Once upon a time, I don't use any of Windows default software...

[Morbus]

Yeah, dreamweaver is better than notepad++ at everything... And on an SSD, it loads just as fast TBH. Granted it's paid software...

 

[ratjacket]

VLC is too clunky for me. And I simply CANNOT live with not being able to hit the spacebar to pause the video. That just won't do.

Space bar if pause by default in VLC!

Not to mention its very easy to set a default audio output in VLC

e.g VLC audio plays through my tv via HDMI (default) so i can still game while the wee huas watch some cartoons

Kaspersky Virus removal tool is good when you think there is a problem. its standalone old school as in not active just a virus scan. one scan fixes most but you may need to follow up with various other programes to remove stubborn problems

just download the latest version and run

http://www.kaspersky.com/antivirus-removal-tool?form=1

then your back to the bliss of using a compu without a virus scaner. (Most of which behave more like a virus anyway slowing the system down and inetrfering with many programes)

 

[ThatsABigOne]

Can you explain this further please ? Are you saying you changed malwarebytes.exe to something else so it would not get disabled by malware ?

Yeap. You can create a copy of the exe and rename it.

 

[serpretetsky]

-VLC wins for me, by far. MPCHC is too old, and too ugly. Weird that my space bar 'pause' .

newest version of mpc-hc was released about 4 days ago.
newest version of VLC was released more than a month ago.

You should probably switch based on the "old" argument

 

[HeXen]

I think it's a shame that MS doesn't pursue better built in software considering how expensive Windows is. Each new OS release, users are paying for the same word processor, sound recorder all the way to the same file management tool that is explorer. Add some tabs and at least, make software up to the year 2005 standards in features that 3rd parties have had. Why can't Word be competitive to Notepad ++? Why can't the built in cleaner work as well as CCleaner? Let the paid software be the developers upgrade options but MS should at least make included apps as good as 3rd party freewares.

If you look at what you are actually paying for in a new Windows, it's actually pretty limited, mostly some performance tweaks, security improvements...etc. An OS is supposed to be a platform to launch applications...so make some applications, oh right, that's what the new Metro apps is for now, they wish everyone to just use those instead.

 

[ThatsABigOne]

newest version of mpc-hc was released about 4 days ago.
newest version of VLC was released more than a month ago.

You should probably switch based on the "old" argument

You are right. I stand corrected. I need to try mpc-hc again after ditching it 4 years ago.

 

[Morbus]

I finally found something good for a tabbed file explorer:

Tabbed explorer: Clover
Download: ejie.me
Why: I tried QTTabBar, but it's not built for Windows 7, and though it works, it has bugs and it's SLOW!!! All I want is to middle click folders and open them in a new tab, and keep all my explorer windows to the same window, and Clover is exactly that, and works flawlessly. There's even a bookmarks toolbar (that I don't use). In essence, from what I can gather, it's a wrapper for Windows' explorer that adds tabs at the top, similar to Chrome's. I'm not a huge fan of the look, but it's light (no performance hit that I can notice) and it works perfectly, it's the best thing ever!

To add it to your task bar and have it look like a normal explorer icon, customize the shortcut with the explorer's icon and name, and pin it to the taskbar. Don't forget to remove the actual explorer shortcut BEFORE you pin the new one, because you'll get one named "Windows Explorer (2)" otherwise.

 

[ThatsABigOne]

Thanks for the suggestion! Seems like an interesting app, especially for someone that gets cluttered with huge number of explorer windows.

 

[Morbus]

It seems there aren't that many Media Player Classic themes... I settled with something, but it's not really as nice looking as I'd like it be.

http://www.deviantart.com/customization/skins/?q=mpc-hc

 

[TheRyuu]

Web Browser: Mozilla Firefox
Download: www.getfirefox.com
Why: because Internet Explorer isn't as fast, isn't as safe, and doesn't have as many customization options.

You can make the argument that the former isn't true for IE11 anymore (it even bested chrome for a while I believe) and the latter hasn't been true since IE10, at least if you're leaving something like noscript out of the mix... although technically that doesn't make the browser itself more secure (e.g. something you have whitelisted is exploited, IE/chrome give you more protection in that case as well). IE employs certain mitigation techniques that Firefox does not (e.g. sandboxing). Also, I'm sorry but, noscript can be a pain to manage which means I'm probably not going to want to use it on a daily basis.

And if you're like me (lazy) and it's security you're after you're probably already using chrome (with EMET).

Firewall: avast!
Download: www.avast.com (paid)
Why: not Windows Firewall because it's not really good at anything. It doesn't block the stuff I want to block, and isn't nearly as consistent/safe. Besides, avast!, and other security suites, have added functions that are good for safety, and I'm more than happy with my choice.

If you expected the built in firewall to be 'smart' you're doing it wrong. It serves its purpose and anyone wanting more can install whatever.

Music player: Winamp
Download: winamp.en.softonic.com (official site is down)
Why: because Windows Media Player doesn't have as good a sound, isn't as pretty (in my opinion) or as good at managing my music library, and is way slower and heavier. I've grown up listening to music on Winamp, but I know there are better players out there, Foobar, for example, has better sound quality. AIMP is apparently better than Winamp at many things. But I stick with Winamp because that's what I know and it does everything I want it to do, and well. It has shoutcast as well, which is nice.

I doubt that WMP doesn't have as good a sound when you're not doing anything afterwards (EQ, etc...) as I suspect most of us aren't (and don't want to) although that doesn't mean I'm going to use it (I'm a foobar2000 person myself) unless there's something horribly broken going on in the decoder somewhere (I doubt it). And on an unrelated note the Windows sound system itself is pretty damn smart about how it handles things.

Video player: Media Player Classic - Home Cinema
Download: mpc-hc.org
Why: because it's fast, very powerful, and reads everything I throw at it. I tried other solutions because Media Player Classic is pretty hideous, but none were as powerful, as configurable, or as easy to use. It's a pretty fantastic piece of software. For VLC users: it's not stable, it's buggy and, if I remember correctly, it doesn't pause the video when I hit the spacebar and/or click the video itself... But I guess anything is better than Windows Media Player, anyway.

The latest VLC (as of writing this) should actually work just fine although yes, I would recommend mpc-hc with LAVFilters (I prefer and recommend CCCP).

File Copier: Tera Copy
Download: codesector.com/teracopy
Why: because Windows' file copier is SLOW, it doesn't have a pause function (at least in Windows 7) and other very useful functions that Tera Copy has, and it's just all around crap. Everybody knows that, it's just that most people bear with it because they don't know there are alternatives. Well, there is, and it's called Tera Copy.

What is this I don't even...

Task Manager: Process Explorer
Download: technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx
Why: because it works! Unlike Windows' task manager. It's Microsoft software too, which is... well, irrelevant, but just saying. It works perfectly, way WAY more powerful than even Windows 8's "upgraded" task manager (that's still pretty abysmal), and actually shuts down applications without asking them "please will you shut down, yes? Is that all right?"... Task Manager is a must have for me.

To be fair to 8.1's task manager I've only come across one thing that I had trouble killing (it would be suspended and wouldn't show up in task manager).

Autorun configurator: Autoruns
Download: technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx
Why: this one is opposed to Microsoft's msconfig.exe's function of managing the software that runs on Windows start up. And it's just so much more. It's great (though not infalible) at finding adware that starts with Windows, and it's just better, because it sees all, and not just some of the software that runs on startup.

Well if you have a brain there really shouldn't be any of that adware in the first place. Also I don't think it's particularly difficult to figure out what's running at start up here on 8.1.

Notepad: Metapad
Download: liquidninja.com/metapad
Why: because notepad sucks. Metapad is miles ahead, even though I couldn't really understand how that was possible... well, that was before I tried it. It's a simple text editor, so there's no code highlighting or anything (I use Dreamweaver for that), but it's faster and more powerful (if uglier) than Notepad, and I love it. Of course if you don't open simple text files a lot, notepad will do just fine, but Metapad will still be better for you.

Sublime Text for me but to each his own.

Cleaning utility/software uninstaller: CCleaner
Download: www.piriform.com/ccleaner
Why: because Windows' Disk Cleanup isn't nearly as powerful or easy to use, and Windows' uninstall panel is terrible, if only because it doesn't let you uninstall more than one program at once, even though you usually can. I don't use Revo Uninstaller for that because it's overkill for me. But I suggest it for people why install and uninstall a lot of programs.

Couple things, Disk cleanup is pretty simple to use. Is it really that difficult to click disk cleanup, wait a few seconds, then select all (considering it's pretty safe to just nuke it all) and click ok?

I don't think I've ever looked at the uninstall panel and thought "hey I need to remove 20 things I wish I could do them at the same time (inb4thrashing)."

 

[Morbus]

You can make the argument that the former isn't true for IE11 anymore (it even bested chrome for a while I believe) and the latter hasn't been true since IE10, at least if you're leaving something like noscript out of the mix... although technically that doesn't make the browser itself more secure (e.g. something you have whitelisted is exploited, IE/chrome give you more protection in that case as well). IE employs certain mitigation techniques that Firefox does not (e.g. sandboxing). Also, I'm sorry but, noscript can be a pain to manage which means I'm probably not going to want to use it on a daily basis.

And if you're like me (lazy) and it's security you're after you're probably already using chrome (with EMET).

Unless you use sync in Chrome, you're good to go. I'm more interested in productivity rather than security. There's just no beating Firefox on that front. For now at least.

If you expected the built in firewall to be 'smart' you're doing it wrong. It serves its purpose and anyone wanting more can install whatever.

You're missing the point of this whole thread. I don't mean to say you shouldn't use Windows' default software. I mean it's crap at what it does and I don't use it because I don't want crap. If other people are fine with it (I know I am, for many a thing), awesome.

What is this I don't even...

I do and it's awesome.

To be fair to 8.1's task manager I've only come across one thing that I had trouble killing (it would be suspended and wouldn't show up in task manager).

The lack a hierarchical tree, for starters, makes see what's going one very hard, most of the time. And whatever the task manager does to "kill" applications is clearly ineffective. I clearly remember how when I killed Word, for example, Word itself would ask me if I wanted to save my document! Well, that's not killing! That's asking to go away...

That alone should be a perfect example of how BAD the task manager is.

Well if you have a brain there really shouldn't be any of that adware in the first place.

Do you want me to insult you too? Because I can be much more creative and funny, to be honest... You suck at insulting people.

That said, you need autoruns to diagnose and treat infected machines, and I've found it to be very useful.

Also I don't think it's particularly difficult to figure out what's running at start up here on 8.1.

It's not, but Autoruns saves you the trouble of checking the scheduler, for example, and the startup folder, and whatever else runs at startup that isn't covered in the msconfig panel.

 

[Morbus]

On a related note, Sublime Text looks...

sublime! I'll try it tonight.

 

[ArisVer]

VLC
Winamp
Ccleaner
Viber
Xbmc

Any free alternatives to Windows Movie Maker?

 

[Morbus]

VLC
Winamp
Ccleaner
Viber
Xbmc

Any free alternatives to Windows Movie Maker?

Last time I checked, Windows Movie Maker was a nice enough piece of software. It wasn't perfect, but it did the job...

Also, it's not in Windows by default, so it doesn't REALLY mean you'd be using Windows default software

 

[RossMAN]

Great thread and thank you for including links as well.

I also use Sumantra PDF instead of Adobe,

What does everyone else use as a .pdf viewer?

 

[ArisVer]

Last time I checked, Windows Movie Maker was a nice enough piece of software. It wasn't perfect, but it did the job...

Also, it's not in Windows by default, so it doesn't REALLY mean you'd be using Windows default software

You are contradicting yourself and your first post that started this thread.

Windows mail is not in there by default too...

The reasons I don't like Windows Movie Maker is that it does not open certain file types and that it wants to save the file as a certain windows file type.

 

[Morbus]

Well, since Windows doesn't include, by default, video editing software, PDF reading software, or a mail client (I don't remember about Windows 8), I didn't include my choices in that field, but since you're asking.

I use Lightworks and not Windows Movie Maker.
I use Foxit Reader and not Adobe Reader.
I use Mozilla Thunderbird (at work) and Gmail (at home) and not Windows Mail or Outlook or none of that crap.

There.

Great thread and thank you for including links as well.

I'm glad you like it!

 

[imagoon]

Web Browser: Mozilla Firefox

With only addblock+ and no script. Don't need anything else.

Antivirus: avast!

Never bothered, use MSE for basic scanning.

Firewall: avast!

Built in Windows one is so easy to use, I never bothered with a 3rd party firewall. Most people that want something like this want app blocking, not a 'real' firewall. Since the built in one can block applications also, I have no need for anything else.

Music player: Winamp
Download: winamp.en.softonic.com (official site is down)

Foobar 2000 for the 5 minutes a month I play music at my PC. It is all on the NAS and normally is streamed by Plex to the Roku, PS3, Xbox etc to the stereo.

Video player: Media Player Classic - Home Cinema

Agree

File Copier: Tera Copy

Robocopy is light years better in my opinion and comes with windows.

Task Manager: Process Explorer

Sysinternals pack is auto install on all my machines and includes this.

Autorun configurator: Autoruns

Sysinternals pack is auto install on all my machines and includes this.

Picture viewer: Picasa

Never use anything other than the built in Windows one.

Notepad: Metapad

Notepad++: tried the rest now have the best. Support plugins for everything else.

MS Paint: Paint.net

Never had a need for more than paint.

Cleaning utility/software uninstaller: CCleaner

Won't ever use it because it has caused far more problems than it solved.

Widgets: Rainmeter

No use for widgets for myself.

Sound recorder: Audacity

No use for this for myself.

 

[Morbus]

Widgets don't really have a use... Like a wallpaper doesn't have a use. But long are the days when I kept my desktop with a black background because it was faster that way... On an old P3 with 98SE.

 

[imagoon]

Widgets don't really have a use... Like a wallpaper doesn't have a use. But long are the days when I kept my desktop with a black background because it was faster that way... On an old P3 with 98SE.

Fine by me, I don't use it so I didn't have an opinion.

 

[Zorander]

Does anyone know of a program that can mass rename (or even mass replace -much like Replace in Office-) files in a given folder?

 

[ninaholic37]

Does anyone know of a program that can mass rename (or even mass replace -much like Replace in Office-) files in a given folder?

Start -> Accessories -> Command Prompt

ren *.doc *.txt
copy purple*.* green*.*
etc.

 

[taq8ojh]

What a useless thread. To put it bluntly, noone is interested in your choice of programs. What works for you does/might not for everyone else. Yeah let's all start a thread with software recommendations.

 

[Morbus]

Does anyone know of a program that can mass rename (or even mass replace -much like Replace in Office-) files in a given folder?

I don't know of anything specifically, but Google is your friend. Just saying.

What a useless thread. To put it bluntly, noone is interested in your choice of programs. What works for you does/might not for everyone else. Yeah let's all start a thread with software recommendations.

The thread is going a bit offtopic, yes...

 

[imagoon]

What a useless thread. To put it bluntly, noone is interested in your choice of programs. What works for you does/might not for everyone else. Yeah let's all start a thread with software recommendations.

Well we could say this:

"What a useless post. To put it bluntly, noone is interested in your opinion in this thread. Yeah let's all start post with thread bash posts that add nothing to the thread."

I do find random applications mentioned on here and then go try them out. I do like hear about it every so often and if something sounds interesting I'll try it out. Random example being Piriform Defraggler for a few choice defragging situations when the normal Windows one has issues.