The one program you cannot live without.

[Bbq]

You know it. There's that one program. It's truely amazing. You don't know how you lived without it. You own multiple copies, and it's your favorite program ever. when you go without it, you suffer withdrawl symptoms.

What's yours?

Mine = Zabkat's Xplorer2. Think of windows explorer. tree on the left, one pane, and it doesn't save your options every time you exit it. Now add another pane, options that stay the way you want it, next to no memory usage, lightning fast searches, completely customizable, and bookmarks for your folders.

It's easily worth the amount you pay for it. Check out the free trial version. www.zabkat.com

[Oklahoma Wolf]

Hijack This ;)

[jonnyGURU]

I'm afraid for me it's Macromedia Studio MX. I use Dreamweaver for all of my reviews. I use Fireworks for the images.

[dBTelos]

MusikCube
Firefox
Thunderbird
Trillian 3.0 Pro
Photoshop CS2

FLAC Frontend
uTorrent
CodeStuff Starter
Alcohol 120%
TrueCrypt
CCleaner
Disk Cleaner
RegSeeker

Spybot S&D
PestPatrol
CWShredder
A-Squared
Ewido
Spyware Blaster
Ad-aware
A/V Free Classic
Everest
Speedfan
PeerGuardian
FreshDownload
DVDShrink 3.2

[jonnyGURU]

MusikCube
Firefox
Thunderbird
Trillian 3.0 Pro
Photoshop CS2

FLAC Frontend
uTorrent
CodeStuff Starter
Alcohol 120%
TrueCrypt
CCleaner
Disk Cleaner
RegSeeker

Spybot S&D
PestPatrol
CWShredder
A-Squared
Ewido
Spyware Blaster
Ad-aware
A/V Free Classic
Everest
Speedfan
PeerGuardian
FreshDownload
DVDShrink 3.2

If that's one program you can't live without, that one program sure has a long name.

[SuperSix]

The Leadtek TV software I use with my Leadtek card - other than than, I just use basic stuff.. Nero, IE, etc...

[CAD4466HK]

Desktop Sidebar

[burebista]

RMClock.

[MrWicked1968]

Windows XP, without it none of my other favorite programs will work.

[jonnyGURU]

Windows XP, without it none of my other favorite programs will work.

lol Good point! :D

[clsA]

Really hard to pin down one
I install all these as soon as a fresh install is done

Clipmate
Nero
ICQ
Steam
Winrar
and of corse the Kaspersky Anti Virus

[dBTelos]

If that's one program you can't live without, that one program sure has a long name.

I simply cannot live without all of the listed necessities. And Windows XP isn't a program, it's a operating system. A platform for programs.

[Super Nade]

SuperPi and 3DM :D

[jonnyGURU]

I simply cannot live without all of the listed necessities. And Windows XP isn't a program, it's a operating system. A platform for programs.

I disagree. Operating systems ARE programs.

[CAD4466HK]

I disagree. Operating systems ARE programs.

It's all 0111001100110,no matter how you look at it:D

[dBTelos]

A computer program (often simply called a program) is an example of computer software that prescribes the actions ("computations") that are to be carried out by a computer. Most programs consist of a loadable set of instructions which determines how the computer will react to user input when that program is running, i.e. when the instructions are 'loaded'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_(computing)

These instructions can't be loaded without an operating system to decode them to the processor.

[Slartibartfast]

D-Tools ftw ;)

[jonnyGURU]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_(computing)

These instructions can't be loaded without an operating system to decode them to the processor.

Your Wiki definition still defines an OS as a program.

Furthermore, you are wrong about instruction not being capable of loading w/o an OS.

I'm sorry that you're too young to remember a time before Windows, or any OS for that matter, but there used to be a time we could boot a program straight off of a floppy w/o an OS. There used to be a time where it was quite common to have to write your applications in machine code. No OS and no programming language.

Even when you use an OS, you don't write a program "in Windows". You might write a program "for Windows," but you write it in a programming language. Windows is not a programming language, but a program written in a programming language. It is a shell. It is a program.

[Effect]

It's all 0111001100110,no matter how you look at it:D

I think CAD put it best :p.

[MMaster]

I have one "category" that I can't live without and is essential to my everyday life - remote control software:
Remote Desktop/Terminal Services
and
Putty/SSH/OpenSSH

With those things and a root/administrator's password, I can rule the world.

[Baron]

WinRar :cool:

[SKYMTL]

AutoCAD. Without that buggy-as-nuts program, my business would cease to function.

[fullmetal chocobo]

Me: FolderMatch. I use it for synching up my USB drive, and I've found it to be useful for tons of other stuff, as well as synching file backups on different drives.

My wife: Guild Wars. :lol:

[Rembrandt_1]

Directory Opus

[uOpt]

Emacs.

[procreate]

I'm sorry that you're too young to remember a time before Windows, or any OS for that matter, but there used to be a time we could boot a program straight off of a floppy w/o an OS..

actually you still had the boot sector with MS [microsoft]-DOS on it. man i remember booting apples with MS-DOS. how ironic. apple originally booted off microsoft, now they are using intel chips. if you are a good bit older than i am [except you mention floppies and it was originally punchcards/paper and magnetic reels]... then you will recognize below:

people give bill gates a lot of shit, but microsoft was formed in the fact they wrote the OS that the OG "personal computer" used, the altair 8800 [c.1975]... on punch paper no less. the bootstrap [OS] was written on the flight out to MITS in order to sell them Micro-Soft BASIC, which evolved into MS-DOS.

IOW, the OS has always existed, it HAS to exist... but was originally called a bootstrap.

what program couldnt i live w/o? sadly, probably outlook. other apps i can adapt w/o... i just figure outlook is the most used app in my machine, other than possibly my browser at times.

[madmat]

actually you still had the boot sector with MS [microsoft]-DOS on it. man i remember booting apples with MS-DOS. how ironic. apple originally booted off microsoft, now they are using intel chips. if you are a good bit older than i am [except you mention floppies and it was originally punchcards/paper and magnetic reels]... then you will recognize below:

people give bill gates a lot of shit, but microsoft was formed in the fact they wrote the OS that the OG "personal computer" used, the altair 8800 [c.1975]... on punch paper no less. the bootstrap [OS] was written on the flight out to MITS in order to sell them Micro-Soft BASIC, which evolved into MS-DOS.

IOW, the OS has always existed, it HAS to exist... but was originally called a bootstrap.


what program couldnt i live w/o? sadly, probably outlook. other apps i can adapt w/o... i just figure outlook is the most used app in my machine, other than possibly my browser at times.

I remember the days before a drive of any sort. The venerable Tandy PC's from the early 80's had no HDD, the floppy was optional (no joke) and you bought huge books of software full of lines of code to enter to avoid the expense of drives and media. It had no DOS, no OS of any sort, just a prompt.

I was playing with punchcard PC's in kindergarden, talk about a toy :)

[CAD4466HK]

mat,
Your about 9 years older then I am, but I can remember the Tandy's when I was in 7th grade at Deltona jr high:p
We were forced to take computers as a elective. It would take all of the class period to punch in some endless code, just to see a rocket take off on
the screen, or to make some stick figure chase his dog around:p
It wasen't untill I hit high school{another forced elective}, that we got to play around with the "newer"
5.25 floppys so we could play good ol' Battlechess:lol: and that was cool
because it "only" took 35mins to load:lol:

[procreate]

ah those were the days of typing code to play a game that you couldnt save... made all those little blips so special.

[Makalu]

Anybody who ever had an early computer that used a cassette player for storage should get a kick out of running this Sinclair ZX emulator (http://www.spectaculator.com/). You can set it so that it will emulate the sounds they used to make...major trip down nostalgia lane for me there.

And uhh I reckon PQ Partition Magic is the one program I'd be hard pressed to replace or do without.

[Fenix-Dark]

wget :D

[Sir_ReeL]

Acronis True Image

[$cooter]

I must be about the same age as CAD. At my junior high school ther where 2 Tandy trash-80 model II's with the back up tape drive for the whole school. The honors math class was the only class that got to use them so we didn't even have an elective computer class. In high school there were 12 trs-80 Model IV's with the floppy drive which we got to learn lotus 1-2-3- on wooo woo! Then advance compter programming I took as a senior was turbo PASCAL.

As for the live without program... hands down is Excel. I am an engineer and I use it every day in some form or fashion.

[Killswitch]

Ccleaner!

[deimos3428]

init

[aaronaugusts]

Filezilla FTP Software - I probably use it every day and it's been faultless. Paint Shop Pro FTW! I love that program, though I haven't used any version that's come out since Corel bought out JASC.Movie Maker - Although it really slows down my computer, irritating me when I record an edited film, I still love it.

[KeriJane]

Open Office. Particularly, OO DRAW.

It's not just free, it's PRICELESS! ;)

All my other proggies have a "Plan B" except maybe Dreamweaver..

Have Fun,
Keri

[rty]

I find that almost every program has a pretty decent alternative so I can probably do without any one program.

Microsoft Office would be pretty hard to do without. Sure, you could do most of the stuff in Open Office, however it doesn't seem to have the greatest compatibility with Office 2007 files if you want to open them.

[shovenose]

My favorite softwares:

-IE 8
-Paint.Net
-MS Sexurity Essentials
-super F disk bootable cd

[GenTarkin]

dd

[mariush]

Usefulness wise, it would have to be AlwaysOnTopMaker : http://www.fadsoft.net/AlwaysOnTopMaker.htm

It basically runs in background and makes windows always on top (or not on top) if you press Ctrl+Alt+T

I could live without it (by replacing it with something similar) but I use it daily : Total Commander (ghisler.net) - It's like Norton Commander for those older folks, explorer with two sides, integrated ftp, multi rename tools, search... lots of good stuff.

I've also used A LOT a text editor called UltraEdit (ultraedit.com) . I've now replaced it with Netbeans IDE due to its better interraction with SVN/CSV servers and better debugging for PHP.