Pen's Gotta Have It Thread/Reviews
 

Hey everyone. I have been asked about 9 million times some variations of the following questions: "What programs can't you live without?" or "What do you think of this software?" or "I can't get this to work. Why?"

As some of you know I am heavily involved in software and started the original Apps thread as a Utilities Gotta Have/Review thread. The original idea in the Apps thread was software I used, tested and recommeneded.

Jester took over the apps thread and made it his own when I left the forums for awhile. He has done an amazing job, along with some others, of keeping it going and making it grow like a weed in Miracle Grow!

This thread is going back to the original idea of software I cannot live without, I have used it or still do, have tested it, or have been asked to review it.

Feel free to ask questions and I encourage you to post your own software you cannot live without. Just make sure it mets the above criteria :)

There may be dupes from the apps thread but never dupe links :)

P.S. If it is linked it is virii free

First up is a program I absolutely love...

Roboform

Roboform Password Manager and Form Filler has been saving you time and making your life easier since 1999. Our software automatically remembers your passwords, logs you into websites, fills long web forms, and so much more.

RoboForm is amazingly fast and easy to use.

Easy: Automatically memorizes your passwords and logs you into websites.
Saves Time: Fills long registration and checkout forms with one click.
Secure: Encrypts your passwords, fights Phishing, and defeats Keyloggers.
Strong: Generates random passwords to protect you against hackers.
Portable: RoboForm2Go runs from a USB flash drive.
PDA-friendly: Sync your passwords to Pocket PC and Palm.
Robust: Works with Internet Explorer, AOL, MSN, and other browsers.
Always Current: Fully compatible with IE 7 and Vista.

It is also free! It can be downloaded here:

Avast Anti-Virus

Yes there are better solutions. NOD32 is one that comes to mind BUT as far as install it and forget it Avast is a superior choice for normal home use. It is also a VB100 award winner, ICSA labs certified and also West Coast Labs certified.

Oh yea...did I mention it is also free?

Defraggler - Use it!

Everyone knows they should defragment their hard drive but not everyone knows why. Why defragment?

When your computer is using files, it will plunk them down, here and there, on the hard drive. If a file is too big to fit in a particular space, your computer will break up (fragment) the file and put the pieces in several different places. As the drive gets more and more cluttered, it takes your computer longer to find things, and the system runs slower and slower. Defragmenting your hard drive will reorganize all these files and pieces of files, making it easier for your computer to find them quickly.

From everyone here at Piriform, the company that brought you CCleaner... we now bring you a file defragmentation tool... Defraggler!

It differs from other defrag tools on the market, by enabling you to quickly and simply defrag the files you want to, without having to process the whole drive. Simply run it, select the file and defragment in seconds. No more struggling with the Windows defragmentation tool!

Defraggler is completely free for both corporate and individual use.

SUPERAntiSpyware

Another great FREE program. Again use it!

SUPERAntiSpyware is the most thorough AntiSpyware scanner on the market. Our Multi-Dimensional Scanning and Process Interrogation Technology will detect spyware that other products miss! SUPERAntiSpyware will remove ALL the Spyware, NOT just the easy ones!

Quick, Complete and Custom Scanning of Hard Drives, Removable Drives, Memory, Registry, Individual Folders and More! Includes Trusting Items and Excluding Folders for complete customization of scanning!

Detect and Remove Spyware, Adware, Malware, Trojans, Dialers, Worms, KeyLoggers, HiJackers, Parasites, Rootkits and many other types of threats.

Light on System Resources and won't slow down your computer like many other anti-spyware products. Won't conflict with your existing anti-spyware or anti-virus solution!

Repair broken Internet Connections, Desktops, Registry Editing and more with our unique Repair System!

Real-Time Blocking of threats! Prevent potentially harmful software from installing or re-installing!*

Multi-Dimensional Scanning detects existing threats as well as threats of the future by analyzing threat characteristics in addition to code patterns.

First Chance Prevention examines over 50 critical points of your system each time your system starts up and shuts down to eliminate threats before they have a chance to infect and infiltrate your system.

Process Interrogation Technology allows threats to be detected no matter where they are hiding on your system

exe

Firefox

Firefox is more secure than IE7. How IE8 will fair vs. FF3 remains to be seen but for now I recommend FF3.

Firefox 3 is faster at rendering, uses vastly reduced system resources, clever tools for your bookmarks and browser history, and more security features than any other browser.

The bad: Firefox 3 will no longer support Windows 95, 98, and Me; same with Mac OS X, versions 10.2 and earlier.

Free!

WinRar

Compression program. There are some alternatives winzip, 7zip, KGB, etc. but nothing is as versatile or widely used as rar files. Yes I know the download is a zip :) but you can't unrar a file if you dont have the program to unrar them now can you?

Get the corporate version here:

TuneUp Utilities version 7.0.8004



Professional assistance for your Windows PC

Solve problems
Increase performance
Free up disk space
Customize Windows

Improve your system's performance, thoroughly clean up your hard drives, solve your PC problems with a few clicks, and customize windows to your personal requirements. All in one program, simple and intuitive - TuneUp Utilities 2008.

10 fundamental reasons for using TuneUp Utilities 2008

Powerful hard drive defragmentation
Optimum start-up, Internet, and Windows acceleration
Quick and extensive clean-up for hard drives
Effective elimination of junk data
Fully-automatic clean-up and improvement of your PC
Extensive clean-up of the registry
Effective help in solving standard Windows problems
Secure data recovery and data elimination
Simple custom Windows configuration
Individual Windows styling

Get it here:

Daemon Tools Pro Advanced Edition 4.10.0218

Daemon Tools (styled DAEMON Tools by its creators) is a disk image emulator and optical disc authoring program for Microsoft Windows. Daemon Tools was originally a furtherance in the development of another program, Generic SafeDisc emulator, and incorporated all of its features. The program is able to defeat most copy protection schemes such as SafeDisc and SecuROM.

If you have an .iso file and want to play/install file without burning to cd-rom or dvd this is what you need.

I used to use Avast. How does it do with false positives? I know AVG doesn't like certain assemblers and will fire off alerts. I ask this for obvious reasons.

Jester - Avast will fire off more false positives than NOD but as many as AVG. When in doubt I suggest using Virus Total a free online scanner (http://www.virustotal.com/). It uses engines from:

AhnLab (V3)
Aladdin (eSafe)
ALWIL (Avast! Antivirus)
Authentium (Command Antivirus)
AVG Technologies (AVG)
Avira (AntiVir)
Bit9 (FileAdvisor)
Cat Computer Services (Quick Heal)
ClamAV (ClamAV)
CA Inc. (Vet)
Doctor Web, Ltd. (DrWeb)
Eset Software (ESET NOD32)
ewido networks (ewido anti-malware)
Fortinet (Fortinet)
FRISK Software (F-Prot)
F-Secure (F-Secure)
G DATA Software (GData)
Hacksoft (The Hacker)
Ikarus Software (Ikarus)
Kaspersky Lab (AVP)
McAfee (VirusScan)
Microsoft (Malware Protection)
Norman (Norman Antivirus)
Panda Security (Panda Platinum)
Prevx (Prevx1)
Rising Antivirus (Rising)
Secure Computing (Webwasher)
BitDefender GmbH. (BitDefender)
Sophos (SAV)
Sunbelt Software (Antivirus)
Symantec (Norton Antivirus)
VirusBlokAda (VBA32)
Trend Micro (TrendMicro)
VirusBuster (VirusBuster)

As an example I checked an outstanding program uploaded by you with it. The results can be found here. As you can see 4 antivirus engines flag this file as suspicious or an outright virus which it is NOT.

In all cases, as you know, it is downloader beware. :p

Been using Roboform a long time. In fact, I even (gasp) bought the paid version. I am pretty sure the free version becomes limited use after 30 days, although it's still usable.

The free verson is limited to 10 passcards but is usable forever.

Great idea for a thread!

What's this one like on system resources?

I run Mcafee VS Enterprise, and its a real hog.

I have yet to find any major issues with Avast. I have Avast Pro installed on our companies network and have used it exclusively for 2 years without any problems or virii. Right now on my home system it is using just over 8k of RAM total. AVG used about 15k, McAffe was in the 50k area, Norton is the worst coming in at almost 100k.

Until Avast causes any system problems or lets a virus through I'll keep using it. I will also use VirusTotal @ http://www.virustotal.com/ to verify anything avast warns about. I have been using this system of verification (for avast warnings) for a couple years and have been virus clean.

I used to run Mcafee as well and would only really turn it on when downloading. But avast has a small enough footprint that I leave it on indefinitely

Not that my opinion counts in this case...aside from being the type that is annoyed by having to even have anything as an anti-virus program and the hassle of setting it up...I'm well pleased with Avast and I've been using it for at least a year now. So basically from a know-nothing standpoint..I am happy. It wasn't hard to set up, it's always on, doesn't cause me problems. I however am not sure I have it set up to watch my Thunderbird because if I remember right, that was a huge PITA. Someday, I might have the patience.

A sort of review of Windows Vista by people who gave Vista a low rating AND HAD NEVER USED IT! They got to see microsofts new operating systems "Mojave"

The vidoes are here: http://www.mojaveexperiment.com/#

Read the results here: http://www.mojaveexperiment.com/facts/

Use it before forming any opinion. This expirement shows why I install, test, evaluate the software I post/review in this thread.

Thanks man, I think I'll give it a go. McAffe on my system is taking 77k, plus about 4 or 5 serivces that uses a bit each too.

On our terminal servers at work, it uses up to 100k for each user, which soon adds up !

Kind of a weird sub-topic for one thing mentioned here... do you have any specific FF extensions you can't live without? I always love seeing the ones others use because I am a bit of an extension whore according to some people in my life.

Alcohol 120% (various editions - black and bloody avail below)

Alcohol 120% has a wizard-based interface that is handy for managing CD images and virtual drives. The program handles most disc image formats, including ISO, Nero, CloneCD, and CDRWIN. Profiles let you save copy settings for audio, game, data, discs. The advanced settings are ummm...limited but still, the functionality of the application is more than offset by any shortcomings.

If you uh *ahem* make backups of you software and say the file created is a .iso, .nrg, .bin, img, etc...Alcohol 120% can burn that image to a CD-ROM or in some cases mount the image as a Virtual CD (although I would Daemon Tools for that).

From the vendor:

Alcohol 120%, is a powerful Windows CD and DVD burning software that makes it easy to create backups of DVDs* and CDs. In addition, the program lets you store your most used CDs as images on your computer, so you can call them up at the click of a button.

Home users make backup copies of their game CDs and movie DVDs*, allowing the kids to treat multimedia disks roughly, without destroying their value.

Librarians and school administrators use Alcohol 120% burning software to archive their institutions' collections of recordable media, protecting themselves against the daily wear and tear that damages discs.

Business users use Alcohol 120% burning software to make duplicate backup copies of software titles, ensuring that they will continue to have access to their licensed software, even if their physical CDs become damaged and unusable.

With Alcohol 120% burning software, you no longer have to worry about CDs or DVDs* getting lost, stolen, or damaged. Duplicate discs work just like the originals, and your entire collection can be archived safely.

Here are two FF extensions that i can't live without.

Super Drag and Go makes browsing super quick. And if you see a link you would like to explore later just drag it to open a new tab and you can come back to it later. Makes MySpacing awesome too.:p



Extends the power and control of you tab functions!


Let me know what you thought of these!:)

I have used those in the past but they do not work on the newest version of FF3. If you can't live without those add-ons do NOT upgrade FF

Oh ok. Good tip! :p

What about Yahoo widgets??



I love these things. You can add them on a whim since they don't "install".
They have a million of them for every purpose including games. They can always sit "on top" of all programs so you can always see them (good for stock tickers etc).

Check them out! http://widgets.yahoo.com

I use a couple of them to control my iTunes.

This one is "iTunes Popup". It shows album artwork, song title, and album name.
The one with the little stars is "mini-rate" which allows you to rate your songs.
You can control where they sit and how large they are.


I also use "itunes shortcut" to control my itunes functions with keyboard shortcuts.

There are so many different ones you will get lost with them.

One of my fave extensions had a problem being compatible with TMP and I wasn't giving it up for the things I wanted in TMP. I can't remember now which one it is either. TMP would allow me to remove a few separate extensions for a single one. But... that stopped me. I use MR Tech's Tpplkit or whatever the new name is to override max version compatibility (and also added the override to about:config before getting that extension) so the max version issues don't bother me too much.

Tweak VI

Unlike other tweaking utilities, TweakVI bundles lots of different utilities in one. It was developed to combine both tuning and optimizing features to increase the speed of your Windows Vista system. It's the worlds first software for Windows Vista to combine both customization, tweaking and optimization features.

TweakVI tunes Windows registry settings only - it does not touch your hardware at all. It does not over clock or change your physical hardware and/or driver settings. So it CANNOT damage your systems hardware.

Activate hundreds of hidden Windows Vista settings
clean your registry
activate system and software restrictions
display detailed system information
create a 256 MB RAM drive
protect your privacy
clean your hard drive
manage TrueType fonts
improve your internet connection
optimize your CPU
optimize your RAM
manage system updates, and much more ...
you can even transfer your tweaks and settings to other machines!

The basic version is free. Get the advanced version instead :)

Hi, pendragon
I've been having a problem with WinRar (I'm using the 3.71 version-I got it from the Apps thread)
For example: I downloaded TuneUp Utilities version 7.0.8004 (thank you by the way)... winrar opens the window when it finish donwloading, and when I try to drag the two files to my desktop it gives an error message:
Tune[1].rar: No Files to extract

What I've been doing is, I save the file to my desktop and I use PowerArchiver to open, it opens fine and I could drag the files to my desktop without a problem... but now my free 30-day trial is up.. and I keep geting that annoying message that I shouldbuy buy...:mad:

It doesn't do this everytime, I noticed it only happns when I try to drag .exe files... any ideas what's wrong.

I know that I could just keep powerachiver to open files when winrar can't, but I would prefer to keep only one compression program, winrar..

Thanks in advance

I uninstalled my version of Winrar and Tuneup. Re-downloaded and installed the versions I have posted and installed with problems. I also verified it on clean laptop I keep for testing.

Get the corporate version of winrar in this thread and see if that solves your problem. The only other thing I can think of off the top of my head is a conflict with powerarchiver. I have never used that program so I am just guessing here.

Also try making a temp folder on your desktop and drag the files to the temp folder.

Vacation is calling so posts will be sporadic the next week and 1/2 or so :)

Thanks... I just remember "rule of thumb": If something is not working how is supposed to.. uninstall it and reinstall it... hahaha... i'll also try the temp folder thanks

Uninstall Tool

I know there are other uninstallers but I like this program. There is a feature in this one I really like, the "Startup & Force Remove" option. This feature will find programs that autorun and remove them from the registry. Be careful with this program because when you uninstall something with it, it is gone!

1. Completely remove any software installed! (using Uninstall Wizard ™ technology)
2. 3 Times Faster than Add/Remove program!
3. 3 Applications Categories: Software, System, Hidden
4. Remove Programs that automatically run at system startup
5. Many ways of Sorting Applications: by Name, by Occupied Size, by Installation Date.
6. Uninstall Programs that could not be removed by Add/Remove program.
7. Force removal of uninstall related entries in the registry.
8. Highlighting of recently installed applications in the list
9. Smart Search ™ allows quick finding of any application you need.
10. Navigate to a selected program's Registry Entry, Installation Folder and its Web Site.
11. View Detailed Information of a certain application installed on your computer.
12. Easy to use and modern User Interface allows to work comfortably with Uninstall Tool.
13. Multilingual interface!
14. Option to replace Add/Remove program.
15. Saving (exporting to HTML) detailed reports about currently installed applications
16. Running "Windows Components" and "Add/Remove Programs" tools
17. Complete compatibility with X64 Windows

Thanks Pen,
These are some awesome recommendations. I will have to mess around with them.

K-Lite Codec Pack 4.10
 

K-Lite Codec Pack 4.10

K-Lite Codec Pack is a collection of codecs, DirectShow filters and tools. Codecs and DirectShow filters are needed for encoding and decoding (playing) audio and video formats. The K-Lite Codec Pack is designed as a user-friendly solution for playing all your movie files. With the K-Lite Codec Pack you should be able to play all the popular audio and video formats and even some rare formats.
This download is for the Full package and contains all the codecs a normal user would ever need.

The K-Lite Codec Pack has a couple of major advantages compared to other codec packs:

It it always very up-to-date with the newest (and/or best) versions of the components.

It is very user-friendly.

The installation is fully customizable, meaning that you are able install exactly those components that you really want.

Uninstallation removes all files and registry entries created by the pack.

It is extremely easy to make a fully customized unattended installation.

It has been very well tested, so that the package doesn't contain any conflicting or buggy codecs.

It tries to avoid potential problems with existing codecs and even fixes some problems. The pack is able to detect broken codecs and filters on your system, and remove them for you.

It is a very complete package, containing everything you need to play your movies.


And it is of course free :)

Thanks for the suggestions Pen.

so far, i've dl'ed everything you suggested. word to ya mutha!

Ever email Microsoft Office Documents with Outlook?
 

SendShield

Before I continue I must advise that this software is still in beta. I have been using it for over a year now without problems but as always with beta software user beware...

Now with the warning out of the way...

What is SendShield for Microsoft Outlook?

SendShield integrates with Microsoft Outlook (not an application you use separately). As long as Outlook is running, SendShield is protecting your privacy when emailing documents, spreadsheets and presentations. SendShield quickly scans your Microsoft Office attachments, alerts you to Hidden Data, and allows you to clean them with the click of a button.

Microsoft Office applications Word, PowerPoint and Excel enable you to display or hide certain types of information. For example, Microsoft Word allows you to track the changes you make to a document, and it also allows you to hide those changes from view. As a result, you risk emailing that document containing revision history, thereby revealing all the changes you and others may have made to the document.

SendShield only cleans the files which are attached to the email, not the original source file. In general, when a file is attached to an email, Outlook takes a duplicate copy of the original file stored on your computer hard drive. SendShield only scans and cleans the attachment, the duplicate copy, so the original file is not modified. The next time you send that same original file, it will be identical to the first time you attached it.

If you want to save a cleaned version of the file on your hard drive, you may attach it to an Outlook email, clean it, send it to yourself and save that copy to your hard drive. Currently, SendShield's cleaning tools are not available for integration with Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel.

Trust me if you email office documents with outlook get this app.

Office 2K3 with SP3

Why 2k3 instead of 2k7? Because in my business dealings about 99% of people/companies have NOT upgraded yet and 2k7 uses a different file format. Yes I know there are converters and viewers available but why bother? I will use 2k3 until most of my associates switch. Yes I have 2k7 as well.

If I have to explain what Office is you do not need it :)

This version is integrated with SP3. This version will also declare a generic win32: other trojan with Avast. There is no trojan it is a false positive.

-Pen

Do you BackUp?
 

Acronis True Image v11.8053 Home

You better. Hard drives fail and that is a fact. I back my systems up several times a week. At the minimum I suggest a full backup once per month and incremental backups several times per week.

A great solution (for the home user) is Acronis True Image Home. I have been using Acronis' product for a few years now and have NEVER had a failure during backup. There is a free trial of the program here:

As an alternative there is an awesome free complete version here courtesy of Binary Jester:

Thanks for the up Binary. Everyone please thank Binary by downloading the small file listed below to keep his links alive.

his original post here:
http://www.drunkenstepfather.com/for...&postcount=852