A lot of people throughout the course of my life and career have asked me two questions: what software do I use, and why do I like said software? I prefer to use applications that follow the KISS principle, excluding a couple obvious ones (like preferring Windows XP as a workstation OS instead of Linux or FreeBSD with X, et cetera). Software that suffers from bloat is acceptable, as long as the positives significantly outweigh the negatives.
So here’s a list of workstation software I use and/or advocate, and visit the home pages of on a daily basis:
- Alcohol 120% — virtual disk/disc software, easily beats DaemonTools
- CCleaner — a reliable way to keep your Windows registry (mostly) clean, and manage start-up programs
- CPU-Z — for examining low-level details about your PC
- EAC — a reliable and effective CD-to-WAV/MP3/OGG ripper/re-encoder
- GPU-Z — for monitoring GPU temperature, because nVidia nTune sucks
- KeePass — never forget passwords ever again…
- HD Tune — for disk benchmarking, SMART monitoring, and bad sector scanning
- MPC – Home Cinema — classic MPC has too many bugs and VLC is a sick joke
- mIRC — yeah, you heard me right
- Miranda IM — pompous authors, but significantly better than Trillian or Pidgin
- Mozilla Firefox — since IE became atrocious with the release of IE7…
- MusicBrainz Picard — a truly amazing music management application
- Nestopia — simply the best (read: most enjoyable) NES/Famicom emulator available
- nLite — customise and build your own Windows CDs
- PingPlotter — because WinMTR really isn’t cutting it any more
- PuTTY — disgusting code, but the best terminal emulator available for Windows
- RMClock — low-level CPU monitoring and feature-toggling tool
- SCFH DSF — absolutely the best DirectShow capture filter there is
- Tomato Firmware — Linux-based open-source firmware for Linksys WRT-series enthusiasts
- uTorrent — compact, no fluff, high-performance BitTorrent client
- VMware Workstation — well worth US$190!
- VirtualDub — fast, feature-extensive video recompressor; does capturing too!
- Winamp — version 5.35 and earlier only, later versions are absolute garbage
- WinRAR — since Winzip turned into something blasphemous years ago…
- Wireshark — an absolute necessity for any *IX administrator
