Must-Have Freeware

I noticed there was an old thread listing must-have freeware applications, but it was from a few years back and many of these programs might not be compatible with vista or outdated altogether. so i thought a new one would be in order.

what freeware apps are you all souping up your new dells with?

 

CCleaner , Boot.vis

 

compiz fusion
conky
amarok music player
vlc media player
open office
pidgin internet messenger
k3b
vmware server
and many many more...

 

Here is my list that combines the best elements of OSX with Vista very very well.

Dock:
RocketDock
www.rocketdock.com
www.osx-e.com for leopard or tiger dock skins

widgets:
yahoowidgets widgets.yahoo.com
googledesktop
avedesk

launchbar:
launchy www.launchy.net
built into vista, but launchy is prettier

Desktop Management:

yod'm 3d this is no longer free, but you can find the old free version around
switcher: uses aero vista to emulate expose

Odds and ends apps:

MonoCal-useful clone from ical
dvd shrink... awesome for saving battery power when playing movies

 

^ you are using yahoo widgets rather than the built-in gadgets sidebar?

 

nice list. ive used some of those apps before. isnt the vista sidebar the same thing?

 

sorry, but if you'd use widgets, you'd see that widgets are much better. Unfortunately but the gadget side bar has so few good gadgets compared to yahoo. Yahoo is the largest of all widget/gadget systems, with many times the number of widgets as apple/vista/google combined.

You can just turn off the gadget sidebar... thats what I did... takes it out of the ram and yahoo widgets is much better with its HUD. Gadgets don't have a HUD that hides/reveals them in one stroke, they just sit there becoming more and more useless and irritating. but other people might like them.

oh oh and the new york times reader... i know its dishonest but you can just sign up for a new account every month. it is a truly incredible way to read the newspaper!

http://firstlook.nytimes.com/index.php?cat=4

 

hmmm, interesting. so is the yahoowidgets aesthetically appealing? and could you explain the usage of the other apps you posted. ive always been a nut for aesthetically appealing launch type apps for some reason...im weird, i know.

 

Not weird at all.. I am a nut for it... With widgets make sure to turn on simple desktop, for some reason that looks a lot cooler.

Yod'm is a 3D desktop manager. it rotates your screen like a cube so you an manage multiple desktops. Very useful when im trying to work on a website on my little 12" ... not so useful on my 20"

Launchy comes up when you type alt+space and quickly launches/searches for anything you type. There are shortcuts to search google/wikipedia/etc The Black Glass skin goes very very well with vista.

Rocket Dock is an EXCELLENT dock for windows. Just get rid of all the stock icons and replace them with the vista ones. You'll be thankful vista comes stock with 512x512 icons now. In vista you can minimize your windows to it and it shows realtime thumbnails. It is very nice.

Switcher is very nice, very smooth and great at doing real time previews and spreading out all your windows like expose. It is a little rough tho and you have to set it up a bit to work perfectly. I suggest customizing it to come up on middle mouse click or a lower right hand screen hotspot. It shows you all your windows and allows you to quickly organize them.

I suggest getting the dock, moving it to the bottom, moving the taskbar to the top, auto-hiding them both and you have a completely spacious desktop with everything at your fingertips.

 

sounds cool! what about avedesk?

 

i checked out the video for rocket dock. does it hog alot of resources? it seems it would slow the computer down a bit.

 

ave desk is an outdated dock+widgets program... it allows for some really complex modifications if you are willing to work with it. I don't like it but some people do, so I threw it up there.

The only thing that interested me about it was that it allows for a modified circular dock. I think that if someone made a dock that just looked like a small dot in the corner of the screen but blew up into a circular dock when moused over, i'd switch to that form. It'd be way futuristic and unlike any other OS. Unfortunately no one has made a system like that yet.

 

and to reply to rocketdock resources... surprisingly NO! it uses vista stuff that is already in the resources. it rarely takes up more than 10megs of ram! usually around 4.

 

cool, thanks! ill definitely add these when mine comes