I'm not a huge fan of MicrosoftWindows but I do what I gotta and end up managing it at home and at work.
See also: MicrosoftWindows, AppleSoftware, LinuxSoftware, CrossPlatformSoftware, ApplicationSwitchMatrix
Contents
Favorite Software
- 7-Zip (Open Source)
- A file archiver which supports most formats including 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR (and for unpacking only supports RAR, CAB, ISO, ARJ, LZH, CHM, Z, CPIO, RPM, DEB and NSIS)
- Airport for Windows
- Allows configuration of Apple Airport gear from a Windows computer (there is no generic software page as far as I can tell, you have to go to the downloads section and search for "Airport for Windows". LAME!).
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/airport42forwindows.html
- Bonjour for Windows
Allows Windows computers to detect Apple Airport based print servers (and maybe any Bonjour/ZeroConf/Rendevous enabled printer). http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/bonjour/
- CCleaner (Freeware)
- CCleaner is a freeware system optimization and privacy tool. It removes unused files from your system - allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space. It also cleans traces of your online activities such as your Internet history.
- Mono Calendar
A port of Apple's iCal program to the MonoLanguage. Looks really nice but it doesn't support remote/WebDAV calendars yet (poo). http://www.monocalendar.com/
- Mozilla (Firefox/Thunderbird/Sunbird)
The best OpenSource broswer around ... http://www.mozilla.org
- Palm Desktop
Designed to sync with your PalmPilot but even without it's a useful collection of tools (addressbook, calendar, todo, memos etc) http://www.palmone.com/us/support/downloads/
- PrimoPDF
- Simple utility that installs as a Windows printer and allows you to print anything into a PDF (just like the Mac does natively!)
- PRTG (Commercial with limited Free version)
- Nice looking tool for doing real time monitoring of SNMP values.
- Video Downloader
- Lets you download embedded movies from web pages.
== Recommended By ...==
Software I haven't used but has been recommended to me by somebody I trust.
- BeyondCompare
- A file and directory synchronising and diff'ing tool, recommended by Bill for backups.
- Cinema Forge
- Converts media from one format to another (similar to iSquint on the Mac)
- JkDefrag
- GPL licensed defrag utility.
- Yadis! (Free)
Interesting looking backup tool. Very simply, supports versioning, exclude lists and backs up files as they change rather then batching it. Recommended by BrettShand. http://www.codessentials.com/
Special Purpose Software
- AxCrypt
- File Encryption Freeware for Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2K/XP with AES-128 File Encryption, Compression and transparent Decrypt and Open in the original application.
- BlogBot
Feed aggregator which supports sync'ing witih BlogLines http://www.blogbot.com/
- ClamWin (Open Source)
A port of the popular OpenSource package ClamAV to windows along with Explorer and Outlook plugins. http://www.clamwin.com/
- Color Cop (Freeware)
- Simple small tool which allows you to select a color from anywhere on your screen and gives your the color codes to put in a web page to match.
- Crimson Editor (Freeware)
- Nice simple, multi-tabbed editor with support for syntax highlighting etc.
- DeltaCopy
In technical terms, DeltaCopy is a "Windows Friendly" wrapper around the Rsync program, currently maintained by Wayne Davison. "rsync" is primarily designed for Unix/Linux/BSD systems. Although ports are available for Windows, they typically require downloading Cygwin libraries and manual configuration. http://www.aboutmyip.com/AboutMyXApp/DeltaCopy.jsp
- ITEF!X
- Collection of useful tools for windows, including LOGREP, copSSH, cwRsync, chwinpw, texprof and vuTrapCon.
- Foxit Reader (Freeware)
- A free lightweight alternative to the increasingly bloated Acrobat. It runs fast and seems to do everything I might want. They also have a for pay pro pack which adds a print to PDF driver (like PrimoPDF), convert to text tool and a PDF editing tool.
- GSpot
- Inspects a media file and tells you what codecs are required to play it.
- Hamachi (Freeware)
LogMeIn Hamachi is a zero-configuration virtual private networking (VPN) application. In other words Hamachi is a program that allows you to arrange multiple computers into their own secure network just as if they were connected by a physical network cable. http://www.hamachi.cc/
- NTSyslog
- A daemon which runs on NT which sends Windows events to a syslog server.
- Prevx Home
BrettShand says, "It's very nice, "noisy" to start off with, very clever in the prevention areas it works - malware, trojans, hacks etc etc. It's freeware." http://www1.prevx.com/prevxhome.asp
- SSH Windows
- Stripped down version of Cygwin with an installer to get an SSH server up and running.
- SysInternals
- An awesome selection of utilities which allow you to get useful information out of Windows. Some of them are free.
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/utilities.shtml
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/rootkitreveal.shtml - Trillian Messenger
- A multi-protocol instant messaging client that will talk to iChat AV (and most of the other audio/video extensions for IM networks)
- VirtualWin
- Virtual desktop manager, supports lots of modules which allow additional functionality.
- WinMerge (Freeware)
- Graphical diff utility, does character based diffs (not just line based).
- Xming
- Free X windows server.
- XKeymacs (Open Source)
- Emacs keybindings for Windows applications.
Microsoft Outlook Enhancements
I have to use it, so I may as well figure out how to make it bearable. I won't suggest Thunderbird as the best enhancement ... even though I want to.
- Import/Export Contacts as vCard (Commercial)
- Very useful for moving your contact information about (note you must export your contacts as vCard 2.1 *not* 3.0 from the Mac Addressbook for this to be able to handle it).
http://www.mapilab.com/outlook/toolbox/vcard_converter.html
http://www.office-addins.com/-outlook-addins/vcard-converter.html - Google Maps Plugin
- Map where your contacts are
- RemoteCalendars (Open Source)
Outlook 2003 plugin which allows Outlook to utilize remote iCalendars via http, https and webcal protocols (Outlook 2007 is supposed to support this natively). The Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICalendar#Microsoft_Outlook article on iCalendars) is worth reading as well for the list of Outlook caveats. http://remotecalendars.sourceforge.net/
- Outlook2iCal (Open Source)
- Script to export Outlook calendars to iCal files.
- Outport (Open Source)
- Converts Outlook calendars and contacts into vCalendar and vCard format.
- vSync (Commercial)
- Convert (import-export) Outlook Calendar and Contacts from/to vCard, vCalendar, iCalendar file format.
- O2M (Commercial)
- Converts Outlook calendar/address data to formats suitable for most Mac programs (Mail.app, iCal, Entourage, etc). Looks better then the other crappy options ...
Looks Interesting, but Untried
- Democracy Player (Open Source)
- Super (Freeware)
Another everything to everything converter, which includes support for H.264. Looks amazing, only caveat I've found is that it is reported to conflict with Cygwin. http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html
- Total Video Converter (Commercial)
- Converts pretty much any video format to any other one. Neat.
- Videora (Commercial)
- Looks similar to Democracy Player. Search, watch and download video by torrents.
- VirtualDub (Open Source)
- A video capture/processing utility, it lacks the editing power of a general-purpose editor such as Adobe Premiere, but is streamlined for fast linear operations over video. It has batch-processing capabilities for processing large numbers of files and can be extended with third-party video filters.
Collections of Unix Software
- Cygwin
- Comprehensive port of Unix tools to Windows. Really cool but kinda "heavy".
- Deskwin
Good looking virtual desktop manager for MicrosoftWindows http://www.yipton.demon.co.uk/deskwin/old/1.0/readme.html
- GNU Win II
An awesome collection of FreeSoftware applications for MicrosoftWindows. http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/apps/en/index.html
- GNU Win32 Tools
- Ports of autoconf, diff, zlib etc
- Interop: Unix tools for Windows
- Commercial collections of tools which work with Microsoft's SFU (Services for Unix).
- Native Win32 Unix Tools
- Lots of developer oriented tools natively ported to Win32 (make, patch, grep, find gawk etc).