What Are Some of the Coolest Utilities You've Found

[Space-Junky]

I like very much Spyware Doctor, the trial version does not fix problems but it gives out a text report you can easily find wich registry keys are wrong ect
Any comments out there about it?

I tried out Tune up 2006 last night, nice prog, too bad version will quit working in 28 days

[BGP Spook]

I have tried Spyware Doctor.

I don't use it anymore.

I have nothing else to say about it.

[Sir Golitech]

This is a very handy tool.

muBlinder

[Warrior123]

Hey
Off topic a bit, have you ever used a site called DRIVER AGENT to get your system software up to date. I think it costs about 30.00 per year, i have used it; and think it is ok.

[nutcase]

this is a handy little tool for doing conversions:

http://www.wscope.com/convert.htm

[ThugsRook]

FlashBlock AddOn for FireFox, does this need an explaination?

easy on, easy off, or use the blocking/unblocking list.
very similar to adblock+, but works flawlessly with flash adds

[sford]

I really like crap cleaner (ccleaner) (http://www.ccleaner.com/), a great little util to clean out all yer nooks and crannies. 1 click, goods yes/no options, thorough as ye want mate.

Textpad and gVim are nice programmer oriented editors.

Process explorer, similar to taskmanager but better. More tattle tale.

ExplorerXP (http://www.explorerxp.com/) fast free directory manager. Like Explorer except it also shows directory size, not just file size.

TCPview from sysinternals

DriveImage XML. Orders of magnitude better than ghost and truimage for dealing with disk imaging. Fast, accurate, easy. http://www.runtime.org/

[Tauvo]

this is a handy little tool for doing conversions:

http://www.wscope.com/convert.htm

add on sidebar gadget for Vista that is just like it IF you like them and works just like Convert.

http://gallery.live.com/liveItemDeta...d5c2&bt=1&pl=1

[Tauvo]

I needed a program to convert my eBooks from a .lit MS format to something else that did not require DRM in it. I have found, used and recommend this program. It is not perfect but it does do things like convert .lit to PDF and that is what I wanted. It also support many other formats. If you use this AND Open Office since it also has a export to PDF feature in it I think that you will be pretty well covered and can leave legacy MS stuff behind.

ABC Amber LIT Converter is an advanced utility which converts your LIT (Microsoft Reader) files to any format you wish (PDF, HTML, CHM, RTF, HLP, DOC, and many more) easily and quickly. The software supports a batch conversion, a run from command line, more than 50 languages. Batch conversion ability allows you to convert a unlimited number of LIT files at a time.

http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

[newman]

My standard list on any new install, I have a cd with these burnt onto them.

Control Vista settings with the Ultimate Windows Tweaker and tame UAC with Tweak UAC.

Bye bye Adobe bloatreader, hello Foxit Reader. Already mentioned, the ubiquitous CCleaner.

Of course, Firefox and Thunderbird.

Updates, head on over to Autopatcher, yes, it's still with us!

My troika of quan, my trio of protection Spybot S&D, Malwarebytes and Avast! Home Edition.

Some eschew Spybot, IMHO still valuable for the ability to lock the hosts file against a blacklist of known bad items, and for the Teatimer protection module. I gave away Ad-Aware after it became nagware.

Avast! IMHO is the best freeware AV out there, and there's literally dozens of skins if you don't linke the initial interface. Please also be advised that Avast now has a downloadable web installer, I disfavour that and do the direct download.

[ThugsRook]

yea, Foxit is a very nice and small PDF reader ~ much better then that overbloated Acrobat junk.

best tweaker is to not install all the junk.... nLite!
(it takes forever but its worth it)
my XP-SP3 cd is only 150mb and dumps a 450mb clean install... in only 8 minutes

...and of course... MS TweakUI for XP.

[newman]

Or Vlite for Vista. But, it want the WAIK download, and at over 1 gig, that's way too much on my 3g plan

[ThugsRook]

Or Vlite for Vista. But, it want the WAIK download, and at over 1 gig, that's way too much on my 3g plan

if you want lite, you prolly shouldnt be using Vista


i still miss W98 with its 124mb footprint

[newman]

i still miss W98 with its 124mb footprint

BIG SMILES! Might have trouble running w 98 on an x58 but

[ThugsRook]

BIG SMILES! Might have trouble running w 98 on an x58 but

well it doesnt have to actually be W98, just the idea of it.

WXP cant get nearly as small even with nLite. WXP would need to be somewhat rebuilt from the core with an absolute minimal single home user footprint in mind.