With all the hype and countless hours of fun surrounding Windows 7 upgrades I thought I'd toss in my two wooden nickels worth of useful applications that have installed themselves into my heart. (aww... ain't that just sweet?, too bad mine's beyond fraggmented to care) These are not really Windows 7 specific, just good Windows based apps that I like. *Some of the descriptions are straight from the makers' own summaries or cnet's download.com site.*
Google Chrome Browser - "Chrome is blazingly fast and is easily the quickest browser available. Chrome is Google's attempt to make the Web browser disappear and to focus on the applications and pages users are viewing, rather than on the border with its tools." If clean and simple are your things then Chrome is the browser for you. The 'address' bar also doubles as the classic Google search bar.
Cost: FREE
Google's Picasa (3) - "Picasa is free photo editing software from Google that makes your pictures look great. Sharing your best photos with friends and family is as easy as pressing a button!" Just like they say, it organizes pictures, and makes it very easy to edit and share, especially if you have an existing Gmail account.
Cost: FREE
Libra - "Libra is a beautiful library software to manage your Books, Music, Movies and Games. You can track items you have lent out, or tag them with meaningful terms to organize them effectively. Libra can import your items from other applications, or scan them from either your webcam or any barcode scanner (including CueCat). Once you have built your collection, you can print out beautiful catalog pages of all your items." I use a 400 Disc DVD changer and store most of my kids' movies on my home network, this is by far the best way to organize them and use to pick a movie to watch. The library is also exportable to Excel for a text list print out.
Cost: FREE
DVDFab (6) - "DVDFab----Copy any DVD to blank disc/PSP/iPod or other mobile devices in smart ways, the fastest DVD copy software. Powerful and Flexible! Enjoy it!" This software can copy any movie disc and is really simple to run. I use it for full quality rips for the the kids' flicks.
Cost: Free basic edition (~$30)
Belarc Advisor - "The Belarc Advisor builds a detailed profile of your installed software and hardware, missing Microsoft hotfixes, anti-virus status, CIS (Center for Internet Security) benchmarks, and displays the results in your Web browser. " Basically it reads your entire PC and sums it up and displays it in web-browser format.
Cost: FREE
PlayOn\TVersity - Media servers to share local and web-based conetnt, see my previous post for a lot more information.
AVG Free Anti-Virus - "AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition is an anti-virus protection tool available free of charge to home users. Rapid virus database updates are available for the lifetime of the product, thereby providing the high level of detection capability." I shouldn't have to explain what this does.
Cost: You gussed it, Free
WinRAR - "Anyone seeking an all-in-one archiving solution would be remiss to not check out WinRAR." In a quick summary; its like winzip, on crack.
Cost: Free Trial, $30 full product.
VLC Media Player - This bad boy will play just about any format of audio and video out there. It also is light weight and comes in a portable version (for use on a USB thumbdrive).
Cost: FREE
This is a quick, off the top of my head type list, so if there are some apps that need some love and respect, please post it in the comments section.
