Larian Studios Forums General Chat Chat (Anything) Your favorite Software

There is a thread for music and another for websites, but as far as I can tell there is not one for software. The theme of this thread would be to post the name of software you really like and why. Please also inform us of any downsides to it and where we can get it. I will kick things off by recommending an excellent piece of software which I am sure many of you might already use.
Mozilla 1.5
This is by far the best web browser I have ever seen.
Advantages
Block popups
Faster than IE imo--when I was on a dialup connection I noticed a definite improvement in the speed with which pages loaded--not any perceptible difference with broadband.
Tabbed browsing--If you've never used tabbed browsing you are in for a treat. For instance I have a tab set up for each forum on the Larian site that I like to visit. I set the tabs to automatically reload every 15 minutes and then if there is a new post I catch it.
Set multiple tabbed sites as your homepage. Suppose there are 12 different sites you always visit--you can get all 12 as your home page--very cool.
Improved security--less vulnerability to viruses.
Integrated suite with a nifty email client.
The ability to customize by adding in free extensions of your choice--about 70 to choose from.
Free.
Open source.
Micromanage cookies and cache if you like.
Etc.

Disadvantages
MS sites may have some material which is inaccessible to you forcing you to fire up IE.
While you can bookmark any site you like, you can't make them appear in the start menu in a convenient drop down like in IE.

Available at
mozilla

My favorite software of this moment is "Michael Halfwing" <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />
Downside: It's not finished yet
Upside: It will be YOUR (**points finger**) favorite software as well when I'm done with it! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/stupid.gif" alt="" />

To conclude I'd like to appologize for shamelessly abusing your thread, Cleglaw, by promoting my upcoming adventure game. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />

I'm sure I'd like to see it when it comes out.

I just remembered another downside to Mozilla. Tabbed browsing doesn't go well with ZoneAlarm firewall. The problem is that for each tab you open ZA gobbles up more RAM. After you close the browser ZA doesn't release the memory and after awhile you have to reboot. To be honest I found this on an earlier release of Mozilla, so maybe it is ok now though more likely it is actually a disadvantage of ZA. I eventually uninstalled ZA.

Hrmph ... I just use IE6xx with a Crazy Browser front end <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
But my favourite software gotta be WinXP Pro, I swear it is the best piece of c-r-a-p that MS has made so far <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Nero excellent burning software

textpad

1) dvd decrypter
One of the best (& free!) DVD rippers out there.
if you want to backup your dvd collection
it can even strip the copyprotections and the region code
you can copy it to a new disk also.

2) musicmatch jukebox :
an "all-in-one" packetch.
you can ripp your cd's to MP3's (or other formats).
you can burn with the program.
it's an multi mediaplayer
you can create your own cd covers
etc.

Where do you get the decrypter?

My favorite software? UNIX! Where else in the world can one person do so much damage in so little time with so few keystrokes?
e.g., "rm -fr .*" = "Delete the universe"

Plus, it has an intrinsic black hole, too: /dev/null

Now, that's some powerful software!

According to the Windows XP popular program list in my Start menu: Notepad.

i just saw this under "what OS are you.......

my favorite software is one that does *exactly* what it is supposed to do! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />

winamp. all versions.

the best & the only audio player software that should be considered.

it plays all sorts of file formats & supports plugins that extend the player capabilities further.

as stable as windows media player can never be. oh yeah, winamp plays video as well since 2.5!

the DSP is impressive! DSP = digital signal processing.

it's dang small for a software that can do so much! for the minimalist, they can always go for version 2.92, the last of the small memory footprint with the program under 3MB.

those with money to burn can go for the latest; pro 5 which can burn at highest speed possible via your cd writer & rip cd's at highest speed that your cdrom drive can go.

the first program that has skin & call them skins & make skins famous! the program without which mp3 revolution can never happen.

disadvantage? if only it can get me a life (please refer to kiya's thread 'get a life'). <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />

it's not a fun software, it's an utility!

winamp 3 SUCKS bigtime.

my favorite SW.... not talking about games here so... then it must the program I made myself to keep track of my finances... with a graph included

Really ? I have the same problem ! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" /> I thought it was a problem of Mozilla ! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" />

DOS has this Black Hole, too. At least DOS 6, that's what I know of. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />

Yes, few people know. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />

Agree.

3DSmax and Photoshop here. I haven't tried 3DSmax 6, though, using the fifth.

As for music ripping, I don't need anything but CDex: not only it can rip CDs, convert from/to mp3, ogg and wav (maybe wma too) but it uses CDDB so when you rip an audiocd, you only have to enter the name and the artist and the program renames the songs!

About popup blocker, I just use the Google Toolbar from toolbar.google.com
It's small, it allows me to access the 'search' faster and has nifty stuff like popup blocker and Word-find/Word highlight (you write the word you need in the text field and it can highlight the word[s] in the whole text/page).

you can download the program on this site: www.doom9.org
under the section downloads. direct link
there is also a dvddecripter guide you find on this site under : guides <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" /> direct link

another useful (free)tool for dvd backup:
dvd decriptor can be used to back up 1 layer dvd's.
to backup 2 layer dvd's (>4500Mb), use DVDSHRINK.
you can select only the movie and the language you want to copy and it compressed this selection until it fits on 1 layer writable dvd disk
dvdshrink guide link
direct download
edit: the direct download link don't work, here's the homepage of dvd shrink (wich doesn't work at this time neighter <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" /> -> http://www.dvdshrink.info/

I use a hardware firewall now. No matter how many tabs I open and close I do not have a leaky memory problem.

Yes, Think that's the best solution.

Here is an example of what makes Mozilla so great. A few weeks ago I downloaded an extension to Moz called Reloadevery which will automatically reload pages for you at a specified time interval. While it worked, the features didn't suit my browsing style--I couldn't change the default time interval and couldn't use to set a whole group of tabs at once. I sent an email to the user list and in response the guy who wrote the code, rewrote it and incorporated exactly the changes I needed and more! What an incredible response! Mozilla is great! You would never get such a response from IE.