Superior Alternatives to Crappy Windows Software - Downloads

It may be the year 2008, but a whole lot of sucktacular software still rears its ugly head on PC's everywhere, even when better-behaved options are freely available. Whether it's molasses-slow bloatware, shameless adware, anemic default apps, or "Your trial period has expired!" nagware, it's time to replace stinky Windows software with its superior (but lesser-known) alternative. Last week we asked what software you should never install on your PC, and over 200 comments later, you compiled quite a list. Today we're going to take a walk down the Crapware Hall of Shame, point and laugh at the worst offenders, and highlight some better choices. Photo by chelseagirl.

Application to Avoid: Adobe Reader
Indictment: Bloatware
Superior Alternative(s): FoxIt Reader or Sumatra PDF
Notes: There are much worse offenders on this list than Adobe Reader, which has gotten more performant over the years. Keep in mind that Adobe deals with some PDF's (like ones with editable form fields) better than FoxIt. If you don't want to ditch Adobe Reader entirely, here's how to tweak Adobe 8 for speed.


Application to Avoid: AOL Instant Messenger pidginthumb.png
Indictment: One-trick pony with ads included made by a company that holds its customers hostage. (Speaking of, here's how to cancel your AOL account.)
Superior Alternative(s): Digsby or Pidgin or Miranda or Trillian or Meebo
Notes: The moral of the story is you should avoid anything that comes on six zillion free CDs that swamp your apartment building's mailroom.


Application to Avoid: Browser Toolbars (that you didn't seek out yourself)
Indictment: Notorious for hijacking your browser, phoning home with your online activity, taking up precious real estate, and not offering any features you actually want.
Superior Alternative(s): Your browser's built-in search box and a few good bookmarklets
Notes: Don't get us wrong: Not all toolbars are bad, but do beware when they get tacked onto the end of a totally unrelated software installation and you have to opt OUT of them.


Application to Avoid: Internet Explorer (6 and 7)
Indictment: Lacks features any self-respecting modern web browser had two versions ago
Superior Alternative(s): Firefox
Notes: Because IE gloms onto the innards of your operating system so inextricably, you can't truly uninstall it. Just set your system's default browser to Firefox to avoid launching IE ever.


Application to Avoid: iTunes
Indictment: Too controlling, gleefully enforces DRM, can't monitor folders for new music
Superior Alternative(s): foobar200 (more on foobar2000), Songbird, or WinAmp
Notes: We—ok, I—actually like and use iTunes, ever since that time Steve Jobs waved that iPhone over my forehead and chanted. These recommendations only for those with particularly sensitive digital music sensibilities.


Application to Avoid: Java Runtime Environment
Indictment: You ugly and yo' Mama dresses you funny
Superior Alternative(s): None.
Notes: If you want to run a Java app, without the runtime you're SOL. Java, we love the idea of you. Just not the coffee cup staring at us from the system tray.


Application to Avoid: Limewire
Indictment: Where do we start? Haven't launched Limewire since our college days, and don't plan to ever look back
Superior Alternative(s): Frostwire
Notes: Bonus: Frostwire does BitTorrent, too.


Application to Avoid: MSN Messenger
Indictment: Little ugly non-faces with a red X over them plant themselves in your system tray with no obvious way to uninstall or quit it
Superior Alternative(s): Digsby or Pidgin or Miranda or Trillian or Meebo
Notes: Uninstall MSN Messenger by going to the "Add/Remove Windows Components" area in Control Panel's "Add/Remove Programs" area.


Application to Avoid: Nero Suite
Indictment: Costly
Superior Alternative(s): CDBurnerXP
Notes: The free CDBurnerXP may not do everything Nero does, but for the price it does a whole lot.


Application to Avoid: McAfee/Norton/Symantec Anti-Virus
Indictment: Naggy subscription costs after the free trial on your new PC runs out
Superior Alternative(s): AVG or Avast
Notes: See why many readers have ditched their AV software.


Application to Avoid: QuickTime
Indictment: Plants itself in your startup and system tray
Superior Alternative(s): QuickTime Alternative
Notes: While QuickTime doesn't annoy us THAT much, it still annoys us a little—especially since it comes with Apple's Software Update. (See Safari's Honorable Mention, below.)


Application to Avoid: RealPlayer
Indictment: We're still so traumatized about RealPlayer's repeated takeover of our PC back in 2004 we're seeing a special doctor that's killing that part of our memory
Superior Alternative(s): Real Alternative


vlcthumb.pngApplication to Avoid: Windows Media Player
Indictment: WTF interface, chokes on clips in common formats
Superior Alternative(s): VLC


Application to Avoid: WinZip
Indictment: Cost
Superior Alternative(s): 7-Zip or ALZip


Honorable mention: While Apple's Safari web browser for Windows itself is not crappy, Apple's Software Update trying to push it on you completely sucks. Here's how to opt out of installing Safari and stop the nag.

What crappy apps or better alternatives did we miss? Did we wrongly accuse one of your favorites? Let us know in the comments.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, still hasn't forgiven RealPlayer. Her weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Monday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.



Lifehacker - Superior Alternatives to Crappy Windows Software - Downloads

DiskDigger - free data recovery made easy | DmitryBrant.com

DiskDigger can recover files from any type of media that your computer can read. This includes USB flash drives, memory cards (SD, CompactFlash, Memory Stick, etc), and of course your hard drive. The types of files that it recovers include photos, videos, music, documents, and many other formats.

DiskDigger can even scan reformatted or badly formatted disks (disks to which Windows can’t assign a drive letter), and even disks with bad sectors. It bypasses the Windows file system drivers and scans your disk directly. It has its own built-in support for the following file systems: FAT12 (floppy disks), FAT16 (older memory cards), FAT32 (newer memory cards and hard disks), NTFS (newer hard disks), and exFAT (Microsoft’s new successor to FAT32).

DiskDigger is also very compact and portable. The entire program is a single executable file that you can run from anywhere. There’s nothing to “install,” and the program doesn’t leave any trace of having been run.

You may find DiskDigger useful if…

  • you deleted one or more photos from a memory card by accident, and want them restored.
  • you deleted one or more photos from a memory card on purpose, but now want them restored.
  • you deleted some documents from your USB flash drive, and want to recover them.
  • you came across an old hard drive of yours (or someone else’s) that’s been reformatted, and would like to see what its previous contents were.
  • you’ve “securely wiped” your media, and want to make sure that your media has actually been wiped correctly.
  • you’re just curious about what old deleted files are still present on your memory cards or hard drives.

DiskDigger is also a work in progress. This means that new features will be added very frequently, including support for more file formats, more configuration options, etc., so check back for updates.



DiskDigger - free data recovery made easy | DmitryBrant.com

Free Programs Every Windows User Should Have

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Recover deleted data from hard disk even if its been deleted from recycle bin

If you are a computer professional then you have to be prepared to protect your hard drive data well from unexpected data loss and take back ups. Hard drives corrupt more often now then before. Sometimes we delete data by accident. Sometimes we delete data but we may need that later on. Computer data is not fully deleted from hard drive. It remains in some form for sometime unless you write more data and fill up the space. You can recover that data easily if you have some powerful tool to recover it. Here are some free powerful data recovery tools which I have been using.

Emergency file recovery requires more than the correct tool, though. It requires knowing how file deletion occurs, and what you have to do to maximize the chances of a successful recovery. When a file is deleted from your computer, its contents aren’t immediately destroyed. Windows simply marks the hard drive space as being available for use by changing one character in the file table so that the file entry won’t be displayed in My Computer or a command line DIR command, etc. If you manage to start an undeletion process before Windows uses that part of the hard drive to write a new file, all you have to do is set that flag back to “on,” and you get the file.

Full article here:

Recover deleted data from hard disk even if its been deleted from recycle bin.

NewOrder - news: Securing Your Windows PC

This guide will be on securing your Windows computer from local and remote attacks by using certain security features that come with Windows to protect your information as well as the use of software to help protect your computer from unauthorized access by intruders.

It will also deal with personal privacy and how to keep your important information from getting in the hands of others. Hopefully, when you are done reading this you will have a better idea on what should be done to keep your PC and your personal information from being exploited by curious or malicious users.

Full list here:
NewOrder - news: Securing Your Windows PC

Finding drivers for unrecognized hardware in a Windows system | Nixadmins.net

image

If Windows wouldn’t be able to find drivers for it the Details pane would still be visible and you would se the Device Instance Id. From that one line we can get everything we need. So let’s try it out.

In the beginning of the line PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_10BD&SUBSYS…. VEN stands for the Vendor, this being Intel and DEV for the device in question. So now that we know this much just head over to pcidatabase.com and enter the DEV id 10BD into the device search.

Read full article here:

Finding drivers for unrecognized hardware in a Windows system | Nixadmins.net

Downloadpedia - The Software Encyclopedia

Downloadpedia.com is an extended library of freeware, shareware and commercial software for Windows, Linux, and Mac.

Downloadpedia.com is intended for those who are looking for tools. We attempt to carry out a simple mission: to provide you with the best software available on the Web. Downloadpedia.com offers a comprehensive gathering of applications. We bring to the focus mainly freeware and shareware.

Though, here you will be able to find the best commercial products. When making our choice of commercial software we were guided by several principles. We gave our preference to the most popular, most frequently downloaded, reliable, effective software at affordable prices.

Downloadpedia - The Software Encyclopedia

200+ Portable Apps for USB | Free Portable Softwares

A portable application, or portable app for short, is a computer software program that does not need to be installed or copied onto a computer’s mass storage device to be executed, running instead from a removable storage device such as a CD-ROM drive, USB flash drive, flash card, or floppy disk.

Portable applications can be run on any computer system with which they are compatible; they usually require a certain type of operating system (e.g., Microsoft Windows XP or above, any Linux, etc). Portable software in this sense should not be confused with software portability, where software is designed in a way which allows its source code to be compiled for different computing platforms.

Here are the Cool List of Free Portable Apps for USB


200+ Portable Apps for USB | Free Portable Softwares

Lifehacker Pack 2009: Essential Free Windows Downloads | Lifehacker Australia


We feature downloads of all kinds every day at Lifehacker. Today, however, we’re bundling all the best free downloads for new computer owners, re-installers, would-be geeks, or anyone who wants to save time installing the best stuff out there. This is our 2009 Lifehacker Pack for Windows computers.

The idea is simple — a single, handy list that we think improves the computer lives of Windows users. We’re also providing a utility to download some or all of these applications at once—more on that after the list.

You can head directly to each application’s download page from the [Download] links following their write-ups, and see what Lifehacker originally wrote about them at the [LH Post] link. If there’s a portable version of an application that you can run off a thumb drive and/or test out without installing, we’ve linked to that at [Portable], or added a “+Portable” to the main download link.

Onto the list!


Lifehacker Pack 2009: Essential Free Windows Downloads | Lifehacker Australia

Free iTunes alternative - Manage iPod and iPhone without iTunes

Everything CopyTrans Manager can do!

Sick of iTunes? Is it too complex and slow for your needs? Looking for a faster, lighter and free alternative iPod manager? CopyTrans Manager is the perfect iTunes replacement for your iPhone or iPod. Preview tracks with the integrated music player, add music & videos to your iPod, edit song tags and artworks, create and organize iPhone playlists, it has never been this simple!

Manage your iPod without iTunes, it’s a reality now!

Add music to iPod, videos & more

  • Add music, podcasts, audio books, videos, films and TV-shows to iPod or iPhone
  • Drag & Drop songs directly from any folder to your iPod, iTouch and iPhone
  • Add tracks from any PC to iPod, iPod Touch and iPhone

Organize iPhone or iPod and manage playlists

  • Create iPod Touch playlists or edit existing ones
  • Drag & Drop iPhone songs directly into iPhone playlists
  • Import all album artwork automatically to your iPod or iPhone
  • Edit track information (artist, album, ratings, genre, etc.)
  • Search iPhone tracks by album, artist or anyway you want
  • Synchronize iPod instantly or manually

Remove iPod tracks & playlists

  • Remove tracks from your iPod playlists
  • Remove iPod Touch playlists
  • Delete iPhone tracks definitively

Play iPod tracks directly on any PC

  • Listen to your iPod Touch music, audio books, podcasts
  • Install your iTunes alternative directly on your iPod
  • Use your iPhone manager on every PC without installation

Standalone, light and fast

  • No installation required
  • Takes only 3MB of hard drive space
  • Loads in less than a second

Free iTunes alternative - Manage iPod and iPhone without iTunes

The 10 most annoying programs on the Internet | 10 Things | TechRepublic.com

The Internet has brought us many joys. It’s rewritten the rules of business and pleasure.

And pain. For it allows what may have seemed like bright ideas at the time (”Let’s use it to make sure our customers have the latest software,” for example) to turn into a stinking pit of misery — usually, but by no means always, after marketing gets its fangs in.

Here are just 10 of the guilty parties that try to do the impossible: to make us hate the Internet and wish it had never been invented — and which very nearly succeed.

Note: This list originally appeared as a photo gallery created by Rupert Goodwins, which published on ZDNet.co.uk, ZDNet, and TechRepublic. It’s also available as a PDF download.

Full list here:

The 10 most annoying programs on the Internet | 10 Things | TechRepublic.com
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29 Web Apps For Students and White Collar Workers

Take a moment and imagine a world without computers, a world without applications. Its hard isn’t it? In today’s day and age it has become impossible to get certain things done without the help of a computer. And of course computer alone can’t do much if there aren’t proper application to assist you in what you are doing.

Web applications have come and gone. Some have stayed on top for years and have provided utmost value to the users and some have been dumped after their first use.

Today we bring you 29 Web Applications that are intended for students, businesses and webmasters. In this post you will find 29 web apps altogether divided in 3 groups – Students, Businesses and Webmasters. Under each link you will find a brief excerpt from their about us page which will give you a better idea as to how they might help you achieve what you are trying to do.

note : the description under each application is extracted from the application developers about page. No one else can describe a product like the makers do, so we decided we would use their own words to describe each applications.

Let’s get started (FROM Palaestra Training » Blog Archive » )

29 Web Apps For Students and White Collar Workers