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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...
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"?
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.
Total Commander, or Salamander Commander. Both are excellent file managers, and they make WinZip un-needed.
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.
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.
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.)
Now let us pretend for a moment that this actually is some computer user who has already mastered implementing RSS+Atom into their blog, yet simultaneously never even noticed that Windows has existed alongside the Mac OS, nor ever even dabbled in it until the release of boot camp last week(I can hardly imagine them rushing out to a store and purchasing a copy of MS Windows for their not-even year old Intel Mac) So why would they be interested in beta software like MS Max? (Which is really only ever going to be as good as last years version of Apple's iLife?) And why is it that their top 10 Mac apps seem to resemble the top rated list from macupdate.com.
Now lets come back to the real world: If you haven't dabbled in windows ever then you're either a recent jail escapee or very good at digging one's own head deeply into sand. This story doesn't add up, and is coinciding with a new wave of windows advertising. Which is fairly interesting as it's before a major release is due. I think our friends in Redmond are just trying to peddle off some Windows sales. Now excuse me I have to drink coffee with a pretty lady from getty-images.
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'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?
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.
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.
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".