Good Free Software

[Razor Ramon]

Guess I don't need bluray then.

[Josh]

now now. no one here is advocating anything like that.

[Toupee]

Doesn't VLC have bluray support?

Don't have a drive so I have no idea.

anyhoo, on windows I use:
WizMouse (lets your mousewheel scroll other programs when your cursor is above them, when the window doesn't necessarily have focus)
SpaceMonger (old version; incredibly useful visualization of disk space)
CPU-Z and GPU-Z (for relevant system info)
Firefox with Ghostery, Adblock, Smoothwheel, Desktop
Chrome
VLC (for media playing)
Filezilla (FTP)
Evernote (online note synching)
MotionInJoy DualShock 3 Tool (for linking PS3 controller. it can even emulate 360 control! I use Xpadder for key bindings which is like $9 I think.)
Dropbox
Google Talk
Pidgin
Thunderbird (with PGP for secure email)
Dual Monitor (I think this is what I'm using - to make my taskbar span across two screens in win7)
Winamp (with AlbumList plugin - still the best mp3 player imo.)
Calibre is useful for ebook management.

I guess this doesn't help you at all if you're going to be using ubuntu. unfortunately, I can't part with the adobe creative suite for job purposes, so until that day i'm stuck as slave to windows (though I've experimented quite a bit with dual booting).

[Fe 26]

did a quick look at Razor's blu ray problem.

Man, how'd we end up back in 90s?

[cka]

SpaceMonger (old version; incredibly useful visualization of disk space)
CPU-Z and GPU-Z (for relevant system info)
VLC (for media playing)

I agree with everything except these, where I'd swap in WinDirStat for SpaceMonger, Speccy for system info stuff and MPC-HC for media playback

e: oh and throw in notepad++ for low level programming too

[Fe 26]

I have to swap between VLC and MPC-HC. People sometimes befuddle their encoding and I get stuff that won't play right in one or the other.

[Toupee]

Speccy is spiffy, thanks for the tip. I haven't had a single problem with VLC not playing anything in years but it's good to know there's something else out there when that inevitably happens.

Actually, I might give it a whirl on my buddy's nano-mobo-inside-a-toolbox rig. It has trouble with some video files.

[Fe 26]

whats the current hip free virus, spyware and malware removal programs? Just had to go into my registry to remove a search engine hijacker. I probably should scan for other shit.

[Fe 26]

also, fuck them for having to reset my firefox. Had to close all my tabs and now I have to reinstall my add ons. Fart boxes.