Essential Free Windows Tools. : comments [Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff]

...where's the list for Mac users, eh? :D

it looks very similar, but with a few things missed out where there is no MacOSX version.

# Firefox Tabbed, installed.
# Thunderbird, no got round to installing yet as I use squirrelmail through firefox.

# Trillian Instant messenger. Not on MacOSX. E

# Picasa Photo manager. Dunno what is best, but presumably someone will say iPhoto?

# iTunes Music player. Nuff said.

# Ad-aware Spyware. Not sure you need one do you?

# AVG Anti-Virus Not sure you need one do you?

# OpenOffice Office suite - installed.

# Skype Long-distance computer I have never used Skype.

I also have VLC installed on the MacOSX box, a VNC client,

Funnily enough I have never needed Windows services for Unix on MacOSX.

To this I add putty for an ssh terminal and that pretty much matches what I put on every machine I own.

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Someone was talking about games for the Mac (tongue in cheek), pointing out that you go into the store and there's 5 titles to choose from, and you know they're great because you played them on the PC three years ago...

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OpenOffice Office suite - installed.

You are using OpenOffice on a Mac? Are you a masocist or something?

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# Trillian Instant messenger. Not on MacOSX. E
Try http://www.adiumx.com/

I hate Trillian (so bloaty and slow) and use Gaim in Windows...

Picasa Photo manager. Dunno what is best, but presumably someone will say iPhoto?
iPhoto isn't free though - it is part of iLife...

Ad-aware Spyware. Not sure you need one do you?
Not so much.

AVG Anti-Virus Not sure you need one do you?
I *hate* AVG - I'm sure it is better now - but when I last tried it it sucked up every bit of resource the machine had :/

ClamAV is great at picking up Windows nasties - and is available for all Unix platforms and there is a Windows port (http://www.clamwin.com/) which I ought to try some time.

I generally prefer Mplayer to VLC - I haven't found anything that it can't play...

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I had a lot of problems with earlier versions of AVG antivirus, but that was nothing compared to the nightmares with version 7. I'm now using a free antivirus program called Avast. It's terrible, a nightmare to use, but at least (unlike AVG) it doesn't actually stop my computer from running.

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I use Avast - don't have any problems with it at all, just install it and forget about it. It performed most admirably when there was a storm of email bourne virii (Klez IIRC). I ended up getting fed up with all the crap coming in to the home network and set up anti-virus filtering on the mail server...

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I tried Avast on my mother's machine, and it got hung up on one particular virus it couldn't erase. Then, after I'd deep-sixed that one, it did it again.

A shame. I suspect it would be helpful in a less toxic environment, though even so, there's no way she'd be able to cope.

(With one thing and another, I took more than 200 nasties off her machine, and I know there were some left, but I just didn't have time. She's got a couple of virus/adware protectors on there now, so at least the rate of infection should have slowed.)

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When something is that fucked over it is easier to rip off the data and re-install. I tend to run AV and antispyware stuff in safe mode - means anything that starts itself as a service can be got rid of.

I'm actually finding the Microsoft Antispyware Beta one of the most effective tools for sorting out bug ridden Windows machines.

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