Free Software Megathread

[theredviola]

VLC is ok if you just want player that works. Or if you want to watch a stream of some kind. It's very good with streams.
If you want extended customization options and settings, allowing you to do whatever you want with the player, then VLC is not a god choice.

I'll have to try it with streaming on my desktop and see if it wants to play nice there because I fail to understand why I can't even get 750HD Youtube vids to load at a descent speed.

I have a feeling it doesn't want to work on my laptop because its 6 years old and still runs XP... I just need a free player that will play DVDs on my portable computer.

[haxartus]

I have a feeling it doesn't want to work on my laptop because its 6 years old and still runs XP... I just need a free player that will play DVDs on my portable computer.

MPC-HC should work.

[hayharut]

Ccleaner
"CCleaner is the number-one tool for cleaning your Windows PC. It protects your privacy online and makes your computer faster and more secure. Easy to use and a small, fast download."
i <3 it

[theredviola]

MPC-HC should work.

I'll look into it more when I get home, but why would that work and not WMP? Does MPC already have the software to play DVDs that WMP doesn't?

[haxartus]

WMP can play DVDs without a problem. I don't know what's the problem with WMP on your computer.
Pretty much any modern player can play DVDs.
Unless you're talking about Blu-Ray and not DVDs but I doubt it.

[beforememory]

Magic Disc

It is very helpful utility designed for creating and managing virtual CD drives and CD/DVD discs

[Evilmaniac]

I know everyone has their preference of media players, but as someone who's used a bunch of em I've never found anything that didn't have a problem with something. K-lite codec pack, CCCP, VLC, DIVX, and many others have all encountered some kind of problem at one point. It just depends on what the people who encode the videos encode with, and what fits your needs at that time so please leave this debate on what player is best for another thread.

[Advent]

I'm just wondering, does Open Office REALLY have all the functionality of MS Word, say 2010?

[Chickensoup23]

Everybody hates windows media player, he was talking about Media Player Classic

Itunes is only recommended for better-than-average machines because once you load it up with a decent number of songs + videos, it slows down and is no longer smooth/quick with it's fancy non-windows GUI.

~46,700 songs on iTunes here.

Takes 4-5 minutes to load, from my 7,200 RPM Caviar Black. Yes, it's ''slow'', but I don't think I could ever imagine using something else than iTunes. Used WinAmp, it's only "meh". Windows Media Classic is also "meh". iTunes is still my winner.

120GB iPod classic represents!

---------- Post added 2011-05-26 at 12:54 AM ----------

I'm just wondering, does Open Office REALLY have all the functionality of MS Word, say 2010?

Yes, and even more, if I'm not mistaking. Also, Open Office has "all" the different programs in 1 (ex: Word, Spreadsheet, Presentation, etc) that you can open, as opposed to MS Office where each is individual.

[ispano]

~46,700 songs on iTunes here.

Takes 4-5 minutes to load, from my 7,200 RPM Caviar Black. Yes, it's ''slow'', but I don't think I could ever imagine using something else.

120GB iPod classic represents!

Once Rockbox works on a classic, use Rockbox + Organize your own damn music, of damn near any format, without itunes or anything else. Just copy the folders over.

[Chickensoup23]

Once Rockbox works on a classic, use Rockbox + Organize your own damn music, of damn near any format, without itunes or anything else. Just copy the folders over.

How much faster is it?

Tbh iTunes is always open anyways. Not like it puts a heavy load on my CPU, at this point.

[ispano]

http://www.rockbox.org It replaces the stock apple firmware, or other devices firmware, and most stable ports will actually co-exist with the apple firmware, like dual booting. It can play damn near any format there is, and doesn't need a database like ipods do, you just copy the folders over, though you can use playlists and/or a database system if you like. It's not quite there for the classics yet, however. They only recently broke the encryption on those.

What that means is you can use any audio software you want on your computer, and most any file format too.

[Xuvial]

~46,700 songs on iTunes here.

Takes 4-5 minutes to load, from my 7,200 RPM Caviar Black. Yes, it's ''slow'', but I don't think I could ever imagine using something else than iTunes. Used WinAmp, it's only "meh". Windows Media Classic is also "meh". iTunes is still my winner.

It shouldn't take that long to load, iTunes keeps a "shorlist" of all your music + info + albumart so it doesn't have to load every file from your HDD everytime it starts.
E.g. I keep iTunes on my SSD, have about 90gb worth of music on HDD, but the actual iTunes folder on my SSD only takes few hundred megs. Doesn't matter if I have 10 songs or 10k songs, it still starts in 2-3 seconds (fresh boot) and displays all my music

What's going on woth your iTunes :S

[vesseblah]

I'm just wondering, does Open Office REALLY have all the functionality of MS Word, say 2010?

Not even close, but...

The thing is that average users need about 10% of MS Office's features, and that 10% work perfectly in OO as well. But the other 90% either does not work, is buggy or is so different from Word that the files are not interchangeable without the documents' visual layout blowing up.

There's certain advanced stuff like using templates and custom document styles if you want to do exact layout of the document (using Word to layout pages for digital printing for example) which does not work in OO. Another problem area is scripting support. OO supports less than half of the script/macro capabilities of Word, and even less in Excel.

Also, the new ribbon UI is really really good. It's painfully obvious that UI is always the weakest link in any open source projects, and OO is no exception when you look at the fugly and disorganized menus and icons from 1995. Office never had really bad UI, just incredibly deep one and it was hard to find specific stuff in there which overwhelmed beginners with the 90% of features you never need, but OO is just a mess compared to even the pre-Ribbon versions of Word.

[ispano]

Not even close, but...

The thing is that average users need about 10% of MS Office's features, and that 10% work perfectly in OO as well. But the other 90% either does not work, is buggy or is so different from Word that the files are not interchangeable without the documents' visual layout blowing up.

There's certain advanced stuff like using templates and custom document styles if you want to do exact layout of the document (using Word to layout pages for digital printing for example) which does not work in OO. Another problem area is scripting support. OO supports less than half of the script/macro capabilities of Word, and even less in Excel.

Also, the new ribbon UI is really really good. It's painfully obvious that UI is always the weakest link in any open source projects, and OO is no exception when you look at the fugly and disorganized menus and icons from 1995. Office never had really bad UI, just incredibly deep one and it was hard to find specific stuff in there which overwhelmed beginners with the 90% of features you never need, but OO is just a mess compared to even the pre-Ribbon versions of Word.

I actually find the MS Office UI, both old and new, far more annoying than OO.org's UI.

[Deleted]

This thread is winning the internets! Thank you OP for this thread! I will throw in whatever I may find out there =)

[Idontlikeyou]

I just want to thank you for this list, but most importantly adding to what post you have updated it to.

[Asera]

I actually find the MS Office UI, both old and new, far more annoying than OO.org's UI.

I like the ribbon personally.

I also can't stand OO though. Not to mention it doesn't have Outlook, and there's nothing that can compete with Outlook unless you use strictly POP3/IMAP.

[ispano]

I use Thunderbird, and all my accounts are IMAP, except one from Comcast who insist on using POP. I just have my GMail account check that one.

[Asera]

I use MAPI. :3

(MS Exchange 2007)