Quake3World

WinRAR is indeed great, but it still pesters you to register it every time you use it. 7zip is completely free.

While I'm in this thread, I'll also recommend Portable Apps, an open source suite of many of these programs, all designed to run off of a USB key.

OpenOffice
OpenOffice is a full-featured office applications suite that includes:
- Writer (Word Processing)
- Calc (Spreadsheet)
- Draw (Graphics)
- Base (Database)
- Impress (Presentation)
- Math (Formula)

It's basically an open-source, free alternative to MS Office. It can open and work with existing office docs and files from Lotus or Wordperfect (Corel), as well as a fuckload of other document formats.

It also outputs directly to PDF so if you do encounter any issues with formatting, this gets around it and makes anything you create viewable for anyone.

Oh and it's cross-platform.

http://www.openoffice.org/

Process Explorer
Ever wondered which program has a particular file or directory open? Now you can find out. Process Explorer shows you information about which handles and DLLs processes have opened or loaded.

The Process Explorer display consists of two sub-windows. The top window always shows a list of the currently active processes, including the names of their owning accounts, whereas the information displayed in the bottom window depends on the mode that Process Explorer is in: if it is in handle mode you'll see the handles that the process selected in the top window has opened; if Process Explorer is in DLL mode you'll see the DLLs and memory-mapped files that the process has loaded. Process Explorer also has a powerful search capability that will quickly show you which processes have particular handles opened or DLLs loaded.
Process Explorer


Process Monitor
Process Monitor is an advanced monitoring tool for Windows that shows real-time file system, Registry and process/thread activity. It combines the features of two legacy Sysinternals utilities, Filemon and Regmon, and adds an extensive list of enhancements including rich and non-destructive filtering, comprehensive event properties such session IDs and user names, reliable process information, full thread stacks with integrated symbol support for each operation, simultaneous logging to a file, and much more. Its uniquely powerful features will make Process Monitor a core utility in your system troubleshooting and malware hunting toolkit.
Process Monitor

oh and just about anything by Sysinternals is gold... including RootkitRevealer

if you are not already familiar with these guys' stuff, then get familiar =)

GIMP

The GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is used to edit and manipulate images. It can load and save a variety of image formats and can be used to convert between formats. GIMP can also be used as a paint program. It features a set of drawing and painting tools such as airbrush, clone, pencil, and paint brush. Painting and drawing tools can be applied to an image with a variety of paint modes. It also offers an extensive array of selection tools like rectangle, ellipse, fuzzy select, bezier select, intelligent scissors, and select by color. GIMP offers a variety of plugins that perform a variety of image manipulations. Examples include bumpmap, edge detect, gaussian blur, and many others. In addition, GIMP has several scripting extension which allow for advanced non-interactive processing and creation of images.

Available for Unix, Windows, and MacOSX

For those familiar with Photoshop and are afraid of change:

GimpShop

GIMPshop is a modification of the free/open source GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), intended to replicate the feel of Adobe Photoshop. Its primary purpose is to make users of Photoshop feel comfortable using GIMP.

It shares all GIMP's advantages, including the long feature list and customisability, while addressing some common criticisms regarding the program's interface: GIMPshop modifies the menu structure to closely match Photoshop's, adjusts the program's terminology to match Adobe's, and, in the Windows version, uses a plugin called 'Deweirdifier' to combine the application's numerous windows in a similar manner to the MDI system used by most Windows graphics packages. While GIMPshop does not support Photoshop plugins, all GIMP's own plugins, filters, brushes, etc. remain available.

Due to the changes to the interface, many Photoshop tutorials can be followed in GIMPshop unchanged, and most others can be adapted for GIMPshop users with minimal effort.

Available for Unix, Windows, and MacOSX

VLC
(Video LAN Client)
http://www.videolan.org
The ultimate media player for all platforms (Win, Linux, OS X etc.). If VLC doesn't play a movie or sound file, it probably isn't a movie or a sound file. Seriously, so many people I know still use Windows Media Player and have never ending problems with codecs. Forget about all that, just install VLC.

Btw: Video LAN Server enables streaming Video content over a Network, hence the name.

Virtualbox

For both Windows and Linux, innotek VirtualBox is a family of powerful x86 virtualization products for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).

Super easy to setup and now offers seamless windows, too.



Seamless (Linux Mint and Vista Ultimate):

OK, Real might be an issue on windows. On OS X, the Real Player isn't that bad at all, it doesn't get in your way and doesn't fuck up the system, so it's a non-issue to have it installed. Still, for everything else but Real, VLC is the way to go.

Audacity


Audacity is a free, easy-to-use audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems. You can use Audacity to:

Record live audio.
Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs.
Edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, and WAV sound files.
Cut, copy, splice, and mix sounds together.
Change the speed or pitch of a recording.

full list of features: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/about/

nLite

Have you ever wanted to remove Windows components like Media Player, Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, MSN Explorer, Messenger...
How about not even to install them with Windows ?

nLite is a tool for permanent Windows components removal and pre-installation Windows configuration. After removal there is an option to make bootable image ready for burning on cd or testing in virtual machines.
With nLite you will be able to have Windows installation which on install does not include, or even contain on cd, the unwanted components.

Features
Service Pack Integration
Component Removal
Unattended Setup
Driver Integration *
Hotfixes Integration **
Tweaks
Services Configuration
Patches ***
Bootable ISO creation

* - Textmode (CD Boot) and normal PnP
** - hotfixes with white icons, *KB*.exe, including update packs
and Internet Explorer 7
***- supports generic SFC, Uxtheme, TcpIp and Usb Polling patching.

nLite supports Windows 2000, XP x86/x64 and 2003 x86/x64 in all languages.
It needs .NET Framework 2.0 in order to run... Check if you have it already, maybe on some of your CDs before downloading if your connection is slow.




use in conjunction with http://www.ryanvm.net/msfn/ to apply hotfixes etc post-SP2.

MozBackup


MozBackup is a simple utility for creating backups of Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, Mozilla Suite and Netscape profiles.

It allows you to backup and restore bookmarks, mail, contacts, history, extensions, cache etc. It's an easy way to do Firefox backup, Thunderbird backup ...



MozBackup is compatible with:
Firefox 1.0 - 3.0 Alpha 6
Thunderbird 1.0 - 2.0
SeaMonkey 1.0a - 1.1
Mozilla Suite 1.7 - 1.7.x
Netscape 7.x.

This program is freeware and works on Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista. It's developed in Czech republic.

QTTabBar

QTTabBar is an Add-In that gives Tab Browsing Feature to your Explorer.
Folder grouping, histories, etc.

have remote co-workers? Need to send a password or instant message the rest of the company? Or just worried about IM proxy loggers snooping your shit?
Try Pidgin or Gaim for linux with
Off the Record encryption. You validate a friend's "fingerprint," and from that point forward, all chat sessions are encrypted and on the low.

http://www.blender.org/
Blender is the free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems under the GNU General Public License.

http://nicotine-plus.sourceforge.net/
Nicotine+ is a SoulSeek client written in Python

New True-Crypt 5.0 is out. notable feature is a pre-boot log on if you've encrypted the entire drive (sans boot partition). changelog:

5.0

February 5, 2008

New features:

*

Ability to encrypt a system partition/drive (i.e. a partition/drive where Windows is installed) with pre-boot authentication (anyone who wants to gain access and use the system, read and write files, etc., needs to enter the correct password each time before the system starts). For more information, see the chapter System Encryption in the documentation. (Windows Vista/XP/2003)
*

Pipelined operations increasing read/write speed by up to 100% (Windows)
*

Mac OS X version
*

Graphical user interface for the Linux version of TrueCrypt
*

XTS mode of operation, which was designed by Phillip Rogaway in 2003 and which was recently approved as the IEEE 1619 standard for cryptographic protection of data on block-oriented storage devices. XTS is faster and more secure than LRW mode (for more information on XTS mode, see the section Modes of Operation in the documentation).

Note: New volumes created by this version of TrueCrypt can be encrypted only in XTS mode. However, volumes created by previous versions of TrueCrypt can still be mounted using this version of TrueCrypt.
*

SHA-512 hash algorithm (replacing SHA-1, which is no longer available when creating new volumes).

Note: To re-encrypt the header of an existing volume with a header key derived using HMAC-SHA-512 (PRF), select 'Volumes' > 'Set Header Key Derivation Algorithm'.


download: http://www.truecrypt.org/downloads.php

I've been waiting for this update.

No more coveting pointsec \o/

NTREGOPT

http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/

"The program works by recreating each registry hive "from scratch",
thus removing any slack space that may be left from previously
modified or deleted keys."

In other words, Defrags your registry..and it's free

WinxpVirtualControlPanel

Very light program to mount images... every trial I could find finally expired and ran across this a few hours ago. Very simple to use, and setting it up takes all of 1 minute, just follow the read me it you have problems.

...Microsoft has a free, 60kb program that does the same thing! Of course, it is not supported...

E:v:O wrote:NTREGOPT

http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/

"The program works by recreating each registry hive "from scratch",
thus removing any slack space that may be left from previously
modified or deleted keys."

In other words, Defrags your registry..and it's free

the registry is a fucking joke. worst. idea. ever.

Hard Drive Defragmentation Software:

Diskeeper
A few of you already use Diskeeper, so it comes as a highly recommended product, though not free.
Commercial application ($30-100).

O&O Defrag
Generally well recommended as well, but there has been a report by one of you that it introduced disc errors. Mileage may vary.
Commercial application ($45).

Ultimate Defrag
Looks interesting, allows you to manually stick more used files and applications on the outer, faster sides of the hard disc platter and other optimizations.
Commercial version and Freeware

JkDefrag
Freeware, fast, powerful. Only limitation is that it is a command line application but you can get the pretty GUI front-end as well.
Freeware and front-end GUI.

Sysinternals Contig
Most of you are familiar with Sysinternals, the wonderful little company that made all sorts of great utilities before being bought out by Microsoft. Their Contig defragmentor is still available from Microsoft though they have labeled it "as is" and unsupported.
Freeware and front-end GUI

CutePDF
Free PDF writer
been using it for around a year now, small, free, and works great.

-----------------------------------

Windows Installer Cleanup Utility
Microsoft has updated the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility. With the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility, you can remove a program's Windows Installer configuration information. You may want to remove the Windows Installer configuration information for your program if you experience installation (Setup) problems. For example, you may have to remove a program's Windows Installer configuration information if you have installation problems when you try to add (or remove) a component of your program that was not included when you first installed your program.

found this recently useful to fix issues with reinstalling photoshop.
handy little tool when uninstalls don't work correctly

Synergy desktop sharing utility. Share one keyboard and mouse among multiple monitors /systems (linux/bsd unix, win, mac compat).

Belarc Advisor

-builds high detailed overview of installed software and hardware on your system
-provides information about missing Windows hotfixes and outdated drivers
-information is displayed in a web browser and all data is private

Digsby

I've been looking for the perfect cross-platform, multi-protocol IM client. Digsby is the closest one I've found so far. Previously, I was using Pidgin (Windows/Linux) and Adium (Mac), the two of which are sister products. Both worked fine, Adium being nearly perfect, Pidgin's interface looks rather like a donkey's ass. Neither supported webcams.

Still toying with it, but Digsby is cross-platform on Windows, Linux and Mac, looks good, supports MSN, AOL, Yahoo, Google Talk, ICQ, Jabber, Facebook Chat, email and various social networks. It looks like it also has webcam support.

Foxit PDF reader now works as FF plugin and can open PDFs in a FF tab.
http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader ... snew30.htm