16 (or so) apps I'm thankful for

It's Thanksgiving day for those of you in the United States, time to reflect upon the things for which you're truly thankful. While I'm sure there are many more noble things to list, this is Downloadsquad, after all, and what would be more fitting than a list of programs I appreciate?

16. Cabos. I rarely use a Gnutella client any more. When there is the odd song stuck in my head that necessitates a one-off download, Cabos is what I use. It's got a clean, simple interface, and it works - and that's really all I'm after.

15. Flash Player. Damn you, Adobe. Now that v10 has taken care of some of the CPU and memory issues, it's hard to begrudge Flash. There are just way, way too many addictive little games and excellent web applications that have been built using it.

14. FastCopy. My boss also runs a DJ business, and transferring his multi-hundred gig library from drive to drive was starting to drive me insane. After stupidly giving Windows a crack at the job once, I quickly hunted down a better tool for the job. FastCopy with the buffer cranked up made (relatively) short work of the task.

13. Find and Run Robot. It's not quite a flashy as the more popular Launchy, but it's much lighter on resources and gets the job done just as well. There are also tons of great extensions for it. For those who swear by the power of the keyboard, FARR is a must have.


12. MalwareBytes Anti-malware. My favorite weapon against infested customer computers. If it were fully portable it'd be even better, but since I can install and update it safe mode I'm not too concerned. MalwareBytes scans quickly and does an amazing job at finding and uprooting all kinds of fiendish software.

11. VirtualBox. In my continuing quest to find one Linux distro that I can finally stick with, VirtualBox is my right-hand app. Now that I've got some decent hardware to virtualize on, I was able to ditch my frankenlaptop and give it a well-deserved rest. I can't even guess how many times I formatted the poor devil's hard drive.

10. LastPass. I admit it. I was guilty of at least one of my "five ways to surf like a complete moron." I used the same password on just about every site. In my defense, it was very strong. Now, however, I leave the grunt work up to LastPass. I've got one memorable but insanely difficult master password and let it remember my sites for me. It's got a form filler now, too. Who doesn't want to avoid repetitive typing?

9. ImgBurn. I only started using ImgBurn after seeing it pop up repeatedly in comments on some of my posts. You guys were right - it's a great burning app, and it's doing a fantastic job at backing up my WII games. Being out one $60 disc with no copy is enough for me, thanks.

8. Skype. When my wife and I were having serious withdrawals while being away from our son for the first time, Skype came to the rescue. Thanks to its excellent video conferencing we were able to hear our son tell us that he didn't miss us at all face to face - and follow it up by telling us to talk to grandma because he was all done.

7. Chrome. Though I only use it occasionally, I really appreciate its existence. Because of Chrome and the competition over browser share, we're more likely than ever to see great developments in all our favorite web browsing applications.

6. Photoshop. I really want to love the Gimp, but it still frustrates me from time to time. For example, why does my image not redraw when I crop it? Why is working with type such a pain sometimes? Photoshop is still the grand master of image editing kung fu, and it keeps getting better - CS4 even runs in native mode on my Vista x64 install.

5. OpenOffice.org. The big reason I love OpenOffice: it helps me combat retail customers who beg for a pirated copy of Microsoft Office. It looks and acts enough like the original that I've yet to hear a complaint back. Except, of course, that their workplace computer doesn't know what to do with OOO's native formats. Sigh. Maybe someday.

4. Free antivirus. Thank you, Grisoft, Aliwil, Avira, Comodo, Clam, et al. With so many great, free options available to home users, I'm always surprised to see a system come in with no protection at all. It's even harder to imagine people that get suckered into paying $90 for rogue apps like SuperWin Antivirus Zapper Gold 2009 Pro Edition Plus.

3. Your DVD backup solution. It's my stinking movie, and I should be able to have a security blanket in case the disc gets damaged. Also, thanks for including all those trailers and disabling the menu button on the DVD I bought. I use Handbrake and DVD43 to get the job done, but there are plenty of other good options out there.

2. Your torrent client. I'm still using uTorrent, and I'll probably never switch. It's tiny and works well, and I've never used another client that was appreciably speedier. Regardless of which client you use, .torrent files provide countless hours of fun and excitement for us all - legal or otherwise!

1. Firefox. Hands down the most used application on my computer. Firefox is a great browser, and the development community keeps pumping out great extensions for us to install. Michael Arrington once called Google Chrome a "Windows killer," but surely Firefox (and its thousands of platform independent XPI addons) is a more likely executioner.

Feel free to chime in with the apps you'd put on your list - everyone at Downloadsquad appreciates your suggestions!

Tags: apps, commercial, favorite, freeware, lists, opensource