By Chad at 1:39 AM
General Usefulness:
Nodobe: Available for everything Firefox is (so everything)
If you’re like me, you hate opening PDFs online – it takes forever and causes Firefox to chew up resources. Well this wonderful little addon to Firefox will take away the need for Acrobat Reader to open PDF’s. Head on over to Nodobe’s website and check it out here.
RunMimic: Available for Windows only
Ever have to use a computer that has had its Explorer crippled? Well give the finger to your work/school computer with RunMimic, a program that mimics Windows run dialogue box. Go to the WyattSoft website to download it and you will be disabling Novell with msconfig in no time.
Smart Defrag: Available for Windows XP and Vista
The built in defrag utility in Windows is terrible at best, so to keep my HDDs in order I use Smart Defrag. This very handy utility not only defrags much faster than the Windows utility but can defrag multiple drives at once. If you are like me and are awful at remembering to defrag this program even lets you schedule Smart Defrag to run at a scheduled time or when your computer is idle. You can pick up this wonderful little piece of software up at iobit’s website.
Productivity:
Open Office: Available for everything
This well known and free Microsoft Office alternative by Sun is a fantastic way to be productive and cheap at the same time. If you’re poor and really need to work on that term paper/letter of resignation/resume/novel, go to the Open Office website and download it now.
GIMP: Available for almost anything (currently not working on windows 3.11)
If you are looking for a professional grade image manipulation tool minus Photoshop’s $600 – $1000 price tag GIMP is a great solution. Sure GIMP has it’s problems, the interface isn’t as good as Photoshop’s (if that’s possible), and its not quite as powerful but that’s easy to live with considering the pricetag. So if your poor or just have a massive hatred for Adobe go to GIMP’s website and download it.
Games
Postal 2 Share the pain (free game)
This free multiplayer version of Postal 2 is violent, offensive, and just a little bit of fun. Why not spend you’re afternoon murdering you’re friends online?
FEAR Combat (free game)
FEAR Combat is the free multiplayer component of the fantastic FEAR game. The beautiful graphics and dark atmosphere of the single player campaign translate very well to multiplayer and it’s even a blast to play. Hit up Fileplanet and see your afternoon disappear.
Well that’s it for this installment, I hope I managed to waste your time/get you fired and at the very least quelled you’re boredom.
I’ve been using Foxit Reader for my PDF needs for some time and have never had a problem with it. Nodobe Firefox plugin sounds like just the complimentary tool to it- being able to view the files on my browser without having to load them with Foxit if I desire.
If I may recommend two more games, they would be Ether War (a sequel to Ether Cannon), in where you must stop evil Ether beings from destroying earth’s final garrison, a space station, and Mastermind: World Conqueror, where you steal everything from money to science to people in an effort to eventually destroy the entire earth! It’s been a long while since I’ve seen flash games of this quality or completeness.