[ Windows / Mac / Linux / ]
Firefox is my current Web Browser of choice. Customisable in all sorts of ways with downloadable extensions and themes. Full of useful features and has very good compliance to modern web standards. If you're still using Internet Explorer then do yourself a favour and get Firefox. I could talk your ears off about how much better it is. Some good extensions to get include, Adblock Plus, Gmail Notifier, Foxpose, Tab Preview and BugMeNot. If you're into web development try the Live HTTP Headers and Firebug extensions. Also handles RSS feeds.
[ www.mozilla.com/thunderbird ]
[ Windows / Mac / Linux / ]
Mail client from the same people who brought us Firefox. Also customisable using extensions and themes. Also does usenet and Also handles RSS feeds. I stick with Mail.app on the Mac though.
[ www.opera.com ]
[ Windows / Mac / Linux / ]
Had tabbed browsing before Mozilla was around yet alone Firefox. Also includes an email client. Never really taken to it myself, obviously I'd use it over IE though.
[ www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty ]
[ Windows ]
A free SSH client for Windows. Does SFTP, Telnet and FTP too.
[ Windows / Mac / Linux / ]
Best way I can think to describe this is a free alternative to Microsoft Office. It'll even open Word, Excel and Powerpoint files, and save as those formats too. Also allows you to save files as PDF.
[ free.grisoft.com/freeweb.php ]
[ Windows ]
Free Anti-Virus software. That's it really.
[ www.zonelabs.com/store/content/catalog/products/sku_list_za.jsp?lid=nav_za ]
[ Windows ]
Free firewall for Windows. Windows XP has a firewall built in of course but if you're not using XP and don't have a firewall get this and be amazed when things like Real Player try and connect to the Internet when there's not even any indication that they're running.
[ Windows ]
Apple's audio media player/CD ripper/legal download store interface/on-line radio station streamer. Nice.
[ cyberduck.ch ]
[ Mac ]
Nice GUI SFTP/FTP client.
[ Mac ]
Gives you multiple desktops in OS X. Why doesn't OS X have multiple desktops built in? Gnome and KDE have them, even Windows XP has a PowerToy add on for multiple desktops. (Though in my experience there's little guarantee that when you go back to a particular desktop the stuff you had running there won't have mysteriously vanished without trace.)
[ www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/11727 ]
[ Mac ]
Nifty Matrix style screensaver.
[ www.adobe.co.uk/products/acrobat/readstep2.html ]
[ Windows / Mac / Linux / ]
The PDF reader formerly known as Acrobat Reader. Every computer should have this installed. How else will you read the PDFs you created in OpenOffice? (Well OK, so on a Mac you can use Preview and on Linux you can use xpdf or ggv or...) N.B. Windows users watch for the other stuff Adobe will try and bundle with the download and de-select it. On Mac OS X Adobe will give you an annoying downloader application which you have to install and then that downloads the installer which then installs Adobe Reader. (There's some good rants about this various places.) You can get around this stupidity by changing the User Agent string of your browser to pretend it's not running on Mac OS X. Adobe will then give you the proper installer for Adobe Reader straight away. Safari users can change the user Agent String by using the Debug menu (see here). Firefox users can use this add on.
[ www.macromedia.com/go/getflash ]
[ Windows / Mac / Linux / ]
Essential web browser plugin for viewing those web cartoons. Those and sites written by people who think it's a good idea to do everything in Flash.
[ www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/gsview ]
[ Windows ]
Unlike Macs and Linux, Windows doesn't come with anything for viewing Postscript files. So if you want to be able to view Postscript files on Windows you'll need to download something to do it. This for instance.
[ azureus.sourceforge.net/plugin.php ]
[ Windows / Mac / Linux / ]
Bit Torrent client. Needs Java Virtual Machine installed to run. (Look for Java on this page or follow link from Azureus's How To instructions.)
[ java.com/en/ ]
[ Windows / Linux / ]
Java is Sun's platform independent run time environment. Basically you can write something in Java and it can be run on Windows, Linux, Macs, Suns, Mobile Phones, whatever as long as the device has the JRE installed. If you use a Mac you got Java with it. Windows XP doesn't ship with a version of Java, (if you care why Google it), so you need to download this.
[ Linux ]
Very nifty script which automatically install Internet Explorer under WINE. Useful if you're you're using Linux and want to see how badly IE renders your standards compliant web pages which render correctly in every other browser without having to find a Windows machine.
Your PC doesn't have to run Windows. It could run Linux. You can buy it in a nice box with manuals or just download it free off the interweb. There are many different Linux distributions (commonly known as distros), personally I use Kubuntu. The best way to try Linux is get a Live CD. You stick it in your CD drive, reboot your machine and you're running Linux (assuming your machine is set to boot from CD). When you're done you just tell the machine to shutdown and take out the CD. Nothing is installed on your harddisc so you can't mess up your Windows install. The Kubuntu desktop CD is a Live CD and has an easy graphical installer on there too.
[ www.gyford.com/phil/writing/2005/11/20/using_a_british.php ]
[ Mac ]
I use my Mac with a standard PS2 Windows type keyboard with a British/UK layout because I use the Mac through a KVM switch along with my Linux machine. This was initially a bit irritating because although Mac OS X contains a British keyboard map it sadly doesn't match an actual British keyboard thus rendering it pretty useless. Fortunately a guy called Phil Gyford created a custom keyboard map which actually matches a British/UK layout and put it online for others to download. Don't forget to leave a thank you comment if you use it.
[ www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler ]
[ Mac ]
Well featured, free, text editor for Mac OS X.
[ www.macports.org ]
[ Mac ]
Easy way to get various unix software packages on to your Mac without having to worry about library dependencies and such tedious things. All sorts of stuff there from wget to KDE.
[ Mac ]
In the event your Mac OS X install becomes borked and doesn't boot up properly this could help you sort it out. Something which you will hopefully never need to use but could prove very useful if you do.
[ ilari.scheinin.fidisk.fi/itunemywalkman/ ]
[ Mac ]
"iTuneMyWalkman is an open source application that will help you synchronize the contents of iTunes playlists to your mobile phone or other portable device. The purpose is to make the process as easy as possible, almost like it is with an iPod. The application is able to detect when you connect your phone and can start the synchronization automatically." I use this with my Sony Ericsson K750i and it's pretty nifty. Well, more accurately I use it with the memory stick from my K750i in a USB Hi-Speed card reader. The K750i only does file transfer at the Full Speed rate via the supplied cable and filling a 1Gb stick with that takes a hideously long time.
[ Mac ]
If you ever need to deploy multiple indentically configured Macs, or you want to be able to create a complete bootable back up of your Mac's harddisk, look at this guy's software. I use NetRestore and LoginWindow Manager at work.
[ Mac / Windows / Linux / ]
Plays all sorts of formats and DVDs. Will ignore the annoyance that is the region encoding on DVDs allowing you to watch DVDs you bought from overseas without having to change the region coding on your computer's DVD drive (which you can only do five times).
[ www.gimp.org ]
[ Mac / Windows / Linux / ]
"GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages."
[ microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/wmcomponents.mspx ]
[ Mac ]
Microsoft have discontinued Windows Media Player for Mac OS X. This will allow you to play Windows Media files using QuickTime.
[ code.google.com/p/macfuse/ ]
[ Mac ]
Install MacFUse-Core, run sshfs.app, mount remote filesystems in the Finder over an ssh connection. Neat.
[ www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/23141 ]
[ Mac ]
For some reason in Mac OS X Apple tied the volume of the start up bong noise to the system volume. So if you leave the system voulume high then the bong is annoyingly loud. This bit of softaware lets you fix the start up bong at a certain volume.
[ Mac / Windows / Linux / ]
"HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded DVD to MPEG-4 converter, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows."
[ perian.org ]
[ Mac ]
"Perian is a free, open source QuickTime component that adds native support for many popular video formats." Install this and QuickTime, and hence FrontRow, will play all sorts of video that it doesn't out of the box.
modified:9th April 2008