BTW, Acdsee is
NOT an image editor, but an image viewer. It's just grown very bloated.
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Irfanview can look ugly to many. Thats why exists
XNVIEW, wich shockingly supports many times more formats (even PS1 TIMs and EA pics!!) out of the box, and features a easy browser interface.
Gratis.
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File Compression category:
You folks might want to try
IZarc. It's more like 7-zip on
hypersteroids., can decode and encode into so many formats his continued absence from this list kept me staring at the screen in stunned disbelief.
Gratis.
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For those who care about security, the windows firewall, while ok to block intruders, will do
nothing to prevent leaks
from your computer, wether it's some phoningback software of malicious stuff.
As worthy replacements, I suggest trying
Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall (the easiest of all firewalls), or
Comodo Personal Firewall for the more technically inclined among you.
Both Gratis of course, with Kerio deactivating suspending some noncritical features after 30 days if you dont buy it.
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For those who want their XP systems looking highly impressive and Vista-like, you could use the
BricoPack full conversion themes for XP (NOT recommended with XP64). Any would be fine, with my personal preference being the BricoPack Vista Inspirat Ultimate 2.
Gratis.
Vista-like.
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For those who dont have Microsoft Office, but want to open, read or print MS-Office documents created with Word, Powerpoint and Excel, I recommend using the free
Word Viewer 2003 ,
Excel Viewer 2003 , and
Powerpoint Viewer 2003. Noone needs MS Office just to read those docs.
Yes, all gratis. Just google those.
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For those who love the security concept of User Account Control, or have to deal with limited accounts on XP, using
SUDOwn would be a very nice addition to XP, as it provides convenience with security in a single package. Yes, that's SUDOwn as in SUDO for Windows. Got it ??
Gratis, of course.
Vista-like security feature.
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I totally oversaw the screencasting category. You
really should append prices and licence status to each entry. Makes no sense to plug hyperpopular payware softs too, gratis alternatives should be plugged instead. A critic on the inclusion of Photoshop and Acdsee.
I can suggest to add
TAKSI.
Gratis.
Open source.
Quote:
Taksi is a utility that allows you to take screenshots and record video clips of your favourite games and other 3D-graphics applications. Inspired by Fraps, Taksi aims to provide an open source alternative.
Taksi can support live video compression with any VFW video codec your system has installed (i.e. XVid, DivX, MS Mpeg4, etc).
Supports user-specified key mapping, allowing user to assign almost any key to a particular function (such as video start/stop, screenshot trigger, etc.). Runtime re-mapping of the keys is supported via GUI: user can change keys without having to restart the game.
Custom video settings are supported. This allows to specify on a per-game basis the frame rate of the captured video, and the weight of each source frame. The weight determines whether a particular frame is captured or not. This allows for creation of smoother and faster videos, when generic algorithm doesn't produce desired results.
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Note 1 : Its most important asset is that it allows to use ANY codec you have, wich could be less ressources-hungry or higher-quality ones (if you got the horsepower), like realtime Xvid, or MJPEG...
Note 2 : Sound recording does not work yet.
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Tsk, tsk, tsk... How about an update, Sylenus?
Till' next time, take care !!
Hmm, maybe I should make my recommendations into a free newsletter? Ther's so much love to share...