May 08
The Freeware XP Machine
This is the story of my attempt at making a 100% usable freeware Windows XP machine. I did a lot of research and tried a lot of programs. This is not an exhaustive list of freeware programs but the result of the aforementioned research and installs blended with my own personal preference and opinion. You are free to recommend a FREE program but you must list exactly why you think it is better. i.e. – If you say it uses less resources then provide a concrete example (with stats), if you call it bloatware then show why, etc.
The Install
I slipstreamed Service Pack 3 manually into a folder. The basic method used was from Paul Thurrott’s guide.
I used nlite to set up an unattended install, integrate my RAID drivers, tweak the settings, and create the image. I then burned the image to disk.
After install I installed all my drivers then ran Windows Update.
*Note – It is very, very important to pay attention to every install option along the way. Only install what you need. Do not let these applications install toolbars on your machine.
I’ll run though the applications I tried by category then write a brief review.
Office
OpenOffice – Highly usable in the home environment. You may run into small compatibility issues (formatting) when sending documents to Microsoft Office users. It isn’t Microsoft Office, that can be a good or bad thing depending on your point of view. Verdict: 2 Paws Up!
Adobe Reader – People whine about this program all the time. Comments run along the lines of; “slow” or “bloatware”. Install Adobe reader then run Adobe Reader SpeedUP. Problems solved and full compatibility and security are maintained. Verdict: It does the job.
Multimedia
File associations are key! When I speak of file associations I mean file types that are not specific to that app.
Multimedia – Codecs
K-Lite Standard – All the codecs the average user will ever need to play anything. Verdict: 4 Paws Up!
Multimedia – Audio Players
WinAmp Lite – I use this only for “quick playing” or previewing mp3 and wav files. When installing do not install; Winamp Agent, anything to do with CD’s, User Interface Extensions, Visualizations. The result is a very fast launching app that uses very little resources. The only associations allowed are .mp3 and .wav. Many people prefer Foobar. Verdict: 2 Paws Up!
iTunes (w/Quicktime) – I use this only to manage my iPods and on a very rare occasion shop the store. Quicktime is also for use in my browsers. No file associations. Turn off the look for speakers, T.V.’s etc. Verdict – It does the job.
MediaMonkey – I’ve got to be honest here. I generally listen to my music from my Linux machine (the reasons are another story in itself). However, in the rare circumstances that I want to listen to music on my machine this app does a wonderful job. No file associations. Verdict: 4 Paws Up!
Multimedia – Audio Editing
Audacity – Sound recorder and editor. Audio geeks, be sure to install lame and check out the plugins. No file associations. Verdict: 2 Paws Up!
Multimedia – Tag Editor
Mp3Tag – Full-featured, wonderful app. Verdict: 4 Paws Up!
Multimedia – Audio CD Ripper
Audiograbber – Excellent tool. Audio geeks, be sure to install lame. Verdict: 4 Paws Up!
Multimedia – DVD Ripper
DVD Decrypter – Verdict: 4 Paws Up!
Multimedia – Video Player
Windows Media Player 11 – It works perfectly and has a good GUI. Plays everything you could want it to play (see K-Lite above). Turn off all privacy options. File association’s, just what you want it to play. Verdict: 2 Paws Up!
VLC (VideoLan) – Default GUI sux, fortunately it is skinnable. I like the Heaven skin. This program is fast and uses FAR less resources than Windows Media Player 11. Like 3-4 times less 32,000K to 128,000K in one test. File association’s, just what you want it to play. Verdict: 4 Paws Up!
Multimedia – Video Editor
Avidemux – The only video editor I’ve used and stayed with. Does the job quite well and improves with every version. Does not work in Vista 64-bit (yet). Verdict: 4 Paws Up!
Multimedia – Video Converter
TMPGEnc – Converts AVI to MPEG and does it well. Verdict: 4 Paws Up!
Multimedia – Picture Views, Editors managers
First a note. Don’t be fooled by people who say these programs are like Adobe Photoshop, they are not. They’ve neither the power or features of Photoshop. That being said they will quite likely more than do the job for most people (myself included). To their credit they are free and not an absurdly priced $650 (and people whine that Vista costs too much).
XnView – Viewer, converter, editor. Try it, you’ll like it. Verdict: 4 Paws Up!
IrfanView – Viewer (videos too), some editing capabilities. Nice to have around but not my main viewer or editor. Verdict: 2 Paws Up!
Paint.Net – Editor. If you need more than this you should probably take up Graphics Arts. Verdict: 4 Paws Up!
Utilities
Utilities – CD/DVD Burning
CDBurnerXP – It just burns CD’s baby! Verdict: 4 Paws Up!
ImgBurn – Creates and burns CD/DVD images, Verdict: 4 Paws Up!
Utilities – Security
AVG Free Antivirus – Consistently rated high by Virus Bulletin. Low resource usage, unobtrusive. Verdict: 2 Paws Up!
Online Armor Free Firewall – At the top of the heap at Firewall Challenge ( http://www.matousec.com/projects/firewall-challenge/results.php ). Comodo is rated highly too, I just prefer the options that Online Armor provides. Verdict: 2 Paws Up!
Anti-Spyware – I don’t use them on my machine. I use Windows Defender on another Vista machine.
Browser
Thou shallt not use Toolbars (Google, Yahoo, etc.). They are 100% completely unnecessary, slow your browsing, and track you usage habits.
I use 2 browsers on my machine.
Internet Explorer 7 – IE 7 is set to high security and I use it only for things like shopping. I do not browse in IE7. Verdict: 2 Paws Up!
Plugin – IE7Pro is a must have.
Firefox – I am not one of those people who believe that Firefox is more secure than IE 7, especially after I put all my plugins (in practice, if you strip it down and use noscript then you may have a point). With the plugins it is a feature rich browser and is the main browser I use. Verdict: 4 Paws Up! (and a tail wag)
Plugins:
Adblock Plus
DownThemAll
FlashGot
IE View
NoScript
Browser Extra
iGoogle – highly customizable home page with gmail integrated. Verdict: 4 Paws Up! (and a tail wag)
Download Manager
Free Download Manager – Normally I use DAP Premium which rocks. The freeware version of it sux. Free Download Manager is just OK. Verdict: It does the job
FTP Client
FileZilla – Fast, secure, all the features you need. What more could you want? Verdict: 2 Paws Up!
Instant Messenger
Pidgin – Free, no ads, works with multiple IM accounts. Lots of cool plugins. Verdict: 4 Paws Up!
BitTorrent
Azureus – Lightning fast, highly configurable. My ISP probably hates me for having this. Verdict: 4 Paws Up! (and a tail wag)
Email Clients
Thunderbird – Customizable, works with multiple email accounts. Easy to backup. Can also be run from a thumb drive. Verdict: 4 Paws Up! (and a tail wag)
Gmail – Lots of online storage. Good features. Access it from anywhere. Verdict: 2 Paws Up!
System Tools
Autoruns – View and configure what starts up with Windows. Verdict: 4 Paws Up! (and a tail wag)
CCleaner (slim) – All-in-one System cleaner. Set it to auto-start. Don’t use the registry cleaner. Verdict: 4 Paws Up! (and a tail wag)
TweakUI – The only tweaking software you need. Verdict: 2 Paws Up!
Other Microsoft Power Toys (at the link above) – Open Command Window Here, Power Calculator, Image Resizer
JKDefrag – I use JKDefrag GUI which provides a GUI to the command line only JKDefrag and integrates PageDefrag. It ain’t quite as easy to use my favorite pay-for defragger but it does a good job. Verdict: 4 Paws Up!
7-Zip – The best file archiver / extractor I’ve every used. Verdict: 4 Paws Up!
Renamer - File renaming tool. Verdict: 2 Paws Up!
RocketDock – OS X style application launcher. I love this thing. Verdict: 4 paws Up! (and a tail wag)
SyncToy – Excellent, fast, configurable backup tool. Verdict: 4 Paws Up!
SIW – System info tool. Lots of good info on everything in or on your system. Verdict: 4 Paws Up!
The Fire Hydrant
These are apps I installed and didn’t like or apps that would not work with my hardware.
DriveImage XML – “You can backup a RAID volume, but you can usually not restore it back to the RAID.”
I’m aware of to other free disk imaging tool for XP and certainly not one that does RAID.
Microsoft Photo Info – “Error 1722. There is a problem with this Windows Installer package. A program run as part of the setup did not finish as expected.” Tried the fix in the FAQ. no dice. MS is “working on the problem”.
No decent WYSIWYG HTML editors. I’m not gonna name them but MS Expression Web is far superior. And no, I don’t care what the code snobs think.
Pooper Scooper Specials
Tweaking programs, Optimizers, Memory Boosters, System Boosters, Registry Cleaners.
Horrible, rotten, nasty, misleading, wastes of time and money. Even the free versions aren’t worth the stuff in the pooper scooper.
After installing and configuring every program I:
- Ran Autoruns
- Booted into safe mode and did an advanced disk cleanup.
- Rebooted and ran JKdefrag GUI and enabled System Files defrag on reboot. Then rebooted and ran JKdefrag.
- Then I booted with my Acronis True Image Boot Disk and made an image.
I’m pretty satisfied with this system. It is running very fast and the programs are all very responsive.
May 9th, 2008 at 12:18 am
I like flock better than Firefox. Reason one is because it’s based on Firefox and has more features. Yes it can run most Firefox extensions. Also Flock has a Facebook group and a Facebook Page and a Myspace group. Also they have a Flickr group. They have flock meet ups. But I don’t live close enough to the places they do the Flock meet ups. But they do a bunch of cool stuff. And a people sidebar that works with flickr, facebook, twitter and youtube and more coming.
May 9th, 2008 at 12:47 am
I’m also wondering why you don’t list IZArc.
May 14th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
What about faststone image viewer?i find it does well.
May 28th, 2008 at 11:55 pm
Mediamonkey also does a pretty solid job of tagging mp3 files. You might give that a shot and uninstall mp3tag, although I agree it’s an excellent program. I use Gimpshop myself for editing, but I’ve used paint.net and it’s no slouch.
June 6th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Okay, now I’m curious. What’s the story behind your preference to use Linux over Windows (and OSX) for your music?
June 9th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Have you tried leechget?
June 10th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Nitehawke, without getting into the subject too much. I’ve found that the drivers (and the default settings) for every sound card I use just seem to work better and sound better. Amarok, the app I play my music under is fast and has excellent sound output (for you nix Geeks I use xine/5.1. The box I play my music on uses an Audigy 2 ZS Plat. and that card sounds far better under Linux than it does under Vista (even with hacked drivers).
June 11th, 2008 at 1:06 am
What about CCCP instead of K-Lite for codec’s?
June 11th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
Thanks for the information. I’m just getting my feet wet with Linux (Ubuntu and Mint). It’s interesting to know the reasons people choose one application over another, this OS instead of that OS.
June 21st, 2008 at 12:00 am
I’m just wondering you still using Zone Alarm?
June 25th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
No.
July 29th, 2008 at 11:34 am
Any good freeware to partition/resize a disk??
August 6th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
UBCD4Win would do it from a bootable CD.
September 9th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Would the freewares be the same if I want to build the same…but with Vista??
September 10th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
Thank you for all the excellent info. I’ve followed a lot of your advice and it has saved me hours of time. I was wondering what you use/recommend for a software Firewall these days (doesn’t have to be freeware. Currently using ZoneAlarm… TIA for any advice.
September 10th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
Hsantos – Pretty much (though a few of the programs don’t have Vista versions).
RichardS – Firewall for XP. I currently recommend Comodo Firewall Pro. This is based in large measure on the ratings here:
http://www.matousec.com/projects/firewall-challenge/results.php
September 27th, 2008 at 4:07 am
utorrent, not Azureus. Please check Google search “utorrent vs azureus 2008″
1. utorrent does not use Java
2. utorrent is a smaller program
3. utorrent could be considered faster
4. The last time I used Azureus, my impression was that it loads all sorts of plug-ins (or whatever they are). I don’t need those things.
I think CCleaner’s relatively dangerous. Perhaps it could be used to do things other than clean the registry. I use Regseeker to do it. I’d advise against knocking Regseeker before trying it…
I use Media Player Classic instead of WMP. I don’t like all that GUI in my face, and want things simple.
WYSIWYG web: Oh c’mon… At least throw a bone even if you wouldn’t gnaw it! Here- I’ll mention Kompozer if you don’t.
October 26th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
foxit instead of acrobat
December 2nd, 2008 at 6:11 pm
I use Ccleaner’s registry cleaner regularly (on several different machines) and have never had a problem. I also use jv16 power tools to do more thorough registry cleaning and only once ran into an issue that was easily solved (I always back up first).
Just curious… why do you advise against using the Ccleaner registry cleaner?
Thanks for the list; some nice sw in here that I wasn’t aware of yet.
Dan
December 7th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
What about Auslogics Disk DEfrag, Reg defra, and system infornation