Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

Gawker's Lifehacker blog is putting together a list of essential free tools for Windows users. I'm amused to see that I'm already using all of them...

• Firefox Tabbed, pop-up-blocking web browser with an ever-expanding base of functionality-enhancing extensions.


• Thunderbird Email client with spam filters, saved search folders, RSS-reading and multi-account support.


• Trillian Instant messenger that supports multiple protocols (AOL/ICQ/MSN/Yahoo!), being logged onto multiple AOL accounts at one time, instant Wikipedia lookup, spellcheck, and conversation logging.


• Picasa Photo manager tracks digital images and albums with keywords and ratings, exports web galleries, resizes images, removes red-eye and offers effects and edits.


• iTunes Music player organizes thousands of tunes into saved search "smart" playlists, records play counts and last played timestamps, de-duplicates your collection, auto-arranges songs into folders by artist and album.


• Ad-aware Spyware detector and cleanser can save even the slowest, most advertising-pummelled Windows installation.


• AVG Anti-Virus Monitors your computer and email for viruses, auto-updates and schedules regular scanning.


• OpenOffice Office suite package opens, edits and saves to Microsoft Office formats, minus the licensing costs.


• Skype Long-distance computer calls over the 'net minus the bill.

I think I'd want to add a few more of my own...

• SmartFTP Fast, well designed FTP client. A real Ronseal application...


• BitLord Probably the best BitTorrent client around.


• jBidWatcher A Free eBay auction watcher


• VLC Watch and listen to pretty much every media format out there...


• Flickr Uploadr Share those photos with the world on Flickr


• CDex Best (and fastest) MP3 ripper around, by far


• RealVNC Direct access to all your PCs and servers


• Spy-bot S&D You can never have too many adware defenders running


• Daemon Tools Mount your CD and DVD images, without burning the disks.


• Sipphone Lite Free 1-800 number calls in the US from the UK using the Internet


• Windows Services for Unix Run and compile UNIX apps on Windows - with better integration than CygWin


• IrfanView Quick Windows image viewer and editor
  

I'm sure there are many more, but that's just a few off the top of my head...

Or rather, off my Start Bar...