Redeemer.Blog

Here are some useful free/open source Windows Apps that are a "must" for me. 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.

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