Here are some useful free/open source Windows Apps that are a "must" for me (see also my newer post with even
MORE free programs that work great in Windows 7). This is mostly for my own records so I don't forget the apps. The below is by no means complete since I just got Windows 7 RC1 installed and can't remember some of the apps I need.
- Xnview - a free graphics viewer/converter/organizer that works similar to ACDSee. ACDSee is my personal favourite viewer/organizer, but it is not free. Windows Preview is so good now this program is not necessary for strictly viewing, but if you are organizing photos then Xnview and ACDSee are a must for easy renaming, resizing, moving of images. This program is also multi language so it is perfect for anyone around the globe.
- Foxit Reader Free alternative to Adobe Acrobat Reader. It is smaller and faster, so it loads up much more quickly. For me the importance is that it feels less bloated. Warning: This is semi-nagware in that it has a permanent note in its toolbar to ask you to buy the software.
- Real Altnernative - a codec to let you view RMV (real media video) files without installing the bloated Real Media software.
- Metapad - a super lightweight Notepad replacement. Metapad is not meant to be an HTML or other web editor like Notepad Plus, another open source notepad like app that has nice syntax highlighting, instead its focus is to be super fast to load and very small. It is crucial for me because it supports Unix line endings, which Windows native Notepad does not, so if you open up certain txt files in regular Notepad it looks either corrupted or condensed without linebreaks. Notepad also has a filesize limit which Metapad does not. Replace Notepad completely with Metapad and the problem goes away.
- FooBar - my current media player of choice. It supports many formats including FLACs. This player is kind of barebones but it does have media library support which is pretty cool. It's pretty ugly though.
open source technology
Redemption blogged
Microsoft has lots of useful stuff with PowerToys (particularly Image Resizer and ClearType). They also have a lightweight and effective image mounter called Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel.
Others:
Audacity for audio editing. I hate the GUI, especially the big buttons, but hey, it gets the job done and has lots of plugins you can install.
PaintDotNet for a Photoshop-ish program...I'd put it somewhere between MS Paint and Photoshop in terms of features -- more than the average user will need.
CCleaner for cleaning out junk and yer registry.
Auslogics Disk Defrag for an alternative to Microsoft's defragmenter...much quicker and nice GUI.
OpenOffice for a nice alternative to MS Word -- compatible with tons of document types.
Songbird -- basically Firefox (GUI/customizability) x iTunes. I prefer WMP 11 or iTunes at this stage, but I'm hoping to move to this one someday.
OpenOffice and Google docs are my current default office apps, unfortunately neither supports Word docx format (very common) and when I received those I'm forced to use the free Word reader that you can download from Microsoft. I think its pretty safe to say when Office 2010's free web versions are made available Microsoft has a real chance of becoming the standard once again (if they do things right).
PS. Beware CCleaner. I was using it fine, and then somehow a few weeks ago it destroyed my laptop's registry. I was forced to reinstall Windows.
Anybody got any hints how to sample colours in Paint.NET without having to use the colour dropper? In Paint Shop Pro you can hold down CTRL in any tool to use the sampler.