Bullets 'n' Babes

Better to make this into 1 easy to find topic, where we will list the freeware-alternatives to all the software that might be useful.

I'll be updating the FP as we go along, and please let's do this orderly so it won't be a huge hassle to me.

I'll divide the FP into different sections, like mediaplayer, unzippers, messengers, etc etc... and what we need is the name of the pogram, the link to the homepage of that software, or where we can download it, and a small description of what it does and possibly why it's better than the alternatives.

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Text-Editors
OpenOffice: http://www.openoffice.org/ - Alternative to Microsof Word.

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Media Players

Media Player Classic (Home Cinema): - http://mpc-hc.sourceforge.net/ - Powerful Media Player, much better than Windows Media Player for playing video.

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Messengers


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Codec-Packs


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Anti-Virus

AVG Anti-Virus: http://free.avg.com/ - Also now does Anti-Spyware.

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Anti-Spyware

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Photo-editing and Graphical software

GIMP: http://www.gimp.org/ - Alternative photo-editing program for Photoshop.
Paint.NET - http://www.getpaint.net/ - Decent free photo software, considering it's free.



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Cool Stuff (think themes, Google Earth, whatever)
Game-Booster: http://www.iobit.com/gamebooster.html# - Enhances your PC's performance during gaming

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Please add any subsection you'd like or feel necessary. And I think it's best to make a seperate thread about freeware games.

Here's an example of how I would prefer your suggestions, so it will make for very easy copy-pasting:

GIMP: http://www.gimp.org/ - Alternative photo-editing program for Photoshop.

Grabit is a decent free newsgroup reader

http://www.shemes.com/

OpenOffice is more than just a Word alternative. It has no viable Access equivalent (due to the complexities of DB programs) but otherwise I hear it's good. It now also natively opens Office 2007 files.

I use Office 2007 personally. It's so good, I see no reason to look elsewhere plus it makes sense to learn the "industry standard" IMO. Outlook is also unbeatable as a PIM client. The way all aspects: Mail, Calendar, Contacts integrate together and the fact Windows Mobile talks to it. Means it's a must for me. Windows Mobile only talks with Outlook.

Here's some:

1. AVG Anti-Virus - http://free.avg.com/ - Also now does Anti-Spyware. I don't use it myself but install it on people's PCs when they don't want to pay.
2. Paint.NET - http://www.getpaint.net/ - Decent free photo software, considering it's free.
3 Mozilla Thunderbird - http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/ - Decent E-Mail client. I use it at work to check my personal e-mail (keep it outside of Outlook).
4. Media Player Classic (Home Cinema) - http://mpc-hc.sourceforge.net/ - Powerful Media Player, much better than Windows Media Player for playing video.
5. VLC - www.videolan.org/vlc - Use as an alternative to MPC when it cannot play something, poor interface but virtually every video ever made will play with this.
6. Windows Live Essentials - http://download.live.com/ - Now in Wave 3, this is a suite of software containing:

* Windows Live Family Safety - Cut down version of the parental controls in Vista/W7
* Windows Live Mail - A decent e-mail client, replaces Outlook Express (on 2000/XP) and Windows Mail (on Vista)
* Windows Live Messenger
* Windows Live Movie Maker - Vista/W7 only
* Windows Live Photo Gallery - Very good Photo Library software - Much better than plain Jane Windows Explorer for viewing photos
* Windows Live Sync - Decent tool to remotely access files and also sync files across PCs
* Windows Live Toolbar
* Windows Live Writer - Blog tool
* Microsoft Office Outlook Connector - Give Outlook proper Hotmail support
* Microsoft Office Live Add-in - Save files directly into Office Live (i.e - Cloudspace). I didn't like it due to the delay it creates opening the OPEN dialogue box. A more integrated version is likely to appear in Office 14/2010

Of this suite I use Windows Live Photo Gallery, Sync and Messenger.

All components of Windows Live Essentials have a 64-Bit component except for "Windows Live Family Safety", no loss unless you have XP 64-Bit. You can choose what to install.

Personally I'm still using MS Office 2003, because the Ribbon is so fucking awful and counter-intuitive.

bradavon wrote:All components of Windows Live Essentials have a 64-Bit component except for "Windows Live Family Safety", no loss unless you have XP 64-Bit. You can choose what to install.

32-bit software works fine 95% of the time under x64 Vista and XP, get a clue.

Text editor:-

EditPad Lite - Powerful Notepad/Wordpad replacement, that's leagues ahead.

Media Players for music:-

WinAmp - One of the two only decent music players for Windows. Do a custom installation to insure a bloat free set-up.

Combine this with a Kernel streaming or ASIO plugin for outstanding audio quality.

Foobar2000 - Can be customised 100% to the user's liking. Use google to find GUI setup guides.

Kernel Streaming and ASIO plugins are available for Foobar2000 as well.

Windows Media Player is absolute garbage, fact.

Music ripping:-

EAC - Exact Audio Copy - A powerful front-end for the likes of LAME MP3 (the best MP3 ripper), regarded as the best available.

Rarewares.org - THE place to download compiled audio rippers, such as the likes of LAME for MP3, Oggenc for Ogg Vorbis, etc.

My preferred audio ripper front-end is Foobar2000, because it is largely hassle free.

Media players for video:-

Media Player Classic Homecinema - This player is constantly being updated, grab the latest and greatest builds from this Doom9 thread.

It supports DXVA (DirectX Video Acceleration) where the video playback processing is offloaded onto the GPU, rather than the CPU.

(GPUs are loads faster than CPUs because they have hundreds of parallel stream processors. Google GPGPU for more information.)

N.B. MPC-HC requires codec packs.

Codec Packs:-

CCCP - A specialised light-weight codec pack, assembled and maintained by some of the best video encoders in the underground scene. Designed to be complete playback solution for those whom watch ripped TV programs and films, ESPECIALLY if they're foreign language programmes that utilise soft-subtitles.

QT Lite - Avoid Apple's awful bloatware player and playback Quicktime video in any DirectShow player such as MPC, ZoomPlayer and WMP.
Google for download links.

Real Alternative Lite - Avoid the utterly dreadful Realplayer and playback Real format audio and video in any DirectShow player such as MPC, ZoomPlayer and WMP.
Google for download links.

Windows Live Messenger (MSN) related programs:-

A-Patch - Remove all of the bloat, such as banners ads from WLM.

Messenger Plus! Live - A light-weight addon for WLM that adds some very nice features, such as chat logging that far surpasses WLM's native solution.

Image viewer:-

Irfanview - A light-weight, powerful image viewer, that is also great for minor image manipulation/editing (eg resizing, converting to other formats, flipping, adjusting contrast/brightness/colours, etc.)

Image editing:-

GIMP - A powerful open source image editing suite.

EvaUnit02 wrote:Windows Media Player is absolute garbage, fact.

Why is it garbage?

I much prefer to have only 1 program on my system to do a certain task. Why should I use Winamp over WMP11? I find the interface in Winamp to be very clunky to say the least.

EvaUnit02 wrote:32-bit software works fine 95% of the time under x64 Vista and XP, get a clue.

I know .

I was just pointing out there is also x64 versions (so why use x86?) except for Family Safety. Which is no loss when this component is really designed for XP anyway.

Get a clue yourself!

EvaUnit02 wrote:Text editor:-

EditPad Lite - Powerful Notepad/Wordpad replacement, that's leagues ahead.

Textpad is also decent. I use Notepad, it does the job for me. I don't need it to add anything more, except maybe colour coding.

IronMonkey wrote:I much prefer to have only 1 program on my system to do a certain task. Why should I use Winamp over WMP11? I find the interface in Winamp to be very clunky to say the least.

Agreed. I use:

Audio - WMP11
Video - MPC
Photo - Windows Live Photo Gallery

But let's not turn this thread into a slag match. Yi has a good idea to start a list.

EvaUnit02 wrote:QT Lite - Avoid Apple's awful bloatware player and playback Quicktime video in any DirectShow player such as MPC, ZoomPlayer and WMP.

I find with MPC HC I don't need this. I just install FFDShow and it installs Codecs to open Quicktime MOV. Probably not all of them but the most popular QuickTime codecs.

This doesn't give you the QT Browser plugin but I always hated that anyway.

EvaUnit02 wrote:Personally I'm still using MS Office 2003, because the Ribbon is so fucking awful and counter-intuitive.

Bollocks. Learn how to use it. No it's not revolutionary but it's equally no worse than before. It took me a few minutes to work out how to use it. It's certainly not counter-intuitive.

Are you going to use Office 2003 forever?

EvaUnit02 wrote:Image viewer:-

Irfanview - A light-weight, powerful image viewer, that is also great for minor image manipulation/editing (eg resizing, converting to other formats, flipping, adjusting contrast/brightness/colours, etc.)

I thought this was hideous but fair enough if you like it.

EvaUnit02 wrote:A-Patch - Remove all of the bloat, such as banners ads from WLM.

Which Ads? I've seen this before but never see any.

Mozilla Songbird - Open Source Music Player:

http://www.getsongbird.com/

I've no idea if it's any good but Mozilla software tends to be good.

There were no Kernel Streaming or ASIO output plugins for WMP, simple. Kernel streaming and ASIO lets you bypass the Windows audio kernel, giving you bit-perfect audio output to your sound card.

If you value quality then you'd use KS or ASIO. ASIO is the better of the two, but the pathetic onboard garbage that most people have usually won't support it, then you'd have to use KS. Creative Audigy's, X-Fi's and Asus Xonar's should all support ASIO.

Also the old Windows audio kernel used in everything prior to Vista (XP, et. al.), the Kmixer, was horribly designed. It managed volume control by removing bits, that is truly horrific. Vista's newly designed audio kernel doesn't do any of that shit.

I found an ASIO plugin for WMP with google just now, it must be quite new. Give that try, I can confirm that it works with Vista x64 + WMP11 at least.

EvaUnit02 wrote:There were no Kernel Streaming or ASIO output plugins for WMP, simple. Kernel streaming and ASIO lets you bypass the Windows audio kernel, giving you bit-perfect audio output to your sound card.

I'm not an audiophile like you. WMP11 and my On-board laptop soundcard is fine for me. Technically it is crud though. I had to get some kind of RCA limiter (I forger what it's called) as the cheap laptop produced (really bad) feedback when plugged into my Amp. I never had this problem with my old PC.

I gave that EVR filter ago for MPC and didn't like it. I couldn't tell any difference but was annoyed to see it disables all custom aspect ratios. Most of the time I use the original aspect ratio but sometimes I want to use Pan & Scan aspect ratios. Of course not for movies (which I never watch on my PC) but some Video clips and the like.

What filter is next best? I'm currently using "System Default".

EvaUnit02 wrote:Also the old Windows audio kernel used in everything prior to Vista (XP, et. al.), the Kmixer, was horribly designed. It managed volume control by removing bits, that is truly horrific. Vista's newly designed audio kernel doesn't do any of that shit.

OMG! I never knew that. That is horrific.

EvaUnit02 wrote:I found an ASIO plugin for WMP with google just now, it must be quite new. Give that try, I can confirm that it works with Vista x64 + WMP11 at least.

Thanks. I'll give it ago. Whether I'll notice it with my on-board sound card I'm unsure.

Sadly it doesn't work for me -

Plug-in window:



When I try and play an MP3:

bradavon wrote:Sadly it doesn't work for me -

Try installing ASIO4All, can be found through google.

bradavon wrote:What filter is next best? I'm currently using "System Default".

Overlay mixer.

Thanks Eva. As to ASIO, sadly it seems in order to use it you need "two" sound devices and I only have one. Here's what I get after installing:

http://www.asio4all.com/



Urm yes, it's in use by Windows Media Player and when I try and play an MP3:



The PDF also says:

Select Speakers and click on Properties. In the Speaker Properties, choose any device that will NOT be used for playback. On most computers, the on-board audio device is a good choice.

I'm using the on-board sound card. Any further ideas Eva?

Will probably update the starting post later tonight. Would have done it sooner if you guys would have listed it the way I asked, cause then it would just have been a matter of copy-pasting it...

Please remind yourself to post any recommendations in the way stated in the starting post.

Anyway, I read about a nice little tool for the PC-gamers on this board (just Eva?), that will enhance your system's performance while playing a game.

Game-Booster; http://www.iobit.com/gamebooster.html# Enhances your PC's performance during gaming

Yi-Long wrote:Would have done it sooner if you guys would have listed it the way I asked, cause then it would just have been a matter of copy-pasting it...

I did . I even went back and edited my list. I may have added too much info though. I didn't bother to add italics as they're lost when you copy/paste anyway.

Cheers Yi.

bradavon wrote:

Yi-Long wrote:Would have done it sooner if you guys would have listed it the way I asked, cause then it would just have been a matter of copy-pasting it...

I did . I even went back and edited my list. I may have added too much info though. I didn't bother to add italics as they're lost when you copy/paste anyway.

Cheers Yi.

I will go into 'quote-mode', and THEN I copy-paste, so italics are included...

I'm not just pretty, you know!?

Anyway, thank Brad.

I didn't think of that, my mistake. I've no idea if you're pretty, you've never posted your photo .

bradavon wrote:I didn't think of that, my mistake. I've no idea if you're pretty, you've never posted your photo .

Most PC's aren't powerfull enough to really show how beautifull I really am.


Nah, old age is killing me. I wouldnt be surprised if I'd be doing a 'Leslie' in 10 years time as well. Growing older is really a major suckfest.