This is a frequently updated organized list which catalogs all the neat little bits of software goons find, make, or in general just can't stop talking about. At just about any given time there is at least one big "Post Neat Software" thread running in SH/SC and when something new crops up it will generally get filed away here.
These threads are occasionally multi-platform, but please keep this article to Windows software only. The "Software_Gold" article over at Applepedia accomplishes much the same thing as this article, but for OSX software. And for Linux software, we now have UsefulLinuxSoftware right here at shsc.info.
Editor's note: This list really needs to be audited. All the links need to be verified, prices need to be updated, features need to be checked, etc. If you'd like to help with this effort, send me a PM or something. Otherwise, I'll just go through it at my own slow-ass pace.
plushpuffin's note: I have too much time on my hands. Please send me a PM if any links are broken or a product description needs to be updated or clarified.
Amarok - Amarok is a free, powerful music player for Linux and Unix, MacOS X and Windows with an intuitive interface.
AudioGrail - Free - Self-described "audio swiss army knife", does tagging, renaming, transcoding, encoding, and a bunch of other stuff.
Banshee - Play your music and videos. Stay entertained and up to date with podcasts and video podcasts. Discover new music with Last.fm radio. Sync your G1 phone, iPod, and other devices.
foobar2000 - Free - Digital audio player OF THE GODS. Playlist-centric, rather than shiny-button-centric like Winamp. Also features a ton of plugins, like a file transcoder, MassTagger/MassRenamer, and a bunch of other stuff (Wiki page)
musikCube - Free / Open Source - Foobar2k, iTunes and amaroK had a giant mp3-player orgy and this was the glorious result.
Songbird - Songbird is an extensible, open source media player available for Windows, Linux, OS X, and OpenSolaris. It is in the style of iTunes, WMP, Banshee, or Amarok. That means the user interface is built around a library which stores all your songs and lets you make playlists of them. Songbird addons are availble that do everything.
Winamp 5 - Free - Winamp, the definitive music player for Windows. Winamp 5 is a continuation of Winamp 2.x, with Winamp 3 skin support and video playback. You're better off using a different video player, however.
Player
Aire Freshener 2.0 - A "software relaxation tool" much like a sound spa. Real recorded audio that loops seamlessly. It has many different environments to choose from, including MIDI windchimes that you can configure yourself.
billy - portable, very small and fast for playing full directory
AlbumWrap Extractor - the tool you need to extract individual MP3s from an AlbumWrap album archive (typically, these files have a '_ALBW' notation in the file name). AlbumWrap is extremely easy to use, much like any file extractor. But the features are impressive... You can list, rename, and even preview the MP3s in the album! And extracting chosen tracks is painless!
MusicBrainz - Free - Mp3 analyzer and database. It will help determine what your mp3 is by running it against their huge database of music.
Editor
Audacity - Free / Open Source - Sound Editor. Not a whole lot to say. It's free and it's about the best you'll get for free.
mp3DirectCut - Another alternative for MP3 editing.
Pcutmp3 - This is the only program that can edit-down MP3s accurately 100% of the time. It can handle the files that MP3directcut chokes on. It also accepts cuesheets as input, so you can auto-cut rips that are in cue/MP3 format.
Creator
burrrn - tool for creating audio CDs with CD-Text from various audio files from wav, mp3, mpc, ogg, aac, mp4, ape, flac, ofr, wv, tta, m3u, pls and fpl playlists and cue sheets
CDex - Free / Open Source - Another good CD Ripping application. Compatible with numerous codecs. Very simple to use.
dB PowerAMP - dbPowerAMP is a Win32 GUI frontend for encoderes like LAME (you can use any version of the dll you prefer) and Ogg that integrates with Explorer so that you can simply right click and select an encoding method. It also adds more information to the tooltips for audio files and other goodies. It's quite useful.
HarddiskOgg (on-the-fly line-in recording) - Ever needed to record a radio concert? This is the tool for that. No need to record to wave and then encode to another format afterwards. This program handles that on-the-fly. It supports mp3s and oggs, it can be scripted and it does normalization should you want that. Recommended++.
EvilLyrics - Free - Works in conjunction with most players, including Winamp and Foobar2000 - runs off to the internets to acquire lyrics for whatever's playing.
RazorLame - great graphical frontend for LAME mp3 encoding.
readplease - text-to-speech. good quality, does not output to file.
SayIt - text-to-speech with definable parameters; poor definition. No output to file
Driver
Sound Control - Free - Replaces the default Windows sound mixer with a new one, with customizable hotkeys, and other bonus features.
TagScanner - Free - Powerful tagging and renaming software. Interface can be a little tricky to learn, but it's fantastic once you understand it. Coded by Russians.
TigoTago - A lightweight ID3 tag editor that is really easy to use for cleaning up all of your crap mp3 files.
Check/Diagnose/Maintain
EncSpot - Analyzes mp3 files to determine which codec brand and version created them.
Rightmark Audio Analyzer - Easily gauge the sound quality of your computer if you don't feel like taking the audio snob Pepsi challenge.
Video
Jacks Of All Trades
VLC - Free / Open Source - Plays back almost every video format known to man, many sound formats, captures video from sources, and plays several different types of video streams. Good software to have around just in case, although other things are better as your main player (due to some bugs in VLC).
Player
Media Player Classic - Free / Open Source - Remember Windows Media Player 6.4? This is that but with modern features.
MPlayer - Multi-platform video player with support for dozens of formats.
AVIdemux - A program that can do everything that Virtualdub doesn't, such as keep audio sync, edit between keyframes and run on other platforms. It can also fix lots of AVI problems that hardware players are known to choke on.
AVISynth - Works great with the above for editing and applying filters to videos.
VirtualDub-MPEG2 - VirtualDub with vcd, svcd, vob and experimental .wmv/.asf support. For those that have know the versatility of the regular VirtualDub, it works great for ripping small segments off of many DVD's for animated GIF's or AVI's or whatever.
DScaler - Free / Open Source - Bestest TV Tuner App ever created in the history of ever. If you have a TV tuner, you are required by law to trash whatever piece of shit you're using right now and switch to DScaler immediately.
DVapp - Free / Open Source - Tool for capturing off a Digital Video Device.
DVD2AVI 1.76 - script generator and dvd audio demuxer for use with virtualdub.
DVD2SVCD - contains all you need for DVD2SVCD conversion (exept for SP/TMPG, but here's a CCE demo and a TMPG demo ): vStrip 0.8f, mpeg2dec.dll (one by Dividee and one by trbarry), Avisynth 2.08 & 2.52, BeSweet 1.5b16, IVTC Plugin 2.2 for Avisynth, Decomb 4.05, Madplay 1.5, Pulldown v0.99c, SimpleResize.dll, WinSubMux 0.1.0.1, VCDImager 0.7.12, DVD2AVI 1.76 CLI, bbMPEG 1.24b18 modified.
FRAPS - Video capture software, primarily used for recording gameplay.
Gordian Knot - A wonderful package of tools to use to rip DVD video and audio
MediaCoder - A free universal batch media transcoder, which nicely integrates most popular audio/video codecs and tools into an all-in-one solution.
mediajoin - paste together media files; change format and compression
MeGUI - Today's Gordian Knot. If you are looking to encode your videos into high quality mpeg-4 this is what you would use. Easily encode x/h.264. Megui also has an audio encoder, avs creator, one click encoding ala AutoGK and plenty of other great features.
ScreenCoder - tool for streaming and archiving video screen captures
CCCP - Free - Video playback pack targeted mainly at anime watchers, but works great for anybody. Has filters and codecs to play back almost every video format on the planet and includes MPC and ZoomPlayer. It is updated regularly and extremely well tested and stable.
DefilerPak - Free - The DefilerPak is a goon-made (sup Defiler, :cool:) package containing just about all you should ever need to play back any kind of video file ever. Uninstall K-lite, uninstall Divx 5 or 17 or whatever version they're up to, and install this. It is all you need. Works wonderfully with MPC.
FFDShow - Can decode DivX 3.11a, DivX 4, DivX 5, XviD, MJPEG, and more.
QuicktimeAlt - Media Player Classic can play Quicktime files, and fullscreen too!
RealAlt - Media Player Classic can play Real Media files too, you know
XnView - view and convert graphic files, really simple to use, with support of more than 400 graphics formats!
Viewer
CDisplayEx - a Comic reader based on CDisplay. It use the popular 7-zip plugins to read many archives types like cbr cbz cbt rar zip tar 7z lzh arj cab tar.gz tar.bz2. It supports jpeg png gif and bmp images.
FastStone MaxView - the perfect free image viewer. If you're like me and IrfanView always kind of bugged you, this is what you're looking for.
myviewpad - Picture and Fax Viewer for Win2K. over 100 formats.
'Peg It - batch-style conversion with command-lines such as "peg_it.exe /45 filename.bmp", which will compress filename.bmp to a jpeg of 45 (out of 99) quality
The GIMP - Free / Open Source - Not a whole lot to say about the gimp, it's the gimp. It's free, and people tend to claim it's "just as good as photoshop", but I don't believe them.
TNGen - Image thumbnail creation utility. This program will scan an entire directory and create thumbs based on the max height or width that you specify. It also creates a html index so you can view all of your thumbs at once.
Tool
ColorCop - Free - ColorCop is a color picker. It can zoom, sample and average samples, and do a number of other neat things.
ColorMatch 5K - which I think has probably saved me about 6 years of my life.
ColorMatch Remix - For those who use FireFox/Opera. This version also now supports themes, Illustrator AND Photoshop output with some more abilities.
ColorPic - Free - ColorPic is another color picker. It works slightly differently than ColorCop, but it does the same basic thing.
DDSV2 - Digital Dream Studio. 3D image generating and editing software
chm2web - a tool for on-the-fly conversion of compiled HTML help(chm) to full-blown online help system, ready for publishing on the web within several seconds.
Privoxy - Another very powerful internet content filter thing. Privoxy is open source, and cross platform. I've used it on OS X, although I still use Proxomitron on Windows.
Proxomitron - IMNSHO, the absolute best web proxy for Windows. Fairly easy to set up and use, with a graphical interface for managing filters. Stops most popups and ads, as well as blocking the irritating ActiveX and Flash garbage infesting the web these days.
Squid - Caching web proxy. Indispensable on 56k and slightly less so on broadband. Runs on anything with an "x" in the name, and also Windows NT/2K/XP.
Server
Apache - Free / Open Source - full featured web server
SimpleServer - The quick, easy way to make your machine a web server. Its just a toy compared to something like apache, but it can be useful.
TinyWeb Server - Complete web server, WWW supports MIME file typing, CGI, common log format, and multi-hosting
HijackThis! - Free - The one true malware detection and removal device. Logfiles can be parsed by the HijackThis! Logfile Analyzer, to give you an idea of what should stay or go.
OpTool - Open link in any browser that's installed on your system.
Popup Stopper Basic - For those who don't want to deal with configuring proxomitron and other similar programs
Spyblaster - This utility blocks ActiveX spyware from ever installing or ever being downloaded.
URLbase Bookmark Manager - Makes it much easier to import/export bookmarks when using different browsers
various bookmarklets - these things are fantastic, once you've got things like wordcount, link listings, autofilling forms with anonymous, making new pages from selected text, and so on all just a click away, you'll never go back.
WackGet - Free / Open Source - Goon-Made frontend for wget. You give it files and it downloads them for you. Use it in conjunction with the Firefox Extension DownloadWith to get a really good and potentially silent download manager linked up with your browser.
nPOPuk - Free - A small and lightweight e-mail client with POP3 support. This is a modified version of the official release that has a few additional features the original lacks.
Pegasus Mail - Pegasus Mail is a free, standards-based electronic mail client suitable for use by single or multiple users on single computers or on local area networks. A proven product, it has served millions of users since it was released in 1990. It is extremely feature-rich and powerful, yet remains small and fast.
Thunderbird - Free / Open Source - A Mail/News/RSS reader. Built in adaptive spamfiltering plus an easy-to-adapt-to ui, along with the established theming and extension power of Firefox.
Proxy
Hotmail Popper - a small application that allows you to check your Hotmail account e-mail from a normal POP mail client (such as Eudora, IncrediMail, Mozilla Thunderbird, Opera, Netscape, etc). Unlike standard mail accounts which allow users to retrieve their e-mail through a POP mail client, Hotmail can normally only be checked on the web. With Hotmail Popper, you can use your favorite POP mail client to retrieve your e-mail from your Hotmail account. In addition, Hotmail Popper allows you to send e-mails through Hotmail's service, as if it was a normal SMTP (outgoing mail) server.
Mail Washer - Checks all your mail from multiple accounts before you download it and lets you bounce it back if it's spam.
POPFile - Free / Open Source - Another free adaptive spamfilter program. You train it, It learns, Spam Goes Away.
SpamBayes - Free / Open Source - Standalone Bayesian Spam Filter Proxy. It sits around and gets mail run through it before it gets to you. If said mail sucks, it goes away. Useful if for some reason you can't be bothered to use Thunderbird.
Mercury Mail Transport System - Mercury is a free, standards-based mail server solution, providing comprehensive, fast server support for all major Internet e-mail protocols. It is supplied in two versions, one hosted on Windows systems, the other running as a set of NLMs on Novell NetWare file servers.
Tool
GQ - A free GTK LDAP client. I have trouble finding commercial products that match this.
OpenLDAP - A free open source implementation of LDAP.
Driver
Gmail Drive Shell Extension - Free - Program that lets you map a Gmail account as a windows drive. Note: Google appears to be more or less blocking this utility now, and using it may result in a temporary "security lockout" on your gmail account.
PopTray - Fast, friendly, and efficient email checker which resides in the system tray. It can check several POP3 accounts at regular intervals, it can preview mail, and it can even decide what to do based on rules you give it. Plays sounds or changes its icon to reflect the number of new messages.
Repair
DBXtract - Free - A tool for recovering messages from Outlook Express databases (.dbx files). It even works on damaged databases ... this is a "must have" for my toolkit CD when I go to fix someone's system.
Jabber - IM client for those who don't like Trillian
miniaim - Free - AIM client. No ads, and just 85 kB.
Miranda IM - Awesome alternative to Trillian, supports all the same things Trillian does and more. Especially good since it is open-source and has good plugin support, as well as a good plugin-making community. Nightly builds of the core program are also very good at eliminating bugs AND they run pretty stable.
Pidgin - OSS multi-protocol IM client, formerly known as Gaim.
Skype - Free - VoIP for the masses. Also IM. You know, for good measure.
TerraIM - Great little AIM client. No ads, wicked small. Awesome.
Trillian - Free or $25 for one year - Sorta it's own style of messaging, but again for every service ever (Wiki page)
ThePhoneBOT - Free - PC answering machine and caller id. You've got a spare modem sitting around, right?
Plugin
Middle_man - alternative to DeadAIM, with features such as remote control, idle control, buddy list appearance options, selective user ignore and blocking, talking while away, safety away, chat logging, automatic screen name formatting, extra information storage, scripting, and the display of various statistics.
IRC
Client
Bersirc - Free / Open Source - Yet another great IRC client.
X-Chat - Free / Open Source - Super-good GTK-based IRC client. "Official" Windows builds are shareware, but it's opensource, so "Unofficial" builds are free.
XChat - replaces XChat - It would replace mIRC if you ran it on Windows. But if you're running such an old, featureless, bug-ridden and ugly application on Windows anyway, what are you doing?
News / RSS
Viewer
RSSOwl - Free / Open Source - RSS Reader for Windows.
KorrNews - KorrNews supplements MorVer and allows you to do snazzy stuff to your headers among other things.
Morver - I happen to prefer OE when reading newsgroups (yeah, I'm odd like that). The problem is that OE is pretty careless about Usenet standards such as signature seperators[1]. MorVer fixes that. It acts like a proxy and filters both the inbound and outbound connection for things like unwrapped lines and stupid people who toppost.
FTP
Client
CoreFTP Lite - a nice simple FTP client, I've been using for years.
FileZilla FTP Client - Free / Open Source - Standard two-pane (or four pane, if you count the trees) FTP client. Supports SFTP via PuTTY.
FlashFXP - Nagware ($25) - Best two-pane ftp client ever created by man.
SmartFTP - Nagware at random times of the day ($36) - Crazy FTP client with 37 different queues which for some reason certain people really enjoy.
Server
FileZilla FTP Server - Send/receive files over a LAN or the Internet and have it actually work consistently! Amazing! Easy to set up and has fun features like virtual file systems (Why can the Windows file sharing still not do this? ) and remote administration.
GuildFTPd - a free FTP server for the Windows operating system
WarFTPd - A very secure/robust/stable FTP server. It can use LDAP/Active Directory/NT domain security and user groups for authentication. Freeware/GNU
Driver
ExpanDrive - Shareware ($39, free for 6 weeks) - Like WebDrive but cheaper and easier to use. Also actually worked for me, unlike WebDrive.
WebDrive - Shareware ($49.95, free for 20 days) - Seamlessly makes ftp, sftp, or WebDAV servers appear as Windows drives.
Plugin
RightLoad - A freeware utility that lets you upload files to an FTP server of your choice with just a few clicks. It also outputs the URL of the uploaded file and you can have certain tags appended to it, so if you wish to upload an image and show it to the forums, you can right click on that image and have the world see it in just a few clicks.
OpenSSH - Free implementation of the SSH protocol.
PuTTY - Free / Open Source - Suite of SSH-related goodies, including a SSH terminal, an SCP client, an SFTP client, and a bunch of other stuff. Like PuTTY, but want clickable links and the ability to minimize to tray? Check out PuTTY Tray, a fork that adds these capabilities.
Tera Term Pro - a free software terminal emulator (communication program) for MS-Windows. It supports VT100 emulation, telnet connection, serial port connection, and so on.
Peer To Peer
Client
Azureus - now called Vuze - A decent yet bloated BitTorrent client. Written in java, so it's cross-platform.
FrostWire - Completely open source Limewire replacement client. Think what Kazaalite++ was to Kazaa.
Simple Socket File Transfer - Free - A quick and simple way of transferring files, especially to people who don't "get" computers.
µTorrent - The best BitTorrent client ever created by man.
Gamer's Internet Tunnel - Free - a utility to link LANs together over the Internet for network gameplay. It can also be used to bridge many configurations of IPX or IPv4 packets and frames from once point to another. Formerly known as the Gamer's IPX tunnel, GIT now tunnels TCP and UDP ports as well, in order to work with modern games.
RealVNC - Free / Open Source - Yet another VNC Client/Server. It's the real deal.
Remote Desktop Control - Shareware ($2-15 per PC) - software allows the user to view desktop of remote computer and control any programs remotely using keyboard and mouse.
Active Network Monitor - Free - ANM tells you what seems to be accessing what port and what it seems to be doing with it.
Down2Home - Down2Home is a program that monitors your ADSL/Cablemodem/Dialup traffic and provides you with useful statistics about the amount of data your PC has transferred. Use it to see what's happening on your Dial-up/DSL or Cable connected on your PC. Check if there is data transferred when you don't want it (Spyware, backdoors, whatever). Or use it to keep control over your transfer volume
NetMeter - Free - Tray Application that shows your current upstream and downstream speeds. Also logs total throughput, and can be used to alert you to when you're about to hit your monthly download/upload cap.
Text
Jacks Of All Trades
GNU Emacs - Free / Open Source - Emacs is the extensible, customizable, self-documenting real-time display editor which has stood the test of time since 1975. It is geared mainly toward programmers but it can also edit any type of other file. The learning curve can be somewhat steep due to heavy use of unconventional shortcut keys but in the long run you can code very efficiently and fast using emacs compared to other editors. nqmacs is a good Windows build.
Editor
Crimson Editor - Free - Another Text editor out there. Standard advanced features: syntax hilighting, tabs, etc.
dark room - green on black, full screen (good for old school tech nerds or people who need to concentrate)
Lyx - As much as I used emacs with the TeX modules, this just save me pain++.
metapad - Free - Yet another super light-weight text editor. metapad sells itself as a notepad replacement--and indeed you can replace the notepad executable systemwide with this program--with a number of small but useful features added.
Motepad - uses the font Terminal 6x8, white on black, other features.
Notepad++ - Free / Open Source - Scintilla-based text editor with syntax hilighting and code-folding.
Notepad2 - Free - A simple text editor designed to be a notepad replacement but with a few extra features.
q10 - Free - a fullscreen editor like dark room, but better.
SciTe - Free / Open Source - The ORIGINAL Scintilla-based text editor.
Tinn Is Not Notepad - Free / Open Source - Again another super light-weight text editor. Like notepad, but with few extra features (among which tabs and syntax highlighting for many programming languages).
UML Pad - Free / Open Source - Notepad. But with UML.
Vim - Free / Open Source - The text editor for manly men. A GUI verison (gVim) is available for those of you scared by the commandline. If gVim is still a bit too scary for you, check out Cream, a set of addon scripts that makes gVim look and work like a regular normal windows text editor, while still preserving all the wonderful power of Vim. Both gVim and Cream have an optional rudimentary tabbed ui.
WikidPad - Free / Open Source - It's a notepad, but with wiki-style text formatting and interlinking . . and now it's open source! Hooray!
WinEdt - Shareware (~$30-70, free trial available) - Text editor with strong LaTeX abilities, including code highlighting and integration with MiKTeX for Windows.
Character Map Pro - An improvement on Microsoft's Character Map not least because it allows you to see the characters at a decent (i.e. readable) size.
PureText - Free - Well, it's text editing RELATED. PureText strips all RichTextFormatting from a selection. So you can paste it into word or whatever and not have word shit itself over trying to format it however the source was.
Replace Text - premiere-quality, freeware string-replacing utility for Windows. At its core, Replace Text is essentially a text search-and-replace program. However, unlike the search-replace functionality of a standard text editor, ReplaceEm is designed to operate on multiple files at once. And you need not only perform one search-replace operation per file -- you can setup a list of operations to perform. If different groups of files need to have different operations performed on them, this is no problem either. You can also specify a backup file for each file processed just incase the replace operation didn’t do exactly what you wanted.
Mozilla Sunbird - Free / Open Source - A Calendar / Reminder utility in the same vein as Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird. NOTE: still in VERY EARLY stages of development.
Rainlendar - Free - A Calendar Program of a different sort
Office
Jacks Of All Trades
OpenOffice.org - Free / Open Source - Full office productivity suite, and a free one at that. Native export-to-PDF capability.
Viewer
Adobe Reader Speedup - Adobe Reader now loads in about the same amount of time as Foxit, but has more features.
Xpdf - Xpdf is an open source viewer for Portable Document Format (PDF) files. (These are also sometimes also called 'Acrobat' files, from the name of Adobe's PDF software.) The Xpdf project also includes a PDF text extractor, PDF-to-PostScript converter, and various other utilities. Xpdf runs under the X Window System on UNIX, VMS, and OS/2. The non-X components (pdftops, pdftotext, etc.) also run on Win32 systems and should run on pretty much any system with a decent C++ compiler. Xpdf is designed to be small and efficient. It can use Type 1, TrueType, or standard X fonts.
Manager
Bottin - directory software for names, addresses, photos, etc.
EverNote - Free (Beta) - Another note-taking program with support for actually writing notes with some kind of tablet input device.
TreePad - Shareware ($30-$90, depending on version. Free "lite" version exists) - It's a basic notepad, but with tree-based structure. Great for taking notes or organizing hierarchical text documents. This Wiki post was initially entered and organized using TreePad Lite. Thanks, TreePad!
Editor
AbiWord - Free / Open Source - For when all you need is a nice free Word replacement.
Abykus - spreadsheet. allows objects to be stored in cells.
Atlantis Nova - Free version of the Atlantis Word Processor.
MiKTeX - an up-to-date implementation of TeX and related programs for Windows (all current variants) on x86 systems.
WordWeb Free - WordWeb is a one-click English thesaurus and dictionary for Windows that can look up words in almost any program. It works off-line, but can also look up words in web references such as the Wikipedia encyclopedia.
Ajour - personal information manager (PIM). Use it as a combined calendar, diary, organizer, and reminder.
InfoRapid Cardfile Sytem - an electronic database system with which you can manage text and image documents. You can arrange the documents chapter wise and open them directly over a hierarchical table of contents like in a book. The integrated full text search engine helps you to retrieve all documents fast and simple. You can also use the program as a digital photo album. So you can enter a description text and the date and time when the photo was taken. The information is stored together with a small preview image in the database. In addition, it is possible to insert hyperlinks directly into the images and to create a hierarchical picture overview.
KeyNote - Free / Open Source - Another tree-based notepad like TreePad and WikidPad, but it's saves as rich text, has encryption, and it's free.
TreePad Lite - personal database program,store all your notes, emails, texts, hyperlinks, etc. into a single file. With the look and feel of the familiar Windows explorer, editing, storing, browsing, searching and retrieving your data can not be easier! TreePad can be run directly from a floppy, if necessary, including data. To find any article you previously created or imported, you can browse the tree, in the same way as you browse directories/folders in the Windows explorer. You can also use the internal search engine.
Client
MySQL-Front - MySQL-Front is a graphical GUI for the MySQL database.
Eclipse - Best programming environment ever! Some of the plugins are commercial, but the majority of it is open source freeware. A must-have for any programmer.
JCreator LE - super light and functional Java editor.
UMSS - a method for single stepping of a Win32 x86 binary without processor support (without TF flag). Its main goal is efficiency of gathering of large quantities of information about process state.
Misc
MinGW - Free / Open Source - A collection of Windows specific header files and import libraries combined with GNU toolsets that allow one to produce native Windows programs that do not rely on any 3rd-party C runtime DLLs.
File
Viewer
NFO/DiZ File Viewer - Free / Open Source - This is a file_id.diz and anything.nfo file viewer for windows based computers. It also supports zip files so you can simply right-click your zip files and view all (nfo/diz/txt/1st/me) files contained within the zip without un-zipping the file.
Peek - A right-click shell extension that displays all ASCII strings in a binary file. Same idea as the UNIX "strings" command. It's old, but it works in XP for sure. I've used it for years.
Manager
FreeCommander - Free - Nice little dualpane file manager/unpacker with lots of features and un-flashy interface.
xplorer2 - Shareware ($27, Free "lite" version available) - Windows Explorer replacement, with a TON of built in extra features.
XYplorer - Like xplorer², a file manager for Windows. XYplorer is shareware, but there is a direct link to a download of the last freeware version on the site.
Resource Hacker - Resource Hacker is a freeware utility to view, modify, rename, add, delete and extract resources in 32bit Windows executables and resource files (*.res).
The File Splitter - great file splitter for shipping large things over small media
Unlocker - allows deletion of files that don't want to be removed.
Copy Cat - skip the bytes which are not readable from file and copy all other bytes
Hard Link Magic - Allows you to create hard links on Windows NT, 2000, and XP. A hard link is like a shortcut, but it's a file system-level shortcut for a given file. By creating a hard link to an existing file, you duplicate neither the file nor a file-based reference (that is, a shortcut) to it. Instead, you add information to its directory entry at the NTFS level. The physical file remains intact in its original location. Simply put, it now has two or more names that you can use to access the same content!
Junction Link Magic - A junction point (also known as a reparse point) is a technology for a folder to be grafted into another folder on the same local computer. Junction points are transparent to programs. This might not seem like a big deal, but it can remove a lot of clutter. It also helps a lot when moving programs from one place to another, since just about every program in the Windows world expects to never be moved from the directory it was installed in. Junction points can only be created on volumes formatted with NTFS 5.0 or higher. NTFS 5.0 is supported in Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2003 and higher.
NTFS Link - NTFS Link is a Windows Shell Extension, which hooks into Windows Explorer Drag&Drop Actions to provide extended functionality for creating hard links and directory junctions on NTFS file systems.
Google Desktop Search - Free - Google Desktop Search scours through all kinds of different files, either by filename or content.
InfoRapid Search & Replace - one of the most powerful text retrieval programs currently available for Microsoft Windows. With its built-in converters, it's excellently suitable for searching and previewing HTML and RTF documents. In pure text files, the found text passages can be replaced after the search is over. The search and replace process can be automated with the help of batch files to replace several phrases in one step. The found documents can be opened in a preview window, in which the matches are highlighted. A special feature is that InfoRapid can use Microsoft Office converters to search WinWord, Excel, Lotus and other documents and preview them in their original layout.
PathSync - Free - Another File synchronizer, written by Justin Frankel of Winamp fame.
RichCopy - If you're looking for speedy transfer and detailed control over all manner of things, like what files should be copied or overwritten based on age, size, attributes, or even the security settings for the directory they are in, RichCopy has you covered.
Robocopy - A tool created by developers at Microsoft and included in the NT 4.0 Resource Kit.. this is a nifty little app that has robust copying capabilities... I've used it to automate backups at work, copy files gigs of files from web servers that are geographically far away without any problems... (other utilities had problems with corruption or timing out, but this one has settings for retries and timeouts) lots of command line options, log files. You can even copy the directory structure first before copying the files (helps with HD fragmentation since directory structure is written sequentially). This thing works like a charm... it's an oldie but a goodie..
SyncBack - Shareware ($30, Free 30 days) - File Synchronization program, for syncing files to an mp3 player, a thumbdrive, a remote hard drive, etc.
Total Copy - pause/resume file copy/move in Windows
Unison - Free / Open Source - File Synchronization Utility for keeping files up to date on removable devices.
Ycopy - Free - Data migration tool. Basically, a more secure, faster way to copy many files from one hard drive to another. Very simple, and that is why it is great.
DriveImageXML - clone drives/backup from within XP/2K3
Repair
PerfectDisk - Shareware (Free trial available) - Is Windows defrag just too good for you? Do you require big happy graphs to make sure your bits are perfectly aligned? Well, then PerfectDisk is for you!
Compression/Archival
Creator
Nullsoft Scriptable Install System - Free / Open Source - A tool that allows programmers to create installers for Windows. Includes easy to use installer creator, but can be used to make more complicated installers with ease.
Tool
7zip - Free / Open Source - Super Mega Ultra Compression Program of Doom. Seriously. 7zip will make the smallest files humanly possible using their own special crazy compression algorithm. It can also decompress damn near anything.
WinRAR - Nagware: Use free with a nagging screen! - WinRAR is a powerful archive manager. It can backup your data and reduce the size of email attachments, decompress RAR, ZIP and other files downloaded from Internet and create new archives in RAR and ZIP file format.
WinZip - Nagware: Use free with a nagging screen! - Windows data compression utility that focuses on the Zip data compression format for all Windows users.
CD/DVD Utilities
Viewer
ISOBuster - Extract from damaged CDs and CD images.
Player
CDMax - I prefer a seperate CD player and this one is ace.
Creator
BurnAtOnce - BurnAtOnce is a cdrdao/mkisofs GUI for Windows. It's quite nice.
Burn To the Brim - Scans your directories and generates a listing of perfectly optimized cds so that the most amount of data possible fits onto a cd. It even generates .isos.
CDBurnerXP - Free - CD and DVD burner. More features than you can shake a stick at.
DvdReMake - Shareware ($25, demo can't export discs) - Dvd Reauthoring program, lets you take sections out of a dvd, split to several discs, etc.
DVDShrink - Free - Rips, decrypts, edits, shrinks, reencodes and reauthors dvds to your liking, generally so they'll fit on DVD-R's. It'll even pipe the result off to nero to burn it for you.
ImgBurn - ImgBurn is a lightweight CD / DVD / HD DVD / Blu-ray burning application that everyone should have in their toolkit.
InfraRecorder - Nero no more. InfraRecorder has all of the most useful features of your major burning programs, only its free and completely open source.
ISO Recorder - powertoy to burn CD and DVD images; create an ISO from any folder.
LC ISO Creator - Free - Free CD -> ISO Ripper. Only 14k!
Daemon Tools - Mount CD Images as virtual drives so your games run faster.
Virtual CloneDrive - Virtual CloneDrive works and behaves just like a physical CD/DVD drive, however it exists only virtually. Image files generated with CloneDVD or CloneCD can be mounted onto a virtual drive from your hard-disk or from a network drive and used in the same manner as inserting them into a normal CD/DVD drive.
AnyPassword - Generate random passwords for all your junk and store them, encrypted.
KeePass - Free / Open Source - Another Password Safe. Works just like the rest of them, but this one has a slightly-less-shit UI.
PasswordSafe - Free / Open Source - It's a safe . . for passwords. Lets you organize your passwords and keep them all in one place, which is then HEAVILY encrypted.
PINs - Free / Open Source - Yet Another Password Safe. Still works like everything else.
Codec
AxCrypt - Free / Open Source - Simple file encryption. Right click, Encrypt, Enter password.
Magic Folders / Encrypted Magic Folders - Shareware ($30 and $60 respectively) - Hide or Hide and Encrypt folders on your hard drive. You've got stuff to hide, right?
iSafer - Winsock firewall is a filter which checks all the network packages against the specific rule set. can be used to check and block Spywares, Adwares, etc.
Tool
Cain and Abel - Find and eliminate your hidden personal data before hackers and snoops do.
Driver
Eraser - Free / Open Source - Secure drive wipes from within windows.
TrueCrypt - Free / Open Source - Program which allows you to create virtual drives with on-the-fly very-strong encryption. Also lets you hide these virtual drives, or . . do whatever you want with them, great stuff.
Monitor
StartupMonitor - a small utility that runs transparently (it doesn't even use a tray icon) and notifies you when any program registers itself to run at system startup. It prevents those utterly useless tray applications from registering themselves behind your back, and it acts as a security tool against trojans like BackOrifice or Netbus.
Launchers/Docks (goddamnitlookatthismess)
Tool
AppRocket - Shareware ($18) - An application launching program, like Quicksilver for OSX.
Colibri - Free - Application launcher like Quicksilver for OSX. Can also interface with certain program settings and has common user actions built-in, such as Google search.
Konfabulator - Free - Everyone's favourite widget runner. Made irrelevant for Mac by the advent of Dashboard, but still works perfectly fine on Windows. Owned by Yahoo!.
Launchy - enter in the name of an application and it finds it.
MobyDock - MobyDock DX is a fully customizable freeware launchbar / taskbar program that allows you to control your applications and folders while displaying some cool mouse-over animations. It can check your POP mail account, displays thumbnails for the running applications, displays popup menus for your favorite media-player allowing to control it from the dock itself, as well as a functional Clock and Recycle Bin etc. The integrated Microsoft Messenger support, weather checker, auto-focus and several other features will help you to explore, interact and keep your system under control in a fast and acessible way.
ObjectDock - allows you to have a nice animated launchbar/taskbar on your screen that reacts to your mouse when you mouse over it. In short, it's a task bar and program launcher that does it with style.
QuickCommand - QuickCommand allows a user definable hot key to pop up an instant command window, with the same functionailty as Start/Run. This allows swift access to a prompt for frequent command line users. QuickCommand also allows users to create aliases to access commonly used commands quickly.
RK Launcher - Free - Another OSX-style bar for Windows. This one takes docklets from both Y'zDock and Objectbar and is in fact based on Y'zDock! Still in Beta, but MUCH better than Y'zDock. Does not support dual monitors and has not been updated since 2005.
RocketDock - Free - Same as the above two except for a few critical differences. It doesn't seem to be bugged completely, it supports dual monitors and it appears to be still in development. Supports all current docking skins.
SlickRun - Free - Floating window that allow you to open any program in about 4 keystrokes with user defined shortcuts.
ToolBox - Free - A launchbar/box but shiny and translucent.
TrueLaunchBar - Shareware ($19.90, 30-day "free" nagware trial period) - Super Ultra Beefed-Up Taskbar of Doom.
TurboLaunch - Shareware ($20) - Provides you with a little Window full of icons. How it is better than the start menu or some hotkeys, I do not know.
Y'Z Dock - Free - OSX-style dock, for Windows XP. Widely accepted as the best of the assorted dock utilities out there.
Dexpot - Dexpot 1.4 turns your monitor into up to 20. It creates and manages virtual desktops and enables you to work far more efficiently and comfortably with many simultaneously opened windows.
LiteStep - LiteStep is a replacement desktop interface for Windows.
Tango Patcher - Patches the windows shell with alternative icon sets.
StyleXP - Style XP unleashes the full potential of your Windows XP desktop by allowing you to download and install XP themes.
TrayIt - Free - Lets you shove any program into the systray, if they like it or not.
Wallpaper Master - Free - Another Freeware Wallpaper changer. Customizable, to change wallpapers whenever you want it to, either automatically or on-demand.
Glass2k - a small little program that allows Windows 2000/XP users to make any window transparent. Right-click on any window or press the keyboard shortcuts (Control + Shift + [0-9]) to make any window transparent. It's that simple.
HoeKey - Free - Ridiculously customizable global hotkey program.
Openwide - Change the universal open/save dialogue boxes that you see in almost all Windows programs. Choose the details view, sorting, windows size, input focus, etc.
QuickStart - Free - Command-line Program launcher like Quicksilver for OSX.
Reflex Vision - Shareware ($10, free for 100 uses) - Yet another task switcher for XP and 2000, brings OSX's Exposé feature to windows. Formerly called Entbloess, which was a horrible name.
SharpKeys - Free - Lets you remap any key to another key.
ShellToys XP - Shareware ($37, 45 day trial available) - Collection of context-menu . . things . .
Snarl - It's like Growl for windows. Customizable unified toaster-style notifications. Can replace all Windows Balloon Tooltips.
SuperCopier - faster copy with pause, accurate progress display, etc.
TaskSwitch XP - Free / Open Source - Pretty Alt+Tab replacement tool with previews for XP
TransText - a small shell extension for Windows95/98/Me/NT/2000, which will allow the user to have transparent background color in the icon caption area, thereby getting rid of the irritating one-colored rectangles covering your nice background image.
WhoLockMe - Free - Explorer extension that lets you figure out what program has a file in use, thus preventing it from being deleted.
WinExposé - Expose clone for Windows. Much better than any alternative I've used. Currently in development, but the betas work great.
YCX - Windows clipboard extender/memory- now in its third generation. Handles Pictures, Richtext, URLS, etc - any size. Features printing, drag and drop, optional permanent storage of clippings. Familiar 'Outlook' interface.
Operating System
Jacks Of All Trades
Windows Sysinternals - Free - Huge Collection of really good utilities, for doing a rather wide range of really useful things. Notable mention: Process Explorer, TCPView, and NTFSInfo. SysInternals was recently purchased by Microsoft, the links now go to their new homes. They also have a blog here, which discusses updates and other new SysInternals goodies.
Player
Virtual PC - virtual machine for testing OS or apps.
Girder - $19.99 - Remote Control Software. Get some manner of a remote control for your pc, and this will interpret the signals and do whatever you want with them.
Radmin - Shareware ($35, free trial available) - It's not-VNC. does the same stuff as VNC, but not-VNC. Also not free.
Windows SteadyState - make it easy to set up, safeguard, and manage reliable shared computers. Requires WinXP
SMP Seesaw - a small utility for dual-CPU workstations that allows the user to finely tune how Windows balances the processing load between the two CPUs.
Creator
nLite - Streamline Windows the easy way! Requires .NET framework. (A special runtime is available on the site that you can use instead--it's smaller)
Tool
CCleaner - Free - "System Optimization Tool". Sometimes, it can be a bit overzealous in it's "cleaning".
StartupCPL - Free - Advanced control over exactly what programs run at startup.
X-Setup Pro - Shareware ($15 yearly) - Comprehensive Windows tweaking tool. Gives you access to tweak a ton of stuff TweakUI doesn't list.
Driver
Cygwin - Free / Open Source - ANSI/POSIX compatibility layer enables UNIX/Linux apps on Windows. Many useful packages are available prebuilt. Great toolset for folks who feel constrained by the native Windows command-line environment.
Synergy - share your mouse and keyboard between two computers (or yor PC and laptop)
VDMSound - VDMSound is a program that overcomes what has probably been the most exasperating limitation of DOS boxes since Windows NT -- sound support. VDMSound is an open, plug-in oriented platform that emulates an MPU-401 interface (for outputting high-quality MIDI music), a SoundBlaster compatible (SB16, SBPro 2, SB2, SBPro, etc.) implementation (for digital sound effects and FM/AdLib music), as well as a standard game-port interface (for playing games with joystick support). In development are improvements to the existing joystick emulation, and possibly VESA support.
MaxMem - a realtime physical memory management program that automatically ensures that you always have as much physical memory available as possible.
Process Explorer - Sysinternals tool deserving mention on its own. Replaces Windows task manager.
RAMpage - a small Windows utility that displays the amount of available memory in an icon in the System Tray. It can also free memory; by double clicking the tray icon, or by setting a threshold that activates the program automatically, or by having it run automatically when an application exits.
SiSoft Sandra - System information, diagnostics, and benchmarking.
siw - System Info for Windows. Full system report.
SmartBarXP - Free - What's that? You want another bar statistic application? You're in luck!
StatBar - Free - a system status bar which allows you to quickly get an overview of your system's condition (memory, CPU, uptime, and much more).
Check/Diagnose/Maintain
Belarc Advisor - Free - Hardware and Software Enumerator, Detector, and Reporter.
Advanced SystemCare - Advanced SystemCare. PC care tool to protect, repair and optimize your computer, "one click"
Bootvis - This is the most powerful tool to increase boot speed. It analyzes the areas of your drive accessed at bootup and defrags them to load faster. The results are amazing.
CCleaner - System optimization and privacy tool. Removes unused and temporary files from your system
BitPim - Frequently updated Cell phone software with broader device support than commercial apps.
Dreaming of Brazil - a file manager for those of us who still have the old Diamond Rio 300 MP3 player but can't access it from Windows 2000 or XP. It's small (about 700k), elegant, imminently useful, and doesn't require installation. Just download and run it from any folder.
Floola - a freeware application to efficiently manage your iPod or your Motorola mobile phone (any model supporting iTunes). It's a standalone application that can be run directly from your iPod.
RIOsitude - a simple program that allows you to interact with the Rio300 or Rio500. Think of it as a handy alternative to the RioPort software. RIOsitude supports windows 98/ME/2000. It supports sending and receiving files, and internal and external memory (via SmartMedia cards).
YamiPod - YamiPod is a freeware application to efficiently manage your iPod under Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. It can be run directly from your iPod and needs no installation.
JoyToKey - because most -- if not all -- "official" joystick and gamepad remapping software SUCKS. This is also good for use with joysticks and gamepads that either don't have official remapping software for it, if the remapping software isn't compatible with your Windows version, or if the manufacturer decides that you shouldn't be able to download it and instead you must pay for it you lose the CD that came with your device.
MultiRes - Free - Tray Application that lets you quickly switch resolution and colordepth.
Notebook Hardware Control - Lets you undervolt your notebook. Undervolting decreases heat and power consumption, which gives you better battery life and less noise.
PowerStrip - Free - Ridiculously powerful application that allows you to do all kinds of crazy things with your display. Lets you set custom resolutions, custom refresh rates, advanced color-correction, etc.
UltraMon - Shareware ($40, Free 30 days) - Utility for keeping making multiple-monitor setups Not Suck.
Monitor
AltiPCI - Explore PCI buses and connected devices. Equivalent of lspci or Apple System Profiler's PCI browser.
CoolMon - Free - Yet another hardware monitoring tool.
CPU-Z - In case you forget some of your system specs.
CrowBar - Free / Open Source - Another bar monitor thing, but written by former goon ctz. His domain died, so the link now goes directly to the internet archive. Details about CrowBar can be found in this archives thread.
CustomBar - Shareware ($20) - Like Rainmeter, Samurize, etc, BUT IT'S A BAR. That makes it totally different, right guys?
Power Meter Plus - Free - Notebook battery monitor that gets less transparent as the battery discharges. Sits in the bottom corner of the screen and jumps to the other side when hovered.
Rainmeter - Free - "Computer Hardware Information Tool". Like Samurize, but made by the guy behind Rainlendar.
Samurize - Free - You need to know your hard drive free space percentage all the time, right?
SpeedFan - Free - Voltage, Fan speed, Temperature, and S.M.A.R.T. monitoring utility.
CrossHairSetup - Shows full-length crosshairs at cursor's point on WinXP. Does not work on a non-administrator account.
Driver
dgVoodoo - A Glide wrapper for your old 3DFX games. It's under development today.
DOSBox - The fastest DOS virtual machine. This is best way to play old games.
Misc
1964 - A fairly good alternative to Project 64. Available for Windows. Open-source. #2 emulator on NGEmu's N64 emulator rankings. Uses Zilmar's plugin system.
Doom Legacy - open sourced and improved Doom II engine
ePSXe - Best PlayStation emulator out there, hands down. Available for Windows and Linux. Closed-source. #1 emulator on NGEmu's PlayStation emulator rankings. Uses the PSEmu Pro plugin system.
FCEUX - Best NES emulator out there, hands down. Available for Windows and Linux. Open-source.
FretsOnFire - Frets on Fire is a game of musical skill and fast fingers. The aim of the game is to play guitar with the keyboard as accurately as possible.
jDoom - jDoom is an enhanced win32 port of DOOM. It uses the Doomsday Engine, works with all Doom/Doom2 WADs, has customizable controls and mouse look, a resizable status bar, enhanced menus, and XG line/sector types.
MAME - Best arcade emulator out there, hands down. Officially available for Windows and DOS, but there are a ton of unofficial ports out there for a countless amount of OSes. Open-source. Supports tons of different arcade games and machine types, because as its name implies, it's a (M)ultiple (A)rcade (M)achine (E)mulator ;).
NetHack - NetHack is a single player dungeon exploration game that runs on a wide variety of computer systems, with a variety of graphical and text interfaces all using the same game engine. Unlike many other Dungeons & Dragons-inspired games, the emphasis in NetHack is on discovering the detail of the dungeon and not simply killing everything in sight - in fact, killing everything in sight is a good way to die quickly. Each game presents a different landscape - the random number generator provides an essentially unlimited number of variations of the dungeon and its denizens to be discovered by the player in one of a number of characters: you can pick your race, your role, and your gender.
Project 64 - Best N64 emulator out there, hands down. Available for Windows. Closed-source. #1 emulator on NGEmu's N64 emulator rankings. Uses Zilmar's plugin system. Discontinued.
Sudoku Portable - the wildly popular and addictive puzzle game
VisualBoy Advance - Best Game Boy/GBA emulator out there, hands down. Available for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and BeOS. Open-source. #1 emulator on NGEmu's GBA emulator rankings. Supports all incarnations of Game Boy and GBA games, including Super Game Boy and Game Boy Color.
ZSNES - Best SNES emulator out there, hands down. Available for Windows, MS-DOS and Linux. Open-source.
Periodic Library - an interactive periodic table of the elements. But it is more than simply a computerized version of the standard periodic table. It takes full advantage of your computer's capabilities to give you an in-depth look at the elements that make up our earth, the solar system, the galaxy... well, let's just say everything.
RRDTool - a RRD for data collection. It can graph just about ANYTHING.