[Bubba]

Also has links to paid stuff where appropriate.

http://www.techsupportalert.com/best_46_free_utilities.htm

[Jim]

Worth pinning me thinks?
oui

[Bubba]

word.

[dontfollowme]

46-95 are here:

http://www.techsupportalert.com/more/extended.htm

[Houdini]

This is a good site but it's quite overwealming to a PC novice.  Does anyone have any recommendations of which freeware to use?  There's too much to choose from and all sound useful.  The main priority would be to keep everything clean and shipshape.

[slackline]

Depends, what do you want to do?

System Maintenance - can't really advise on this I'm afraid as I've little experience on M$ systems
Office/Productivity - there really is only one option for Office software, and thats http://www.openoffice.org/
Music - I reckon you know the score there
Antivirus - there is no one best solution, but one they don't mention thats free, good and cross-platform is http://www.clamav.net/
Web-browsing  - now't wrong with Firefox, although Opera is pretty good too.
Browser plugins - no idea where to start, but I use delicious plugins in Firefox for easy tagging of web-sites (see http://www.delicious.com for info), and some flickr plug-ins.
Email - Thunderbird from Mozilla is pretty good http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/products/thunderbird/ (you can use this to d/l emails from web-based services via IMAP or POP3 if you want to keep your emails locally as opposed to only accessing them on t'net)

Not much help really

[Houdini]

Hmmm...

Probably start w/ a partition manager.  Defragmenter and Registry cleaner?

New laptop arrived today, battery's charging now.

[slackline]

Partitions generally don't need managing as such, you set them up and leave them, although of course you can change your mind later and then adjust the partition schemes afterwards, but you then run the risk of loosing all your data if you screw up your partition tables, of course if you back everything up regularly this isn't a problem.  Note that HD's only allow four primary partitions, if you want to have more than four partitions then the fourth partition must be a "logical" partition and you then create partitions within that.

Anyway, the only one I've ever used (once) under M$ was a copy of Partition Magic borrowed from a friend in jail to reduce the size of the Windows install and free most space for Linux.  So I can't really offer opinion on which is the best, but of the two listed the EASEUS Partition Manager sounds prefereable as the other one doesn't allow you to delete partitions (which you may want to do).

Wouldn't know where to start with defragmenters and registry I'm afraid.  Never defrag my HD under Linux as I use a journalised file system that doesn't spread bits of files all over the partition.

[Bubba]

An excellent general maintenance tool is Tune Up Utilities.

Not freeware but there's a 30 day trial, etc, etc.

[butters]

Browser plugins - no idea where to start, but I use delicious plugins in Firefox for easy tagging of web-sites (see http://www.delicious.com for info), and some flickr plug-ins.

Try the first link in this thread for Firefox extensions.

I would recommend Colorful Tabs and Update Notifier - neither are truly essential but I like them. Signature is also good as it allows you to put in customised signatures at the bottom of posts but it will require a minor hack to get it to work with Firefox 3.0.x - if you want it drop me a PM.

bluebrad

[Bubba]

Here's the Firefox extensions I have installed (other than the defaults that come with FF):

- Adblock Plus
- All-in-One Sidebar
- BBCodeXtra
- Better YouTube
- BlockSite
- Bookmark This Page Plus
- British English Dictionary
- ChatZilla
- Clear Cache Button
- ColorZilla
- DownThemAll
- Easy DragToGo
- FEBE
- Firebug
- FireFTP
- FireGestures
- Foxmarks
- FoxyProxy
- Google Gears
- Greasemonkey
- Master Password Timeout
- ScrapBook
- Scroll Search Engines
- Session Manager
- Stealther
- Tiny Menu
- UrlbarExt
- Wizz RSS News Reader

Phew! That's a lot but they are all useful, honest

[bigd942]

Came accross this the other day, quite a good stitcher, would still need a few small touchups with something like GIMP etc

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/ICE/

is Beta so free for a while at least, seems to be the full version of the stitching available via Windows Live Photo Gallery so may end up fully free

test image below of the local beach

http://cid-940852817a929823.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Stitch/PA262341%20Stitch.jpg

Dom

[slackline]

Came accross this the other day, quite a good stitcher, would still need a few small touchups with something like GIMP etc

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/ICE/

is Beta so free for a while at least, seems to be the full version of the stitching available via Windows Live Photo Gallery so may end up fully free
test image below of the local beach

Looks good, I like the rainbow in the right corner, although personally I'd have cropped it to give a rectangular picture.

Best stitching software (IMO at least) is Hugin.  Open sourec and free although one of the programs it uses (autopnao-sift) is licensed under a more restrictive license, but is free for non-commercial use.  Recent incorporation of enblend helps dramatically when you cock up exposure between shots.  My favourite stitch I've done...



My panorama flickr set and tons on Flickr's Perfect Panorama Group (useful hints & tips in discussion forums) (and Hugin group on flickr).

If you've an N95 and fancy splashing out a few quid you could get PanoMan and do it in camera 

[andy_e]

What's the best DVD ripper out there? I'm using AutoGK which is good but sloooooooooooooooow, anyone got any other ideas?

[Bubba]

DVD Decrypter was always awesome - development stopped in '05 but can't see why it wouldn't still work - you can still download it all over the place...

[Obi-Wan is lost...]

What's the best DVD ripper out there? I'm using AutoGK which is good but sloooooooooooooooow, anyone got any other ideas?

Handbrake is awesome on a Mac. Now available on Windows. Haven't dabbled much with the Win version much but my bro used it successfully a while back for a project.

[Eddies]

PeerGuardian2 is well worth the free download if you use P2P alot.
Stops people from seeing your IP address... like the film companies for example!!

[Jim]

you only have to look through the block list, its quite worrying.
I'd have it wether or not I was using p2p.