Essential Computer Programs Everyone Should Have

[f283000]

What are some computer programs that everyone should have? please give us your list! Here are 3 that have made my life better.

Open Office
http://www.openoffice.org

How silly I was trying to find a place to download microsoft word (it is expensive). Open Office is open source, free, you can save in .doc format so pretty much you don't need microsoft word and there are a lot of free extensions. If you are a student or you just need a good productivity suite than look no further, 100% free.

webmail notifier (mozilla firefox extension)
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4490

If you are using firefox then you must download this extension. It notifies you everytime you get a new email (checks for emails every few mins you set it to. You can check any of your web email accounts by right clicking them from a list no need to type any passwords (thus making everything really fast). If you are one of those people that has lots of email accounts this is a must download.

GIMP
http://www.gimp.org

No need to buy photoshop or spend a long time trying to look for an illegal download of it. Gimp is open source and 100% free.

 

[mpimpin]

VLC it's a great media player

Winrar for extracting .rar files

Xilisoft -video converter

 

[evoken]

Mozilla Firefox - Duh...
uTorrent - Best torrent download program
Flashget - Download manager, good if you have a rapidshare premium account
Winamp (+DFX plugin) - For m00zic
VideoLAN Media Player - For videos, has a LOT of codecs so you can play anything
Styler - If you're using XP, you can make it look better

 

[Nygard]

Let's see if somebody here agrees with these :

Netbeans 6.7
Microsoft Office 2007
Enterprise Architect
yapa : Google Chrome (****, I need somethign to browse the web)

 

[f283000]

btw I think we should say if the programs are free or not.

 

[mpimpin]

Most anything can be free if you know where to look.
but to go back to my post you can get a free download of VLC
Win Rar and Xilisoft cost money but not worth the cash if you have to pay.

 

[f283000]

Most anything can be free if you know where to look.
but to go back to my post you can get a free download of VLC
Win Rar and Xilisoft cost money but not worth the cash if you have to pay.

yeah obviously but free as in legal free.

 

[horaholic]

Winrar is free. You sign up for the trial, but it never ends for some reason, or you can redownload it and get it indefinitely.

For mine, Im gonna say Codestuff Starter. It is a free manager of startup/always running programs. It also helps you look online for each program, so you know what it is, and if you really need it to be always running. Usually you dont, and there are many programs hogging your ram, needlessly.

 

[02hero]

Too many to mention, really useful programs and tweaks. Check this place out;

http://lifehacker.com/

 

[Duffdog]

utorrent or bittorrent is really all that you need. From then on, all programs are free.

 

[Desdinova]

My pick is the Opera web browser. It's fast, slick, runs on crummy hardware with ease, and it rarely crashes.

The great thing about all the software mentioned in the original post is I can run them all, and I don't even use Windows