March 20th, 2008
Your turn: Readers choose their 10 favorite Windows programs
Belarc Advisor
Info / Download
Price: Free for personal use; corporate and government use prohibited
System requirements: Windows 95 or later
Belarc Advisor screen shot
For a free utility, this really is an amazing piece of software. You install and run it, and it probes your system to build a complete profile of hardware, software, OS components, and updates on a Windows PC. It saves its findings as an HTML page and displays the results in a browser window.
Be careful, though, when sharing information gathered by this utility! It captures product IDs (for Windows and Office, among others) that you might not want to show the world. And if you think no one would be that stupid, well, think again.
Skype
Info / Download
Price: Free; some phone calls require payment
System requirements: Windows 2000, XP, or Vista
Skype screen shot
Reader danielarbib threw this one onto an alternative top 10 list he constructed in the Talkback section. (He also included several security programs and the PerfectDisk defragmenter.) Skype is an incredibly useful took, and I really should use it more. In the past year, I’ve mostly used it to do interviews and the occasional international call, and my one run-in with customer service was so bad that I hesitate to sign up for an account. But it sure is easy to use.
I’m curious: How many Skype users are reading this? Any fans out there?
Windows Live Writer
Info / Download
Price: Free
System requirements: Windows XP SP2 or later, or Windows Vista
Windows Live Writer screen shot
This free utility was one of the first to come out of Microsoft’s Windows Live division. Within a half-hour of my original post, I had three e-mails in my inbox asking why I didn’t include Windows Live Writer. Duly noted. It’s an excellent all-around editor and blog manager that works with most popular publishing platforms. It handles images better than any other editor I’ve seen on any platform, and it has an extensible architecture that third-party developers have already used to create some cool plug-ins. I love the fact that you can create drafts and save them locally instead of trusting in web-based editors, where a post can disappear with one stray keystroke.
It should come as no surprise the Writer was excellent from day one. The team that developed it for Microsoft is led by J. J. Allaire, founder of Allaire Corp., which developed ColdFusion and HomeSite (my very first website editor). After selling Allaire Corp. to Macromedia, he founded Onfolio, which delivered the first version of what had the potential to be a great web-clipping application but then was purchased by Microsoft and has languished in an untouched beta since 2006. Oh well. I only wish I knew what this team was working on next.
Ed Bott is an award-winning technology writer with more than two decades' experience writing for mainstream media outlets and online publications. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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| 03/21/08
