The Loeki's Strange Omniverse
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What I put on PC's
posted Friday, 7 April 2006
In the good old days back in highschool when you had to (re)install a PC because of whatever happened to it you basically took your bundle of CD's with illegal sofware and started work, ór people would pay dearly for the official versions.
Both are so last year.
So, if you happen to be one of those people who join 98% of the world in running Windows: This is the list of software I put on PC's to make 'em do the stuff they need to do without paying a penny extra.
nLite is an extremely usefull tool to strip Windows from all kinds of bloated and heavy crap. Use this program wisely, combine it with some other standard performance tweaks and stuff and Windows XP SP2 will run quite nicely off of a Pentium II, as long as you're talking simple users.
Perhaps they'll finally include it in Vista...
Free virusscanners. Lightweight in usage and footprint, these things are both free for home usage, with very little effort they can be made completely administration-free and almost completely nag-free and they're an overall much better experience than the hardly understatable crap that is Symantec. For Avast a free registration is more or less required.
"Will I have Word than as well?" Has got to be one of thé top 5 n00b questions I receive at (re)installs. Although most people ask for it very explicitly, I found out that 99% of the cases that's only because they don't know any better. They are open to alternatives, you just have to give them a gentle push in the right direction. OpenOffice is one of such beautiful alternatives. It's functioning rather well, is a bit limited but most people won't even notice, and it's free as in the sunrise.
Ever noticed what kind of grossly immense hugely overbloated piece of hippo Adobe Acrobat Reader has become? A clean install can weigh in at a fat 150MB! Annoying nagscreens, built-in advertisements, a irritating and performance impacting "quickstarter", and all the endless whining about updates included.
Although it's free, that doesn't mean it's not high time for an alternative. Both Foxit and eXPert are. eXPert handles just a litte more, but it's interface is a bit clunky. So Foxit has my preference, weighing in at (hold on)... less than 3MB, with no install needed.
A clear-cut all-in-one solution in the "I can't play this or that"-field. From this moment on, everything is, including QuickTime and Real, in a tightened, slick lightweight fast "Media Player Classic".
Unequalled simple, effective photo manager from Google. Everybody who sees this is almost instantly hooked just because it integrates and combines a myriad of separate functions, and because it's not so full of self-important useless junk and crap like for example this goat of a thing called Kodak EasyShare does (WHAT THE HELL is a photo album manager doing in my Services, twice!?).
Another major pro for Picasa is that it will never mess with the originals, contrary to for example the Picture Viewer from Windows for example.
No single list is complete without this free alternative to Internet Explorer. The new version has a lot of added functionality, most importantly automatic updates, minimizing administration.
A mechanism similar to this is the extension auto-updater, which allows me to install extensions which are automatically updated. And extensions are good.
Adblock Plus - VERY usefull in blocking advertisements and other annoying stuff.
Filterset.G Updater - Normally Adblock is manually controlled by the user. This is an automatic filterlist so this only has to be done 1% of time anymore.
FasterFox - Basically kicks FireFox into high gear.
IE Tab - With this you definitively kill of every mention of IE within the user interface, because it allows you to flip between Firefox and IE within the Firefox window.
FireFTP - FTP client for FireFox.
Cuhl/handy extensions
Tab Mix Plus - Gives you complete control over the way your tabs and your browser behave. A session manager is added as a bonus.
Download Statusbar - If there's one thing I always found slightly annoying about Firefox it's the download mechanism. With this one all your downloads will be added as "tabs" in a separate bar above your status bar.
Download Embedded - Have a "Play Now" button, but no "download" button? This fixes that.
Auto Copy - copying without Ctrl-C.
CustomizeGoogle - Modifies the way Google's page looks rather dramatically with links to other search engines, integrates with Google Suggest and so on.
Cookie Button In Status Bar - Usefull when you're confronted with one of those "you-have-to-login" sites. Because of that, cookie security settings can be set substantially higher.
Leet Key - 67 72 61 70 70 69 67 , .. -.- -.- .- -. . -.-. .... - . unpxregnny 01100101 01101110 esrom dWl0c2xhYW4=! 1k 83n 1337! But you can do a lot of other cuhl stuff with it too, like very simple quick encryption and so on.
Reveal - Nifty search functions, gorgeous screenshot-driven interface for tabs and history and such. Bit on the heavy side though.
Both are so last year.
So, if you happen to be one of those people who join 98% of the world in running Windows: This is the list of software I put on PC's to make 'em do the stuff they need to do without paying a penny extra.
nLite
nLite is an extremely usefull tool to strip Windows from all kinds of bloated and heavy crap. Use this program wisely, combine it with some other standard performance tweaks and stuff and Windows XP SP2 will run quite nicely off of a Pentium II, as long as you're talking simple users.
Sun Java
Perhaps they'll finally include it in Vista...
Avast! of AVG
Free virusscanners. Lightweight in usage and footprint, these things are both free for home usage, with very little effort they can be made completely administration-free and almost completely nag-free and they're an overall much better experience than the hardly understatable crap that is Symantec. For Avast a free registration is more or less required.
OpenOffice
"Will I have Word than as well?" Has got to be one of thé top 5 n00b questions I receive at (re)installs. Although most people ask for it very explicitly, I found out that 99% of the cases that's only because they don't know any better. They are open to alternatives, you just have to give them a gentle push in the right direction. OpenOffice is one of such beautiful alternatives. It's functioning rather well, is a bit limited but most people won't even notice, and it's free as in the sunrise.
Foxit of eXPert PDF Viewer
Ever noticed what kind of grossly immense hugely overbloated piece of hippo Adobe Acrobat Reader has become? A clean install can weigh in at a fat 150MB! Annoying nagscreens, built-in advertisements, a irritating and performance impacting "quickstarter", and all the endless whining about updates included.
Although it's free, that doesn't mean it's not high time for an alternative. Both Foxit and eXPert are. eXPert handles just a litte more, but it's interface is a bit clunky. So Foxit has my preference, weighing in at (hold on)... less than 3MB, with no install needed.
K-Lite Mega Codec Pack
A clear-cut all-in-one solution in the "I can't play this or that"-field. From this moment on, everything is, including QuickTime and Real, in a tightened, slick lightweight fast "Media Player Classic".
Picasa
Unequalled simple, effective photo manager from Google. Everybody who sees this is almost instantly hooked just because it integrates and combines a myriad of separate functions, and because it's not so full of self-important useless junk and crap like for example this goat of a thing called Kodak EasyShare does (WHAT THE HELL is a photo album manager doing in my Services, twice!?).
Another major pro for Picasa is that it will never mess with the originals, contrary to for example the Picture Viewer from Windows for example.
FireFox
No single list is complete without this free alternative to Internet Explorer. The new version has a lot of added functionality, most importantly automatic updates, minimizing administration.
A mechanism similar to this is the extension auto-updater, which allows me to install extensions which are automatically updated. And extensions are good.
Mandatory extensions
Adblock Plus - VERY usefull in blocking advertisements and other annoying stuff.
Filterset.G Updater - Normally Adblock is manually controlled by the user. This is an automatic filterlist so this only has to be done 1% of time anymore.
FasterFox - Basically kicks FireFox into high gear.
IE Tab - With this you definitively kill of every mention of IE within the user interface, because it allows you to flip between Firefox and IE within the Firefox window.
FireFTP - FTP client for FireFox.
Cuhl/handy extensions
Tab Mix Plus - Gives you complete control over the way your tabs and your browser behave. A session manager is added as a bonus.
Download Statusbar - If there's one thing I always found slightly annoying about Firefox it's the download mechanism. With this one all your downloads will be added as "tabs" in a separate bar above your status bar.
Download Embedded - Have a "Play Now" button, but no "download" button? This fixes that.
Auto Copy - copying without Ctrl-C.
CustomizeGoogle - Modifies the way Google's page looks rather dramatically with links to other search engines, integrates with Google Suggest and so on.
Cookie Button In Status Bar - Usefull when you're confronted with one of those "you-have-to-login" sites. Because of that, cookie security settings can be set substantially higher.
Leet Key - 67 72 61 70 70 69 67 , .. -.- -.- .- -. . -.-. .... - . unpxregnny 01100101 01101110 esrom dWl0c2xhYW4=! 1k 83n 1337! But you can do a lot of other cuhl stuff with it too, like very simple quick encryption and so on.
Reveal - Nifty search functions, gorgeous screenshot-driven interface for tabs and history and such. Bit on the heavy side though.
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