StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Ok, thanks to my near magical ability to generate files I can't get rid of (Thanks to corrupt archives and bad installers [Fuck you OneNote 2K3]) I'm going to be reinstalling XP Pro sometime in the next month or so. In my two prior reinstalls, all I had was the firefox installer, and I had to go and download all of my programs one-by-one. This time though I'm Downloading all of my software ahead of time, and buring it to a CD, so I figured I would run the list past everyone here first:

• Word Perfect (nonnegotiable until Abiword includes a similar reveal-codes feature)
• Open Office
• AbiWord
• Opera
• Firefox
• Thunderbird
• Windows Live Messenger
• Pigden
• Windows Media Player 10
• VLC
• Paint.net
• Gimp
• Inkscape
• Infranview
• Exifier
• IcoFX
• Camera Software (it came with my digital Camera)
• WinRAR
• Google Desktop Search
• ZoneAlarm
• Windows Defender
• Antivirus software (either Avast! or CA [I had no problems with CA when I've used it in the past)
• IconDevelper
• IsoRecorder
• MS Photo Info
• HTML Slide Show Wizard
• ClearType Tuner
• Tweak UI
• Color Control Panel Applet
• Alt-Tab Replacement
• Power Calculator
• Image Resizer
• CD Slide Show Generator
• Virtual Desktop Manager
• Virtual PC
• Foxit PDF Reader

Can anyone see anything I'm missing, or any critical problems (and now, running windows is not a problem

Edit: ([1123] 18 April) Added Virtual PC and Foxit

I'd recommend the CCCP instead of/in addition to VLC. It's much better at rendering some things such as subtitles, and handles files like h.264 far better. (The interface is also much nicer, but I suppose that's a personal preference thing).

Before I put it on the list, does anyone have any eperience with Explorer Breadcrumbs?

Buy Process Guard and forget all about firewalls, trojan protection anti virus and so on.

I usually work with CCCP (mentioned earlier) and Media Player Classic. Whatever you do, a recent ffdshow is needed for good h264 playback, or you can use CoreAVC, but that's not free.

All the Sys Internals stuff should also be on every HDD, just in case you need them. Spybot+Ad-Aware should be on as well. I've heard good things about Spy Sweeper, but I've not used it personally. This is a good reference when needed.

EDIT: There's also Miranda/GAIM/Trillian as IM alternative clients, because most of them (Miranda especially) are not really a replacement feature for feature for "MSN" unless you just use IM for basic messaging.

If you're going for a free AV program, I'd use Avira AntiVir over Avast! in a heartbeat. It's much better.

On Windows, I use http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=112365 for video , no dicking around w/ codecs (problem there is that there's no browser plugin, but nowadays most video on the web is flash anyway).

Pu-239 wrote:On Windows, I use http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=112365 for video , no dicking around w/ codecs (problem there is that there's no browser plugin, but nowadays most video on the web is flash anyway).

There's minimal dicking around with the CCCP. It has all the codecs you need and once it's installed, you merely have to select which ones you want to use and you're good to go.

Pu-239 wrote:On Windows, I use http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=112365 for video , no dicking around w/ codecs (problem there is that there's no browser plugin, but nowadays most video on the web is flash anyway).

That is awesome. Combined with Quicktime alternative codec, this will probably replace MPC/WMP10 on my PC.
Though there is a small stuterring problem to trackdown.

General Zod wrote:I'd recommend the CCCP instead of/in addition to VLC. It's much better at rendering some things such as subtitles, and handles files like h.264 far better. (The interface is also much nicer, but I suppose that's a personal preference thing).

Is there anyone who actually likes the VLC GUI over others?

The VLC GUI is an absolute turd, the only reason it's picked is because it's a standalone player that requires little codec mumbo-jumbo.

Yokel on an Island wrote:The VLC GUI is an absolute turd, the only reason it's picked is because it's a standalone player that requires little codec mumbo-jumbo.

Like I said, CCCP requires little codec mumbo jumbo either. You just select a few options once it's installed, set your player and you're good to go. Very user friendly.

Pu-239 wrote:On Windows, I use http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=112365 for video , no dicking around w/ codecs (problem there is that there's no browser plugin, but nowadays most video on the web is flash anyway).

Could it be? Has someone actually done a good MPlayer build? A lot of the other prebuilds that I have tried sucked so much that I didn't even bother with them after I downloaded. Five minutes with the default config file and I had a better experience.

Ace Pace wrote:

Pu-239 wrote:On Windows, I use http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=112365 for video , no dicking around w/ codecs (problem there is that there's no browser plugin, but nowadays most video on the web is flash anyway).

That is awesome. Combined with Quicktime alternative codec, this will probably replace MPC/WMP10 on my PC.
Though there is a small stuterring problem to trackdown.

I've never gotten stuttering w/ Mplayer on Linux or Windows- loss of synchronization between video and audio, yes (solve w/ adding -framedrop). Adding -vo directx improves video performance - stick these options under additional mplayer parameters. I'm not sure if these are enabled in that build as the default however, doesn't really hurt to add them.

Someone really needs to make a better Linux Mplayer frontend for GNOME- command line is nice, but typing weird filenames w/ special characters that are common w/ media files is annoying, even w/ tab complete. VLC has a better gui... (ubuntu build is buggy though). And I'm just biased against Xine for some irrational reason (despite it having better handling of FLV- I use Xine for those as well as DVDs)