Tuesday, April 08, 2014

My Favorite Programs

     I decided to help people out and list the best programs that you may not know
They may be obscure, but are highly useful and lightweight.
Then I got carried away and started listing everything I use.
 I may or may not get around to sorting this out better and including links for everything.


My Favorite New Programs in order of most used:  Alternates in Red:

LastPass, KeepPass (Password Manager - access all websites with 1 master password)
Greenshot (Screenshot - uploads to Imgur, save to file, etc)
DesktopSlides (Wallpapers Cycler - downloaded in High-Res (2560x1440) from WallpapersWide.com )
TeraCopy,FastCopy
Sandboxie
Link Shell Extension  Hardlinks provide the ability to keep a single copy of a file yet have it appear in multiple folders (directories).
YawCAM (to use webcam as motion sensitive security)
DirSyncPro
DiskPie
Process Lasso
DriverSweeper
IrfanView
UltraISO, TotalMounter, Alcohol 52% 
Eraser (Secure Erase) or WipeFile
MP3Tag
Tag&Rename
Album Art Downloader
AutoClicker
EasyBCD, VisualBCD (easily edit Win 7 boot menu entries for dual Boot etc)
GetDataBack NTFS
PDFStreamDumper (manually check for [malicious] javascript in PDF files)


Preferred Mainstream Programs:

TrueCrypt
AVG AntiVirus Free Edition 2014
Malwarebytes Anti-malware (free)
uTorrent
Google Chrome, Google Chrome Canary (devel)Mozilla Firefox
HexChat (IRC)
foobar2000, Winamp
Spotify
VLC Media Player
Media Player Classic - BE (Black Edition) ALL codecs built-in
Media Player Classic - Home Cinema x64 
Combined Community Codec Pack (CCCP) 
K-Lite Codec Pack x64Shark007 Codecs
Serviio free (DLNA Home Media Server), or Mezzmo($)
SierraChart (Financial Market Analysis)
Pidgin, Trillian (Instant Messaging)
TeamSpeak 3, Ventrilo (alternately Raidcall)
WinRAR, 7-Zip
CygWin (run a Linux shell or programs on windows)
OBS Open Broadcaster Software (stream desktop or games to twitch.tv), or XSplit
FileZilla (FTP Client) and FileZilla Server (FTP Server)
WireShark (requires WinPCAP)
Non-Free:
ShadowProtect Desktop (Automated Differential Network Backup)
Microsoft Office 2003 (because lightweight/portable) or free LibreOffice, OpenOffice
VMWare Workstation 8, VirtualBox 4.1.4


LiberKey (contains hundreds of tiny utilitarian programs):

CCleaner
ImgBurn
Unlocker
Remove Empty Directories
DupKiller
CrystalDiskInfo (View HDD SMART data and temperatures)
Process Explorer
Process Monitor
Autoruns
Revo Uninstaller
Everything (lists everything by filename = indexes hard drive to a text file)
FreeFileSync
DSynchronize
TimeSync (Syncs clock, use nist1.symmetricom.com, since I disabled Windows Time Service)
CurrPorts (list all open TCP/IP ports and what process opened them)
LibreOffice (instead of M$ Office)


Programming/Coding:

Notepad++
Sublime Text 2 or 3
Eclipse IDE
WinDiff,Compare It! (line by line File comparison)
HxD (Hex Editor)
Visual Studio 2010 ($$)
Python 2.7, PyQT, QT 4.8.4


Cloud Storage:

Dropbox
MediaFire Desktop
BackBlaze


Bitcoin:

Bitcoin-QT
MultiBit
MultiDoge (Dogecoin)
Electrum, Armory (alternatives)


Video Encoding:

Handbrake
MeGUI
MKVToolnix (MKVMerge, MKVInfo)
MediaInfo
AviSynth
FLAC Frontend 


Overclocking:

MSI Afterburner
RealTemp
GPU-Z, CPU-Z, HWMonitor
Intel Extreme Tuning Utility
Fritz Chess Benchmark
IntelBurnTestV2.exe
Hard Drive Benchmarks: CrystalDiskMark, AS SSD Benchmark, HD Tune, HD Tach
Prime95, SuperPI, ORTHOS
HWiNFO64


Pro Audio, Music Production (most $$$):

Audacity
Ableton Live 9.1.1, FL Studio 10.9, BitWig Studio 1.0.4
Arturia Analog Factory
Arturia Spark
KORG Legacy
Traktor 2
Maschine
Kontakt 5
Massive 1.3.0
ASIO4ALL
impOSCAR 2
this list is far from done.

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