Extremely Useful Computer Software

[Disco Pickle]

Alright, so maybe this is redundant to the Tech Forum thread that's stickied, but it seems to be sparse on posts.

I've renamed this thread as a resource for useful software for those of us that do our own break/fix work or anyone who wants to learn how to maintain their own boxes.

I know I have a decent library of software I should probably update.  Anyone who wants to share their own preferences/tricks/tips on keeping your other house in order, have at it.

[Disco Pickle]

found a decent piece of 3rd party software that will recover files from a deleted or lost partition. 

The ware I found is Partition Find and Mount.  It is compact, fast and easy to use.  It's also free unless you need data transfer at speeds faster than 512KB/s.

http://findandmount.com/download/

should anyone find themselves in this same boat, it's a good piece to have on a disk somewhere.

[Cain]

Zotero.

http://www.zotero.org/

Absolutely essential for organising academic work.

[Rumckle]

That looks pretty cool Cain, thanks.

Also I think Dropbox is pretty useful, especially if you're a student working on a group project, or have multiple computers.

http://www.dropbox.com/

[Disco Pickle]

For those disks that have really important software on them, but may get lost or scratched:

http://www.magiciso.com/tutorials/miso-magicdisc-overview.htm

Rip an ISO file from them, save it to a backup somewhere and use this software to create a virtual CD drive to mount the ISO.  Also useful for those tiny laptops without CD drives when you don't have a key drive handy.

I suppose I should post some good ripping software next to go with this.

[Kai]

Zotero.

http://www.zotero.org/

Absolutely essential for organising academic work.

I second this. Though, I feel like there should be a course on how to maximize it's usage, because there are options I don't understand, and things I'd like to do with it that I don't know how.

Edit: On that note, need to spend the next two hours actually organizing my Zotero, because the only thing that is organized right now is the collection of all the books I ever remember reading.

[Juana]

https://www.evernote.com/
^keeps track of all your notes, which you can format, and saves pictures and recognizes writing in pictures. Also syncs to an external server every fifteen-ish minutes and pulls information from copied stuff (ie, I copy part of this page and paste it into a note, and evernote will pull this page's url out of it)

[Pope Lecherous]

For those disks that have really important software on them, but may get lost or scratched:

http://www.magiciso.com/tutorials/miso-magicdisc-overview.htm

Rip an ISO file from them, save it to a backup somewhere and use this software to create a virtual CD drive to mount the ISO.  Also useful for those tiny laptops without CD drives when you don't have a key drive handy.

I suppose I should post some good ripping software next to go with this.

ImgBurn has never failed me.  Create image from disc or files.  Write image or files to disc.  UI is easy enough for noobs, but has enough features to meet the needs of advanced users.

[Requia ☣]

For those disks that have really important software on them, but may get lost or scratched:

http://www.magiciso.com/tutorials/miso-magicdisc-overview.htm

Rip an ISO file from them, save it to a backup somewhere and use this software to create a virtual CD drive to mount the ISO.  Also useful for those tiny laptops without CD drives when you don't have a key drive handy.

I suppose I should post some good ripping software next to go with this.

ImgBurn has never failed me.  Create image from disc or files.  Write image or files to disc.  UI is easy enough for noobs, but has enough features to meet the needs of advanced users.

Will it let you burn a cd iso to a DVD?

[Pope Lecherous]

My device doesn't burn DVDs, but I think it does.

[Disco Pickle]

https://hiddenapp.com/

Oh the privacy implications.

While having a potential to allow some very creepy behavior in the wrong hands, it could also be the difference between getting a stolen computer back and never seeing it again.  Barring a format by the thief, it takes web cam shots and screen shots of a stolen computer and also does some network sleuthing.

$15.00 a year, but I expect there will be some freeware mimics shortly.

[Triple Zero]

A bunch of useful Windows software I can remember from the top of my head:

microsoft security essentials -- probably the best and least intrusive anti-virus/malware solution for Windows. additionally it's free, and the objective of its creators is to promote the Windows OS as stable and secure, which is more in line with your objectives than most AV corps whose objective is profit by selling protection, fear and snake-oil.

7-zip -- a Zipfile manager like WinZip or WinRAR, except it's free not nag/shareware, and it's really pretty good.

CDRTFE and Infrarecorder -- free software replacements of the commercial Nero Burning ROM application. Both are good, I use Infrarecorder only because I had to pick one over the other.

GIMP -- free image editing software. very advanced. not as advanced as Photoshop, but comparable. I use it for everything.

NoScript Firefox extension -- Firefox + NoScript = the safest browser available. Chances of you getting somehow fucked or hacked because of browsing dark alleys on the Internet, practically reduced to zero. It seems a bit annoying at first because you need to explicitly whitelist every site you want to allow to use Flash or Javascript, but once you whitelisted your top 20 regular sites, it's very smooth. And it even got additional detection patterns to alert you if a whitelisted site suddenly starts misbehaving (due to XSS, for instance)

PortableApps.com -- lets you create a USB stick with a selection of quality free software (including a bunch of what I named above), except they are portable versions, which means they run on the USB stick, keep their configurations on the USB stick and generally do not mess with the computer's harddrive you're running it on. Very useful if you're, say, in an office that doesn't really have a good selection of utilities installed and you find yourself installing the same shit over and over again because you have a different workplace every day or IT wipes whatever you install every night. Comes with a nice "start menu" type of application that lets you easily start the apps on your portable apps sticky.
Additionally, even if you don't plan on making a portable apps USB stick, it pays to take a look at their catalogue of software. All of them (naturally) also come in a non-portable version, and they got a really good quality selection of free software in their list. So if you're thinking "I need a free software that does X", maybe check the portableApps list first to save yourself separating the crud from the crap.

Metapad -- notepad replacement. Does slightly more than regular notepad, but not much (which is the point). Starts up superquickly and is awesome. Main advantage over Notepad is that it has a sweet purple notepad icon.

PSPas -- free universal full-featured text editor. Use this to reformat plain text files, do search/replace over multiple files or directories, syntax highlighting for many/most computer languages, and a crapload of features that you don't know what to do with but one day will save your ass. Highly customizable. Also useful as a programming editor if you don't happen to have an IDE ready.

FileZilla -- free FTP/SFTP transfer program. very convenient. One of the easier ways to upload new stuff to your website (barring an automated versioning/sync/deploy solution, of course)

Prey Project -- Opensource anti-theft solution for laptops, phones, etc (multi-platform). Install Prey, register an account, and every 20 minutes Prey will try to connect to the Prey Server, get an OK and go back to sleep for another 20 minutes. In the unfortunate event that your laptop gets stolen, you log onto your Prey account, set your laptop to STOLEN, and the next time your laptop (now in the possession of the thief) connects to the Prey server, it will NOT get an OK but a message that it is STOLEN. Prey then silently takes a few pictures using your webcam, notes down the IP address it is connecting with and tries to triangulate its GPS position given the relative strengths of nearby WiFi networks. It then emails this data to you, so that you can try to get the police to take it serious, or whatever (that's the tricky bit). In case you are worried about privacy and/or don't trust the central Prey Server, you can also configure it to connect to a special page on your blog or whatever, so you are in fact in full control.

[Xooxe]

Launchy. Simple program launcher for people who can't be arsed trawling the start menu.

Podium. Digital audio workstation for writing music. The free version is so lenient that you can just use that. Best free DAW I know of for Windows.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Stuff I like (for burning things, mostly), it's not break/fix work but people were talking about burning, so I'm throwing it in. (Disclaimer: I'm not a geek and this is going to look retarded to the real geeks, but it's all EASY and it WORKS...took me a lot of trial and error to find these!)

Final Torrent, easiest torrent downloader ever, just click
http://www.finaltorrent.com/

Foobar2000, plays FLAC files, converts FLAC to WAV so you can burn lossless WAV cd's with Windows
http://www.foobar2000.org/download

mp3 tag, so you can make little pics come up on your iPod. Any pics you want to load.
http://www.mp3tag.de/en/download.html

Youtube downloader, does exactly what it says
http://youtubedownload.altervista.org/

DVD Flick, converts your youtube (or whatever) vids and burns them to DVDs. Pretty sure it uses ImgBurn for the burning part.
http://www.dvdflick.net/

And just for fancy-dancy shit, you can laser etch photos and stuff on your cd's and dvd's...you have to buy special ones, but they're good quality, better than Verbatim, I think.
http://www.lightscribe.com/

All of this stuff is free so you have to watch out for dumbass unwanted toolbars and the like, but I haven't had any real ill efffects.

[Gordon C]

Notepad++ http://notepad-plus-plus.org/

Smooth Gestures addon for FF and Chome https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lfkgmnnajiljnolcgolmmgnecgldgeld
Is my fav
Nothing better than just leftclick, move right to refresh a page