Must Have Software

http://www.softperfect.com/products/networx/=> real time traffic monitoring

http://shellscape.org/#gnp=> gmail notifier with w7/8 taskbar integration

http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/...df-reader.html=> best pdf reader evah

http://windirstat.info/=> pie charts of how much hdd space your shit is using

http://imgur.com/apps=> imgur stuff

http://www.1014.org/code/nullsoft/netmon/=> small latency checker. been using this for the last 7-8 years.

I wouldn't recommend it for graphic designers or anyone else that needs color accuracy, but I've been using f.lux (http://stereopsis.com/flux/) for several months now and have noticed I've had less trouble sleeping following late night computing.

It essentially adjusts the display based upon the time of day. The screen gets a sort of orange hue that takes a little getting used to.

I'm using it as well but they need to make it smarter as in disable it during (fullscreen) video playback and games. I always disable it when I'm watching a movie and then forget to turn it back on. An option to disable it for more than 1h would be pretty awesome as well.

My own personal list would be:

Teamviewer with app on iphone - Whenever my WoW server overflows with queues I log myself on before I go home from work, effectively skipping the queue.
f.lux - changes monitor brightness based on the time of the day. Really really nice and after you get used to it, switching it off will really hurt your eyes. Lovely tool
Chrome. I love the browser, but I am a bit interested in trying Waterfox
uTorrent. Whether legal or not, very nice tool to help you manage what you download

Audio Editing
LMMS- Open Source alternative to FL Studio

Graphic Design
Inkscape- Vector graphics editor

Not sure what category to put these in:
Blender- 3D Software Suite
Sculptris- free very easy to use 3D sculpting application
LibreOffice- Office Suite (forked from OpenOffice, but where most of the devs went)

I need a music player that doesn't take version juggling and 15 plugins + a skin to be good (foobar).

Sublime text 2, best text editor for web development imo since textmate is dead in the water. Best of all you purchase one license and you can install it on any computer no matter the os. I have it on my mac, win 7, and linux machines. It is written in python so it is not for the feint of heart especially if you are looking to add plugins and mods.

TextExpanderfor OSX only unfortunately =(. Easy to record text macros so you don't have to keep retyping shit.

Cygwin on windows cause PUTTY just doesn't cut it.

VMWare and Oracle VirtualBox.

Spotify, duh! And it's available on win, linux, and osx.

Daemontools lite, for mounting iso's. Small install and easy to use.

Kingsoft office writer. For those too cheap to pony up for MS Office this is a pretty decent free alternative.

Hydra IRC client. It's afreeIRC client for windows. Best of all no fucking adds or annoying messages when you leave a room.

Teamviewer. For when you need to remote to another computer pc or mac in a hurry. Free as well

Media Player Classiceasy to use for watching most video formats.

Anyone know of a good free drive cloning program? I got a nice big new SSD and would rather just clone my current drive onto it rather than doing a fresh install.

I only know ofClonezillaoff the top of my head, but I don't have personal experience with it.

I've been usingNorton Ghostfor years now. Make sure to go to Options=>Image/Tape and pick Image Disk to grab the MBR & shit or it won't boot. Of course you gotta do this from another OS like the MiniWindows XP from theHirenBootCD.

Take KMplayer off the list. It's a piece of shit now. Anyone able to recommend an alternative?

I've been usingUMPlayerlately and I like it pretty well so far.

opiate82_sl said:

Anyone know of a good free drive cloning program? I got a nice big new SSD and would rather just clone my current drive onto it rather than doing a fresh install.

Click to expand...

I used Acronis when I migrated my various computers over to SSD's a couple years ago. Not free, but it worked flawlessly. Just bought a new SSD for my laptop, which still had a mechanical drive, and all I had to do was dig up my old emails with the serial numbers and it once again worked great. Easily worth the $40 or so bucks.

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing...s/migrateeasy/

Eomer_sl said:

I used Acronis when I migrated my various computers over to SSD's a couple years ago. Not free, but it worked flawlessly. Just bought a new SSD for my laptop, which still had a mechanical drive, and all I had to do was dig up my old emails with the serial numbers and it once again worked great. Easily worth the $40 or so bucks.

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing...s/migrateeasy/

Click to expand...

If you've got a Western Digital hard drive in your computer (I think even USB drives), you can get a free version of Acronis. It might be a slightly stripped down or older version but it does the job.

http://support.wdc.com/product/downl...l.asp?swid=119

opiate82_sl said:

Anyone know of a good free drive cloning program? I got a nice big new SSD and would rather just clone my current drive onto it rather than doing a fresh install.

Click to expand...

You should be aware that there are some optimizations that go into making an SSD get the most bang for your buck. If you're cloning from a HDD then the correct settings probably won't be used. I just did a quick google search and found this thread which seems to cover the basics:http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials...ndows-7-a.html

Clonezilla is an excellent tool. Just pay attention during the process or you could accidentally fuckeverything.

Adobe has the entire CS2 Suite available for free. Justregister here, and you can download Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. No idea if it's just a limited thing or what.