The First 14 Programs I Needed
Submitted by Dale on March 26, 2008 - 11:39pm
A little while ago my Windows computer became unusable and it was time to reformat and reinstall. The sordid tale is even documented: Hi Ho, Oh No, Installing I Must Go.
Like most people, I'd collected a variety of programs that were used seldom or not at all. Starting over with a clean desktop, it was fascinating to watch which programs I installed because of immediate need. Here are the first fourteen.
- Mozilla Thunderbird
- I actually really liked the user interface for Outlook professional but had to give up on my really old version of Outlook when it became unsupported and a security nightmare. Thunderbird works the closest of the open source options I've tried.
http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird - Mozilla Firefox
- I used to think Firefox was the bomb. It's piggish nature has tarnished it a bit, but it's still the best browser out there, especially when you throw in the Firebug plug-in.
www.mozilla.com - Komodo Edit
- This is Active State's free IDE. For Java work I was an Eclipse fan. For scripting languages, not so much. Komodo has the feature sets I need and is better matched for PHP (and Python) work.
http://www.activestate.com/Products/komodo_ide/komodo_edit.mhtml - TortoiseSVN
- Gotta have version control for the source code.
http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/ - AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition
- Gotta have virus protection.
http://free.grisoft.com - jEdit
- I use jEdit like notepad. It's relatively lightweight and has some nice features. I'm told there's some great plug-ins for it, but I've never felt compelled to look.
http://www.jedit.org/ - Skype
- The project team I'm working with uses Skype for instant messaging. Need to "talk" to the team, so need Skype.
http://www.skype.com - BlogBridge
- BlogBridge is my RSS feed reader. It has a few warts, but over all I like the functionality. Using a client program instead of a web service does mean it isn't available everywhere, but I pretty much work from a single desktop so it's not a big issue.
http://www.blogbridge.com - XAMPP
- Before the rebuild I had Apache, MySQL and PHP installed individually. Since I was starting from scratch I decided to check out XAMPP. It installs like a dream. Using VHOSTS proved to be a bit of a pain to configure.
http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html - QuickTime Player
- My preferred player for audio/video, though it has a few warts. I loath iTunes, and it's a pain in the ass that I can't install QuickTime Player by itself. iTunes was promptly uninstalled afterwards.
- Microsoft Word
- I know, I know, I should be using OpenOffice. But my Office 2000 still works and OpenOffice reproduces a lot of the suck behaviour. I've never felt compelled to switch when I would simply be replacing one set of shitty idiosyncrasies for another with no payoff. I wouldn't buy a new copy of Office, so I'm sure I'll find myself cussing out OpenOffice soon enough.
- Adobe Acrobat/Adobe Reader
- I didn't last a full day before I needed the reader for a PDF file. It turned out I needed to create PDFs, as well, with my really ancient version of Acrobat.
- Juice Podcast Receiver
- Life wouldn't be as interesting if my MP3 player didn't have podcasts to listen to during my evening walk.
http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/index.php
Comments
I feel the pain
My little computer is starting to get a bit sluggish too but I've been putting off the reload simply because I know it's going to take a few hours to get myself setup and at the moment, I simply don't have that kind of time.
That said - have you checked out Opera? I've used it in the past though it's been a good year since I've used it. The Wii version is fab so when the new install finally goes in, I may give it a second look. As a bonus, there is now "Opera's answer to Firebug"
Skype is a must for me too. Don't know where I'd be without it.
I'm all about the online RSS reader but I understand your point about working from one machine. No need for the extra worry.
I have a love/hate relationship with QuickTime - love it sometimes (for watching nice high def .mov's) but otherwise, I avoid it like the plague. Surprisingly, I've really come to love the functionality of Windows Media Player (but really only versions 10 and 11).
Hated iTunes when I didn't have an iPod because that thing was a nightmare to sync but now that I do have an iPod, I'm not sure where I'd be without it. Curse Apple for not making it easier to integrate with other MP3 devices.
Ah the Word nightmare. I use OpenOffice but lately I've been forced to use Office 2007 for a class and god I hate that thing. So much for making it more intuitive. We've been using the same layouts and functionalities for god knows how many releases and then they go and change it on us? Guess what Microsoft??? You've indoctrinated us! The old style IS the intuitive one! What angers me most of all is that you have to manually set each program to auto save in a backwards compatible mode because the native extensions (.docx etc) do NOT open in previous versions of Office. And don't even get me started on the Vista/Outlook issues. NIGHTMARE.
I used to love Adobe but not no more. I find Adobe 8 takes for ever to load. OpenOffice has brilliant built in functionality that lets you print to a PDF but otherwise, I too am using an ancient version of Adobe (5).
Sorry for the minor ranting. Software sometimes does that to me.
Minor ranting is A-Ok!
Minor ranting is A-Ok! Heck, you can even major rant! :-)
I haven't checked out Opera. The new Flock is also sounding interesting.
I'm with you on Word. My favourite version of is still Word 2, before they screwed up style handling. Except for the inline spell-checking, the new features have made my experience worse. You're not the first person who's said the most recent version is more horrible, yet.
I'm with you on Adobe, too. Acrobat used to be so nimble, now it's a bloated slug.
RE: Adobe
I dumped Adobe a while ago. Check out Foxit reader.
http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader_2/down_reader.htm
It's just an EXE so nothing to install plus it's blazing fast.
Also check out Zoom player if you want a fully featured media player. It comes with a really great community codec pack called CCCP.
http://www.cccp-project.net/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
FAST!
Thanks, Paul. Took your recommendation and installed them both.
Foxit is FAST, I love it!
Will check the media player out a little more later. If I start watching videos now, I won't get any real work done today .....
Re: Fast
Glad to help!
I used to do this too...
I used to frequently do the old 're install windows' routine up until about 5 years ago. Then one day I just had enough of having to make up for the shoddiness of windows and just wiped it completely and moved over to Slackware Linux, which I'd been dual booting for a while.
I wouldn't recommend Slackware to anyone, but thankfully other Linux distributions have moved on in leaps and bounds and I now use Ubuntu. Long story short (too late?) if you're sick of reinstalling windows every time it plays up, maybe you should try linux?
I haven't reinstalled the OS in the 2 years I've owned this particular computer, though I have upgraded to the latest Ubuntu (which is, of course, free) and even that only takes issuing a single command.
I'm frankly amazed that people still put up with Windows' shennanigans.
I've had good luck
This was the first time I'd needed to reinstall Windows since getting the PC. I can't say how long that was, but it was two to three years, perhaps even four. For whatever reasons of fate, my desktop was stable.
I love Linux, it's definitely my preferred server platform. Linux workstations haven't loved me. I actually played with Linux back in 95/96 by downloading Slackware over Trumpet Winsock and extracting it to many floppy disks. From the beginning Linux has never loved my video cards, and I have little tolerance for recompiling video drivers on the hope some patch or another might make it work.
The current generation of Linux distros are much better. I certainly see a Linux desktop in my future, but I'm in no hurry to throw out a working solution.