Uncle Roger's Notebooks of Daily Life

P is for Programs

Hot on the heels of the death of my MP3 player, my laptop died. While pondering ways to recover (and typing journal entries on my PDA), I began making a list of the software I had installed on the machine. If I end up reinstalling windows onto a blank drive, I'll need to reinstall the software as well. Of course, in most cases, that means I'll lose my settings as well, but getting rid of slime left behind by poorly written windows software (no, that's not necessarily redundant) might be worth it.

So, without further ado, here is the list, as complete as I can make it, of all the software I had installed on my machine.

Miscellaneous Applications

• Microsoft Word
  I use this a lot. I hate it, but it's a necessity.
• Microsoft Excel
  I don't use this as much, but when I do, I do it pretty seriously.
• OpenOffice
  I had hopes, and if I were not a power user -- if I do say so myself -- it would be fine.
• Visio
  Haven't done much with it except an outdated network map, so probably not worth the effort.
• PC Write
  I still use this occasionally; mostly I need the files created with it.
• Programmer's File Editor (PFE)
  A constant companion -- it's on every machine I use.
• WordFind
  A DOS-based, TSR thesaurus. It was great in its day, but it's been replaced by, among other things, the internet.
• Adobe Acrobat
  My copy is outdated; a necessary evil.

Auction Software

• AuctionTamer
  A great program that I don't use much these days (which is probably just as well.)
• Auction Wizard
  Freeware auction submission -- outdated and probably no longer functional.
• AuctionSubmit
  Another freeware submission program, suffering the same problems.

Communications

• Eudora
  An absolute necessity. Probably the only program I use more heavily is PFE.
• Netscape
  My current browser of choice, only because I haven't gotten around to installing Firefox.
• Internet Explorer
  IE sucks.
• Opera
  Not as good as I had hoped. The interface is clunky, and the free alternatives are just as good or better.
• Reflection
  HP Terminal emulator. I don't use this much anymore on my own machines -- at least not as much as I'd like. Still, if I can find my original disks, I'll probably install it. If anyone knows of a free HP terminal emulator I'd love to hear about it, or better still, one that runs under linux.
• Putty
  SSH Terminal Emulator -- Nicely written in that it requires no installation.
• WS FTP le
  FTP Client with a better than most (that I've found so far) interface.
• WinHTTrack
  Website mirroring program -- downloads a complete copy of a website.
• Trillian
  Full-featured, Ad-free, multi-service chat program. Highly recommended.
• Abilon
  RSS Feed Reader -- evaluating
• FeedReader
  RSS Feed Reader -- evaluating
• Tristana
  RSS Feed Reader -- evaluating

PalmSoft

• MobileDB
  PC interface for MobileDB databases
• ToDo Plus
  Advanced To Do list
• Bonsai
  Outliner
• DayNotez
  Handheld journal entries
• SplashPhoto
  Picture viewer
• TimeCompanion
  Time Tracking
• Total Recall
  Voice recording springboard module
• WordSmith
  Word Processor
• Due Yesterday
  Task manager
• PalmDesktop
  Main interface
• Cachemate
  GeoCaching utility
• RatShopper
  HandyShopper interface

Multimedia

• NikonView
  Nikon Camera Utility
• Paint Shop Pro
  Poor man's Photoshop -- Unless you're a pro, the only difference you'll notice is the price.
• IrfanView
  Free image viewer, converter, web page generator -- highly recommended
• RealPlayer
  Probably not necessary, but the web can be annoying without it.
• Axialis CD Player
  Nice interface, basic functions, works. Paid for too.
• AudioCatalyst
  MP3 ripper -- I've since moved on.
• WinAmp
  I've got lots of MP3's; unless someone can suggest something better, this is a necessity. (Plus, I've got a Handspring Visor skin for it.)

Utilities

• Spybot
  Finds and removes spyware.
• AVG Anti-virus
  Free, quality anti-virus program. McAfee always crashed my system.
• Banshee
  Alarm Clock. Came with spyware (but openly). Could probably live without it.
• D-Link DWL-650
  Wireless card driver
• Font Glancer
  Displays fonts. Great program, and it's free.
• Free&Easy Fonts
  Another font viewer.
• GreenStreet
  Font viewer for a collection of fonts I purchased.
• Logitech Mouseware
  Driver for my trackman marble
• NetSwitcher
  Network settings reconfigurator. If you use a laptop (or desktop) with more than one network configuration, you need this. It's cheap too.
• FreeNote
  Sticky notes for the desktop.
• Pixie2
  Color identifier
• PDF Creator
  Print to a PDF file for free
• Veritas BackupExecPro
  Tape backup program. I wish I had a tape drive that could hold everything.
• Berkeley Utilities
  Unix utilities for DOS
• Registry Mechanic
  Fixes registry problems. Supposedly.
• WinZip
  Archiving/Compression program
• Browse
  DOS file viewer
• MaxLister
  Directory listing utility
• PopSel
  
• Sherlock
  DOS file comparator
• Vtree/Vtree2
  DOS Visual Tree utilities
• FreeZip
  Free unzip program

So there you have it. There are probably a lot of folks out there with a lot more programs on their hard drives, but the ones I have, for the most part, I use heavily. Reinstalling Windows from scratch would be a royal pain since I'd lose a lot of settings and configuration info for a lot of programs. Unfortunately, it looks like that may turn out to be necessary.

[ Posted: 20:00 | home | print ]

Hmmm...

I'm not a Windows user so I'm not absolutely sure about many of these, especially the more technical apps. However I noticed Adaware seems to be missing, which we use here at work all the time and combined with Spybot you're *almost* covered. As for MP3s and playback, give iTunes a run. It will rip to various formats at different qualities, organize and playback what you throw at it. After that hopefully someone else has more experience and can give better advice than me...

Posted by dugh