Programs of Choice...

[Seven]

I wanted to start a thread where people give their opinions on programs, and what they think is best. You can name any program you want in any category, just say what category it's in though. For example.

Anti-virus:
AVG, avast!, Norton, McAfee, etc?

Then, you would tell why you think it's the best. (Pros/Cons)

You can choose anything. Like Instant Messengers, Browsers, Photo Editing, CD/DVD Ripping/Burning, etc.

[jhs59]

Virtual optical disk drive software:

Many of the optical disk burning software solutions out there come with a virtual cd/dvd rom emulator built in. This is all fine and good but I never use these.

I use Daemon Tools.

It's free. It's small. It reads pretty much any kind of disc image file including b5t, b6t, bwt, ccd, cue, isz, mds, nrg, pdi, cdi, and iso. Plus loading a disc from your hard drive is faster than loading it from the original disc.

It also is able to emulate copy protection. Some software requires that a disc be inserted in order for the software to run. This is true with many PC games. If you want to back up your discs to a disc image you can, but the software normally doesn't recognize the image as being a valid disc when you load it into a virtual cd/dvd rom drive. With Daemon Tools you can turn on emulation of copy protections that will tell your software that it is a valid disc and then load the program. This is very useful for those of us with large hard drives who back up their discs to images and don't want to go shuffling through discs just to load their games or software.


And that's why I like Daemon Tools. The end.

(P.S. If anyone knows better software for this, let me know!)

[Vorspire]

For fast file and sub-string document searching, I use Agent Ransack (free)
For image manipulation and processing, I use Paint Shop Pro 7
For 3D Grahpic Design and rendering, I use 3D Studio Max 8 & 9
For 3D Landscaping and environment design, I use Daz Studio & Bryce 5 & 6
For Virus Protection, I use AVG, Spyware Doctor and SpySweeper
For Bench-marking and profiling, I use Fresh Diagnose
For Decompiling and Dissasembling, I use IDA Pro
For programming and application design, I use Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 & 2008 Express Ed.
For PHP, CSS and HTML web design and programming, I use PHP Designer
For PDF reading/writing/formatting, I use FoxIt Reader Pro
For Movie and Video editing and manipulation, I use Windows Movie Maker Pro
For Music and Sound manipulation, I use Cool Edit Pro
For media playing and archiving, I use VLC Media Player, DivX and Windows Media Player
For drive ghosting and cd tray mounting, burning ripping, I use Power ISO and Daemon Tools coupled with Nero 8 Pro
For copying CD's on-the-fly from drive to drive, I use Clone CD

Hope that's enough ^^

[Joeku]

Originally Posted by Seven

Anti-virus:
AVG, avast!, Norton, McAfee, etc?

Lol .

[Vorspire]

Originally Posted by Joeku

Lol .

Agree, a sieve with a hole in it.

[Anti-Basic]

Originally Posted by Vorspire;769994
For Movie and Video editing and manipulation, I use [b

Windows Movie Maker Pro[/b]
For drive ghosting and cd tray mounting, burning ripping, I use Power ISO and Daemon Tools coupled with ]Nero 8 Pro

lol @ Windows Movie Maker Pro and Nero.


Browser: Firefox
Mail Client: Thunderbird
FTP: Filezilla
Messenger: Trillian (ya I know it blows, stfu)
IRC: mIRC for Windows and BitchX for *nix... Mainly cuz xchat is horrid beyond horrid
Mounting: Daemon tools older version before the lame gui change, and also with the shell extension
Burning: People still use optical media? imgburn is what I use when I have to burn shit for other people who are still living in 1995 tho.
Ripping: Games I just drag and drop and then make an image, for video DVD Decrypter.
Anti-Virus: Avast, but I have all the residents turned off cept torrents, seriously as kiwi found out a while back, the instant messenger shield scans every message sent, not just file transfers.. y know.. to protect you from all those plain text viruses out there... email scanner does the same thing. Decent definitions (updates several times in one day sometimes) and doesn't accidentally DDoS half the internet like AVG.
Torrents: utorrent, pre 1.7.
Media Player: Winamp
Image editor: Photoshop CS2. Tho I rarely do any graphics work
Audio Editing: Audacity for simple shit, Sony SoundForge for anything heavier.
Video Editing: VirtualDub mostly (and its many forks and filters)
CyberSex: Joeku's mom.

[Kiwi]

Originally Posted by Anti-Basic

lol @ Windows Movie Maker Pro and Nero.

Messenger: Trillian (ya I know it blows, stfu)

I haven't found anything suitable to replace it with. I only use it for AIM and MSN, and frankly it has great memory usage compared to other apps and supports oscar protocol which nearly no other multi-IM app does. I'm looking at you, Miranda, piece of shit. If they could've just got their act together and pumped out a couple more updates to fix direct connect issues it would be nearly flawless IMO. File transfers work fine as well.

[Vorspire]

Originally Posted by Anti-Basic

lol @ Windows Movie Maker Pro and Nero.

I understand you don't know how to use these tools, so I'm willin to let it slide this time.

If you know what you are doing, you can use Win Miovie Maker to port your videos to other applications for extensive editing, Movie aker is a good project manager for movies.

Nero is one of the best tools for ripping and burning and again, if you know how to cross your applications, is a very powerful tool.

As for trillian... yeah, it blows hard, it's a shame you don't have the processing power to just run MSN, AIM, IRC and ICQ at the same time.

[Anti-Basic]

Originally Posted by Vorspire

I understand you don't know how to use these tools, so I'm willin to let it slide this time.

ROFL.

Originally Posted by Vorspire

If you know what you are doing, you can use Win Miovie Maker to port your videos to other applications for extensive editing, Movie aker is a good project manager for movies.

Nero is one of the best tools for ripping and burning and again, if you know how to cross your applications, is a very powerful tool.

Windows movie maker blows hard cocks, Nero has gotten progressively worse since version 6 or so, they keep going downhill, working backwards so to speak.

Originally Posted by Vorspire

As for trillian... yeah, it blows hard, it's a shame you don't have the processing power to just run MSN, AIM, IRC and ICQ at the same time.

a 486 has the "processing power" to run 100 instances of each of those. The point isn't processing power at all, its a matter of convenience. Why not havew all your conbtacts in one program? why have 4 different things in your tray that do the same purpose? oh right, there isn't a reason.

[Vorspire]

Originally Posted by Anti-Basic

ROFL.


Windows movie maker blows hard cocks, Nero has gotten progressively worse since version 6 or so, they keep going downhill, working backwards so to speak.

People only say such programs blow hard when they don't know how to use them, or there is no point to the program (like Trillian)...

I agree to a degree about Nero.. but I have a complete extensive Nero 8 suite that does everything that no previous version of Nero could do.

[Anti-Basic]

Originally Posted by Kiwi

I haven't found anything suitable to replace it with. I only use it for AIM and MSN, and frankly it has great memory usage compared to other apps and supports oscar protocol which nearly no other multi-IM app does. I'm looking at you, Miranda, piece of shit. If they could've just got their act together and pumped out a couple more updates to fix direct connect issues it would be nearly flawless IMO. File transfers work fine as well.

Yeah, my only gripe with it is startup time.. which actually may be more due to everything trying to start at once after I boot up. Also, sometimes parts of it "tooltip list entry" or some shit, don't like to quit themselves when I shutdown and it takes like 12 seconds for windows to manually quit it. Other than that, I'm really happy with it. Plus my crack for it has awesome music.

[Jeff]

[Kiwi]

Originally Posted by Vorspire

As for trillian... yeah, it blows hard, it's a shame you don't have the processing power to just run MSN, AIM, IRC and ICQ at the same time.

Who needs processing power when those applications fucking suck to begin with? With the exception of IRC, which has terrible support in anything other than a dedicated client.

[Vorspire]

Originally Posted by Jeff

Fraps ftw.

[Anti-Basic]

Originally Posted by Vorspire

People only say such programs blow hard when they don't know how to use them, or there is no point to the program (like Trillian)...

You really are hilarious. No people say that when the program sucks compared to others.

I agree to a degree about Nero.. but I have a complete extensive Nero 8 suite that does everything that no previous version of Nero could do.

Nero is a bloated piece of garbage that is trying to be everything at once.

I want to flame you, but I imagined everything you just said in a British accent, which made the stupidity cute, so I won't.

[Vorspire]

Originally Posted by Anti-Basic

You really are hilarious. No people say that when the program sucks compared to others.



Nero is a bloated piece of garbage that is trying to be everything at once.

I want to flame you, but I imagined everything you just said in a British accent, which made the stupidity cute, so I won't.

It's amazing that, when cornered, one will always resort the lowet common grade of flaming and simply flame one's country.
You are obviously nothing more than an "end-user" who doesn't really understand how applications work, and how applications, when grouped together as a whole for use, can be far more powerful than a single application can be by itself. Win Movie Maker is a component of a much bigger scale.

[Anti-Basic]

I didn't flame your country at all....

[Vorspire]

Originally Posted by Anti-Basic

I didn't flame your country at all....

You used a metaphorical statement to flame me by using my country as a basis, given that the accent is related to my country, to say anything bad about the accent typically means you are flaming the country or nationality of that accent.

Like if i were to re-state the fact that the american accent is of a lazy pronounciation.

[Kitchen_]

NOD32 for AV

[Macil]

Long live Fruity Loops! - for making music. Easy to use, fairly cheap to buy (hypothetically easy to crack... Heh) Lots of compatibility with plugins and lots and lots of great freeware plugins and samples out there to download for it.

FL Studio Homepage

[Anti-Basic]

Originally Posted by Vorspire

You used a metaphorical statement to flame me by using my country as a basis, given that the accent is related to my country, to say anything bad about the accent typically means you are flaming the country or nationality of that accent.

Like if i were to re-state the fact that the american accent is of a lazy pronounciation.

I said the accents were cute. if cute has changed meaning in your version of english, than I apologize, It was actually a compliment.

and what about your "flame"

You basically did the equivalent of telling a race car driver that he should drive a an automatic instead of manual, and that the reason he prefers manual is because he's too stupid to understand how to drive an automatic.

[Suil Ban]

Broswer: Firefox 3.0
VoIP: Ventrilo
Messenger: GTalk, AIM Lite, MSN (in that order)
Music: musikCube
Email: GMail
C++ development: VS2008, Eclipse
C# development: VS2005
Java development: Eclipse
Video Editing: VirtualDub
Torrent: uTorrent
Music production: Ableton Live 7.0.2
PDF viewing: Foxit Reader
Desktop sharing: Teamviewer
FTP: SmartFTP
Media player: WMP, VLC
Graphics maniuplation: Adobe Photoshop CS3
Gaming platform: Sallos, Steam
.NET reflection: Reflector
Debugger: OllyDbg
Online poker client: Full Tilt Poker, Pokerstars
IRC client: mIRC
Diff: WinDiff
SVN: TortoiseSVN
HTML/PHP: Notepad

[Vorspire]

Originally Posted by Anti-Basic

I said the accents were cute. if cute has changed meaning in your version of english, than I apologize, It was actually a compliment.

and what about your "flame"

You basically did the equivalent of telling a race car driver that he should drive a an automatic instead of manual, and that the reason he prefers manual is because he's too stupid to understand how to drive an automatic.

Well, you'll hav to be mosre specific than you were, because if I remember right, every part of every country has a differing (and subsequently differently named) "accent". You probably imagined a London accent or something, which I agree is cute, but if you heard me speak IRL, I would probably make as much sense to you as a Scotsman speaking Japanese.