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

Decent file manager

[Anonymous Coward]

Total Commander, or Salamander Commander. Both are excellent file managers, and they make WinZip un-needed.

Adding a few more...

[cgenman]

* 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.

Re:What software amazes me?

[lmlloyd]

I have worked with a LOT of designers, artists, video professionals, and even web developers who have REFUSED to ever work on anything but a Mac, and have never used Windows for more than a few minutes. It always amazes me, but I have found myself in situations more times that I can count, where as the one guy in the studio who has ever touched a PC, I have to explain all sorts of simple things, because they don't know the first thing about Windows.

Living off the grid -- easier than you think.

[Yaztromo]

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'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.

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

[tomcres]

It's funny, I'm a former OS/2 user myself. When Windows 95 came out, and OS/2 software was becoming rarer and rarer, I broke down and bought it. It was about as dreadful as Windows 3.1 was, but at least had a useful desktop. I ended up going back to OS/2 and started using Linux regularly at that point, dual-booting between Warp 4 and Slackware (thanks, OS/2 Boot Manager!).

But, eventually, I found that a lot of the mainstream stuff just wasn't available. It took a long time to compile software on a 486 under Linux (there wasn't much binary software for Linux at the time.. all the a.out vs. ELF, Slackware vs. Red Hat... it was ugly) and OS/2 was practically dead at that point. So when I bought a new computer, I got Windows NT 4.0. Other than software that was designed for 95 that didn't like NT and having to be a little choosier with peripherals, I was happy. It was close enough to the OS/2 experience that I was comfortable, so I've been on Windows (NT) ever since.. from 4.0 to 2000 (5.0) to XP (5.1) to XP x64 (5.2).

I'm just guessing, but I think most people's aversion to all things Microsoft stems mostly from the utter unreliability and crudness of Windows 95 and 98. Had they been NT users, I think that they'd have had a different opinion of Microsoft operating systems.

But also, I'm not a developer. I'm more interested in the web, multimedia, and games. Microsoft Money is the one application I can't live without. I used to use Quicken on OS/2, but using MS Money for the first time was an epiphany. I even tried switching to Mac a couple of times, but Quicken is just crap compared to MS Money (for someone like me who knows jack #?@! about finance and needs something that is mistake-proof and simple and interfaces directly with my bank).

Re:I have used a PC for 2 weeks

[FirienFirien]

Bullshit straight back at you. My dad had a Mac SE when I was old enough to think coherently, back when Apple was the field leader and MS was a whelp (yeah, it surprised me too, gizmodo came out with a '20 years ago...' post that was quite informative). Since then it was at each point easier to upgrade within the Apple line rather than switch over to Windows, even though Windows took over as market leader; when I got to university and could pick my first computer, I used the nice 25?33?% apple education discount (UK, don't know what it's like in the US) and got myself a flat panel imac. I was used to macs, and though I'd used programs in windows on the school computers, it was never enough to find out what a lot of the subsystem stuff was. Since then I've bought an iBook, using the handy installation process that copies your entire hard drive and filestructure over so there's no effective change between the first computer and the second. When I left uni and got a job, the office I now work in uses Apple computers exclusively, except one PC for the designers when they need to make a Rhino file in the right format for a windows user to recieve.

Sure, I'm a rare occurence. But while I've wandered around the web enough to come across the terms (especially on bash.org), I've never had a need to find out exactly what they do. I think there's a difference between DLL and .dll files, and I think that BIOS is the sublayer you have to drop to when you want to configure new hardware like RAM or partition your hard drive. But while I've come across the term 'flash BIOS', it means jack shit to me. The only context I have it in is a quick wipe, and that's only because other utilities use the term in that way, and it's a complete guess when applying it to the BIOS as I understand it.

You know why I don't know? Because I don't care. I'm a geek who uses macs, and I don't care about the hordes of people who told me I was doing it all wrong when apple were going down the tube, and I still don't care about the hordes of people who think I'm a moron for using macs. I have no need to know anything at all about the windows subsystem, and so when I come across the terms I see them but ignore them completely. I simply have no need to know what they mean, in the same way that when I see arcane sigs here, I can recognise them as being *nix terms or cryptography (I have familiarity but not mastery of the linux stuff, and I've read Cryptonomicon) - but their meaning isn't obvious simply by looking at them, and I don't have a reason to learn the meaning of each and every single one of them by looking them up or figuring them out.

I may have more understanding of what they are than the average Windows user, just like the gpp. But by no means does that mean I understand them completely, nor that I care to know what they do. I don't need to.