Media
iTunes - I have an iPod, so this is a must
VLC - how good is BSplayer?
Videora
**P2P Soulseek
uTorrent
**
Maintenance
Switch Off - this enables you to schedule shutdowns, etc.
Ad-Aware
Spybot
**Antivirus
**My old comp has AVG, but I get the impression from other topics in this forum that Avast! or Kaspersky are the best choices.
**Firewall
**Old comp: ZoneAlarm Pro. Is their a better solution?
**Productivity
**Microsoft Office
(sorry, while the little voice inside says to use OpenOffice…)
**CD/DVD Burning
**Is the answer to just use whatever comes with the drive?
**Photo Editing
**Adobe Photoshop
–
That’s all I can think of for now. Thanks for any recommendations.
Hey SRK experts, does Litestep work on Vista? Is there a really easy tutorial/guide somewhere? Some of you guys have setups that are slick as hell, so thanks!
I just realized that you might not know what some of that stuff is…
K3B is a burning app. Interface-wise it’s on par with Roxio and Nero, and can burn really just about anything. GimpShop is a GUI-altered version of Gimp that looks and behaves like Photoshop. Crossover is a package-centric version of Wine that allows you to create wine “bottles”, ie you could create a bottle that mimics windows 98 and runs nullDC, and then zip up that bottle and send it to someone else to run. Crossover creates a complete, individual windows environment for each program, so that no one Windows program can screw up another. iTunes can run without Crossover, but Crossover works so well that I can’t help but recommend it. Audacity is for recording and mixing down audio. Inkscape is for vector art (similar to Adobe Illustrator).
I guess that’s about it. Guarantee that if you wipe out your laptop when it arrives and load what I listed instead, give it 3 days and you’ll never want to go back.
For Firewall I like Outpost Firewall, the best in my opinion, and when I tested it apposed to other firewalls. Also Nod32 gets a second mention as I prefer Nod as well over any other.
Perfect PC.
iTunes can run without Crossover, but Crossover works so well that I can’t help but recommend it. Audacity is for recording and mixing down audio. Inkscape is for vector art (similar to Adobe Illustrator).