I have been using Windows for about 7 years now am over that time, I have used many different apps. Some I’ve only been using for a couple of years, some I have been using for many more. I have seen the evolution of my most favourite pieces of software for Windows right from when they first arrived on Windows up until now where they’ve really matured and become feature rich. These are the applications I use on Windows, my favourite applications, my must have applications.

To start off this list, if I was to only have one application on my computer and I couldn’t have anything else, what would it be. The answer is pretty simple and it would be the same for a lot of people. That application is the best web browser, Mozilla Firefox. I spend about 90% of my computer time inside the Firefox browser which is why it is the most important app on my computer. There are many other browsers to choose from but none is as great, fast, extensible and feature rich as this browser. I have been using this browser since 1.0 and with ever version it just keeps getting better and better and its huge database of extensions allow this browser to do pretty much anything.

Sometimes it can be hard to shuffle through the news on the web and keep up with everyone’s websites and blogs. This is where Feedreader helps out. This is a good RSS reader where you can just import or add your feeds into the app and then it will update so you can quickly go through and read the news from your favourite sites without having to continually visiting websites seeing if they’ve updated yet. Unfortunately this RSS reader is far from perfect with it’s unusual “smart” updating of feeds and its freezing up when loading it with 300 or so different feeds. What makes this my favourite RSS reader is the interface. It’s not trying to do anything different, it’s pretty generic actually, but that is what I like. This application is an important one as it allows me to be updated very quickly.

When it comes to media, the included software in Windows is not that great. This is why I use iTunes for my music and VLC Media Player for my videos. I like the way iTunes displays the music in my library and gives me lost of ways to sort them. It also has good playlist support and now Genius which makes a playlist of related music to one of choosing. It also has a nice album grid way of displaying albums which I find very appealing to browse through. Also it does have iPod and iPhone syncing if that’s not reason enough to use iTunes, although I used it way before I got either of those devices. If you want a player that is like a swiss army knife for media, VLC is it. It plays a massive variety of media codecs, pretty much anything you throw at it. It is also very lightweight and does exactly what you would expect it to do. It is my player of choice for all my movies and TV shows.

Another thing I use my computer for is communication. For instant messaging I use Windows Live Messenger with Messenger Plus! Live. I have been using WLM ever since it was called MSN Messenger and I have always loves getting my hands on future versions of this client to see what features are coming in the future. Unfortunately in most cases, your IM client of choice can either be the official client of the service your friends use or a multi-messaging client, but I feel that most of those aren’t as nice looking or sometimes lack features of the official clients, especially for WLM. The MP!L add-on for WLM brings a lot of extra features to the client. Some of the bigger ones are better chat logs, polygamy mode for multiple clients open and tabbed conversations. There are plenty of other features but those are the I take advantage of.

Another way I communicate with people online is with IRC. There is a large variety of clients for Windows, but my most preferred one would have to be mIRC. The main reason why I choose this one is because it is the one I am most use to. I haven’t really used many of the other ones for an extended period of time but none of them had anything that would make me even consider switching. I like the tree view of the servers and channels and the basicness of the text chat. I also think that having windows inside the main IRC window is pretty cool as not many applications that I’ve used do that.

The last one of my must have apps for Windows is Internet Download Manager, or IDM for short. This is a lightweight download manager that has many features such as queues and synchronization. It also has a really good download accelerator which makes download files so much faster than with the download manager that comes with your browser. This app has definitely saved me many hours where I could quickly watch my TV shows instead of waiting for them to download. I have used a few different ones in the past and this by far is the best and easiest one of them to use.

There are two more that are not essential apps that you need but I do think they deserve a mention. The first one is a paint replacement, Paint.Net. This is pretty much paint advanced with extra features that makes quickly cropping or editing pictures and photos easy. It’s no where near as powerful as a proper photo editor such like Photoshop but it is definitely a must have alternative to paint. The second app is Ashampoo Burning Suite. There is a lot of disc burning software for Windows. Some free and some you have to pay for. This is unfortunately one you have to pay for, but I do think it is worth it. It’s basic interface makes burning any type of media very simple and it can burn all sorts. It is much lighter than Nero and overall a better disc burning software.

Those were all of the software I use daily on Windows. Some of them I use a lot more than others but those are the first pieces of software I install on a new Windows installation. That is not all the software I use those. There are some I just download when I first need them and other I just have installed for fun. These are apps like Chrome, Flickr Uploadr, Last.fm, Skype, Twhirl, uTorrent, Wakoopa, WinRAR, WinSCP, and Whatpulse. I do recommend you try any of the software I’ve mentioned in this post, if you don’t already, and maybe you too will be able to add some new software to your must haves or even find a nifty app that blows you away and changes how you do certain tasks on Windows.

This morning when i was digging through the internet, I found a link on Digg to a Lifehacker post. The post was about there being a way to turn your PlayStation Portable into a monitor for your Windows PC. They also had a video of this in action. Not only can it mirror your computer onto the PSP, it can also use your computer as a display for your PSP in mirror mode. You may wonder why would would want to do this. Because we can. This was fun to play with but I personally wouldn’t use it on a regular basis but its nice to know I can do it and it gave me something to play with.

The requirements for PSPdisp are a PSP with Custom Firmware which allows it to run homebrew, and a Windows PC. To get this going, you first download an installer from the website. It is very small weighing in at about 700kb. Then it’s as simple as clicking the installer and letting it install all the software and drivers or this. You will also be prompted to plug in your PSP so it can transfer a program which allows you to view the screen. After it’s done, you’re all ready to go. Down in the notification taskbar will be the program icon. This allows you to access the setting for the PSP display.

To launch it, you navigate to the Memory Stick icon under game and launch PSPdisp. You will be greeted with a screen asking you if you want to do it over USB or Wifi. I would recommend USB. If this is the first time launching it, it will install the right drivers but after that it will work pretty much straight away. You will see part of your monitor on the PSP screen. By default the quality is medium but you can adjust it to a higher quality, but this will result in a little bit of lag, but its not too bad. You can also change how much of the screen is viewed, fit to screen will show the whole computer screen on the PSP and 2 follow mouse modes which show the resolution up to 4 times that of the PSP’s native resolution.

I haven’t played with any of the other things and I probably won’t. It is a cool thing to play around with for an hour or so. I had it working in on Windows XP in VMware Fusion and on Windows 7 Beta. Both worked perfectly fine as a monitor. I myself couldn’t think of a useful application to use this in but if you wanted it to be static on a stats screen or something in a game, I could see where this would be useful there. If you have a PSP, you should definitely check this out. It’s really cool.

Before school had finished for the year, I was lucky enough to acquire a promo code for a one month free trial of Fatso. Fatso is basically what Netflix is in the US, except in New Zealand. Fatso allows you to rent DVDs from their website which they deliver in the mail to you instead of you going to the store and picking them up.

You start off by adding movies you want to rent into a queue. They have a large selection of titles, over 22,000 according to the website. Not being a huge movie person, I didn’t find the selection lacking, but more overwhelming for me. I feel that the range is more than adequate for any normal movie loving person. You can view movies by genre or by new release, most popular or any of their other categories. You can also search for a title if you want. This service works best if you have a large queue, and in that queue you have some titles that are not new release. If you only go for new releases, I think you are going to be disappointed with this service.

When you have titles in your queue, Fatso will send you out the number of DVDs according to your plan. For the trail, I had Unlimited with 3 DVD’s at a time. When you are looking at your queue, beside the movies that are out, it will say how high the demand for that title is. This will give you a good indication of how long it could be till you will be able to get that movie. When a disc is available for rent, there is a “Get Now” button which will automatically add the DVD to your dispatch queue ready to be sent out to you. For the new releases, it felt like a race most of the time, which the “Get Now” button only showing up on the hour, and you had to be very fast to get it. Sometimes the service would go down because of the demand, which is very poor on their part. I think they should have a better way of handling New Releases. However I was lucky to get 2 new releases on the day of their release automatically without having to use the “Get Now” feature.

You can see the status of the DVD in your dispatch queue. When the DVD has been sent out, it will say the date that the movie has been sent out to you. The service was really fast with the movie coming the next day, expect for weekends (which i understandable.) When you get the movie you are free to watch it as many times as you like and keep it for as long as you want (well for as long as you are continuing your subscription) and can send it back at your leisure. To send it back, back you just put it in the included envelope which is freepost and put it in any postbox. Simple. During the Christmas season, it did take about a week for it to return to them, although that is to do with the postal service and not Fatso. Although after the Christmas season, it only took 3 days to get there, which is much better. When you sent the movie back, you can go on the site and tell them you have shipped it back and they will then dispatch replacement DVDs, even before the ones you’ve sent have returned. The idea of this is that you’ll get movies while the other ones are still in transit so this will minimize waiting time and give you the best experience form the service.

One last thing I want to mention about the service is it’s movie recommendations. How this works is that when you rate movies on the service, it will go and find movies that people with a similar taste like and give you recommendations of movies they liked. This is sort of how the algorithm works. I found it to be very average, mainly because it kept recommending me TV shows when I just wanted movies. There was no way for me to say I was not interested in television shows so it would stop recommending me them. Maybe if I could have done that, the movie recommendations could have been better. I really needed good recommendations from movies to see, and unfortunately this service failed me there.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t afford to continue my service and needed to cancel it. They make it very easy to do so and even help you out by extending your subscription time so you can watch and send back those movies that you still have lying around your home. 2 weeks is more than generous to give you to return these DVDs. In that amount of time, you can watch them half a dozen times and then send them back on time. They don’t delete your account when you leave them either, meaning you ratings, reviews and queue still remains for whenever you decide you want to come back, or in my case when you can afford it. Kudos to them for making the leaving of the service a great experience. It makes me feel bad for having to leave them in the first place.

Overall, I did love this service and would recommend it to anyone looking for a Netflix service, or anyone who loves renting movies. I think it’s great value for anyone that is more than a casual movies watcher. The postage both ways is fast and you will always have a movie in your hands. If I could afford it, I would have definitely continued my subscription with them. Do give Fatso a try. They have a 2 week free trial which is plenty of time to get a feel for the service and fall in love with it. After that, plans start at $10, although for the Unlimited with 3 DVD’s at a time will cost you only $32. If anyone out there wants to pay for a 1 year subscription to Fatso for me, feel free to!

Not all of us are as fortunate as I am to start the new year with a brand new computer. If your current system is anything like my old computer, which I happened to have left behind in 2008, it is probably a little messy and in need for a good clean up. What better a time to do that than at the start of this brand new year. Here are some things that I recommend you do if you haven’t done so already.

One thing that I know many people don’t do is backup their computer. Whether this is just your important documents, or all your user files or ever single thing on your hard drive, having a back up copy of your files is very important. If something was to go wrong and you lost everything, you’re probably going to wish you had a backup of your files, but were either too busy or too lazy (or both) to do that task. It could be as simple as dragging you files over to a few blank DVD’s and burning them, or copying your files to an external hard drive. Make sure you backup as soon as possible, and if you can, have a regular backup schedule for 09. Most modern OS have this functionality built in but there is also software available to make this much easier and somewhat automated.

Everyone has software installed on their computer that they don’t use anymore. This would be a good time to uninstall and delete any programs you don’t use anymore. Along with uninstalling software you don’t need, this would also be a good time to delete files on your hard drive you never use anymore. You don’t necessarily have to delete them for good. You can always burn these “junk” files to a disc for if you ever needed them again. Both of these things should make your system run a bit better and also free up some hard drive space. No doubt that in 12 month time, you’ll have more junk on your computer that needs uninstalling and deleting.

Your computer is not the only thing that get messy and frequently bombarded with more junk that gets pushed aside to deal with later. If your email inbox is anything like mine, it is hit with bacn (“emails that are subscribed to and are therefore not unsolicited but are often unread by the recipient for a long period of time, if at all.”) This includes emails from social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Digg or any email subscriptions you had subscribed to in the past. I recommend that this would be a good time to start taking action against it and whenever one of these messages come, instead of deleting it, archiving it or just ignoring it, go and unsubscribe to stop these notifications. Not only will this help stop your inbox from getting bogged up, it will also be one less thing to think about when checking your email in the morning.

These are just a few things that I think everyone should do as soon as possible. A clean computer is a better performing computer and makes you a more productive person. All of these may not apply to everyone but there must be something that I have said that does apply to you which you can do something about today!

Well it officially just ticked over to 2009 in New Zealand. I wish my regular readers a Happy New Year! Best of luck for 2009 and lets hope it brings joy to you and your friends. Hopefully this blog can survive one more year longer.