My Favorite Apps

Posted on 1:19 PM by gamei56

Hey, it's been almost half of a year that I haven't posted, in fact I haven't posted anything at all... :(

Well, today I'm here to present you with my list of favorite applications, although with no specific order. Camwi pretty much included a giant list of applications in the past but I'll highlight the really, really good ones. Please keep in mind this is my opinion, and they won't be completely be accurate but I'm sure you will be impressed.

1. File Compressor - Alzip

Part of the AL-series, I find Alzip the most useful tool. Although sometimes WinRAR is better, Alzip is a little better to use and definitely won't give you that stupid "You must register WinRAR" error every time you want to extract something. With support for 36 archive formats, including .iso and .bin files, this is great. It can also zip files up in an .exe file for users that doesn't have a decompression program (but who doesn't?).

But I've had slight problems with this in the past. It doesn't work too well with .7zip files, or .tar files. When I downloaded backups from cPanel, it just wouldn't extract .tar files properly. So I use a different program. It's not always this happens, just from time to time.

Download ALZIP here: http://www.altools.com/image/ALZipv6.7.exe

2. Internet Downloading Manager - Free Download Manager (FDM)

With support for flash downloading and conversion, and support for bittorent, I found this tool very useful. Like the usual stuff, it can continue failed/disconnected downloads and enhance speeds for downloading. It's very organized, and you can redownload stuff that you deleted accidentally, and much more. It's just great.

Download FDM here: http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/download.htm

3. Internet Browser - Mozilla Firefox

Obviously one of the best. Of course there's Opera, but if you want a light, fast browser, you should consider getting Firefox. It's better than Internet Explorer if you're still using that crap, and it's better than the new rubbish Google Chrome.

It offers a nice history browsing feature under the address bar, and it'll show the title of the webpage, the favicon, and its description. That's probably the most amazing feature I've seen yet. Not only that, I've noticed that it actually does load pages faster than IE (not saying it improves your internet, no, but it makes good use of its webpage caches). Firefox is one of the greatest things I've used, it would definitely fit into my best applications list.

Download Firefox here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

4. Mail Handling Program - Windows Live Mail

Surprisingly, this mail handler from the Windows Live series is actually useful unlike the rest of the tools other than the messenger itself. Windows Live Mail automatically takes care of your hotmail account and integrates itself to the Windows Live Messenger (if installed) and fetches mail from there.

It easily handles your live account, but it also handles other accounts well too. That's not a surprise since it must be a feature for mail-handlers to have different accounts. It allows POP3, IMAP and HTTP mail servers. Can't say much more but you'll be impressed once you see it.

Download WLM here: http://download.live.com/

5. VoIP Program - Skype

This is great. Skype is just great. You can call landlines with a subscription of 3 dollars. Save two cups of coffee for later and you can get phone service for a month. How cheap is that?

Although it shouldn't be a replacement for your phone (as it does not provide connection to emergency numbers such as 911) it'll be a lot cheaper than using your mobile phone. You can even call computers or normal phones on your PSP, but you have to know Sony, you have to buy their stupid specially designed headset and remote for 30$, I've heard hacks around this but I'm not sure as I haven't done it myself.

With fast (sometimes choppy when the network gets busy) and an extremely good quality call, Skype is the best VoIP program (there's a Korean program that's better than Skype but I won't discuss it since it doesn't support English yet) as of yet, and like most it provides support for video calls.

Download Skype here: www.skype.com

6. Video Playback Application: GOM Player

Forget realplayer, forget windows media player, forget everything. Forget getting stupid codecs that you have to manually find and install it yourself. That's completely obsolete, with GOM player.

GOM player includes codecs in the setup package (the core files) so you won't have to risk downloading codecs that could be a virus. It can also play AVI files that aren't even done downloading, or in other words it can play videos with a broken index.

Like other players, GOM player provides support for subtitles.

Download GOM player here: http://www.gomlab.com/eng/GMP_download.html

7. Personal Webhosting - Abyss Web Server

And you were expecting Apache. Yeah, Apache is better than Abyss by a long shot if we were talking about commercial hosting, but we're talking about personal, private webhosting that's probably just used to test websites.

Abyss Web Server is well made- its control panel is very impressive. Look:









Takes about 10 minutes to set that up. That's amazing, if you ask me. It supports CGI, PHP and other things like always.


Download Abyss here: http://www.aprelium.com/abyssws/

8. File Conversion - FormatFactory

Simply the easiest. It supports mostly all of audio/video formats today, and can convert them to any format you want. It's simple, quick, and light. I have not much to say but see for yourself.


Download FF here: http://www.formatoz.com/download.html


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This concludes part 1. I'll post the rest later. 'Till then, try some of these out!