Browser:
Google Chrome - multiplatform, fast, and supports addons

Mozilla Firefox - old standby browser. multiplatform and well supported.

Email:
I don't actually have a recommendation for desktop email clients. My best suggestion is to use web based mail like gmail, yahoo or even hotmail and ditch your ISP provided mail.

BitTorrent:
uTorrent
Transmission

Both clients are excellent, use the one that you prefer.

IM Clients:
Pidgin -- formerly known as GAIM -- supports all popular and some unpopular IM protocols.
Trillian -- If you need multimedia support (webcams, etc)

Antivirus:
Avira - best detection rates and low false positives. occasionally does have annoying false positives (blocks battle.net and some credit card sites on occasion, just disable webguard temporarily)

Antispyware:
Malwarebytes - better, imo, than either spybot or ad-aware.

Archivers:
IZarc
7zip

MP3 Ripping:
Exact Audio Copy
LAME + RazorLAME
CDex

System Maintenance:
CCleaner - clears already existing clutter.
Defraggler - better than Windows built in defrag tool, made by the same folks that make CCleaner.
Revo Uninstaller - better than using add/remove programs in Windows. Prevents the "crusties" from old applications. Worth paying for the Pro version, but the free version works well.
Shark007 Codec Pack - the only codec pack I'm aware of that is 64bit capable for better performance.

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

I love Hamachi. Create VPN's with the ease of use of MSN. No port to forward, pass trough NAT<->NAT configuration. I can't live without it.

http://hamachi.cc

This thread, I like. The rules thread? Silly-- we haven't needed one for years, why start now?

Vana's just making it his own. We have sub-moderators now, which is pretty leetfresh imo!

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I've been using Azureus for a bit torrent client.

Anything at all that's non-java will crush that app. Java is so terrible, I wish it'd drop off the face of this earth.

uTorrent is so better in so many ways.

http://www.videolan.org/

have used this thing forever. never have codec problems, never had any types of problems period. whenever someone i know can't play a video file i link them this and they become very happy.

http://hellninjacommando.com/defilerpak/

Best and only codec pack you'll ever need. Lightweight, non-conflicting, and always updated.

http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html

Spybot!

Am I the only one that uses Avast for antivirus or am I missing something? not dogging you Van,but I dropped AVG when I saw/used avast.

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I also use Avast and VLC.

Notepad replacement
Notepad++

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Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.

The biggest enemy of freedom is a happy slave.

Keytweak is also great. For those playing WoW with the Numeric keypad, you noticed that if you hit numlock, WoW dosen't recognize the Num_5 key and mess with all the other keys?

Well with Keytweak you can remap individual key on your keyboard and get rid of the Numlock behaviour or change Caplock for Shift instead.

http://webpages.charter.net/krumsick/

MetaPad works quite well too.

Autoruns
Process Explorer
Rootkit Revealer

Still a very big fan of Soulseek (file sharing)

http://www.slsknet.org

I really enjoy uTorrent. I could never get a good download from bittorrent, but uTorrent rocks. Thank you guys.

Oh.. I tried firefox. It sucks. =P

wtf blasphemy

Not sure if some of the virus programs mentioned detect outbound traffic, but if not then I suggest Zone Alarm be added to the list.

Having a program that detects (and blocks) outbound traffic from your computer is kinda handy.

Since I get CA's virus protection free as part of SBC, I downloaded the free Zone Alarm program and it works out pretty well.

What add-ons do you all have for Firefox?

Currently, I use FireFTP, Dom Inspector, Open link in, Fotofox and Torrent search tool bar.

Adblock Plus
NoScript
ShowIP
DownThemAll
VideoDownloader

http://www.dcpp.net DC++

P.S. Java has its advantages, and is not as slow as it used to be. Unless the programmer is shitty, you won't be able to tell a difference. The only problem I have with it is that it's so ridiculously easy to decompile and reverse-engineer apps developed in the language.

Sarissa Candyangel

Automated utilities to help you with various issues so you don't have to type out the commands manually (probably already known):

Dial-A-Fix: http://djlizard.net.nyud.net:8080/softw ... 0.0.24.zip
Wiki on it: http://wiki.djlizard.net/Dial-a-fix

Reasons to use: Permissions problems, SSL/HTTPS issues, Fixes numerous windows issues, etc. Resets network interfaces (Limited connectivity, not getting IP, etc)

7zip - Awesome open source zip utility
Trillian - Good multi-purpose chat client(aim/yahoo/jabber/icq/irc,etc)

The entire PSTools suite for security or meddling folks(wtf, they got gobbled up by microsoft?!?! whoa...):
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/sysinternalssuite.mspx

Scanline used to be awesome, i guess its damn good thing i got it before it dissapeared, i know they got bought by McAfee but, didnt see that one coming...

DVD Shrink for backing up your dvds, Daemon tools for virtual disk emulation goodness, cdex for mp3'ing your cds...

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My sig got eated by the bit bucket...
Fellenwhite Moonsong
Sixty-Something drunken freak of Lanys
Formerly known as:
Dashkast Justifyer
75 Gnomish Puppy kicker

I'd suggest Pidgin over Trillian unless you absolutely need webcam support.

Combined with the Off the Record plugin, your communications are secure!

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

Exact Audio Copy + LAME or FLAC codec is probably better than CDEX, imo.

cdex uses lame, so the only thing you lose is the accuracy of EAC, which many people don't care about.

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

Dunno what EAC is, but CDEX has been doing a great job for many years now(usually pull songs ~160kbps)... Songs dont sound any kind of bad or off on my ipod, car stereo, or those nifty klipsche THX speakers

You should update some of the top stuff with 'gimmes' Van... Like 7zip seems like a pretty good 'required' for a windows pc since it does all kinds of zip, rar, etc...

Spybot and Adaware are a good solution for spyware solutions. And if you mention firefox, adblock is like, a necessity(you should know you the one who told me about it!)

Another good weekly maintenance type tool is ccleaner.

http://www.ccleaner.com/

Self-explanatory.

Required reading for all Firefox users =p

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD ... Myths.html

Recommendation for a free registry cleaner?

define registry cleaner.

adaware and spybot get rid of the nastys, if you're looking to clean up registry fluff, then most of the time a reinstall is in order.

if that's too drastic, you may want to look into this : http://www.download.com/3000-2094-881470.html

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

I have had problems in the past that Ad Aware and Spybot did not get rid off, shit in the registry. I have used successfully moosoft, but you only get 30 days free.

http://www.ccleaner.com/

Has a registry cleaner built in.

I thought this was a worthwhile link to have here...

http://downloadpedia.org/Open_Source_Al ... l_Software

This thread is old enough that I'm curious: What's everyone using now?

Opera, utorrent, and I guess mIRC is what I usually have running. I don't like the IM combination programs.

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Marauder Harabakc Goat

I don't have any chat things on my computer, I just use AIM through GMAIL, I don't ever have it enabled though unless I know I need to talk to someone.

Firefox 3 is good. Duh. Hmm, what else? I'll post later. I'm about to leave work.

uTorrent, Firefox, AVG, Pidgin, CCleaner, Glary Utilities, SecureCRT

Putty > SecureCRT

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

I used to use PuTTY all the time. I just found SecureCRT one day and liked it.

So what's the new hotness these days?

New hotness as far as what? Nothing's really changed since this was posted.

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

I'd like to submit Open Office as a recommended software. It's a decent way to get good portion of MS Office functionality for free.

On the mac side of the fence, I'm a huge fan of:

Visor: a nice little mod to the terminal program that emulates the drop down command shell from quake. Makes it very handy for a *nix guy like me to get to the command line where I do most of my actual work and has a nice nostalgia aspect to it

MagicPrefs: the app Mac should have released with their magic mouse. Fixes all the problems I had with the magic mouse.

TotalFinder: tabbed windows for the finder and other functionality. still beta, but a must have at this point fo rme.

On the "any platform" front:

Hulu desktop has impressed me. I'm using it on my linux box, my mac laptop, and my windows desktop.

Evernote. I love this program. I use it on all of my machines as well as my iphone to have one unified note location. The fact that you can search for text in photos stored inside it? even better.

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For Remote Access, I have been using Team Viewer when I have had a friend help me with things on my Computer.

http://www.teamviewer.com

any new or recommendations for antivirus? I have AVG Free 2011 and it is a resource hog!

I've moved to either Avira (paid) or microsoft security essentials (free)

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]