Best Recommended software for Win 7

Merenwenrago said:
Lol people always try and pretend their program is way better than one we use.
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Never said it was better :) I did point out that it was freeware. I used WinRAR as well - but the little box popping up telling me how many days I had left/was past trial date annoyed me. So I moved on, and I'm happy with what I have now.
 
shadowfox said:
Never said it was better :) I did point out that it was freeware. I used WinRAR as well - but the little box popping up telling me how many days I had left/was past trial date annoyed me. So I moved on, and I'm happy with what I have now.
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I was replying to his quote about CZC not you :D

I understand your pro's and cons for the programs. So I am going to test 7zip again. I think I had it years ago on my old pc.
 
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Merenwenrago said:
I was replying to his quote about CZC not you :D

I understand your pro's and cons for the programs. So I am going to test 7zip again. I think I had it years ago on my old pc.
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Oh ... my bad.

I recall my first experience with 7zip also wasn't entirely positive. But that was also quite a few years ago. But I've been using it again for the past 6 months now, and the level of functionality is exactly the same as WinRAR's. As Avatar said, the UI is a little bland, but I never use the UI - never used WinRAR's UI either.
 
shadowfox said:
Oh ... my bad.

I recall my first experience with 7zip also wasn't entirely positive. But that was also quite a few years ago. But I've been using it again for the past 6 months now, and the level of functionality is exactly the same as WinRAR's. As Avatar said, the UI is a little bland, but I never use the UI - never used WinRAR's UI either.
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Doesn't seem too bad it is quite fast and efficient like Winrar. I also never used the UI of winrar since I only use it for extracting zipped files.

I like the fact that it gives more options like compress and email or add to archive. With Winrar you had to use the UI to do it and wasn't with an easy right click.
 
I've been on this drive lately to switch my entire machine over to freeware (with the exception of my games and OS of course) - which includes going back and testing out the newer versions of programs I didn't luck with in the past. OpenOffice 1, for example, was horrible - I remember struggling for two hours one night just to get a table to display properly in my doc, before giving up and reinstalling MS Office.

Now, its a lovely set of apps, and I love the fact that you can save directly to PDF - whereas with MS Office I still have to go hunt for a app to do that for me (might have changed by now - last version I used was Office 97).

The one thing I'm looking for now is something that can replace Photoshop and Premier Pro - but I just haven't found any viable alternatives just yet. There is GIMP, but I struggle with its interface.
 
Merenwenrago said:
Lol some people always try and pretend their program they use is way better than one we use. I get told that my antivirus sucks yet it has protected me from hackers and viruses.
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Hehehe I was just pointing out that his motivation was equal to mine. I'll admit, I don't think WinRAR is better than 7zip, I simply prefer the former's GUI and ease-of-use over the latter's (very slight) clunky feel. All that is a feel and preference thing, so there's no reason for me to try and convert someone on 7zip to WinRAR. If they were using WinAce, however....
 
shadowfox said:
Now, its a lovely set of apps, and I love the fact that you can save directly to PDF - whereas with MS Office I still have to go hunt for a app to do that for me (might have changed by now - last version I used was Office 97).
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You should check out LibreOffice. It's essentialy the new OO, since Sun Intl was bought out by someone and some drama ensued and the whole OpenOffice team left and started LibreOffice as a fork. Apparently it's where OO was headed and still doing things right.

MS Office has the ability to print to PDF these days, but only via a freely available plugin from the MS website. I have no idea why they don't just include it out of the box..

shadowfox said:
The one thing I'm looking for now is something that can replace Photoshop and Premier Pro - but I just haven't found any viable alternatives just yet. There is GIMP, but I struggle with its interface.
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Have you tried Paint.NET? Apparently it's similar to GIMP (which I haven't tried in eons) but with a better interface. The only downside is having to install .NET runtime libraries.
 
Pidgin: Your one stop IM program. Not sure if the new version has facebook chat built in, I'm still using 2.8 because I'm lazy, but if not you just need to download a plug in. Otherwise it handles every Instant Messenger in one place, including MXit.

Thunderbird: I may have switched my browser to Chrome, but I am still very happy with Mozilla handling my E-mail. Especially easy to keep track of multiple accounts since my dad uses my laptop quite often and its no hassle for him to find his business and personal e-mail in one place.

EDIT: Just checked out pidgin 2.10 and yes, does support facebook chat.
 
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Avatar said:
Have you tried Paint.NET? Apparently it's similar to GIMP (which I haven't tried in eons) but with a better interface. The only downside is having to install .NET runtime libraries.
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I'll give it a go - I think it might be another one of those apps which I tried out aeons ago, so maybe there was some improvement. .NET libraries aren't an issue - I think I have those installed already :)

Oh ... it seems that VideoLAN org is busy working on a video editor http://www.videolan.org/vlmc/

I doubt it will measure up to Premier to start with, but I'm definitely going to play with it when they finally release it.
 
shadowfox said:
I've been on this drive lately to switch my entire machine over to freeware (with the exception of my games and OS of course) - which includes going back and testing out the newer versions of programs I didn't luck with in the past. OpenOffice 1, for example, was horrible - I remember struggling for two hours one night just to get a table to display properly in my doc, before giving up and reinstalling MS Office.

Now, its a lovely set of apps, and I love the fact that you can save directly to PDF - whereas with MS Office I still have to go hunt for a app to do that for me (might have changed by now - last version I used was Office 97).

The one thing I'm looking for now is something that can replace Photoshop and Premier Pro - but I just haven't found any viable alternatives just yet. There is GIMP, but I struggle with its interface.
Click to expand...

Got MS Office 2007 and still can't save to pdf without another program installed.
 
shadowfox said:
Oh ... it seems that VideoLAN org is busy working on a video editor http://www.videolan.org/vlmc/
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Oo-er, I'll be keeping my eye on this. My brother is an editor for a living, and I tried to get him on linux when he was a student and I got tired of fixing his Windows install; the only thing that kept him going back to Windows was Premier. There just aren't any good FOSS video editors that stand up to the professional products.
 
Total Commander IT edition - have Installed on2 computers and a Laptop
VLC - Like it cos it works with my phone as well android remote
jdownloader - Works great for downloads best one for youtube as well
 
crashdan said:
Total Commander IT edition - have Installed on2 computers and a Laptop
VLC - Like it cos it works with my phone as well android remote
jdownloader - Works great for downloads best one for youtube as well
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jdownloader works like a charm and the minute you copy a link it adds it to a download queue which you choose whether or not to download!! I don't think I will use any other download manager. ;)
 
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