6 Awsomely useful applications for general computer usage

I have found that some applications i have are way more useful than i ever thought they would be when I installed them. They're the kind of applications that depending on who you are, you might not use very often, but when you need to use them, then they are very handy to have around. Click the title to get a link to that application's download page.

1) Ccleaner

I originally downloaded this application because I wanted something that I could use to routinely clean up the crap around my computer. On first run it deleted over a gigabyte of files that had built up on my computer. I like to run it around once every two weeks to get rid of about 200 MB of uselessness.

Ccleaner, however, has three other tools that are pretty awesome in and of themselves. It has a registry cleaner, an application manager, and a startup manager.

The startup manager lets you edit what processes start when you first log on to windows. This makes it very easy to go through a list and delete useless processes to make your login faster.

The registry cleaner will analyze your registry for any problems and will then solve (read "delete") these entries. This is a) very very satisfying and b) great for keeping your registry compact.

Last but best of all is Ccleaners application manager. Anyone who uses windows has suffered the wrath of the Add/Remove Programs tool. The way that utility works makes you feel like clawing at the hard drive with a nail might be a faster way of uninstalling a program. Ccleaner has a convenient built in tool to uninstall basically anything on your computer, making it a much faster alternative to the default window utility.

2) Spybot Search and Destroy

This application is great for all sort of spyware prevention uses, including scanning your computer and getting rid of spyware. It also has an add/remove program utility and all sorts of other goodies. It does not, however, load as fast as Ccleaner for those purposes. The best use it has for me is a little process called TeaTimer that sits in your tray.

TeaTimer uses about 20 MB of RAM and is completely worth every bit. It pops up a notification every time any program tries to edit your registry. You can choose to allow the change, reject the change, and can even set it to blacklist a certain change. This is great just as a general "keeping in control" of your computer, and is especially helpful with any program that tries to edit your startup entries.

3) Daemon Tools Lite

Daemon Tools is a utility that lets you mount an image file as a disc on your computer. I don't find myself using it an exorbitant amount, but when i need it is very good at what it does. Daemon Tools makes yoru computer think that you've inserted a DVD and so you can then interact with it as normal. This is good for ripping a DVD to your computer and mounting the resulting image file. It's also great for previewing an image file before you burn it to a DVD so you knwo what it will be like.

4) Foxit Reader
Endless articles have been written recommending Foxit, but I am so thankful to this program that I thought it warranted a mention. Foxit is an alternative to Adobe PDF viewer. It loads much faster than Adobe and is great for quickly viewing a PDF you find on the internet. No longer will you cringe when you click a link in google without realizing its a PDF because you know it will be an hour before Adobe opens.

5) VLC Media Player

VLC is an all purpose media player than can play pretty much any video file you might happen to have. You can use it to play DVDs as well which makes it a great alternative to the PowerDVD program that comes installed with your OS. It's very handy to have a media player that you can count on to play almost anything. It's not quite as pretty as most other applications you'll find, but it gets the job done very well.




6) SequoiaView
I saved this one for last because it is my absolute favorite. SequoiaView is a utility that lets you view your hard drive. The amazingly useful part is that it diplays your files as a square of a size proportional to the actual size of the file. This is great for figuring out how best to free up space on your drive and exactly what has made your free space drop 5 GB (answer: incomplete yet huge torrent file). Even better, SequoiaView has a specific color for each file type and lets you customize what color correspond to what file extension.