On the USB stick I carry with me, I have a directory (called InitialSetup) with software for Windows, which I update occasionally (with new versions of the applications). I install the software each time I do a new installation on my computer, or the computer of a friend. These are applications, which I had used for awhile and am pleased with their reliability. All of them are free, some are with open source code. I will list those application in a series of 4 posts – I hope they will be useful to you too.
I separated the software in the following four categories (thеse will be the names of the posts on the subject as well):
- . System tools
- . Internet/Network applications (this post)
- . Office applications/Tools for document (word) processing
- . Multimedia applications
Browsers
There are at least three browsers, that are much better than Internet Explorer for several reasons. They are more secure (in the sense of Security and Protection in the previous post on the subject), they are faster and they offer additional functionality to what IE has.
Firefox – Internet Explorer’s main competitor according to usage statistics of the web browsers in the internet. Besides being quite fast and reliable, Firefox is also famous for abiding official internet standards (W3C) most strictly. It is very useful, that Firefox can be extended with a variety of add-ons, which improve your internet (and not only) experience. You can install, for example, status bar icons to notify you when you have new mail (without the need to log into your email account every time you want to check it), block Flash advertisements from the web sites you visit, to improve your Gmail experience and a bunch of other extensions.
Opera – Alongside the most popular mobile browser, Opera Mini, Opera provide a desktop browser for quite some time. Very fast browser, the first one to introduce browsing in tabs (instead of different windows). This is a common feature for all modern browsers, but Opera made it first. The team behind Opera is known for their innovations, and they were the first to introduce the Speed Dial – when opening a new window/tab, the user is presented a preview of the most visited (or preconfigured) pages to choose from and go there fast. At present Google Chrome (and even Safari) provides the same functionality, but don’t forget that Opera were first in this as well. Opera also offers add-ons (widgets), but the choice is pretty limited, compared to what Firefox has to offer.
Google Chrome – Google’s browser slowly (but consistently) gains traction and is based on the same open source toolkit (WebKit), used by Apple for their browser, Safari. It also introduced extensions recently, which will make it even more popular. The curious thing about Chrome is, that it updates itself automatically (without asking the user) and each website is opened in e separate process – meaning that if one page you’ve opened crashes, the rest are left intact.
Launchy – Launchy is not exactly a browser, but this seems the most appropriate category for it. I mentioned this extremely useful application before and to be honest, I’ve been using it intensively ever since. A really useful tool for starting applications quickly, without having to look for them in the Start menu. Just press Alt + Space, and start typing the name of the application you want to start and Launchy will suggest the programs it found. Try it if you haven’t already – you won’t regret it.
Download Managers / Torrents
uTorrent – Nowadays you don’t have to be a “pirate” to use a torrent client. A number of web sites offer download of software through torrents, to reduce the load on their servers. uTorrent is really, really small (the installation file is only 300k!) and fast client, which does not exhaust much of your system’s resources. At the same time it handles torrent downloads smoothly and efficiently.
Azureus / Vuze – I had been using Azureus (long before it was renamed to Vuze) for quite awhile, before I came across uTorrent. The main reason I stopped using it, is that it is really, really sluggish – it loads very slowly and then you can feel it is working in the background (your whole PC becomes slower). Despite this shortcoming, it is one of the best torrent clients and handles torrent downloads wonderfully, even when other clients fail. They introduced media capabilities in Vuze recently, which will transform it in something like a Media Center (not just the next torrent client).
DownThemAll! – Firefox add-on, which handles file downloads much better than the default download manager Firefox has built-in. It downloads files faster and supports resuming of downloads, if the connection is dropped, for example (and the server you are downloading from supports it). It also has a very useful dTa OneClick! function, which allows you to easily select directory for the download (from the most recent you’ve used).
Instant Messengers
Skype – The most popular application for internet calls, which helped it become one of the most popular instant messaging clients, as well. One of the main characteristics of Skype is, that the communication is secure. A message sent on Skype does not go through a central server and is encrypted, which makes it almost impossible for someone in the middle to read it. A drawback of this approach is, that if you send a message to someone, who is offline, she will receive the message only when you are both online again, at the same time.
Miranda – Great little instant messaging client for Windows. You can use it for ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and even Jabber. It is really small, does not load your computer significantly and works fast and reliably. Until recently, it’s major drawback was its ugly UI, but there are improvements on this front – there are better looking icons in the latest builds.
Remote Access
FileZilla – Great open source FTP client, localized in a variety of different languages, including Bulgarian.
Putty – If you ever needed to access remote machines over SSH (Linux primarily), this is THE client for Windows. It’s UI looks a bit outdated and clumsy, but it works great and once you get used to it, you stop worrying about it.
WinSCP – Very good client for file transfer over SCP or SFTP. The user interface reminds about Norton Commander and helps to transfer files to and from Linux/Unix machines easily and without hassle.
