My last post with my top apps for Windows is more than 2 years old. Here is my latest list of my top apps for Windows:
7-zip – This is a great free replacement for WinZip or WinRAR; it will allow you create zip files which I find is most commonly used compression standard.
Adobe Photoshop – Extremely powerful digital graphics editor and although I only use 5% (if that) of all the features that it offers, it’s a great piece of software. There are free alternatives though such as paint.net which offer great features over the Paint Brush program that comes pre-installed with Windows and Microsoft has not bothered making any enhancements to it.
CCleaner – This is the default software I install on any computer that I am asked to service. It allows you clean up your Windows machine without manually going into the registry. I use this especially to clean up the Windows start-up items that tend to slow down your Windows start-up time (when you are not careful installing software and hit next, next, next all the way through to the finish).
DAEMON Tools – The Lite version is free and it allows your to map .iso files to a virtual drive. I don’t remember the last time I actually burned something onto a CD or a DVD, so this is a great utility that will allow you to create virtual drives. Be careful when installing it; it will by default install some bloatware if you don’t select them during the installation process.
Firefox – I keep flipping back and forth between Chrome (the recently new web browser from Google) and Firefox; it has a huge number of extensions/add-ons to extend your browser’s capabilities. Although Chrome has become very popular and Google was of course able to achieve it’s high popularity in a relatively short time because they were able to push it out through the their search engine, which most of us use. I still prefer Firefox!
freeSSHd – Ever wanted to flip some files over to your home PC (not just one file but a bunch), aside from the usual methods such as email, Dropbox, etc. this will allow you to setup an SSH daemon server and then connect to it using a client (something like WinSCP) and securely transfer files over.
FTP Rush – This is by far my favourtie FTP client application, plus it’s free! Try it and you’ll know what I am talking about.
Google Picasa – In the recent years, my photo collection has drastically grown especially after I acquired a digital SLR camera. I always fear that this photo collection will accidentally disappear if my hard drive crashes. Although there are hardware solutions from preventing from loosing your files such as a RAID server, I oped out for Google Picasa and storing all my photos online. This way if my hard drive crashes, all my photos will still be accessible via Picasa Web Albums. The Picasa Windows application allows to store all my photos online and share them with my family members and/or friends.
MediaMonkey – You probably own an MP3 player or a smartphone that allows you to list to your music collection. At some point you probably wonder why some of the music you have has weird names, titles, etc. Most, if not all, MP3 players use what are called ID3 tags to sort and display your music. This program will allow you to sort out all your music collections ID3 tags (artist names, song titles, genre, etc.).
PSPad – This is an absolute must alternative to the featureless Notepad that comes pre-installed with your Windows machine. PSPad have endless features to edit your simple text files; I use quite often to do regular expression searches and replacements, but there is a lot more.
Skype – Although it has been causing me some headache recently because of how many times it crashes, I haven’t found an alternative, plus this is what most people use and it would be tough to convince anyone else to switch to something else.
VLC Media Player – This will play all your video formats. You most likely won’t find a video format that this application does not support. This is also a great replacement for Windows Media Player that comes pre-istalled with Windows.
Winamp – I’ve recently come back to Winamp to list for my tunes. I used Foobar2000 which is also a great music player but I made the switch back to Winamp.