Comments on: Windows Tips II – software roundup

By: Andy

Andy — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 19:28:18 +0000

Another cool paint/photo program is Paint.net, which is free (http://www.eecs.wsu.edu/paint.net/index.html)

As for iTunes replacements, I’ve been using WinAmp rather happily on my windows box at work because there are tons of plugins for it to play things like aac, m4a, flac and shorten files, and plugins for last.fm. There’s also a cool tag editing tool called TagScanner if you are as anal about your ID3 tags as I am.

Also, WinSCP3 is a great SCP/SFTP client that’s open source.

By: rick

rick — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 08:05:26 +0000

wow. punk. I’m looking forward to being astounded now ;)

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 05:58:01 +0000

i heard nagios is pretty cool

By: iggir

iggir — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 22:28:51 +0000

i work in a Windows shop, but i switched over the Thunderbird last year and am pretty happy with it. it doesn’t have a couple of features that Outlook had, but i can’t even remember what they are now (so not having them must be okay). also, it blocks alot of annoying spam images and such that Outlook automatically loaded.

i highly recommend SpyBot Search & Destroy for ad/spy/malware removal, btw. it’s completely free and it comes with an Immunizer that blocks known threats once it’s installed. just my $0.02…

By: rick

rick — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 17:42:47 +0000

amazingly, several of these tools (openoffice, ad-aware, firefox, thunderbird and more) work just like you’d expect a windows app to work, easy UI, functional, but with the additional bonuses of being cheaper/more powerful/more compliant. Give them a shot, you won’t be disappointed! I tried to be clear where an app might require a bit more of a learning curve.

Open source applications have made huge strides over the last several years, as commercial office apps have been experiencing diminishing returns. Plus, having been built on open standards, the open source software is far more agile.

By: Ojingo

Ojingo — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 17:21:14 +0000

Having lived with Senor Beerdrinker in the past, I can attest that although there’s a bit of a learning curve involved to use his computer – there is a method to the Linux madness. It’s an elegant and efficient setup, especially compared to the bulky “monolithic applications” that have yet to provide a single foot rub.

By: moistee

moistee — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 18:36:46 +0000

after reading these technical posts, no wonder you can dissect a beer so well…