Must have applications for your Windows PC

Below is a list of applications that do my work and windows experience more easy. They are not sorted in any particular order and note that they are all light applications, no hundreds of MB involved.

Total commander - http://www.ghisler.com/
A clon of the famous Norton commander used long time ago (yes I am that old and also you can have mc on your Linux) that you can use to manage your files, ftp, connect to other boxes, etc. Visit the website and go back in time where things were simpler.


Cerberus - http://www.cerberusftp.com/
An FTP server easy and quickly to run on you pc.

Snagit - http://www.techsmith.com/screen-capture.asp
A must have if you have to send documents with manuals or showing users what to do. Easily capture your screen, edit it, modified it, copy it and just send it or paste it or save it in whichever format you want.

Textpad - http://www.textpad.com/
A text editor to replace the old notepad on which you cannot do much. If you deal with logs and simple files and want to do searchs, compares, replaces, etc. this is the tool for you (other textedit or vim for windows but I always go back to Textepad).

Putty - http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/
Not sure if this is the right site where to download it but Google for it. A great and complete telnet and ssh and others. Very useful to replace the windows telnet.

Videolan - http://www.videolan.org/
This is to reproduce video files of all types (almost) very easy to use with some extra features as to stream your movie to your friends if they are on the same network.

Synergy - http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/
If you have 2 pcs or more you can just use 1 keyboard and mouse to control both systems. I have my desktop and my laptop in the office and I use my normal keyboard for both, it shares memory so copy paste can be copy and no more having several mouse laying around not knowing which one to use and occupying all your desktop space.

Foxit pdf reader - http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php
This is not a must but aren't you tired of downloading 70MB to read a 30K pdf!!. This is a PDF reader free to use, there is a pay option for a writer but I don't need it yet. One day Adobe would need to launch a light version of their app that consumes less memory also.

Other applications I sue are the CoolEdit, RealVNC (or any vnc clon), WinSPC3 and ActivePorts.

Ok that is my list for the time being, I would have to go through my start/programs menu to find out more but if I have to find them then they are not essential.

Good luck!!