Worthwhile programs that you should download

[Torch]

Stick Online - This smalltime MMO, created using gamemaker is one of the most addictive MMOs available. It has a wide range of areas, equipment, and enemies, as well as an extremely fluid PVP system. It has a small but growing community and those in it are considerably more mature than those that you would find playing many other, larger MMOs. There is currently a small 10$ paypal donation required to play, but a remake is currently in development and is set to be completely free of charge.

[Scotty]

Last.fm Scrobbler

Last.fm is the social network of online radio.  I personally am a HUGE fan of Last.fm, as I am a huge advocate of social networking (via my job) as well as the fact that I love music.  Combine the two, and you are golden!  They have a desktop application that "scrobbles" your music that you listen to, and it submits every song played to your profile.  As an example, you can view my profile here  If you like social networking, and you like listening to music, this is quite possibly one of the best ways to find more music!

Notepad++

As a great substitute for the regular notepad or wordpad, I present Notepad++.  I like it as a simple, quick and easy IDE.  Being that I quite often will write up just a quick script or two, this is an excellent tool to do just that, vice working on a project level amount of scripts, in which case I would recommend Netbeans from my previous posts.  This is just a great quick and easy IDE that supports just about every single programming/scripting language under the sun, as well as other features via plugins like FTP and such.  Go check it out!

[Pat]

Game Maker: An easy to use game creation program that uses a drag and drop feature that allows you to take what you want and drop it into the game for easy quick game development. While D&D is a main focus of Game Maker more serious developers can use the inbuilt Game Maker Language (GML) to create more advanced games and gives you a gateway into the world of programming as GML is similar to many high end programming languages such as Java and C++.
Steam: Steam is created by Valve (the guys who made Half-Life and TF2) and is used as a digital distribution platform for video games. Many of the games you find on steam will be cheaper than a retail copy (a lot of retail games now activate and require steam) and you don't have to leave the house to buy them as they are delivered via the internet straight onto your computer. Steam also includes a community where you can add and chat to friends, view others profiles / what games they've been playing / game stats and create and join groups where you can organise events and such.

[Mr Pwnage]

So just wondering Chaos, are you going to populate your first post with some of the suggestions from other people or is it just going to be a running list like this?

[ARTgames]

I made a long post with a lot of stuff when the topic was just starting but fire fox crashed and i got pist an never remade my list. Good thing some of you suggested the stuff i was so i can suggest a lot less things. now back to what people care about:

CDBurnerXP http://cdburnerxp.se/ "CDBurnerXP is a free application to burn CDs and DVDs, including Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs. It also includes the feature to burn and create ISOs, as well as a multilanguage interface. Everyone, even companies, can use it for free. It does not include adware or similar malicious components." -from site

MediaCoder http://cdburnerxp.se/ "MediaCoder is a free universal media transcoder since 2005. It integrates most popular audio/video codecs and tools in an elegant and transparent manner into an all-in-one transcoding solution. With a flexible and extendable architecture, latest codecs and tools are updated added in constantly. MediaCoder intends to be the swiss army knife for media transcoding in all time." -from site

These are just two things i can think of that have not ben said.

[11clock]

I'd like to bump this topic with something I recommend.

SUPERAntiSpyware (http://www.superantispyware.com/): A very useful free virus scanner. It gets rid of viruses that other scanners can't detect. It's also frequently updated.

[Forum]

I'd like to bump this topic with something I recommend.

SUPERAntiSpyware (http://www.superantispyware.com/): A very useful free virus scanner. It gets rid of viruses that other scanners can't detect. It's also frequently updated.

Is it better than AVG?

[Scotty]

GIMP

Like Photoshop but don't want to pay the ump-teen hundred clams for it?  GIMP is a thriving free and open-source alternative.  It has an ever-growing list of free add-ons that extend the capabilities, and is highly regarded as one of Photoshop's top competitors.  From Wikipedia:

GIMP (short for the GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a free software raster graphics editor. It is primarily employed as an image retouching and editing tool. In addition to free-form drawing, GIMP can accomplish essential image work-flow steps such as resizing, editing, and cropping photos, combining multiple images, and converting between different image formats. GIMP can also be used to create basic animated images in the GIF format. At present, GIMP is usable for amateur or professional work with images intended for viewing on monitors and printing on ink-jet printers.

Inkscape

Inkscape is a vector graphics editor application. It is distributed under a free software license, the GNU GPL. Its stated goal is to become a powerful graphics tool while being fully compliant with the XML, SVG, and CSS standards.
Inkscape is cross-platform and runs on Mac OS X (typically under X11, although the underlying GTK+ toolkit can be compiled to run natively under Quartz), Unix-like operating systems, and Microsoft Windows. Inkscape's implementation of SVG and CSS standards is incomplete. Most notably, it does not yet support animation, or SVG fonts, though base support for the creation of SVG fonts has been implemented as of version 0.47. Inkscape has multi-lingual support, particularly for complex scripts, something currently lacking in most commercial vector graphics applications.

[tehrozzy]

GIMP

Actually, I have photoshop CS4 and i prefer GIMP over it. Screw the big brands, GIMP owns it.

[Lingus]

GIMP

Actually, I have photoshop CS4 and i prefer GIMP over it. Screw the big brands, GIMP owns it.

Not to get into this topic too much, but I tried GIMP once and I couldn't even figure out what to do with it. The interface, in my opinion, was not very intuitive. Adobe products seem to be a lot more intuitive in the interface department. Photoshop and Illustrator work great for me. I think it's all preference...

[tehrozzy]

GIMP

Actually, I have photoshop CS4 and i prefer GIMP over it. Screw the big brands, GIMP owns it.

Not to get into this topic too much, but I tried GIMP once and I couldn't even figure out what to do with it. The interface, in my opinion, was not very intuitive. Adobe products seem to be a lot more intuitive in the interface department. Photoshop and Illustrator work great for me. I think it's all preference...

Yeah I havent actually used GIMP in a while, i forgot about the interface. That was always a let down.

[Scotty]

GIMP

Actually, I have photoshop CS4 and i prefer GIMP over it. Screw the big brands, GIMP owns it.

Not to get into this topic too much, but I tried GIMP once and I couldn't even figure out what to do with it. The interface, in my opinion, was not very intuitive. Adobe products seem to be a lot more intuitive in the interface department. Photoshop and Illustrator work great for me. I think it's all preference...

It is a preference.  You could really say the same for Photoshop, the main GUI difference is the windows.  All of these high-capability programs are going to have more than a lemming's worth of a learning curve, but once you get it, you are gold!  Look at it this way, take an average user who would like to get into Photoshop or GIMP, but doesn't take the time or effort to learn it well, then after a couple of months, observe them and see how much they use the programs, and how much untapped potential you'll see.  I'd say both would average about equal in that regard.  Also, I will agree with you, in that if you go from one to the other, you are in for a wild ride.  If you start out on or the other, you're likely to be biased and say the same thing about either, aka preference.

[11clock]

I'd like to bump this topic with something I recommend.

SUPERAntiSpyware (http://www.superantispyware.com/): A very useful free virus scanner. It gets rid of viruses that other scanners can't detect. It's also frequently updated.

Is it better than AVG?

AVG and SUPERAntiSpyware are both about equal, and it's suggested you use both.

[Forum]

I'd like to bump this topic with something I recommend.

SUPERAntiSpyware (http://www.superantispyware.com/): A very useful free virus scanner. It gets rid of viruses that other scanners can't detect. It's also frequently updated.

Is it better than AVG?

AVG and SUPERAntiSpyware are both about equal, and it's suggested you use both.

Oh ok i will try out SuperAntiSpyware.

EDIT: I remember i used it before on my old computer and it was ok but i'ma just stick with my current virus protector.

[krele]

deamon tools

used to create virtual drive containing mounted .iso files, rather. rather than burning the image on a medium, you can mount it and access it in a matter of seconds.

rocket dock

a mac-like dock. can be used to easily access stuff you need occasionally, rather than jungling your desktop or start menu. fully customizable, and awesome =)

jet-audio

not really a celebrity, which is amazing since i personally prefer this media player over winamp. many add-ons, included audio recorder, converter for most video and audio filetypes, burning, audio editing, etc... absolutely amazing.


i also support openoffice and gimp...