I did not make this list,i just found it useful so i am posting it to help you guys
Windows Enhancement
Windows isn't Windowsy-enough for some people. These are apps to add or modify some kind of feature.
- TaskSwitch XP - Free/Open Source - Pretty Alt+Tab replacement tool with previews for XP
- Logon Loader - Free - Logon Screen changer for Windows XP
- Microsoft Powertoys for Windows XP - Free - Latest in the ongoing suite of neat little apps Microsoft has released to go along with Windows. Of special note are ClearType Tuner, Alt+Tab Replacement, and TweakUI.
- ShellToys XP - Shareware ($53) - Collection of context-menu . . things . .
- Entbloess - Shareware ($8, free for 100 uses) - Yet another task switcher for XP and 2000, brings OSX's Exposé feature to windows.
- StrokeIt - Free - OS-Wide customizable mouse gestures.
- Winkey - Free - Customizable hotkey program.
- HoeKey - Free - *Ridiculously* customizable hotkey program.
- SharpKeys - Free - Lets you remap any key to another key.
- HotKeyControl XP - Free - Another keymapping app. Requires VB 6.0 Runtimes.
- Clickie - Free - Adds "Copy Path Name To Clipboard" and "Open MSDOS Prompt" to your context menu.
- TrueLaunchBar - Free - Super Ultra Beefed-Up Taskbar of Doom.
- Sound Control - Free - Replaces the default Windows sound mixer with a new one, with customizable hotkeys, and other bonus features.
- Joe - Free - ANOTHER Alt+Tab enhancer.
- Sizer - Free - Lets you resize any window to a specific exact customizable size.
- MultiDesktop Manager - Free - Virtual Desktop Program.
- TrayIt - Free - Lets you shove any program into the systray, if they like it or not.
- sDesk - Free / Open Source - Virtual Window Manager for Windows. No longer being developed.
- AllSnap - Free - AllSnap adds window-snapping functionality to all windows. It's neat and tiny and good.
- X-Setup Pro - Shareware ($8) - Comprehensive Windows tweaking tool. Gives you access to tweak a ton of stuff TweakUI doesn't list.
- Tclock2 - Free / Open Source - Taskbar Enhancer. Lets you mess with the start menu, your clock, set alarms, etc. Sup, shii :cool:.
- WinRoll - Free / Open Source - Adds "Rolling" or "Windowshade" mode to all windows.
- Clipomatic - Free - Expands the capability of the clipboard, allowing for multiple clipboards, permanent clips, etc.
- Icon Restore - Free - Lets you save and restore your desktop icon layout in two clicks.
- Chameleon Clock - Free - Another Systray Clock Replacement.
- ieSpell - Free - Too much of a mouthbreathing retard to learn how to spell? Let computers do it for you!
- xplorer2 - Shareware ($35, Free "lite" version available) - Windows Explorer replacement, with a TON of built in extra features.
For SOME people, just adding actual features isn't enough. You've got to lower your UI closer to the ground, put a giant chrome tailpipe on it, get yo' self some phat chrome spinnaz, add 27 extra gauges on your dash, wait what were we talking about?
- Y'z Dock - Free - OSX-style dock, for Windows XP. Widely accepted as the best of the assorted dock utilities out there. Note: there is no official site for Y'z Dock due to legal issues with Apple.
- Samurize - Free - You need to know your hard drive free space percentage all the time, right?
- Random Desktop - Free - Wallpaper Randomizer for all versions of Windows.
- Wallpaper Master - Free - Another Freeware Wallpaper changer. Customizable, to change wallpapers whenever you want it to, either automatically or on-demand.
- Rainmeter - Free - "Computer Hardware Information Tool". Like Samurize, but made by the guy behind Rainlendar.
- Konfabulator - Free - Everyone's favourite widget runner. Made irrelevant for Mac by the advent of Dashboard, but still works perfectly fine on Windows. Now owned (and set free) by Yahoo!.
- Kapsules - Free - Like Konfabulator, but not.
- CustomBar - Shareware ($20) - Like Rainmeter, Samurize, etc, BUT IT'S A BAR. That makes it totally different, right guys?
- CrowBar - Free / Open Source - Another bar-type monitor thingie, but this one was made by CTZ, so that makes it :cool:
- WinBar - Free - Like Rainmeter, Samurize, CustomBar, Crowbar, and 8 billion other applications.
- SmartBarXP - Free - What's that? You want another bar statistic application? You're in luck!
- WKrelleM - Free - Yet another needless chrome stat information bar thing, this time ported from *nix.
- DesktopSidebar - Free - Gaudy chrome, Longhorn Style
- ToolBox - Free - A launchbar/box but shiny and translucent.
Some things you just shouldn't try enjoying the internet without.
- Mozilla Firefox - Free / Open Source - If you need an explanation, you have been living under a rock for the past three years (Wiki page)
- Portable Firefox - Free / Open Source - Got a thumbdrive? Enjoy Firefox? Hate being forced to use IE when you're on the go? Portable Firefox lets you stuff a self-contained version of Firefox on a portable device, along with extensions, bookmarks, etc. Updated often with Final Builds as they get released by the Mozilla Foundation.
- Mozilla Thunderbird - Free / Open Source - A Mail/News/RSS reader. Built in adaptive spamfiltering plus an easy-to-adapt-to ui, along with the established theming and extension power of Firefox.
- PuTTY - Free / Open Source - Suite of SSH-related goodies, including a SSH terminal, an SCP client, an SFTP client, and a bunch of other stuff.
- WackGet - Free / Open Source - Goon-Made frontend for wget. You give it files and it downloads them for you. Use it in conjunction with the Firefox Extension DownloadWith to get a really good and potentially silent download manager linked up with your browser.
- RSSOwl - Free / Open Source - RSS Reader for Windows.
- SpamBayes - Free / Open Source - Standalone Bayesian Spam Filter Proxy. It sits around and gets mail run through it before it gets to you. If said mail sucks, it goes away. Useful if for some reason you can't be bothered to use Thunderbird.
- POPFile - Free / Open Source - Another free adaptive spamfilter program. You train it, It learns, Spam Goes Away.
- Simple Socket File Transfer - Free - A quick and simple way of transferring files, especially to people who don't "get" computers.
For when you want to vaguely try to be social on the internet.
- Gaim - Free / Open Source - Aim-style messaging for every service under the sun.
- Miranda - Free / Open Source - ICQ-style messaging for every service under the sun.
- Trillian - Free or $25 for one year - Sorta it's own style of messaging, but again for every service ever (Wiki page)
- Skype - Free - VoIP for the masses. Also IM. You know, for good measure.
- Gush - Free - Is it an IM client? Is it an RSS reader? Who ****ing knows.
- X-Chat - Free / Open Source - Super-good GTK-based IRC client. "Official" Windows builds are shareware, but it's opensource, so "Unofficial" builds are free.
- HydraIRC - Free - Another really good IRC client.
- Bersirc - Free / Open Source - Yet another great IRC client.
[INSERT TEXT EDITOR HOLY WAR HERE]
- Vim - Free / Open Source - The text editor for manly men. A GUI verison (gVim) is available for those of you scared by the commandline.
- Crimson Editor - Free - Another Text editor out there. Standard advanced features: syntax hilighting, tabs, etc.
- Notepad++ - Free / Open Source - Scintilla-based text editor with syntax hilighting and code-folding.
- SciTe - Free / Open Source - The ORIGINAL Scintilla-based text editor.
- TextPad - Shareware ($30) - Another text editor with the same old features you see everywhere.
- HTML Kit - Free (Pro versionn $55) - Web development centered editor - includes integrated FTP providing remote editing
- Editpad - Pro version ($40), Lite version is free - There really isn't much innovation in the world of Windows Text editors. Editpad is no exception. But at least it has a No-Nags free version available.
- Texturizer - Shareware ($20, Free trial available) - Yet another text editor, same generic advanced features.
- TreePad - Shareware ($30-$90, depending on version. Free "lite" version exists) - It's a basic notepad, but with tree-based structure. Great for taking notes or organizing hierarchical text documents. This Wiki post was initially entered and organized using TreePad Lite. Thanks, TreePad!
- WikidPad - Shareware ($12, Free 30 day trial) - It's a notepad, but with wiki-style text formatting and interlinking.
- KeyNote - Free / Open Source - Another tree-based notepad like TreePad and WikidPad, but it's saves as rich text, has encryption, and it's free.
- EverNote - Free (Beta) - Another note-taking program with support for actually writing notes with some kind of tablet input device.
- SafeSex - Free - A tiny encrypted scratch-pad editor for Windows. Made by Nullsoft.
- UML Pad - Free / Open Source - Notepad. But with UML.
- NexPad - Free - Barely any features at all. It's notepad, but with tabs.
- EDXOR - Free - Another super light-weight text editor. Just about as many features as you can possibly cram into 30k.
- PureText - Free - Well, it's text editing RELATED. PureText strips all RichTextFormatting from a selection. So you can paste it into word or whatever and not have word **** itself over trying to format it however the source was.
For people who have trouble keeping track of their Stuff.
- Google Desktop Search - Free - Google Desktop Search scours through all kinds of different files, either by filename or content.
- Ava Find - Free - Desktop Search / File Management tool. Advanced tips are available here.
- Copernic Desktop Search - Free - Another Desktop Search Tool
- Agent Ransack - Free - It's . . another desktop search tool.
- Dave's Quick Search *bar - It's a quicksearch tool. For people who for some reason don't have a browser that has this feature by default.
For all your mp3 encoding / playback / tagging needs
- Exact Audio Copy - Free - Best CD Ripper ever created. Can be made to interface with your encoder of choice.
- CDex - Free / Open Source - Another good CD Ripping application. Compatible with numerous codecs. Very simple to use.
- Easy CD-DA Extractor - Shareware ($20, free version is crippled) - CD to anything ripper/encoder.
- Foobar2k - Free - Digital audio player OF THE GODS. Playlist-centric, rather than shiny-button-centric like Winamp. Also features a ton of plugins, like a file transcoder, MassTagger/MassRenamer, and a bunch of other stuff (Wiki page)
- Audacity - Free / Open Source - Sound Editor. Not a whole lot to say. It's free and it's about the best you'll get for free.
- K-MP3 - Free - Self-described "audio swiss army knife", does tagging, renaming, transcoding, encoding, and a bunch of other stuff.
- The GodFather - Free - Audio File Manager. Tags, Renames, Moves, Searches, Filters, Etc.
- MusicBrainz - Free - Mp3 analyzer and database. It will help determine what your mp3 is by running it against their huge database of music.
- mp3DirectCut - Free - Lets you chop segments out of an mp3 without having to reencode it.
- Tag&Rename - Shareware ($30, Free trial available) - Incredibly powerful Mp3 tagging and renaming software.
- TagScanner - Free - Powerful tagging and renaming software. Interface can be a little tricky to learn, but it's fantastic once you understand it. Coded by Russians.
- musikCube - Free / Open Source - Foobar2k, iTunes and amaroK had a giant mp3-player orgy and this was the glorious result.
- EvilLyrics - Free - Works in conjunction with most players, including Winamp and Foobar2000 - runs off to the internets to acquire lyrics for whatever's playing.
Everything you'll need to get on the MPAA's most wanted list. I don't support 1 Click Programs in the least, but most people are too lazy/ignorant to learn how to do a proper encode.
Here's a list of **** that does it for you, faggots.- Media Player Classic - Free / Open Source - Remember Windows Media Player 6.4? This is that but with modern features.
- DVD Shrink - Free - Rips, decrypts, edits, shrinks, reencodes and reauthors dvds to your liking, generally so they'll fit on DVD-R's. It'll even pipe the result off to nero to burn it for you.
- DVD Decrypter - Free - Rips dvds to unencrypted dvd images. Recently killed by legal threats from Macrovision, but it's still available. if the .org.uk mirror goes down, it's still hosted at AfterDawn.
- 1Click DVD to AVI - Free - You get to guess what this does.
- DvdReMake - Shareware ($25, demo can't export discs) - Dvd Reauthoring program, lets you take sections out of a dvd, split to several discs, etc.
- Ulead DV Converter - Free - Converts DV Type I to DV Type II. If you know what this means, it might be useful to you.
- DVapp - Free / Open Source - Tool for capturing off a Digital Video Device.
- DScaler - Free / Open Source - Bestest TV Tuner App ever created in the history of ever. If you have a TV tuner, you are required by law to trash whatever piece of **** you're using right now and switch to DScaler immediately.
- webcamXP - Shareware ($40-$100, Free trial available) - Streaming or still-capture webcam software.
- TMPGEnc - Free - Convert damn near anything to MPG.
Perfect for creating and organizing horrible image macros!
- IrfanView - Free - THE image viewing program.
- Picasa - Free - Google-owned image viewing / management software.
- Paint.Net - Free - MSPaint from the future.
- The GIMP - Free / Open Source - Not a whole lot to say about the gimp, it's the gimp. It's free, and people tend to claim it's "just as good as photoshop", but I don't believe them.
- Inkscape - Free / Open Source - Inkscape is an open source vector graphics editor. It saves to .svg by default, and is really quite nice.
- ColorCop - Free - ColorCop is a color picker. It can zoom, sample and average samples, and do a number of other neat things.
- ColorPic - Free - ColorPic is another color picker. It works slightly differently than ColorCop, but it does the same basic thing.
- Dup Detector - Free - Checks images in a directory and determines if there are duplicates. Even checks "near" duplicates or resized duplicates.
- HoverSnap - Free - Advanced screenshot-taking utility.
- Eyedropper - Free - Another global colorpicker.
- Screen Loupe - Shareware ($15, Free Trial Available) - Like the default windows magnifier, but not ****.
Is it secret? Is it safe?
- TrueCrypt - Free / Open Source - Program which allows you to create virtual drives with on-the-fly very-strong encryption. Also lets you hide these virtual drives, or . . do whatever you want with them, great stuff.
- PasswordSafe - Free / Open Source - It's a safe . . for passwords. Lets you organize your passwords and keep them all in one place, which is then HEAVILY encrypted.
- KeePass - Free / Open Source - Another Password Safe. Works just like the rest of them, but this one has a slightly-less-**** UI.
- PINs - Free / Open Source - Yet Another Password Safe. Still works like everything else.
- AxCrypt - Free / Open Source - Simple file encryption. Right click, Encrypt, Enter password.
- Magic Folders / Encrypted Magic Folders - Shareware ($30 and $60 respectively) - Hide or Hide and Encrypt folders on your hard drive. You've got stuff to hide, right?
For determining [or influencing] what is occurring inside your computer machine.
- NetMeter - Free - Tray Application that shows your current upstream and downstream speeds. Also logs total throughput, and can be used to alert you to when you're about to hit your monthly download/upload cap.
- SysInternals Software - Free - Huge Collection of really good utilities, for doing a rather wide range of really useful things. Notable mention: Process Explorer, TCPView, and NTFSInfo.
- WhoLockMe - Free - Explorer extension that lets you figure out what program has a file in use, thus preventing it from being deleted.
- ClockGen - Free - X-TREEM 0V3RCL0KING UTILZ
- SpeedFan - Free - Voltage, Fan speed, Temperature, and S.M.A.R.T. monitoring utility.
- WinDirStat - Free / Open Source - Graphical hard drive usage analyzer. Shows you what is taking up the most space and where it is.
- SpaceMonger - Free - Another graphical hard drive space analyzer. It has the bonus of being self-contained, so you can put it on a thumbdrive.
- SequoiaView - Free - Also another graphical hard drive space analyzer.
- Scanner - Free - Can't get enough graphical hard drive space analyzers.
- Treesize Pro - Shareware ($40, Free trial available) - SH/SC just loves graphical hard drive space analyzers.
- CoolMon - Free - Yet another hardware monitoring tool.
- Motherboard Monitor 5 - Free - The grandaddy of all windows device monitors
- Everest Home Edititon (Formerly Aida32) - Free - Another system device monitoring / hardware diagnostic suite.
- PerfectDisk 7 - Shareware ($45, Free trial available) - Is Windows defrag just too good for you? Do you require big happy graphs to make sure your bits are perfectly aligned? Well, then PerfectDisk is for you!
- Active Network Monitor - Free - ANM tells you what seems to be accessing what port and what it seems to be doing with it.
- Belarc Advisor - Free - Hardware and Software Enumerator, Detector, and Reporter.
Rid yourself of the e-AIDS.
- Spybot Search & Destroy - Free - One of the best malware detectors and cleaners out there.
- Ad-Aware - Free, Depending on version - The other of the best malware detectors and cleaners out there.
- Spyware Doctor - Shareware ($30), Freeware Version can only *scan* - Yet Another Spyware Utility.
- HijackThis! - Free - The one true malware detection and removal device. Logfiles can be parsed by the HijackThis! Logfile Analyzer, to give you an idea of what should stay or go.
- StartupCPL - Free - Advanced control over exactly what programs run at startup.
- CCleaner - Free - "System Optimization Tool". Sometimes, it can be a bit overzealous in it's "cleaning".
- AVG Anti-Virus - Free - It's antivirus! It's free! The Pro-version ($30 for 2 years) is absolutely worth the money, but is not necessary for most users.
- RegSeeker - Free - It's a registry cleaner! Amazing! Free!
WHERE DA FILEZ AT?
- FlashFXP - Nagware ($25) - Best two-pane ftp client ever created by man.
- Filezilla - Free / Open Source - Standard two-pane (or four pane, if you count the trees) FTP client. Supports SFTP via PuTTY.
- SmartFTP - Nagware at random times of the day ($36) - Crazy FTP client with 37 different queues which for some reason certain people really enjoy.
Programs for making or keeping track of things.
- OpenOffice.org - Free / Open Source - Full office productivity suite, and a free one at that.
- AbiWord - Free / Open Source - For when all you need is a nice free Word replacement.
- Mozilla Sunbird - Free / Open Source - A Calendar / Reminder utility in the same vein as Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird. NOTE: still in VERY EARLY stages of development.
- Nvu - Free / Open Source - Mozilla Composer! Rise from your grave!
- Rainlendar - Free - A Calendar Program of a different sort
- Selida - Free - WYSIWYG HTML editor. W3 compliance level unknown.
- Amaya - Free / Open Source - WYSIWYG HTML/CSS editor. W3 compliance DEFINETLY known, since they MAKE IT.
- Stickies - Free - Little post-it note program
- ATnotes - Free - Another tiny post-it note program.
- PDFCreator - Free / Open Source - Print-To-PDF, lets you make PDF's in any program that can print.
- Foxit PDF Reader - Free - Super Fast Lightweight PDF reader.
- Atlantis Nova - Free version of the Atlantis Word Processor.
Everything else.
- TurboLaunch - Shareware ($20) - Provides you with a little Window full of icons. How it is better than the start menu or some hotkeys, I do not know.
- X-Fonter - Shareware ($20) - Font management tool
- WebMon - Free - Website Monitor, sits in your tray and checks sites on a periodic basis, informing you when they update.
- MultiRes - Free - Tray Application that lets you quickly switch resolution and colordepth.
- PowerStrip - Free - Ridiculously powerful application that allows you to do all kinds of crazy things with your display. Lets you set custom resolutions, custom refresh rates, advanced color-correction, etc.
- UltraMon - Shareware ($40, Free 30 days) - Utility for keeping making multiple-monitor setups Not Suck.
- TUGZip - Free - Multi-format archiving tool
- 7zip - Free / Open Source - Super Mega Ultra Compression Program of Doom. Seriously. 7zip will make the smallest files humanly possible using their own special crazy compression algorithm. It can also decompress damn near anything.
- ZipGenius - Free - Slick little zip utility. Opens pretty much anything.
- SyncBack - Free - File Synchronization program, for syncing files to an mp3 player, a thumbdrive, a remote hard drive, etc.
- Unison - Free / Open Source - File Synchronization Utility for keeping files up to date on removable devices.
- PathSync - Free - Another File synchronizer, written by Justin Frankel of Winamp fame.
- Sync2IT - Free - Lets you sync bookmarks across multiple computers over the INTERNETS.
- ThePhoneBOT - Free - PC answering machine and caller id. You've got a spare modem sitting around, right?
- eConsole - Free / Open Source - like a transparent Eterm, but for Windows, so you're limited by the WONDERFUL Windows commandline.
- Girder - $19.99 - Remote Control Software. Get some manner of a remote control for your pc, and this will interpret the signals and do whatever you want with them.
- Citrus Alarm Clock - Free - Mp3 / Wav / Etc alarm clock program. For people who are too good for taskmanager.
- Daily Alarm Clock - Free - Another Mp3/Wav/Etc alarm clock, for people too good for taskmanager OR citrus.
- AppRocket - Shareware ($18) - An application launching program, like Quicksilver for OSX.
- QuickStart - Free - Command-line Program launcher like Quicksilver for OSX.
- WebDrive - Shareware ($49.95, free for 20 days) - Seamlessly makes ftp, sftp, or WebDAV servers appear as Windows drives.
- Macro Express - Shareware ($40, 30 day free trial) - MacroExpress lets you make complex macros that do all kinds of crazy multi-step things easily.
- Beyond Compare - Shareware ($30, Free trial available) - for people too good for diff.
- AM-Deadlink - Free - Checks through browser bookmarks [IE/Mozilla/Firefox/Opera/etc] and determines if links are dead.
- UltraVNC - Free / Open Source - VNC Client/Server (remote desktop) that doesn't suck.
- TightVNC - Free / Open Source - Another VNC Client/Server. Also Doesn't suck.
- Radmin - Shareware ($35, free trial available) - It's not-VNC. does the same stuff as VNC, but not-VNC. Also not free.
- CompareIt! / SynchronizeIt! - Shareware ($25) - Another set of diff/sync tools.
- Gmail Drive Shell Extension - Free - Program that lets you map a Gmail account as a windows drive. Note: Google appears to be more or less blocking this utility now, and using it may result in a temporary "security lockout" on your gmail account.
- HTTrack - Free / Open Source - HTTrack is a website archiver. It'll spider through a site and download everything.
- FreeGuide - Free / Open Source - Desktop customizable TV-Guide.
- LC ISO Creator - Free - Free CD -> ISO Ripper. Only 14k!
- Asterisk@Home - Free / Open Source - Ever wanted to run your very own phone system at home? No? Are you sure?
- burnatonce - Free - Simple cd burning program, burns damn near everything.
- UnxUtils - Free / Open Source - Native Windows ports of assorted GNU utilities. They're native, unlike cygwin, which runs through an emulation layer.
- MinGW - Free / Open Source - A collection of Windows specific header files and import libraries combined with GNU toolsets that allow one to produce native Windows programs that do not rely on any 3rd-party C runtime DLLs.
- Nullsoft Scriptable Install System - Free / Open Source - A tool that allows programmers to create installers for Windows. Includes easy to use installer creator, but can be used to make more complicated installers with ease.
