You Are a Peacemaker Soul |
 You strive to please others and compromise anyway you can. War or conflict bothers you, and you would do anything to keep the peace. You are a good mediator and a true negotiator. Sometimes you do too much, trying so hard to make people happy. While you keep the peace, you tend to be secretly judgmental. You lose respect for people who don't like to both give and take. On the flip side, you've got a great sense of humor and wit. You're always diplomatic and able to give good advice. Souls you are most compatible with: Warrior Soul, Hunter Soul and Visionary Soul |
Recently, I formatted my computer thanks to some weirdoes with massive complexes sitting in their messy cramped rooms creating viruses out of spite towards successful people or happy people or maybe because they want to feel powerful or important or whatever they want to feel when they create those virtual monsters that reek havoc on innocent computers the world over. Now since I got that out of my system I decided to come up with a list of useful free softwares that one might need on a PC that is blank except for windows.
Before one formats his/her hard drive it becomes important to back up your data into an external medium or on a partition that one is not going to format.
This is a useful tool to back up your data and it supports various methods like zip files, cds, external drives, etc.
http://www.snapfiles.com/apphistory/simplysafe_history.html
Are you afraid of loosing important bookmarks and settings on Firefox browser, Netscape or important emails on Thunderbird? If yes, then fear not! This software comes to the rescue. U can take a back up, save the zip file on a CD or external drive. After u format your computer u can reinstall the app, select the file and ‘restore’ your profile settings to get your old browser and email client back as you remember it before your machine was formatted (I didn’t back up my browser and I am quiet bugged now, don’t make the same mistake!).
http://mozbackup.jasnapaka.com/
IE users can use this software to backup their favorites and settings.
AVG and Avast are the most popular free anti-virus applications out there. Both have similar features and are a must for internet users.
AVG
http://www.iobit.com/avg-com.html
Avast
http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html
AVG is a little more popular according to download.com but I feel both are equally good. AVG has one advantage over Avast, it automatically gets updates but Avast has to be manually updated.
Virus were bad enough, now we have to deal with a new threat knows as spyware. Basically a spyware is a malicious application that sends information regarding your computer activities to the maker of the Spyware. This can slow down your internet speed as your bandwidth is being used up to send info. Thankfully Microsoft has come out with, ‘Windows defender’, an effective tool in keeping your PC free from Spyware.
A firewall is an application that monitors all the programs accessing the net. It will let u block the programs you don’t want accessing the internet and no program will be allowed to access the net without your consent. Windows service pack 2 comes with a free firewall. Just go to security center in control panel and enable the firewall. If u don’t have service pack 2 it’s about time u upgraded.
Service pack 2
http://www.update.microsoft.com/windowsupdate/v6/thanks.aspx?ln=en&&thankspage=5
This software promises to keep your computer running smooth. It promises to clean registry errors, piracy sweep, spyware cleaner, tune up and some other features. I recommend u install it and run a scan every week.
http://www.iobit.com/advancedwindowscareper.html
Windows comes in with a built in file searcher but anybody who is used it will know how slow it is. It’s an absolute nightmare to search for any file and if u your hard drive is large u are finished! Fortunately there are several other search applications from Google and MSN to name a few that are much faster and hence more effective.
I would recommend Windows desktop search as it is a simple software that sits in your taskbar and is convenient to use. You can search for files on your hard drive and the internet.
Winamp is by far the most popular digital jukebox in the planet. It is light, highly skinable which appeals to the aesthetic minded and it players all audio and video formats there is. There are many plug-ins and upgrades that allow u to add more utility to the player. It also lets u burn CD of your favorite songs and supports multiple media devices.
There are so many audio files and video files that I bet u wouldn’t have even heard off. Wouldn’t it be nice if u had a collection of all the codecs in one bundle? Well Windows essential media codec pack 1 is exactly what u need.
http://www.download.com/Windows-Essentials-Media-Codec-Pack/3000-2140_4-10662709.html?tag=lst-4
Audacity
It is regarded as one of the best free audio editor. Its features even compare to the professional audio editing apps available in the market. It has a range of features like recording live audio, conversion of tapes or records into the digital medium, editing of audio files (supports a list of formats like OGG, MP3, WAV or AIFF), etc.
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/
Windows Movie Maker 2
Want an easy to use video editing application? Well look no further than, ‘Windows Movie Maker 2’. This comes bundled with Windows XP so no download necessary. This application lets u do some basic editing work and has some nifty transition effects. For all us simple folk than just want to produce a decent home movie from the snaps and videos we took on are mediocre cameras this application should suffice. Service pack 2 improves on the earlier version shipped with windows so I urge people to download service pack 2.
Do u have a vast collection of pictures? Wouldn’t it be easy to have a software that would let u view, organize and add some minor quick fixes to all those pictures u have? Well there are two wonderful apps that I recommend for exactly this task.
Picasa
http://picasa.google.com/download/
Windows live
http://get.live.com/
Windows live is a power packed application with loads of features which I will deal with later. One of the features is photo gallery which is same as Picasa.
While the above applications will give let the user apply some minor effects and corrections, it pales in comparison to a professional photo editing application like Adobe Photoshop. Since Photoshop comes with a hefty price it is not easily affordable to the amateur or enthusiast photographers. That’s where Paint.net and Gimp come in handy.
Paint.net
This handy application will give u most of the important features that a professional photo editor offers. It is the simplest photo editor out there and I recommend this to photographers who are just starting out.
http://www.getpaint.net/download.html
Gimp
This is a powerful application that is almost as good as Photoshop. It was all the professional features and is more feature rich than paint.net. However it can get a little intimidating to a novice photographer so I could recommend pain.net to first time users.
http://www.gimp.org/downloads/
This software lets u Burn audio, video, and data CDs and DVDs and create and burn ISO files.
http://www.download.com/Instant-CD-DVD-Burner/3000-2646_4-10393316.html?tag=lst-1
I would recommend this browser to everybody. It beats IE any day and offers far superior security features file better pop up blockers for example. It is one of the faster browsers out there and it is my favorite browser as of now (safari is still in the beta stages so I wouldn’t recommend it just yet but my loyalties will shift as soon as the official version is released).
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/
If you are a download junky like me u need a download manager and accelerator. There a couple of free apps out there but I recommend FDM. It supports all browsers and has a whole lot of use full features that makes this a must have for all download junkies. To use it all u need to do is to install and it will automatically integrate with the browser you use. It also comes with a quiet little movable box which acts like a link grabber, just drag and drop the link into it and it will download. I find the box of no value as I prefer just clicking on the download link. Its primary task is to act as a download accelerator and it doesn’t disappoint. It also has support for broken downloads. This is an important feature. Imagine you are downloading a large file and for some reason the connection is lost, u have no option but to start over and if u have already downloaded most of the file, it is enough to drive a person to the very edge of sanity! The resume broken link download feature is a life saver! It also supports the torrent protocol so another torrent client will not be required. It supports flash video downloads and will even convert the file to the format we desire after it is downloaded (WMV, AVI, MPEG, etc).
Earlier I spoke about one of its features, the photo gallery, apart from that it has –
Therefore we see that it is an all round application and I would like to recommend to every internet user as it a very useful tool in delivering a richer online experience.
OpenOffice.org is both an open-source product. The product is a multiplatform office productivity suite. It includes a word processor, a spreadsheet program, a presentation manager, and a drawing program, with a user interface and feature set similar to those of other office suites. OpenOffice.org also works transparently with a variety of file formats, including those of Microsoft Office.
http://www.download.com/OpenOffice-org/3000-2064_4-10263109.html?tag=toprated
I hope this software guild was helpful.
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