I’m not really much of a “list guy”. But I couldn’t help create one while I was cleaning up my PC. It’s a bit of everything, some programming tools, some games, some general things you really need and some random stuff that is just neat. I’ve skipped a few basic things you’ll have anyway (Mozilla, Winzip) to keep the list interesting. It’s fun for the whole family.
Fun
- Electric Sheep: Without a doubt the greatest screen saver on earth. I don’t think you still need a screen saver these days, but this one is so cool, you’ll find yourself staring at the screen for long periods of time.
- Azada: Ancient Magic: Previously mentioned, this is an essential casual game. Can be played in short bursts of time. Have 15 minutes of spare time a day? Get yourself this game!
- Farm Mania: I always have a few casual games around that I’m evaluating. This is one that I have played a bit. It’s nice, but I’m not yet sure if I’m going to buy it. In any case, Big Fish Games, to which the link points, is a terrific resource of casual games. Their client, allows you to easily download and try a ton of games.
- Kudos 2: A life simulator. Think of The Sims, but focussed on just the statistic aspect: no house building and other fancy stuff, just trying to get all your stats correct. I’m not entirely convinced as it might turn out a bit too stat-focussed for me, but I’ve only played it for a little bit.
- LDraw (with some add-on tools, like LeoCAD): If you still reminisce the days of playing with LEGO, you owe it to yourself to get these virtual building programs. You’ll never run out of bricks.
General necessities
- uTorrent (Micro Torrent): At some point you’ll find the need to download BitTorrent shared files. Legal (Linux distros) or illegal, that’s not the point. I used to be an Azureus fan, but they now have so much stuff in there I don’t need, so I became a uTorrent fan. Clean, simple, just what you need.
- Evernote: This has quickly become my one central place to store almost anything.
- FileZilla: I don’t use FTP that much any more, but if I need it, FileZilla is a no-frills client that still has everything you’ll need in an FTP client.
- Pidgin: No longer do you need to have umpteen instant messaging clients running. You can manage all your contacts from all your networks with this one application. And it’s free to booth.
- *update* Digsby: I’m currently testing this instant messaging client out. For now, I like it better than Pidgin, but there are a few things you might not like: you need to sign up for an additional account and it’s not open source. You will like the integration with Facebook and the fact that it will store your configuration across systems.
Development
Nowadays, I do most of my programming and development inside a VirtualBox environment (see below), but there are a few things I use so frequently, I keep them on my host operating system.
- FlashDevelop: I think I’ve mentioned this one enough in the past. The best free Flash IDE.
- NetBeans: As far as Java development is concerned, some prefer Eclipse, I prefer NetBeans for most uses. It has a great mobility package, it has a very nice GUI editor and it has pretty much everything Eclipse has.
- PSPad: I’ve searched a long time for the one true text editor (for Windows) and, thrust me, this is the one. Quick startup times, handles any size file, FTP integration, the list goes on.
- VirtualBox: VirtualBox allows you to seamlessly run a different operating system on your PC. I use this to create different development environments tailored to specific needs. I’ll give some more details in a future post.
- TortoiseSVN: A very userfriendly way of accessing SVN repositories. Useful if you want to back up your source code to a remote site.
3D and media
- Blender: This is not an easy program to use. It is not for the faint-of-heart. But if you want to create 3D images and movies, this is the program to use. It has power and options by the boatloads. And there are a lot of great tutorials to help you get started.
- ffdshow tryouts: The only codec pack you’ll ever need.
- foobar 2000: The only audio player you’ll ever need. Lots and lots of plugins are available for every audio format imaginable and it won’t slow down your PC with fancy graphic options you don’t look at anyway.
- SMPlayer: Starting to sound like a broken record: the only movie player you’ll need. One of the most interesting options for me, is that it has a very userfriendly interface to add subtitles and configure how they are displayed.
- Google Sketchup + IRender nXt: I think I’ve talked enough about those two.
- Inkscape: it has a few rough edges, but is without a doubt the best free vector graphics package around.
- Paint.NET: this is the bitmap sibling of Inkscape. Not as future-rich as the commercial competition, but do you really need 200+ filters anyway?
Know a better replacement? Have some essential tool to add? Feel free to add your suggestions in the comments.