The one program you cannot live without.

[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.

[KeriJane]

Open Office.

Gotta have OpenOffice.
Acorn is great, Final Cut Pro is great, but the gotta have is OpenOffice.

[mariush]

There's nothing I couldn't really live without, but it's stuff that really improves how I do my work on PC.

Total Commander - I loathe windows explorer, never use it.

Total commander is sort of like two windows explorers, but styled in the Norton Commander/Dos Navigator looks from the old days, and optimized for people who use keyboard more than mouse.
Each panel can have several tabs, so you can change what you see on a panel simply by clicking on the tab (like you'd change between pages in Firefox).. it's really great from a usability point of view.

Lots of functionality built in, like opening archives directly in the panel like normal folders, compressing folders directly, copying from panel to another, searching, ftp etc etc

pics here. http://www.softpedia.com/progScreens...shot-6062.html

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AlwaysOnTopMaker - http://www.fadsoft.net/AlwaysOnTopMaker.htm

It's a small < 16 KB freeware app I just put in startup and it runs in the background without any window.
Whenever I want some window to be Always On Top, I just press Ctrl+Alt+T and that window stays on top of others and it works with several windows. Great for when you have to drag and drop stuff in various places.

Irfanview - small light image viewer but also has some basic image editing (cut, crop, ms paint style tools, text overlays etc) and filters, can grab pictures from camera or scanner, lots of screen capture methods (when pressing a hotkey, or every n seconds etc), batch conversion (cropping, resizing, applying filters etc) and renaming of pictures.

ps. well what do you know, looks like I already posted in this thread but someone revived it and I didn't realize.

Anyway, as long as I'm here... KeriJane, you might want to switch to LibreOffice.. as far as I know, OpenOffice is owned by Oracle who are dragging their feet when it comes to improving it. LibreOffice is a fork of OpenOffice which is actively developed.

[PedroDaGr8]

Hmm, program I can't live without...besides the browser. I'd say FL Studio (for making music).


Runner up mainly because its an app not a program but I'd have to say Electrodroid is useful as hell for me. It's like an interactive electrical pocket reference (resistor color bands, reactance calc, heatsink calc, 555 calc, filter calculator, pinouts etc etc. etc.)

[c_hegge]

Openoffice is one thing I can't live without. M$ office is a ripoff IMO.

Freemake video converter and Paint.net others I use a lot.

[bobnova]

I'd be really sad without win7's Paint.