I figured it’s probably now a good time to be a charitable citizen of the inter-webs and to publish my list of essential software nobody should go on without. The best thing is that everything on this list is absolutely free and available like the no-strings-attached one nighter you picked up last weekend.
For those of you who aren’t as tech savvy as the rest of us, some of the following list contains Open Source Software which are basically alternative software to their more commercialised counterparts such as Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Office etc etc. These can become absolute lifesavers if you’re running out of coins in the old piggy bank and can’t afford to dish out the $2,500 it costs for Adobe’s Creative Suite Collection.
Also I’ve noted down any other notable software that might be related for you to check out in case my choices don’t quite fly with you along with the URLs as to where you can find more information about the software and where to download them from.
Considering how diverse a category this bunch of software is, I’ll order them in terms of what I use most and find most useful. So let’s kick off the list with the one, the only …
OpenOffice.org
You might have read my recent review of the Microsoft’s latest offering: Office 2010 but what you might not have known is that there are several open source variations which are more often or not free. Leading the way in this department is OpenOffice.Org. This suite of applications incorporate most the programs you would normally find in Office but free and developed by the community. Their latest offering (Version 3.1) runs on all platforms, so whether you’re a MAC, Linux or Windows user, you can not only edit on one machine, but you can then take it over to another platform without any hassle. It’s also available in a variety of languages and can handle most common document types.
Personally I don’t use this (which explains why it’s last) but I do know of many people who do on a daily basis and recommend it to me if you don’t have Office. I’ve always been a bit of an MS Office user myself and if you can get Office 2007/2010, I’d recommend them first but for those instances where you can’t, OpenOffice.org is definitely the way to go.
Notable alternatives: Google Docs, Lotus Symphony, NeoOffice
Find it here: http://www.openoffice.org/
Polaris
Many of you reading this will be either bloggers or own a website, for those who aren’t just skip ahead to the next one on the list or at least drool at the Adobe Air Interface. This is the second application I’ve used based on the Adobe Air Platform (the other being Tweetdeck) and I must say, I’m very very impressed with how it runs on a whole new GUI and brings a breath of fresh air to what would otherwise be ordinary applications. Everything from the Installation to the setup and the final product makes you sit up and pay attention.
After experimenting with a couple of website tracking utilities, Google Analytics has been far and away the best in terms of ease of use and the way in which it represents data to you (not to mention free!). Google Analytics itself will be covered in a review on a later date when I run the comb over my favourite websites but Polaris brings essentially a beautiful dashboard to your desktop via the Analytics engine.
This free version allows for tracking of only one site, but this is perfect for me (as I only have one site) and apart from that, appears to have no other limitations. It’s quick and from the drop down menu, you can easily pull a variety of useful data you can glance at without the need of opening up a browsing and navigating the Analytics Website. All in all, an absolutely superb piece of software for those who need to track your website.
Notable Alternative: Awstats
Find it here: http://www.desktop-reporting.com/polaris.html
Virtual CloneDrive
Now I must admit that this is a new one on the list for me, and if I hadn’t switched over to Windows 7 RC that I would have probably never stumbled across this. However, seeing as my once preferred Daemon Tools (including Lite) doesn’t work with the new Windows as of yet, I’ve had to go looking elsewhere for a drive emulator. That is how I met Virtual CloneDrive and I haven’t looked back since. It runs in much the same way as Daemon Tools in that it sets up virtualised drives on your computer in order to run .iso files. This won’t mean much to people who don’t backup files and folders onto discs or who don’t download illegal educational games and software from the internet. But to those who do, this is an absolute gem and hasn’t failed me thus far.
Notable Alternatives: Daemon Tools, Alcohol 120%
Find it here: http://www.slysoft.com/en/virtual-clonedrive.html
Windows Movie Maker 2.1
Now this one might come as a bit of a surprise to you but yes Microsoft does release free software *recoil in horror*. Now once you’ve caught your breath back, Windows Movie Maker is my choice for a simple to use movie maker with a variety of customizable options such as title screens, transitions, text overlays etc. Just check the rest of my site, and you’ll find a few examples of my (amateurish) video editing skills. Yes I’m also perfectly aware that the Windows Live Movie Maker Beta is out but the library of effects and the customisability appears to be stripped down for some unknown reason. There might be a way of displaying and showing the timeline in the new one, but I haven’t found it and it looks to me like Microsoft have taken a step backwards.
A lot of you on the Mac platform will have the iCanMakeAnAmazingMovie software anyways and other more serious video makers with probably use Avidemux but that requires a bit of time and patience to get around the software. So if you’re not too concerned with making top notch productions and like me, mostly just post your videos to YouTube, this is a smart and easy to use piece of kit. Although they’ve taken a step backwards with new software it at least makes clear that not all new software upgrades actually upgrades software.
Notable Alternatives: Avidemux, Adobe Premier Pro, iMovie, Pinnacle Studio
Find it here: http://bit.ly/Lg8Xq
AVG
What has been the most reliable and unobtrusive anti-virus for the past few years in my opinion? Only one answer. AVG. For someone who downloads an obscene quantity of data on a daily basis, I’m really quite surprised that I haven’t had a major virus or anything come through ( cue the shooting myself in the foot scenario aka waves of hackers ). On the off chance that I do download a dodgy piece of software, up pops AVG like an experienced bouncer at a London nightclub. Without AVG, I’d definitely have a stockpile of buggered up CPU’s around my dorm and a general wasteland of Trojans and Worms all over my system.
Yet thanks to AVG, it runs nicely in the background and you won’t even notice it. It does have a few handy features such as being able to scan links sent to you via email or highlighting dangerous sites on Google. This is certainly a much sweeter answer than Norton Antivirus which in my opinion is way over-bloated and acts like an annoying child, asking permission of this, permission for that, permission to …
Notable Alternatives: Avast, NOD32, Avira AntiVir Personal , Clam Antivirus
Find it here: http://free.avg.com/
Live Messenger + Messenger Plus!
Chat. Some people do it, and some people don’t. For those who do, I’m not going to talk about the new Live Messenger as such but instead focus on the superb add-on: Messenger Plus! (the exclamation mark is actually the title, I didn’t just feel excited ..). This Live Messenger Extension practically beefs up Messenger to a point which Arnie would be proud of. 
There is a huge list of features which would take me months to get through (minutes really but I’m feeling lazy) so check out the site to see the full list. The one’s I think you should pay attention to the most because I couldn’t live without them is Tabbed Chats, Boss Protection and HTML Chat Logging.The first feature makes organising all your chat windows into one box with the ability to Ctrl + Tab your way through conversations. The second makes pressing a preset keyboard shortcut minimise all windows to one icon in the system tray and hide any sounds or pop ups from appearing. The third includes secure encrypting of logs and displaying them in a much nicer fashion.
Notable Alternatives: none that i would trust not to break msn
Find it here: http://www.msgplus.net/
7-Zip
Anyone whose ever come across a .zip or .rar or even the .001 type files will know that the inbuilt windows extractor is deeply out of it’s depth. Here I bring you 7-Zip, a free file extraction utility that can quickly and easily extract virtually any file, whether the file was even meant for this type of extraction or not. What makes this really easy to use is that you can change the Windows context menu in order to make extracting a simple two click process and absolutely hassle free.
The screenshot below shows the built in Windows Context Menu in action. Just right click and then on extract here and it’ll do the rest.
Notable Alternatives: WinZip, WinRAR, IZArc
Find it here: http://www.7-zip.org/download.html
Picasa 3
As I was searching for a better way of organising and viewing my tens upon thousands of pornographic personal images, I came across Picasa 3. Under the heading of Google, Picasa 3 provides a very quick and easy solution to managing photo libraries small and large. Picasa 3 has features such as being able to automatically update the library any time it detects new images in any assigned folders, it can detect duplicates in all your folders to keep your photo library clean and also create fancy collages to your viewing delight.
Also it includes native support for uploading to the Picasa Web Albums directory and although it’s not too apparent from the screenshot below, the interface does make it both very simple to navigate and provides very cool looking graphics
Something that I hadn’t noticed before was that opening pictures from Windows Explorer opens up a Cooliris-esque picture viewer which overlays the image you want to see on top of windows which looks incredibly sleek and if your GPU is up to it, is a very satisfying piece of eye candy. In terms of the UI, this definitely has one leg up over Windows Live Photo Gallery.
Notable Alternatives: IrfanView, Flickr
Find it here: http://picasa.google.com/
FeedDemon
Anybody who reads the news particularly a lot or needs to keep track of their favourite websites, subscribes to the RSS or Atom feeds right? Well with NewsGator’s FeedDemon, the software essentially aggregates all your news feeds and delivers it right to your desktop. Usually it’s the first thing i open when I switch on my laptop and keep up to date in the world of tech and news and (rightly or wrongly) takes priority over breakfast.
It’s as simple as clicking subscribe, typing in the name of your website, it'll find the feed for that site and once you’re done, it’ll automatically download new posts depending on how often you would like to be updated. Whether that be once every 30 minutes or every 3 hours is up to you. If you’re done reading but wish to keep it in the background, closing it via the X can be altered to minimise to the system tray. 
There’s the added functionality of clipping which is HUGELY useful if like me, you have half a kazillion feeds and say you see something interesting but don’t have time to read it, you can send it straight to the local or online clippings folder and access it later whenever you want.
Notable Alternatives: Google Reader, Vienna
Find it here: http://www.newsgator.com/Individuals/FeedDemon/Default.aspx
VLC Media Player
Quite literally the definition of multi-format media players. I’ve yet to come across a video or audio file on my daily use that this multi-faceted player could not handle. When installed, it can either be used “straight out the box” or a further delve into the options reveals the ability to rip CDs, to convert file formats and even enabling simple re-skinning of the entire interface. Not much else to say but once you’ve installed VLC, then you won’t ever have to find a reason to rummage around for codecs.
Notable Alternatives: Media Player Classic, Kantaris, GOM Player, Real Alternative
Find it here: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
Firefox
Yup, as the photo up top was probably a big clue, the number one spot goes to Firefox. Now where to begin with Firefox. Firefox has in my opinion not only provided a great open source platform for which millions of users browse the web from but has also changed our behaviour in how we interact with the Web. From simple features that we often take for granted such as tabbed browsing to the more complex and forward thinking ideas of Ubiquity, Firefox has managed to bring internet browsing to the next generation of users. 
Now I’ll keep this short and sweet because I’ll do a separate article specifically just about Firefox at a later date highlighting everything from the best extensions to new upcoming ideas and a review of the new Firefox 3.5 ridiculously quick TraceMonkey Javascript engine. But to the 90% of my readers who are reading this on Firefox, when was the last time you went a day without clicking on the Orange and Blue icon? Case Closed?
Notable Alternatives: Google Chrome, Safari, Opera
Find it here:http://getfirefox.com/
Feel free to leave a comment just down below and subcribe to the site. It would be very much appreciated. If you think i’ve missed a trick somewhere software wise then throw down what you think should’ve been in this list and have yourselves a little debate.
