Software calling computer people, michaelab, AT

Bit confused, don't like the free applications that came with windows and stuff.

What software is useful, good features etc.9 ( I know it depends what you want to do, but the industry std applications please.)

bit of a minefield.

thanks in advance

 

Give us an idea on what you are planning to with your computer.

Write emails
Surf porn
Develop software
Develop websites
Graphics
Music
Video
Other

 

just do the sort of stuff that comes free on the computer but is a pain in the ass to use, as its so limited.

stuff like dtp, photoediting, graphics, perhaps web software, and most of the other stuff.

just the industry std programs. Its time to do things properly.

 

I have Open Office which is free, its a nice word processor, spreadsheet and has half decent drawing program built into it.

I also have Photoshop Elememts 3.0, Premiere Elelements and some good text editors. I also have Visual Studio.NET but I doubt you will have much use for that.

The graphics package that comes with windows is crap. You could try the Gimp which is free but its not that easy to use.

 

Data do you actually need the industry standards in all those areas? Thing is to get the standards in what you've listed your looking at a small fortune in software and alot of it may be too complicated for most of what you want to use it for. Photoshop etc. are very nice programs but can be a pain sometimes for simple tasks.
Might be better to look around for cheap/free alterternatives rather than going for the full blown stuff.

 

firefox & thunderbird - http://www.mozilla.org/

nvu - http://www.nvu.com/

 

Must agree about O, the price is quite good and it will import and export in industry standard file structures including those formats supported by Microsoft. I would further suggest looking at Mozilla Thunderbird for managing your email and Mozilla Firefox for browsing as in my opinion both products fit together quite well and Firefox is a safer offering to use than Microsoft IE. You might find that some of the Firefox extentions allow you a fair bit of control over how the browser functions and in my view that is good.

 

How can the price be quite good when its free? Its better than good.

Also I haven't used IE for good 6 months now, I even have Firefox installed on my pendrive, so I can run it on any PC I want without having to install it.

I even use Firefox on my linux based P233MMX laptop.

In fact I am very very proud to say I only have one Microsoft product on my PC, and thats Windows.

Actually I tell a lie, I also have Visual Studio.NET, but its a great product and you shouldn't let the M$ sign stop you using great software.

 

Dreamweaver is probably the standard web building program, I use that along with Textpad (not notepad) for hand coding.

Photoshop and CorelDraw are good graphics programs. Photoshop is all about photo editing as the name implies and CorelDraw is good for making posters and a lot more, it's hard to describe. Adobe Illustrator is good too for doing lineart. Check out - http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/previous/expression3_downloadlinks.aspx It was just bought by Microsoft and while they 'improve' it they are giving it away so get it now!

Video editing look at Adobe Premier. Virtualdub is good and free for standard edits and filters converting etc..

Audio look at CoolEdit (now Adobe Audition and not as good as it was), Sound Forge, Audacity for editing. CoolEdit is brilliant. For recording look at Cubase SX, Logic Audio, Sonar, ProTools (thats the real industry standard).

Internet, I use Opera and FireFox for browsing, Outlook for email, Limewire for hearing new music, Bitlord for downloading entire films, and CDs in one go. WarFTP for a free FTP client. Oooh, also look at VNC for a remote desktop, I can use my home computer to do anything from anywhere in the world and use IIS to make a web server just hosting a directory so I can access the files. There is a new program that does both and is free but I forget its name. I can find it if anyone wants too know, its faster than VNC too.

Norton Ghost is also a great program for backing up your computer. The newer version.. I have 2004 I think, can back up NTFS too. It will take your whole hard disk and turn it into one big file. You can then restore your entire computer, programs, documents and all in one swift move at any time. Far, far better than windows 'restore' or 'rollback' or whatever they like to call it which just saves windows' own settings.

CPUIdle is a cheap app that cools your CPU by turning it off for every cycle it isn't used, it has no effect on performance and on average drops the temp by 5-10c.

That should cost you a pretty penny! But they are the top dogs.

 

I think audition is better than Cool Edit, the 5.1 encoder is fun, I can switch between wave edit and multitrack without it crashing and I find it handles filters etc far better. Its a beast of a program.

 

Really, is that compared to CoolEdit Pro 2? I have never seen it crash.. ever!

 

Yeah I liked using Audition too, I use Adacity at home simply becuase its free, thats not bad but not a patch on Audition, I have never actually used Cool edit though.

 

Yeah I had loads of problems with it till I upgraded, Audition is the bees knees. Especially with the aurora plugin