Freeware Software
There is so much crappy software out there. There is a lot of crappy shareware software with annoying nag screens, free programs which are poorly written, and of course overpriced commercial software. For almost every case of software that you either have to pay
for, or is of this annoying shareware variety, there is a nice little
freeware program that does the job better. Over the years I've used a lot of different software and I think I've found the best for most of the things you'll do on a computer.
If you know of a freeware program that you have very good reasons for superiority over one in my list, please, let me know.
Freeware
- Web Browser: Chrome //Fast, no wasted pixels
- PDF Reader: Chrome //Fast, good for feature-less reading
- Simple Text Editor: Notepad++ //Fast, simple (also use as LaTex editor)
- PDF Writer: PDFCreator //No-nonesense open-source PDF writer
- FTP: FileZilla //Finally a good, practically perfect FTP/SFTP program
- E-mail: Gmail //Still miss folders a little, but love me my google
- Image Viewer: Irfanview //Have only used for rare formats since Picasa 3
- Photo Organization: Picasa //Brilliant Google software
- Video Player: MPC Home Cinema //Cleanest player around for windows
- Movie/TV Organization: XBMC //Perfect program for your hard drive full of movies/tv shows
- Audio Player: Foobar2000 //Just plays audio files, infinitely customizable
- DVD Ripper: DVDShrink //Program I used to rip all my DVDs,
- Bittorrent Client: uTorrent //Haven't switched torrent clients since I found this
- Calculator: Emu48 //Haven't found a better RPN calculator
- Window Manager: WinSplit Revolution //For fast window move/resize
- Unzipper: 7-zip //Clean, faster
- Disk Mounting: Virtual CloneDrive //Just does one thing well
- DVD Movie Writer: DVDFlick //Haven't used much, but seems simple
- Photo Editing: Photoshop
- Operating System: Windows //Good balance between do it 16 ways with Linux and do it my way with OSX
- IDE: Visual Studio 2010 Professional //Messy, but still better debugger and user experience than anything else I've tried (free on DreamSpark)
I use OpenOffice, Spell and Grammar Checkers and translators. Also I did an analysis about it.
http://jrwhyte.wordpress.com/2008/10/07/freeware-vs-commercial-software/
http://jrwhyte.wordpress.com/2008/10/07/spelling-and-grammar-checkers/
http://jrwhyte.wordpress.com/2008/10/09/online-translators-review/
OO doesn't really excite me. It is basically just a slightly crappier Microsoft Office clone. I'm still looking for something truly innovative in that space. Still, it is definitely worth using if you need the power of MSOffice but can't afford it.