Microsoft Windows Tips

Thursday, November 7 2008 at 11:30, posted by Norman

Although I use Linux most of the time, I still think Windows XP is the best desktop os in the market. It is easy to use, robust, compatible with tons of hardware and software. Now I switched to VISTA, which is also great and enforced user control.

Windows APP list:
WinRAR: Great archive tools, support rar, zip, tar, gz, iso... If don't want to pay, try open source alternative 7zip.
MPC: Media Player Classic, it is my favorite Media Player. Light weighted, directdraw, great UI. It doesn't have any codec. The author has not update it since 2007, but afterdawn has latest build. Alternatives: VLC-has all codece but I don't like it's control too much.
ffdshow: Also free, but I like the afterdawn build most.
Notepad++: Great text editor and source code editor. It is free but absolutely powerful. I switched to it after years of using UltraEdit.
Active Desktop Calendor: A very nice desktop gadget.
putty: For me, this tiny ssh application is as important as anything else. Alternative: SecurityCRT is also great, I use it's old version in the school. It has more features than putty, but unfortunately, it's not free.
cpuz: A small tool to show you very detailed information about cpu, memory and motherboard.
hdtune: Another small tools to show you hard drive status, including total power on hours and health status.