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Cryos6:
Yeh, TweakUI is great. In addition, to supplement TweakUI, I have tried out FreshUI. And for Win XP systems, there is now XPtweak. A lot of redundancy between the three, but they all have their own special little offsetting complementary benefits...
EDIT: correction, "XP Smoker", not XPtweak; I had renamed it on the icon and had come to think of it incorrectly (well, I didn't like the "Smoker" part...). Anyway, between the three of them, they allow tweaking just about anything...
I can't remember if it has been mentioned yet, but I also like XP-Antispy to make some additional tweaks (such as turning off the automatic update service, etc).
You can get XP-Antispy here.
This has got to be the single most valuable thread, in any forum, anywhere since the beginning of time! :D
My "can't-do-without" 's:
Norton SystemWorks
X-teq Setup
WinZip
And my favorite all-purpose editor, NoteTab Light . Does everything great, and even the paid-for version is worth every cent.
This whole thread begs another question, which I ask here:
Looking for a download "commenter"
Thanks all, Dex
I love this thread.
I love "pushpin". You can't get it anymore, but if anyone wants it, I can send you the small file.
It allows you to keep a windows on top while using another active window.
RE: UltimateZip
version 2.6 is available here.
I'm working on a webpage to simplify reading this thread... 8 pages is a lot to sort through. Give me a week or so!
I admit that I have only been using this new little prog for a couple of days, and have not really shaken it down or tweaked it much yet, but already it has become my top favorite little time-saving freeware component that I just can't do without.
I did do a search first and did not find much on it. Hard to imagine that this little gem is not more "talked about". Might be that it is one of those things that people keep quiet so that the rest of the world does not find out about it? Surely not, I must be missing something, and likely there is something out there that is even better, and that maybe I am just clueless when it comes to spiffy browsers (I have stayed away from the likes of Eudora or Opera because of supposed problems...)…
Anyway, the little tool is called "Crazy Browser". Even with the plain-vanilla config, there are several advantages so far that I have seen over Netscape and good old IE, but the main plus is that it saves time and hundreds of pointer clicks over the course of a typical day - mostly, via the "groups" feature (which may be available in other browsers and I just missed it…). As an example, I have several set categories of sites that I check out every day, like webcams, tech forums, weather sites, news, health, sports in general, and specific sites just on my favorite sports teams.
Long story short, I have set up each category in what CB refers to as a group. When I want to check out one of these, say the weather sites, I select the group and CB loads all of the sites up in tabbed format, and then I browse through the tabbed sites, and one of the resultant niceties is that I do not have to wait on them to load, as they all do that behind the scenes while I am viewing the first site in the group. Easier and saves time and mouse gyrations (ie, avoiding carpal tunnel syndrome). And, there is another (as advertised) plus, CB is noticeably "faster" than IE or Netscape.
One last assurance. CB is what I would term (probably erroneously) a psuedo-interface for IE (maybe more correctly it uses IE components?), so (how could it be faster than IE itself?) it is entirely unproblematic - no glitches that I have seen in using it for a couple of days. There are lots of other little nice features (like ad blocking, etc.) that I will try not to bore you all with, so just give it try, you can always uneventfully switch back and forth with other browsers, but frankly I have set CB as my default browser, for a number of reasons other than the group feature…
Now, I suppose someone is going to clue me in to an even better browser, which is just fine, that's what this thread is all about.
http://www.crazybrowser.com/index.htm
One more late addition. This might not be something for everyone, and it ain't out of this world great, but I have also recently become slightly enamored with a little hideaway toolbar called "StatBar", using it's quick launch feature as kind of an overflow of the standard taskbar to free up room on the taskbar, but it also has cpu graphs and other extras like that, all very configurable, and of course it auto-hides…
Addendum. Possibly a disclaimer on Crazy Browser - I have noticed via my firewall log that there is a significant amount of seemingly strange and maybe even suspicious activity that I am not sure should be going on, so if you try it out you may want to check on that (anyone already know about that?)…
EDIT: being so favorably impressed with (some of) Crazy Browsers features and speed, and having seen similar features mentioned about the Opera browser and Mozilla's new Firebird browser, I have taken a few hours over the last few days to install and shake down both of them also. Result to date is that altho I have not given up on them yet because they do present some nice features, I find them both cumbersome and buggy (Opera v7.11 is reallllly buggy) and have significant learning curves (I just did not find them "intuitive" - necessary to muddle through very extensive help facilities and tutorials...). So, I will force myself to keep trying to get up to speed on both of them, because I think that in the long run they will prove of better value, but it is a real pain trying to deal with the bugs, especially when I simply am unable to do things that need to be done because they just don't work. Also, I did not see the where they were so blazingly fast, but that might be due to an optimal machine and OS and fast DSL connection negating speed factors -- frankly, at this point I thought Crazy Browser was faster based on what I have done with all three browsers so far. Maybe I should hold off for upgrades. Anyone else noted similar results and know if they are doing much repair work on them?
Hi!
Many I use have been mentioned already (GetRight, Javacool's SpywareBlaster, SpybotS&D, WinAmp, ZoneAlarm) but here are some others:
Mike Lin's "Startup Control Panel" - invaluable way to enable/disable what runs at startup.
http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml
ACDSee3 - fast image viewer with batch rename and lossless JPEG rotation. Pity v4 and v5 became such bloat.
DNSKong - very effective way of blocking your PC from even accessing ad/spy sites without making a huge hosts file (which some Windows configs hate) or doing complex configuration (eg proxomitron).
http://www.pyrenean.com/dnsk.php
Mozilla - my favourite browser - its popup blocking is brilliantly done and its tabbed browsing is a must.
Best wishes,
Andrew
I was amazed that there were a couple of fantastic progs that were not listed in this thread, so I gotta jump in and open my big yap about em.
First one, may be new, just recently ran on to it, may be why it is not listed here. Called JExplorer. I have always detested plain old Explorer, and went with 2xExplorer to avoid it. 2xEx is great, but has some minor drawbacks. JExplorer is basically the same two pane file manager concept as 2xEx, but is much improved and incorporates some additional features over and above the basic file management. Unless there is somthing better that I do not know about, give it a try, otherwise fill me in on the better mousetrap...
http://www.webattack.com/get/jexplorer.shtml
Second one, is an alternative browser, called SlimBrowser. Not perfect, but pretty danged good, don't take my word for it, link to the postive CNET reviews posted in the other thread on this forum, subject "SlimBrowser" (well, I pasted in the link below)... Most should be glad that you did -- a time saving breath of fresh air...
http://download.com.com/3302-2356_4-...html?pn=1&fb=1
I saw this one mentioned on tech TV I use mailwasher pro, but this one is free and is a good spam filter=
SpamPal
:D
My SPAM solution:
MailWasher Pro -- http://www.firetrust.com
Benign -- firetrust.com
CFS db -- firetrust.com
V2i Protector, Desktop Edition v2
http://www.powerquest.com/
This does everything that Drive Image 7 does but it also does incremental backups. This makes it easy to do a backup before I install a new software product or download something from the net. I also keep a record of date and time for identifying each backup and then what was downloaded or installed.
Having fought for 8 months to figure out what was causing a "blue screen of death" on my 6 month old top of the line computer, I have learned the hard way that it is important to have both backups and a record of what I did when. This is a tremendous help in tracking down the offending problem. I also learned that BSODs can be caused by anything and they frequently occur on a random basis, which is what makes it so much fun to figure out what is going on.
Panda Platinum AV & firewall, http://www.pandasoftware.com/
SpyBot
Raxco's PerfectDisk v6 defrag software, http://www.raxco.com/
Modesitt 's TimeSlice, http://www.modesittsoftware.com/. This is a great package for anyone, who needs to track their time for billing purposes.
Cheers,
Linda
:D
Great programs all!!!
Not sure if these have been metioned or not.
But check these out:
Program
Desktop X - http://www.stardock.com/products/desktopx/
Website
Betanews - http://www.betanews.com
LindaHewitt,
I currently use both MailWasher Pro and Benign (b9). What is CFS db I can't locate it on the www.firetrust.com site. Can you provide a direct link? Thanks.
Never mind Linda, I finally found the info about CFS db in MailWasher Pro and the link it provided me. I assume you're beta testing the service, looks like there'll be an added fee to use the option. The option of having it looks good, but I'll wait to see what they'll charge.
WebAttack.com...#1
SSSleeper is a handy app also. It enables you to move your cursor to a corner so that the screen saver will come on or to another corner so that the ss will not come on.
some programs that i find helpful...
*window blinds
*cutePDF- simplest way to create pdf files. simply acts as a PDF printer which prints to ur hard disk a copy of ANY file as a PDF. absolutely free and no watermarks!
*Jaws PDF Editor- merging and extracting pages/whole PDF files.
*Trillian
all of these can be downloaded from www.download.com