starts up. This became more of a non-issue much earlier in the life of dlls, but some of the structure that supported it is still lying around (because it's useful for plug-ins).

The traditional way a dynamic shared library works (specifically, a dynamic library means dynamic link library [dll] on Windows, shared object [so] or shared library [sl] on UNIX or UNIX-likes, and dynamic library [dylib] or framework on mac) is the application starts and checks its symbol table to see if all the symbols it needs are in memory. If it can't find the function for the symbol (and it's marked in a way that identifies it as dynamic), the program searches the library path for the first instance of the symbol it finds. The program then starts (loads) the library and updates the internal symbols to point to that library's address space. If the library is already loaded, the program dynamically links to the addresses in the library (but doesn't start it).

    It is also possible to indirectly load and unload libraries, which is how plug-ins work (normally the symbols the app needs for dynamic libraries are set at link time, so no special processing is required). On UNIX (and mac as of X.3, though there is another way to do it that worked on older OS's) this is through the dlfcn (dlfcn.h header - stands for dynamic library function) commands dlopen, dlclose, and dlsym (also some others like dlerr). I forget what Windows uses, but the idea and functionality is similar. The idea is you can load or unload and look up symbols as needed. A long time ago, this was for performance and memory reasons, as noted above, but is now pretty much exclusively used for plug-ins.

Apple prefers using a special type of dylib called a framework. Essentially, a framework is a lot like an application on mac - a directory with a regular structure that looks like a file in the GUI.

    One of the problems with dynamic libraries is they can break if, say, some legacy code is removed from a newer version that is required by a certain app. This spawned app specific dynamic libs like the ones that often litter Windows directories. Apple people do something of the same with embedded frameworks. I've never really found an advantage to doing this over static linking (which copies the library into the app) outside of maybe patching, however, so it's probably not the most useful thing. I might be forgetting some good reason, but I can't come up with it at the moment - even third party code can be statically linked (but perhaps that's the reason - to be able to patch third party code).

Re:I have used a PC for 2 weeks

[senatorpjt]

"Flash BIOS" is called "Update Firmware" on a Mac. Like you have to do before you can install Boot Camp.

Here's what I run just about every day:

[Woldry]

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)

my list

[timothv]

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.

Google Pack

[SilentOneNCW]

The *one* thing I'd download first after installing XP is none other than the Google Pack: http://pack.google.com/

It includes these helpful, excellent, and *free* programs:

• Google Earth
• Picasa
• Mozilla Firefox
• AdAware SE Personal
• Norton Antivirus 2005 SE
• Adobe Reader
• Google Talk
• Google Video Player

After that, I'd go with the real advantage of XP: Games!

• World of WarCraft
• Unreal Tournament 2004
• Football Manager 2006
• Battle For Middle Earth 2
• Battlefield 2
• The Sims 2
• StarCraft!

Pricelessware

[Anonymous Coward]

www.pricelessware.org

Re:Not needed

[prell]

Also, anyone designing a web site pretty much has to test it with Internet Exploder. Boot Camp is the alternative to wasting desk space for a Dell.

Or you could use BrowserCam :-)

Picasa

[alphakappa]

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)

Re:flame war?

[hackwrench]

Dictionary:
http://wordweb.info/

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

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

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

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

Re:Wrong

[LookoutforChris]

"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."

Wow...

First off Pro/ENGINEER was first available for Linux with the release of WildFire. That'd be version 24 for you old-schoolers. As of right now they only support RedHat on SUN or HP hardware. And that's just Pro/ENGINEER ... no Mechanica, no Intralink or Windchill versions are available for Linux. So it's completely incorrect to say that all of PTCs latest software packages are available for Linux. See www.ptc.com

Actually Pro/ENGINEER only used to run on SGI gear back in the late 80's early 90's ... thems was teh days.

Next up, SolidWorks has never been available for anything other than Windows and probably never will be. Microsoft and SolidWorks are joined at the hips. So it's absolutely incorrect to say that any of SolidWorks software packages are available for Linux. See www.solidworks.com

Somehow I doubt I you've used Pro/E or SW.

Re:Picasa

[Yaztromo]

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.

This is easy to set-up with iPhoto. Just create an Automator task that takes the files in a folder and auto-imports them into iPhoto when activated. Create a folder to dump photos into, and enable it's folder actions to call your Automator task whenever a file is added to the folder. Done.

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.

In the Library view, right click on the photo and select "Revert to Original". Edits in iPhoto are also non-destructive -- editing an image actually creates a new image file. The original is still present on your hard drive -- you just have to tell iPhoto to revert to the original, and you're ready to go.

These may not solve all of your issues with iPhoto, but if you feel the need or requirement to work with it, hopefully knowing these two tricks will make it a little less annoying to you.

Yaz.

Re:Games.

[R3d M3rcury]

Well, I was going to start off this post the various other products that you could use instead of those product names. But I realized that I don't know enough about any of those products.

What might have been more Informative (moderators, note) is to do a little research and see what Macintosh products might replace these. As a person who, I assume, does industrial work, this might have been quite valuable.

You see, it's easy to throw out application titles and say, "See? You can't CAD on a Mac because there's no AutoCAD!" But what about VectorWorks, VersaCAD, or the products from Ashlar-Vellum? A trip to Apple's database gives me those three.

Of course, you have to look for them. I remember being told that Macs couldn't do accounting because there was no QuickBooks. There was plenty of other accounting software available for the Mac. But the only accounting software that this person knew was QuickBooks and if that didn't run a Mac, well, you couldn't do accounting.

Check out some of the Mac solutions. You might be surprised.

I'd add errorless CD ripper, DVD player, Avivo

[MojoStan]

That's a pretty good list. A few of you selections reminded me of some other useful related tools.

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

Foobar2000 is a great powerful alternative to iTunes, but every new Windows user should know about Exact Audio Copy (EAC) for making errorless CD rips. The "jitter correction" in other rippers (like iTunes) is not enough!

Video: Media Player Classic with ffdshow

That reminded me of the important fact that Windows XP does not come with a DVD decoder by default. This is almost never a problem because DVD decoders are always bundled with retail DVD drives and PCs with DVD drives. However, Apple obviously doesn't bundle a Windows DVD decoder with their Intel Macs, so Boot Camp users need to purchase a DVD decoder (e.g. PowerDVD, WinDVD, PureVideo Decoder) or download a non-DirectShow DVD decoder/player like Media Player Classic or VLC.

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?

Re:Adding a few more...

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI, uTorrent isn't open source.

Good news

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

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.

Re:flame war?

[moro_666]

now when i boot to windows ...

install 3 different versions of anti spyware things , a virus scanner,
disable everything that makes windows comfortable.

i guess my first app would be old-timer total commander, then cygwin ;)

but just for the start, the updates of the windows will make you restart the machine at least 5-7 times before the machine gets all it done :D

and they're telling me that installing linux is time consuming and difficult, pffffft

Re:I missed one.

[yurigoul]

Since when did Opera stop making a Mac version of their browser?

Just checked, it is still there. Clicked on the free download link at opera.com and the download of a nice mac disk image started.

Re:I have used a PC for 15 minutes, and it sucked

[Ohreally_factor]

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.

Re:Living off the grid -- easier than you think.

[Halo1]

MacOs X I find a pain to use with many different documents open in several different applications - you can switch between programs easily, but then have to use whatever scheme that program uses for switching windows (which may or may not conform to the UI guidelines).

cmd-` always works in my experience.

Re:Living off the grid -- easier than you think.

[Anonymous Coward]

RISC OS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC_OS) certainly had an active task bar long before Windows. It worked a bit differently (better actually) from the one in Windows. Each running program had an icon in the taskbar. Open windows from the applications could be accessed from a menu invoked from these icons. There were also a lot of toys/tools that could be run on the taskbar such as clocks, menus, etc.

Lacerte

[jaypaulw]

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.

music-related windows applications

[roedelius]

P2P: Soulseek
Real-time Audio Synthesis: Audiomulch
Modular Synthesis: SynthEdit

Here's a few.

[amper]

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.

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. ...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.

Re:Companion too for DVD Decrypter: DVD Shrink

[Anonymous Coward]

Mac The Ripper and DVD2one do this with no difficulty, and it's all one-click (or almost) operation.

Re:Games.

[mrchaotica]

Well, of course actual Computer Science is platform-agnostic. I'm just saying that, because I personally only use UNIX-like systems, I have very little interest in bothering to learn the Windows API(s) and programming style. Not to mention that every course my school offers is based on cross-platform technologies (although that will change; they're planning to change "software practicum" from Java to .NET next year)...

Re:flame war?

[jafac]

What about Cygwin? Don't forget Cygwin! Windows is unbearable without Cygwin!

(screw that SFU garbage - if you even moderately secure your system, their service just hangs on startup without even the courtesy of an error message).

Homie does right-click...

[MsGeek]

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.

Re:Living off the grid -- easier than you think.

[arminw]

....you can switch between programs easily, but then have to use whatever scheme that program uses for switching windows ....

In OSX, the Expose function allows easy switching between apps and numerous windows within them. Does MS have something like that? The taskbar gets pretty crowded fast and then it becomes hard to figure out which one is the right one.

Re:flame war?

[poolmeister]

Windows bashing aside a sec (not that use it myself or anything, god forbid!) there is a bunch of freeware/OSS links over at nethomehelp.co.uk for Windows n00bs.