CAG PC Customizations - Recommend your favorite apps or tweaks

daphatty

daphatty

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Inspired by the CAG Desktop thread (not sure where that disappeared to) I thought it would be cool to gather some suggestions on ways to customize our PCs or MACs. Feel free to make suggestions just be sure to specify whether your suggestion is for PC or MAC and whether it is OS specific (OSX/XP/Vista). Oh, and also let us know if your suggestion if free. After all, this is CAG. :D

I typically start my OS tweaking with TweakUI which is a part of Windows XP Power Toys. It allows me to do things that should have been included in Windows XP like force My Computer to be the first icon (as opposed to My Documents). TweakUI is completely free.

I recently stumbled upon EasyBCD while building a Windows XP + Vista dual boot computer. EasyBCD is a program that allows you to easily edit the Windows Vista bootloader making the boot interface a little easier to read.
EasyBCD is also free.

Those are a couple that I can think of off the top of my head. Got any others?
 
Speedfan

CCleaner-Helps to house clean windows registry and other clutter.

Orb-Probably the easiest tool to use for those wishing to stream media between their pc and 360.
 
I8kFanGUI (for Dell laptops) - free fan utility because Dell's too stupid to build one in
Rocket Dock - free shortcut bar that looks like Mac OSX's (without the mental retardation of the similar one from Stardock)
Digsby - because Trillian is taking its sweet ass time with Astra and Pidgin looks like a high school programming final project
 
Thanks for the RocketDock suggestion. I was looking for something just like it. Stardock was definitely bloated and sucked lots of system resources. Let's see how RocketDock performs.

Here's another gem that I remembered this evening. It's called File Renamer Basic and it pretty much does what it says. The program's usefulness really comes into play when you need to rename large quantities of files simultaneously, like the hundreds of digi-photos you took on your last vacation or the seasons of South Park you just "backed up" in Xvid format. ;) Another free app for Windows XP and Vista. Not sure about MAC.
 
[quote name='daphatty']Thanks for the RocketDock suggestion. I was looking for something just like it. Stardock was definitely bloated and sucked lots of system resources. Let's see how RocketDock performs.

Here's another gem that I remembered this evening. It's called File Renamer Basic and it pretty much does what it says. The program's usefulness really comes into play when you need to rename large quantities of files simultaneously, like the hundreds of digi-photos you took on your last vacation or the seasons of South Park you just "backed up" in Xvid format. ;) Another free app for Windows XP and Vista. Not sure about MAC.[/quote]

Oh that IS handy :D
 
[quote name='daphatty']Thanks for the RocketDock suggestion. I was looking for something just like it. Stardock was definitely bloated and sucked lots of system resources. Let's see how RocketDock performs.

Here's another gem that I remembered this evening. It's called File Renamer Basic and it pretty much does what it says. The program's usefulness really comes into play when you need to rename large quantities of files simultaneously, like the hundreds of digi-photos you took on your last vacation or the seasons of South Park you just "backed up" in Xvid format. ;) Another free app for Windows XP and Vista. Not sure about MAC.[/QUOTE]

Omggg.... that would have been so useful for me a year ago... had to manually rename over 1200 TGA image files... Anyways, if you have a multiple monitor setup, you can't go wrong with Ultramon, which let's you easily manage and customize your environment for multiple monitors seperately: http://realtimesoft.com/ultramon/download.asp

Windows 98, Me, 2000, XP, Server 2003 are officially supported. Both 32-bit and 64-bit x64 versions of Windows are supported. The Vista compatible version is still in beta. The beta version is free, but you need to pay if you want to download official builds. I am currently using the beta on my Vista 64 bit machine and it has worked flawlessly so far.
 
I'll second Digsby, and add a few other key ones.

RKLauncher - like rocketdock but a little slimmer. Supports most of the same stuff, and for me it seems more fluid.

Enso - http://humanized.org - Great launcher program. Hold down capslock and type commands to open programs and search. You can teach it commands as well.
 
I've been playing with PC Wizard 2008, which is just about the coolest, most stable piece of freeware I've ever used. It's basically a bunch of monitoring programs for temps, voltages, etc like Speedfan but much more complete.
 
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