Best Applications

Last modified January 5, 2010

I thought I’d make a list of the programs that I use or have used (I get asked all the time). Of course, I consider these apps to be the best of their category. Some are windows only, some are multiplatform (as stated below), and some are listed under multiple categories. Comments are always welcome.

Music

  • Tagging: MP3tag – If you have a large music collection and want to keep it organized, this is a must. It can read all known audio formats and edit their tags (like ID3 for MP3). Good when you have a bunch of music files that have the correct filenames, but don’t have the correct tags or vice-versa.
  • Ripper: CDex – Rip music from a music CD to MP3/MP2/AAC/WMA/WAV/OGG. Has support for CDDB, volume normalization, bitrate, ID3 tags, and great regular expression syntax for file naming. Be sure to use the new LAME VBR encoding method for the highest quality mp3 with the smallest size.

Images

  • Image Viewer: Irfanview – Can read and save to virtually any image format. Has tons of plugins to expand functionality, but only if you need them. Also has nice basic image editing features like image resizing, color/brightness/contrast correction, etc.
  • Image Editor: GIMP – The best alternative to installing the bloated, costly Adobe Photoshop.

Video

  • Compressing to divx/xvid: AutoGK – Good video codec compression utility for movies. Inputs mpeg’s and avi’s. Outputs to divx/xvid. Works well with DVD Decrypter. Tons of features.
  • Ripping DVDs: DVD Decrypter – Can rip and decrypt movie DVD’s to your hard drive. Can also write almost any image file imaginable to a CD/DVD. Lots of copy protection decryption options. Works well with AutoGK. Apparently further project development has been halted, but it’s still a great application.
  • Quicktime Playback: Quicktime Alternative – A great app that lets you download embedded .mov files for later viewing.
  • Video Player: MPC-HC – Simple, excellent movie playback. Supports CoreAVC for h264 playback.
  • H264 Playback: CoreAVC – Although not free, it’s the fastest, fully featured, easiest to use h264 hardware accelerated decoder out there. At $10, it’s a reasonable price for what you get.

Disc Burning/Reading (not video/audio related)

  • Burnatonce – Can make data ISO’s with many, many options including making bootable ISO’s. Can also make ISO’s for audio CD’s. You can then burn the ISO or just save it to a file. It can also make an ISO from a disk. A must have replacement for Nero.
  • Daemon Tools – The standard for emulating a CDROM drive and mounting any image file imaginable. Also has great copy protection emulation support. When installing, make sure you do NOT install the adware that it comes with. If you uncheck it, it won’t install any.

Servers/Clients/Networking

  • HTTP server: Apache (httpd) – Best HTTP server. Highly configurable options and plugins. Multiplatform.
  • FTP client: Filezilla (client) – Best free ftp client. Has support for many features, including SSL encryption and compression. Also supports SFTP over SSH. Multiplatform.
  • FTP server: Filezilla Sever – Best windows ftp server. Many options. Has SSL encryption and data channel compression support.
  • VPN: Hamachi – Best 3rd party VPN solution. Easy to set up and use. Multiplatform CLI versions available.
  • SVN client: TortoiseSVN – The best SVN client for windows. Has a nice GUI extension that integrates itself into explorer. Works really well.
  • Remote desktop: UltraVNC – A really good VNC server and client for remotely controlling a computer. Has good plugin support and encryption. Also supports file transfers and simple IM with the client/server that it’s connected to. Client is multiplatform through a Java extension. Other flavors of VNC are multiplatform, but they don’t have good password/data encryption and therefore aren’t compatible with UltraVNC’s encryption if turned on.
  • SSH client (for Windows): PuTTY – Of course, if you don’t want to install cygwin, PuTTY is your best alternative.

Web Browsers/HTTP Proxies

  • Fastest browser: Chrome – If your cpu usage is spiking when loading sites, Chrome is for you. It’s a ram hog though, so make sure you have a beefy machine.
  • Best overall browser: Firefox – A good general web browser replacement. May have more features than what you need, though. Picking a browser for yourself depends highly on personal preference. Addons are nice, especially AdBlocker Plus.
  • Best ad blocker for Firefox/Chrome: Adblocker Plus – A good general web browser replacement. May have more features than what you need, though. Picking a browser for yourself depends highly on personal preference. Addons are nice, especially AdBlocker Plus.
  • Best general ad blocker: Proxomitron – I’ve been using it for many, many years on countless machines. It acts as a proxy, so it can be used with any web browser. Highly configurable and versatile. However, it hasn’t been maintained for some years and therefore some newer ads/popups slip through its fingers if you don’t program your own rules. The programming language it uses for rules is fairly simple to learn, though.
  • Best anonymizer: Tor/Vidalia – Easy to use. Multiplatform.

Instant Messengers

  • Pidgin – The best multiprotocol IM available. Simple, easy to use yet customizable with plugins. Only downside is that it doesn’t support webcams/mics. Multiplatform.
  • Gfire – Decent support for xfire on Pidgin. Multiplatform.
  • Xfire – The best IM for gamers. Shows what game you and your friends are playing and what server you’re both on.

System/File Utilities

  • Compression: 7-Zip – Has lots of features that nothing else has. Compared to other free file compression utilities, it’s the best hands down. Only 1 thing missing: for those who use RARs, it can’t compress them (but can decompress them). Multiplatform.
  • Defragger: Auslogics Disk Defrag – The fastest 3rd party defrag utility. Multithreaded and has a decent visualization of fragmentation on your disk. Can also run it and the windows defrag utility at the same time, which saves time when defragmenting multiple drives. Also gives a nice summary of files that it defraged in HTML format.
  • Defragger: MyDefrag – The most configurable 3rd party defrag utility. It can defrag the MFT, move files into contiguous sectors, and move most accessed files to the fastest part of the drive. It’s very intelligent.
  • Antivirus: AVG – Useful if you’re not that great of keeping viruses out of your system :P It’s a bit bloated and ties into your system, but not as bad as some I’ve seen.
  • Antivirus: ClamWin – The most unobtrusive antivirus. It doesn’t tie into your system whatsoever, except for optional scheduling. Useful to scan individual files at will.
  • Hashing: MD5summer – Best file verification/MD5 utility out there. Can walk down subdirectories and verify each file. Can save results to a file for later comparison.
  • Temperature monitor: Speedfan – The best lightweight temperature and fan speed monitor. It supports almost any chipset imaginable.

Other

  • 3D modeler/animator: Blender – Can open almost any desired format and save to it, with a few exceptions. Tons of features. Multiplatform.
  • Google Earth – Only program of its kind. Can zoom in and out on incredibly detailed aerial and satellite photographs taken anywhere on Earth. Can also view the night sky as seen from your house at any time. Broadband is required. Multiplatform.
  • Office suite: OpenOffice – A nice drop-in replacement for microsoft office. Has almost all of the same features and is open source. Can read and write to almost all formats that office can. Multiplatform.