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JustJohn
Joined: 18 Oct 2007
Location: Your computer screen
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 Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 9:51 am Post subject: Best. Freeware. Ever. |
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Not sure how a couple of these have escaped me for so long. Everyone and their mom knows about firefox w/adblock plus and firegestures, but these seem to be flying under the radar a bit.
Must have:
1. Launchy - set a hotkey to bring it up, start typing and it goes to whatever program you want. Dug into it a little and found you can index all your programs/directories/music/pictures AND you can also input commands.
Example: I want to watch the powerthirst video. I ctrl+space, type yo, lauchy suggests youtube, I press tab, I type powerthirst + enter. Firefox opens on the Powerthirst search results page from youtube.
2. Strokeit - Mouse gestures for windows. No more clicking little buttons at the top of the screen. Minimize/maximize/navigate/close windows all with the flick of a wrist.
Also great:
1. Switcher - Expose clone. Bind it to your middle mouse button, tweak it out the way you like and never mess with clicking through windows to find the one you want again.
2. MediaMonkey + CD Art Display - Mediamonkey is iTunes but better. Includes mass file renaming by tag and auto-tagging as well as the ability to encode any which way you want, including flac to ogg/mp3. CD Art Display is a sexy little addition you should check out regardless of what player you use.
3. Rainmeter - Embed system info, weather, RSS feeds or whatever you want in your desktop. Hugely customizable if you don't mind digging around and messing with parameters in a text file. I recommend the Hud Vision "skin" to test it out with.
Used it to make most of my current desktop which you can see HERE. Note that this is my desktop, not wallpaper. There are about 6 things on there right now. You might need to look closely to see them all.
Last edited by JustJohn on Sat Jan 10, 2009 1:00 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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oldtactics
Joined: 18 Oct 2008
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| Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 10:19 am Post subject: Re: Best. Freeware. Ever. |
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| JustJohn wrote: |
Must have:
1. Launchy -
Example: I want to watch the powerthirst video. I ctrl+space, type yo, lauchy suggests youtube, I press tab, I type powerthirst + enter. Firefox opens on the Powerthirst search results page from youtube.
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No offence, but how is that faster than just opening Firefox and typing 'powerthirst' into the address bar? I just tried it and it took me directly to the video. Two clicks. |
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JustJohn
Joined: 18 Oct 2007
Location: Your computer screen
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| Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 12:57 pm Post subject: |
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Wow, I didn't realize the awesome bar was that smart. That's pretty sweet.
Launchy is still faster, as you don't have to mouse to your firefox icon or mouse to the awesome bar and to select it. Though you're right, it's not THAT much faster if you have FF in the quicklaunch bar.
It still has other huge advantages though, especially for people who keep a lot of windows open since you don't have to navigate to anything to bring it up. As you pointed out, it will only be slightly faster for things you have on the front page of your start menu and such, but you can set it up to go to anywhere or launch anything on your computer.
Example: Normally to get to your temp folder you have to find your my computer icon and click it, find and click C:, find and click windows, find and click temp. Launchy you hit your hotkey, you type tem, you press enter. (Assuming you have it indexed)
I just did a test. I'm pretty fast both ways and my fastest time out of a few tries was out 4 and a half seconds the usual way, less than 1 second with launchy. Remember you can index files as well. Music, pictures...
Bottom line
Most people, especially if you keep a lot of windows open or dig around in your computer a lot will learn to love this thing. If you never ever use anything that's not in your quicklaunch bar and/or are a REALLY slow typer it might not be for you. |
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oldtactics
Joined: 18 Oct 2008
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| Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 1:32 pm Post subject: |
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Okay, upon further exploration I must say that Rainmeter and Launchy are both excellent - I've been trying to find something that allows me to get rid of all my desktop icons, and Launchy definitely seems to be doing the job so far.
Much appreciated for the suggestions! |
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JustJohn
Joined: 18 Oct 2007
Location: Your computer screen
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| Posted: Sun Jan 11, 2009 8:06 pm Post subject: |
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No problem. Love to share great programs. The wider the user base the more likely they are to continue to improve and be supported. 
Note that if you're just looking to get rid of your desktop icons my first suggestion would be Rocketdock. Like OSX but more flexible. Launchy on the other hand is more for replacing the inside tiers of the start menu and the outside tiers of explorer. |
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TheBulimicFatGuy
Joined: 03 Jan 2008
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| Posted: Sat Jan 17, 2009 7:05 am Post subject: |
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| I'm a big fan of Pixia for scanner image (twain) acquiring and editing. |
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Temporary
Joined: 13 Jan 2008
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| Posted: Sat Jan 17, 2009 8:00 am Post subject: |
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Teamviewer  OpenVPN, Squid. |
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Dodgy Al
Joined: 15 May 2004
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Sat Jan 17, 2009 6:57 pm Post subject: |
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| I'm loving Rocketdock. Thanks JustJohn! |
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superdave
Joined: 20 Aug 2006
Location: over there ----->
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| Posted: Sun Jan 18, 2009 10:34 pm Post subject: |
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rainmeter??? you're kidding me right??
this is for people who want their desktop to look "uber-awesome" but having zero functionality.
nobody gives a damn how much ram or cpu they're using at that very second ... in all honestly, it's a complete waste of space.
rocketdock too ... nothing that your start bar or quick launch bar can't do.
i'm all for useful gadgets, but some of these are far overrated ... if you like bells and whistles, great ... but otherwise, forget it. |
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registered
Joined: 06 Jan 2009
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| Posted: Mon Jan 19, 2009 7:18 am Post subject: |
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Its not really freeware - but it is free as its built into window ..
You can do
WindowKey + "R" - this opens the "Run" command. From there you can launch anything that's in your path. eg.
calc
notepad
desktop
You can add the address toolbar to add an explorer like address space to the windows toolbar. From here you can launch your default webrowser very quickly on any site by doing "go ..." - for example - " go www.google.com" will open google. Another nice trick is that if the address is malformed, eg. "go korea" is should automatically use your default search engine and return results related to korea.
You can extend this even further with some registry hacks - see here http://www.pctools.com/guides/registry/detail/1065/ |
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hanguker
Joined: 16 Mar 2005
Location: Korea
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| Posted: Mon Jan 19, 2009 8:23 am Post subject: |
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This is just the best site for fully-reviewed freeware. If you have no opinion, but need something done, let this guy choose the software for you (with options!). Just check the categories or do a search for your need. Lots of other good stuff (left panel) too:
Gizmo Richards
http://www.techsupportalert.com/ |
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JustJohn
Joined: 18 Oct 2007
Location: Your computer screen
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| Posted: Tue Jan 20, 2009 11:00 pm Post subject: |
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| Dodgy Al wrote: |
| I'm loving Rocketdock. Thanks JustJohn! |
Just John, just here to help. |
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JustJohn
Joined: 18 Oct 2007
Location: Your computer screen
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| Posted: Tue Jan 20, 2009 11:38 pm Post subject: |
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| superdave wrote: |
rainmeter??? you're kidding me right??
this is for people who want their desktop to look "uber-awesome" but having zero functionality.
nobody gives a damn how much ram or cpu they're using at that very second ... in all honestly, it's a complete waste of space.
rocketdock too ... nothing that your start bar or quick launch bar can't do.
i'm all for useful gadgets, but some of these are far overrated ... if you like bells and whistles, great ... but otherwise, forget it. |
True geeks care. My geekier friends like to monitor their swap files and individual commit charges. 
However, I think you misunderstand just how powerful rainmeter is. Besides any system info you could imagine displayed with live graph or whatever you want it can also do: Live weather feeds clickable for details, time/date/calender, sweet looking clocks, menu bars to launch specific files/folders/programs/websites, RSS feeds, live net traffic stat, exchange rate displays, music player display/control... If you're clever enough you can make it display or launch just about anything you could possibly want, all customizable down to size/color, embedded/floating, graphic/text, etc.
When you understand everything it can do there's no way you can write it off as eye candy. (Though a little eye candy never hurt either  )
Rocketdock on the other hand is indeed a glorified quicklaunch bar. But it is glorified. Scrollable, folderable, and beautified. I don't need it 'cause I just use launchy now, but it's awesome for replacing all your desktop icons. |
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JustJohn
Joined: 18 Oct 2007
Location: Your computer screen
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| Posted: Wed Jan 21, 2009 12:13 am Post subject: |
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| registered wrote: |
Its not really freeware - but it is free as its built into window ..
You can do
WindowKey + "R" - this opens the "Run" command. From there you can launch anything that's in your path. eg.
calc
notepad
desktop
You can add the address toolbar to add an explorer like address space to the windows toolbar. From here you can launch your default webrowser very quickly on any site by doing "go ..." - for example - " go www.google.com" will open google. Another nice trick is that if the address is malformed, eg. "go korea" is should automatically use your default search engine and return results related to korea.
You can extend this even further with some registry hacks - see here http://www.pctools.com/guides/registry/detail/1065/ |
Of course, launchy does all that and better . But great tips nonetheless. I had completely forgotten you could even do the address bar.
P.S.
That recommended freeware site is awesome IF you actually read what he says and don't just click on the top one. For example, he rates rainmeter really low just because the settings are in text files. For power users it blows everything else away. I know a couple of programs that have been overlooked (including every single dock program), and I disagree with him on a couple picks, but it's extremely thorough for the most part. Great site to keep bookmarked. |
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Temporary
Joined: 13 Jan 2008
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