That’s a name I have not heard in a long while. I used to use it back on Windows 95 because it was a faster way to view JPEGs than opening Internet Explorer. Everything about that makes me feel old.
Each their own, that's mine. Note that this is not a tech user or developper list, but the list of what I install on any new windows pc, including those at work etc ...
7zip (open any archive)
VLC (open any audio/video file)
IrfanView (+ the "all plugins" installer on the same page, open any picture file)
SumatraPDF (read PDFs)
Libreoffice (to open any office files)
NAPS2 (easy scan, and split/merge/... PDFs)
Ditto (give your clipboard a memory)
Everything (an instant file search that works)
TeraCopy (replace windows copy with queue, queues, add files to the queue instead of starting a second parallel copy, pause that works, ...)
Powertoys (so many to list ... mass rename file easily, screen ruler, text extractor ...)
If it's appropriate : Qbittorent (clean torrent client)
Nvidia graphic card ? NVCleaninstall, so you can install just the clean driver you need
Windows 10 or 11 ? O&O Shut Up (to disable all the telemetry and onedrive in one click, there are plenty alternatives but I sort of like this one)
Windows 11 ? ExplorerPatcher to remove suggestions in the start menu and the new and terrible castrated contextual menu
And of course your browser of choice and extensions
In ten minutes you have a computer that feels much more smart and usable. There are plenty of great software out there, but I feel like many what to install lists are very topical or include software you won't use in many cases or once every 6 months, so this is my short list of what you will use essentially every time you use the computer.
I recently started having trouble with 7zip at work due to shared sharepoint folders and the like. I wound up finding ZanaZip which was forked from 7zip but keeps up with modern OS changes.
Thanks for sharing your list; I already use many of them but learnt about a few new ones that I'll try. I second Everything, the best, nifty little, Windows search utility that is blazing fast.
Not using windows much anymore, but great to hear about O&O and ExplorerPatcher. I notice you don't list an ssh client. I still install cygwin for that. Anything new besides putty?
SSH client is not for non tech users and I tried to keep my list non tech oriented, something you can install on yours, your mom or Janice from accounting and they will all benefit from it.
For SSH I was a die hard team PuTTy for a long time but these days one of the first thing I install on my windows computer is WSL and a Debian inside, that covers all my SSH needs.
Windows now have OpenSSH client (and server) available as optional features. Together with the new terminal the ssh client seems to be working fine. Personally I usually opt in to use the ssh in WSL as I keep it installed on all my Windows machines.
The reason I started with TeraCopy was that it could to automatic verify after a move but before deleting the originals. Had lots of problems with corrupt transfers and wanted to be certain.
Now it's just what I use, I know it works and my files are safe.
This is my list, but it’s pretty opinionated and is missing some pieces: Backblaze Backupper, Canon CaptureOnTouch, YNAB CLassic, and GPSoft’s Directory Opus
I opened the link first and I kept a few seconds trying to remember what we had to use to open JPEGs and GIFs back then. Then I read your comment. Right, IE for images. What a fun world we lived on!
Also remember the times... I think ACDsee 2.3.x was a game changer on Windows systems with little memory back in the day... it was so fast and displayed partially on the fly.
Btw I use a Mac nowadays and I get strong ACDsee vibes from open-source Phoenix Slides https://blyt.net/phxslides/ with browsing through images with the mouse-wheel ;)
sadly it did, the 3.1 version was the last one that I remember as still not bloated, 4.x was already bad. But up until that, 1.x, 2.x, ..., they were great.
Everybody was down with either IrfanView or ACDSee to look at their collection of uudecoded por--er, photographic human figure studies they got off USENET.
>I used to use it back on Windows 95 because it was a faster way to view JPEGs than opening Internet Explorer.
That's an amazing sentence. We should frame it and put it in a museum. Actually someone should make a book filled just with quotes like this, call it "Life Before the Gigahertz" or something.
I see so many comments these days bemoaning how slow modern software has gotten, but no one seems to remember/have been alive for the time when just rendering an image would take multiple seconds.
Just goes to show that our expectations scale with the available technology.
And now decoding a jpeg takes the blink of an eye, but we wait five seconds for a widget to render. When it does, we click somewhere else, because in that exact moment the layout was reflown.
