Be Excellent To Each Other

Hello everyone.

Some of you may remember a delightful thread I posted a couple of weeks ago where my PC decided it would like to stop working at random intervals.

After throwing lots of money at the problem, I know have some shiny new stuff and an oh-my-god-how-do-I-make-this-look-like-it-used-to desktop.

However, rather than recreate the old, I am willing to embrace the new (well, listen to suggestions, before installing all my old stuff anyway, because I know what I like and I fear change).

So if anyone can recommend some fantastic bits of windows software that I just have to use (on a daily basis, or just every so often). Then I'd love to hear about it (assuming I can keep my pc up and running long enough to install it ).

What kind of things do you like? It's a bit of a vague question...

I will be mock for this, but at work I use Google Desktop.

I don't use the side bar, just the search part of it. You double press control and it brings up a search box from which you can find files, text in files, emails and even open programs. I use it everyday.

Just stuff like Bluecup has posted.

Just random apps that you have installed that are quite handy that you'd like to share with the world.

Ok, some stuff I have:

Rainlendar - A calendar program that you can put tasks and events on
Yod'm 3d - A 3D desktop manager (that I think emulates something that linux does). I don't think I've ever used it properly, but it can be nice to spin your desktop like a cube.
Wallpaper Master - This probably has a proper name, but you point it to a bunch of images and it randomly (or in order) cycles through them for your desktop.

Stuff like that ok?
Sorry, I've spent all morning watching files copy one way then the other, realising I don't have backups of everything I thought I had and watching the forum go into near-meltdown. How's your day so far?

Even though it's now badly named, I always like to have Dialup-Meter running in the background. It's just an app that monitors your up/down internet rate.

I find this quite handy when my internet is being slow, as it tells me if my computer is silently doing something it shouldn't (sending 50k/sec somewhere), or if my ISP is just shite. More than once I've identified an explicable use of bandwidth and killed it for safety reasons

WinRAR, SFTPDrive (let's you map a drive letter to an FTP site), logmein (remote access) and EveMon (for people that play EVE) are all running on my PC right now.

I quite often run XBList which pops up a "toast" when someone logs on the Eggbox Live, and tells me which game they are playing and if they are joinable. That way I can hop on if an impromptu game starts.

I don't really have any gadgety type things on my desktop. I just use it for my emails, browsing and the odd game of DEFCON.

WinRAR is great, though; WinZip is dead to me.

See, this is good.
Thanks.

Then get out of my thread.


Edit - hilariously I meant to PM this, but I am a cack-handed buffoon.

Launchy. Never actually use your start menu again. - http://www.launchy.net/
CDBurnerXP - Free CD/DVD burner - http://cdburnerxp.se/

Oh - and Firefox, of course.

I found this yesterday when I was looking to convert an mp4 to an avi at work. Freeware and easy to use.

Browser Wars 2.0 FTFY.

Some other poster's what?

He shoots; he scores!

Damn you, seconds before I removed the offending line

Next time though, Myoptika, next time...

My work here is done.

You've been most helpful. Thanks.

LClock -- Replaces the clock in the taskbar with something a little more swish.

PowerMenu -- Adds extra options to the menu you get when you click the icon in the top-left corner of a window (change task priority, windows transparency, make it always appear on top of other windows, and minimize to the system tray).

Taskbar Shuffle -- Lets you rearrange the taskbar. Perfect if you're a little OCD (like me) and like to have, for example, your web browser as the "first" open window.

Unlocker -- Pops up a window if you try to delete a locked file to tell you which program has it locked, and offers to try to unlock it.

LClock and Unlocker are both on my list (I just didn't mention them earlier out of spite )

The other two sound good and I shall investigate immediately.

For XP, there's a very good Power Toy that gives you right-click image resizing options.

I'm a recent convert to Notepad++ too.

Thanks everyone, I have now clogged up my nice new XP install with loads of crappy bits of software.

GetDataBack or SpinRite. Not free, but they'll definatley be worth it.

I already ("purchased" - Ed) these a month or two back when one of my hard drives went AWOL. I don't remember which of the two I used, but it did the job.

Filescavenger is very good too. I ran it earlier on an old memory card I found (my first one for my camera.. 8mb!) and it pulled some old photos back .. when I looked youthful.

Well shut up and get it again then!

Explaination:
They monitor your disk. Usually, whenever it fails to write to a sector, it just makes that sector as "fucked" and uses a new one. Windows doesn't care: Disks do this. However, it's a sign that YOU'RE DOOMED. So It's a very, very, very ncie thing to know and often means you don't get into the situation of ever needing to recover data. It's all explain on one of the sites (and that's the one that does it and the one that you want )

That might come in handy actually. I'm pretty sure my hard drive problem last time was due to some MBR related tomfoolery (windows couldn't see it anymore, but it was in disk management, I didn't like to poke it funny in case I lost everything).
I was advised to run a surface scan on it at the time, but it was going to take too long and I couldn't be bothered (come to me for all your backup needs, etc).
Anyway, I gradually copied stuff back and it seems ok now (cue disk dying in next few days).

Something that sits there and informs me that one of my disks is on the road to death may well save me a few problems in the long run.

don't run surface scan or check disk or any windows utility to do with disks. They are quite bad and throw away a lot of good data because it's in an area marked as bad.

Read those sites for more info on why

But it was a surface scan on one of those pieces of software.

I like ObjectDock. I never use my Start Menu.

Sorry, that's another one of my already installed programs that I didn't mention.

Fuck you, man, fuck you