GFPack: Recommended software for users by users.

Easy, easy, easy:
foobar2000, the best damn piece of music playing software ever coded, the playlists, feature support and everything else that makes this program so useful (for those who want to use the arguably better version 0.8.3, go here, currently, foobar2000 0.9 doesn't have mant plugins).

Exact Audio Copy, anyone who considers a perfect copy of a CD should use this program, no questions asked.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by quazi

Is there any significant advantage of WinRar over 7-zip? I ask because WinRar for some reason doesn't work on my laptop. It crashes every time I try to open an archive and is in general a hassle to use.

WinRAR supports many more compression features for Zip and RAR files, like delete after compression or put each file in an archive. That and the fact the RAR format is optimized to handle pictures/video/audio/text better than 7-Zip. Otherwise, 7-Zip is superior in every other aspect.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by RushJet1

agreed! i was going to post this, but i was surprised to see that someone else likes 7zip. it has its issues, but overall it's pretty awesome.

i would also recommend



that was another unexpected one i guess, but true! mpc is much smaller than wmp, and real and quicktime alternative are so much better than the real programs.

here are some suggestions of my own:

speedfan - monitors temps of your cpu and can control speeds of the fans, as well as do some bus overclocking. i like it because it can sit in the tray and report the temperatures that way, and it's a small program.

ati tool - by far the best thing ever for ati overclockers- this can give you very detailed information about your ati card, as well as control fan speeds and clock rates (ati tray tools is good as well, but it doesn't overclock as well).

razorlame - a great frontend to the lame mp3 encoder.

virtualdub - great for video editing. this has different versions for different tasks: i use the MP2 version for dvd decoding as well as everything else.

cpu-z - another small computer utility. this reports everything about your computer to you. memory speeds, cpu speeds, voltages, core revisions, model stepping, etc

prime 95 - mainly for overclockers, it tests the stability of your system (as well as the health of your cooling).

zone alarm - the free version is a somewhat basic firewall, but program internet access control is nice, and it's better than nothing (windows firewall is close to nothing).

I'd suggest VirtualDubMod over VirtualDub. It can read/convert Mpeg2 and VOB files and can save to the vastly-superior-to-AVI format MKV. It also can save multiple audio streams and subtitles.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.