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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
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"?
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."
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.
Videolan Website
Total Commander, or Salamander Commander. Both are excellent file managers, and they make WinZip un-needed.
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
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
My favorite Windows apps:
Firefox
Thunderbird
Gimp
OpenOffice
Putty
Filezilla
Inkscape
Other than that about it's good for is games.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Get UltraEdit-32. Best text editor I've ever used on Windows.
Did you know that gullible is not in the dictionary?
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.
Forgive him. He's a Mac user, so he doesn't realise that software is supposed to be obtuse to learn, frustrating to maintain and butt ugly.
Blank until
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'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?
* 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
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?
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.
It includes these helpful, excellent, and *free* programs:
After that, I'd go with the real advantage of XP: Games!
games journalism blog
Boot Camp would be almost useless to a web designer or developer - you have to reboot to test it.
padding: 3px 5px 2px 2px;
Perfect in Safari, right now lets reboot into windows & check IE (time passes..)
padding: 3px 4px 2px 1px;
hmm, looks ok in Safari still, righty oh, reboot back to win (times passes..)
ARGGHHHH!
* Game Over * High Score: 264,846,927 -- Your Score: 14
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
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.
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)
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.
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/
"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."
... 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
... thems was teh days.
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
Actually Pro/ENGINEER only used to run on SGI gear back in the late 80's early 90's
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.
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?
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.
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.
Bonzi Buddy, CoolWebSearch, anything and everything from Gator/Claria. Best of all it's all free!
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...
First important app: "How to right-click!" :p :p :P
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
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.
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!
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();
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.
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.
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".
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.
Never mind the features: Picasa is touchy-feely and has what I believe Mac people call "The snappy".
I bought a Mac Mini because I thought it might be a good idea to store my growing photo collection on a machine that belonged to me, rather than my employer. I allowed myself to believe the hype about iPhoto, was curious about OSX so I chose the Mac.
With 1GB RAM, iPhoto 5 takes unacceptably long to start up, stutters while scrolling through the library, freezes for seconds at a time, and generally gets in the way of doing what you want to do. It does work in the foreground (so you have to wait) that should happen in the background ("Saving changes..."). Verbs are frequently where I least expect them to be. The import process is messed up (it expects you to name the "roll" before showing you what's on it. I can't find a way to rename the roll afterwards).
It's possible iPhoto 6 is an improvement, but I'm damned if I'm paying $79 to find out.
On my work Windows laptop, with half the RAM and half the CPU speed of the Mac, Picasa is speedy and fluid. Verbs are where I expect to find them; nothing is fiddly and everything makes sense.
On the bright side, the Mac runs Firefox acceptably, and does a nice job of running Azureus...
To wrench us back onto topic: is it worth dual booting your Mac just to run Picasa? Possibly not -- rebooting is a pain in the arse. But I would seriously recommend any Mac zealot spend an hour or so playing with Picasa, just to remind themselves that it *is* possible that someone other than Apple can do usability. If there was an music library that used the Picasa approach to UI -- "Tucasa"? -- I'd drop iTunes in a heartbeat.
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
...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.
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.
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.
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.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
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.
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.
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.
Uproariously funny concept.