Useful Apps thread

[stunno]

Powerdesk - Free edition THE best file manager replacement around!

[Guest 20157]

K Lite Codec pack - This is the only media player you'll need. I've used Zoom, VLC etc but nothing comes close to K Lite.

[MetalGearAl]

Originally Posted by big1

I should ask you to put some money up first. But you would only lose it VideoLan is superior to BSPlayer. Though BSPlayer is a good player in itself. As far as VideoLan is concerned, if the file you point it at contains a media file - it plays it.

So what? It comes with a load of built in codecs, or it just installs them alongside it? Surely codecs are what control what the program can or can't play?

[Guest 41975]

FREE OFFICE SOFTWARE THAT WORKS. And its damn good too www.openoffice.org

[Dean[SAS]]

Originally Posted by stapp

K Lite Codec pack - This is the only media player you'll need. I've used Zoom, VLC etc but nothing comes close to K Lite.

You're kidding right?! codec packs are the worst thing you can install on your system. All you need is Xvid, Divx and FFDShow.

[Ono]

BMExtreme - keeps tabs on how much you have downloaded during the Session, Day, Week and month. Useful for keeping an eye on how much you exceed BTOW's monthly caps until you leave them next year

[Guest 33684]

Originally Posted by MetalGearAl

So what? It comes with a load of built in codecs, or it just installs them alongside it?

Yes there are a bunch of codecs distributed with the package. Some of which it is sugested you make a donation for, but that is upto the individuals concerned. As for the player itself, once installed it just locates the codecs you have on your system and uses them. There is a lot of information on the player here: http://www.videolan.org/doc/faq/en/videolan-faq-en.html

The main benefit here is the fact that videolan can for the want of a better word "interogate" a file and extract the video content. A program such as BSPlayer et al. Doesn't possess this facility, it is looking purely for a media file and if you point it at a zip or a bin it chokes and you get an error. Likewise, if you point BSPlayer at a file and it cannot interpret the video track, it throws up an error. In my time using both programs, videolan is my fallback. If nothing else plays the file, videolan doesn't seem to have a problem.

Surely codecs are what control what the program can or can't play?

Yes they do. Though you can get something like ffdshow which takes care of most of them. The default installation of videolan though seems to encompass the frequently used codecs.

[Guest 28605]

Remote Desktop.

Connect to a remote computer & work at that computer as if you were sitting at it. - Included with XP & download available for 2k)

RealVNC

-Free software to perform a similar function to remote desktop.

VirtualPC

Run different OS's on the same PC. Not free but very useful.

MSDE (Microsoft SQL Server Desktop Edition)

One of the most powerful database engines available and it's FREE! No client tools though & some performance/scalability limitations.

Ghost

One of the most useful programs in the world. :bow:

[compa]

Originally Posted by Doppleganger

VLC Media Player

Plays just about anything you throw at it. A handy feature is being able to view media files before they're fully downloaded.

What do you reckon to the comment about a reported virus? on the download page.

[Guest 993]

nedit - Free multi-purpose text editor. X Windows based but will run on Windows using...

cygwin - Free Linux API for Windows. Lets you run a whole bunch of UNIX things on Windows. Originally a RedHat project, so it's based on RedHat's package system. Handy especially for running SSH (secure shell) on Windows (a necessity if you're using VNC as VNC is not secure, unlike Remote Desktop).

PRTG - "PRTG (Paessler Router Traffic Grapher) is an easy to use Windows software that monitors bandwidth usage and other network parameters via SNMP" - i.e. you can graph bandwidth on any devices supporting SNMP. Especially handy for people with cable modems as you can monitor throughput on the modem without including internal LAN traffic. Free in a cut down version that monitors one device at a time.


TightVNC - Another VNC app. Uses compression to reduce traffic. Not as good as Remote Desktop, but useful in it's absense.


Miranda IM - Free open source, multi-protocol Instant Messenger. Supports MSN, ICQ, AIM, Yahoo, Jabber and others.

Yahoo! Companion for Mozilla/Firefox - Free unofficial version of the Companion toolbar for Mozilla/Firefox. Especially useful for Yahoo's Bookmarks feature which means you can get to your bookmarks anywhere in the world either through their Bookmark web page, or using the Companion toolbar on IE(with the official toolbar) or Mozilla/Firefox (with this unofficial version).


JDiskReport - Free disk space grapher/reporter. Java based and works on many platforms.


Auction Sentry - Auction snipe/auto-bid tool. Not free (though there is a trial period), but could be worth it if you really want to win those auctions. Doesn't risk your details on 3rd party servers, but instead does the bidding from your PC. Requires PC to be on and Auction Sentry running at the time the bid will be placed. Sniping works better with broadband.

Daemon Tools - Mount ISO images of CDs and DVDs, without having to burn them to a real disc. Handy for testing images. Emulates copy protection.

Winamp - Media player (works best with audio, MP3/WMA/etc). Winamp 5 recommended.

Cartes du Ciel/Sky Charts - Free sky chart astronomy software.

SpamSource - Plugin for Outlook to report spam to SpamCop. Available in free or pay versions, but the free version works fine enough.

Renamer - Free and powerful file renamer.

Coppermine - Free Photo Gallery software for websites. Requires a web server with MySQL, PHP and either GD or ImageMagick.

Xteq Setup - Tweak tool for Windows.

ClearType Tuner - Microsoft's ClearType tuner for Windows XP. Especially handy for users of TFT monitors.

K9

K9 is an email filtering application that works in conjunction with your regular POP3 email program and automatically classifies incoming emails as spam (junk email) or non-spam without the need for maintaining dozens of rules or constant updates to be downloaded. It uses intelligent statistical analysis that can result in extremely high accuracy over time.

Free Surfer

EMS Free Surfer Companion is the best surfing tool available for Internet Explorer, including intelligent popup stopper, complete cache cleaning and managing, advanced and easy-to-use quick search from favorites/cache, site info manager and hosts file editor.

[Guest 44186]

Originally Posted by compa

What do you reckon to the comment about a reported virus? on the download page.

It is what it says it is, false positives. If the package has any trojans, I've yet to find any. I've done a full system scan with Avast and nothing was found.

[compa]

Originally Posted by Doppleganger

It is what it says it is, false positives. If the package has any trojans, I've yet to find any. I've done a full system scan with Avast and nothing was found.

Cheers for the info.

[Guest 17778]

anyone know what freeware that can download entire websites?

[Guest 17778]

Originally Posted by Wiseman82

Remote Desktop.

Connect to a remote computer & work at that computer as if you were sitting at it. - Included with XP & download available for 2k)

RealVNC

-Free software to perform a similar function to remote desktop.

VirtualPC

Run different OS's on the same PC. Not free but very useful.

MSDE (Microsoft SQL Server Desktop Edition)

One of the most powerful database engines available and it's FREE! No client tools though & some performance/scalability limitations.

Ghost

One of the most useful programs in the world. :bow:

Links would be nice

[Guest 993]

Originally Posted by raymondlin

Links would be nice

www.google.co.uk

[Guest 17778]

What what exactly does he mean bu Ghost being the most useful programs in the word? if I was to google, i need a clue what it is related to....Does he mean Norton Ghost? or something else (but does the same thing?)

[Guest 993]

I'd assume he means Norton Ghost (which is extremely useful), but yeah it could be clearer.

[Guest 28605]

Originally Posted by raymondlin

Links would be nice

We use Norton Ghost at work - It's a life saver!
At home I can re-load Windows + Patches, Drivers, Office, Visual Studio .NET + loads of other stuff in about 25mins instead of a full day re-build!
-Think you can download a trial version here .


http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/default.mspx

-Bought the technology from VMWare or something. - Great stuff!


http://www.realvnc.com/

http://www.microsoft.com/sql/msde/default.asp

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/d...dclientdl.mspx

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/u...moteintro.mspx

[Guest 993]

Originally Posted by Wiseman82

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/default.mspx

-Bought the technology from VMWare or something. - Great stuff!

It's very useful. MS hides the fact it will run non-MS operating systems however, but it does. Just pick 'other' as the OS type. There's no official support for other operating systems, but it will run a variety of Linux systems. I don't know if the pre-MS versions had the extra support software for "other" operating systems which lets you share drives etc. If they did, then that's missing in MS VirtualPC, but it's all there for all the versions of Windows.