Top 15 Open Source Items (For Windows)

I decided to let you know what my top 15 open source items are for Windows computers. All of the items below are free, both in the monetary sense and the intellectual property sense.

Only programs that I use or have used are in this list. I’m sure there are plenty of great programs not in this list, but I believe this list will suit the various needs of most Windows users. (I have excluded PuTTY, as it is a program intended for use by a small group of users — those with Linux/Unix servers.)

15. Handbrake

This is an excellent program for backing up (a.k.a. “ripping”) DVD’s, converting them to formats like H.264 MPEG4 for playback on computers. Leo Laporte has recommended this program to many callers on The Lab With Leo Laporte, but it may not be legal much longer if the proposed copyright reform in Canada is passed. From what I can tell, it is a powerful program.

This program is available for Mac, Windows, and Linux.

14. PDFCreator

I used to use this for converting any printable document to PDF, but now I have Office 2007 which has built-in PDF capabilities. I no longer have a need for this open source solution. Mac users, of course, can convert to PDF in a simple fashion when printing. With PDFCreator, it leverages other GPL/LGPL things like ghostscript in order to convert whatever you’re printing to PDF. There are commercial and non-open source solutions, but this is by far the best of them — aside from Adobe Acrobat.

13. Pidgin

This is a good instant messenger that consolidates multiple IM accounts from Windows Live Messenger, Google Talk, AIM, Yahoo! and more. It doesn’t look as intuitive as a free (but closed source) product like Windows Live Messenger or Google Talk, but it is a powerful application. I used to use this before I found out how to install Windows Live Messenger on Windows XP Professional x64 Edition.

Other notable IM clients for Windows include Miranda IM.

12. DVD Flick

DVD Flick is a really good program that creates DVD’s that can be played in most modern DVD players. It doesn’t match up to iDVD on the Mac — it only converts the video/audio to the DVD standard format and creates titles & chapters — but it is an easy-to-use solution for average Windows users that don’t need a menu. There is another open source solution for menu authoring, though.

11. Notepad++

Notepad++ is an interesting program that is so much more than a Notepad replacement. It can even replace some coding programs, given the plugins available for it and code highlighting, even though I think Dreamweaver still beats it in terms of usability and user-friendliness for Web designers and developers.

I would appreciate the authors of Notepad++ more if they didn’t have a large, ugly, and ineffective banner at the top of their site advocating the boycott of the Beijing Games. Guess what? Not a single country decided to boycott the Games! But that’s a matter for another time and another blog…

10 more programs after the jump, including (in no particular order here) Firefox, 7-zip, VLC Media Player, Audacity, MediaCoder, and more!

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(1 votes, average: 3 out of 5)

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IE8 FAILS Acid Tests

I was very skeptical back in December 2007 when Microsoft released a PNG image indicating that an internal build of IE8 passed the Acid2 test (Acid Tests are complex pieces of coding which test the standards compliance of any browser). And I said:

Everyone’s just so optimistic for IE to be standards-compliant that they’ve disregarded Microsoft’s capacity and history of lying.

Guess what? Now that there’s a beta of Internet Explorer to be downloaded, which Microsoft claims features “improved interoperability and compatibility”, I can entirely disprove the previous claim that IE8 passed the Acid2 test. (Note: it doesn’t take much to pass Acid2; current versions of Firefox, Safari, Opera, and other browsers pass it easily.)

This is what Acid2 looks like on IE8 (top) and the reference rendering (bottom):

It’s plainly obvious that Internet Explorer is incompetent at displaying even the relatively basic Acid2 test.

Let’s examine what happens with Internet Explorer 8 and Acid3. Once again, IE8’s screenshot is on the top and the reference rendering is on the bottom.

Big difference, eh?

There. I’ve completely and utterly debunked the false claims that IE8 passes the Acid2 test. Once again, it’s the people creating the product who spread misleading information specifically to promote their product.

For all the web developers and designers out there: DON’T take advantage of IE8’s new proprietary features; urge Microsoft to support web standards, which they have embarrassingly FAILED to do for more than the past decade.

(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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NASA Uses Linux

A long time ago (sometime around the current month last year), I was talking to some people about how the International Space Station was running on Windows 95 and old versions of Windows NT. Apparently they were later moving to Linux.

Interestingly, NASA also uses Linux - that is, two flavours of Linux: RedHat Enterprise Linux and Fedora.

More after the jump.

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(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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Ubuntu 8.04

A few days ago, Canonical released a new version of their leading Linux products: 8.04. Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Long Term Service) has been released, improving the desktop experience and targeting Mac and Windows users by adding enhanced multimedia solutions for pictures, music, videos, and more.

You can find out more about Ubuntu 8.04 from their official page.

I do want to point out a related project, called Kubuntu (essentially Ubuntu but with a KDE desktop). Kubuntu 8.04 was also released recently with updated components, such as KDE 4 with support for 3D effects, new simplified codec installation for Kaffeine, and Read/Write support for NTFS!

Personally, though, my preferred Linux distribution is still OpenSuSE. Maybe that will change, but likely not if I can get KDE4 on SuSE.

(4 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

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ESET NOD32 Antivirus

I just thought that I should recommend this product to fellow tech enthusiasts.

Although I am affiliated with Symantec and Trend Micro, the only product that I feel is truly worth recommending is ESET NOD32.

This is an award-winning antivirus program known for its reliability, performance, and security.

Reliability

A lot of business use NOD32 as part of their defence against viruses and malware. The York Region District School Board, for instance, has it installed on most imaged systems. It provides a trustworthy line of defence, and is suitable for use in the business or education environment.

A “home edition” without the server OS support and remote administration is available for a lesser price.

Performance

There’s a great reason that ESET NOD32 is frequently used by businesses. It’s amazingly fast and lightweight. On typical installations (eg. Windows 2000 Professional or Windows XP), ESET NOD32 takes up about 30 MB memory, less than half of which is actually in the physical RAM. Compared to the 50-60 MB used by products like Norton Internet Security, NOD32 offers a significant advantage to people running older hardware or older operating systems.

But don’t be fooled. NOD32 isn’t just for old computers. It’s for new computers, too.

On a Windows Vista Business Edition (32-bit) computer, ESET NOD32 scans programs and applications at 43.17 MB/s, as compared to 14.54 MB/s by Symantec and 12.12 MB/s for Kaspersky.

Security

NOD32 provides amazing security for a computer. Very few viruses or malware get through its real-time protection or filesystem scanning, all while maintaining the lowest memory footprint of all the consumer antivirus programs. It is also able to identify potential (previously unknown) threats through its ThreatSense and Early Warning features.

The real-time protection protects you from downloading viruses before you even access them, protects you from opening or saving files containing malware, and will also protect you from spyware. Excellent daily (often several times per day) updates keep your protection at its peak.

Even better, NOD32 was recognized with multiple awards for NO FALSE POSITIVES. In the most recent test of its kind by AV Comparatives, ESET NOD32 Antivirus had its real-time protection put to the test, among other competitors such as Kaspersky, Symantec, and McAfee products. NOD32 did not mistakenly detect any legitimate applications as harmful programs, and was also noted as “fast”. It defeated Kaspersky’s AV program on two regards: Kaspersky had “few” but some false positives and was considered “slow”.

Conclusion

Given these factors, I highly recommend that you take a look at ESET’s award-winning NOD32 Antivirus for your home, home office, small business, or even large-scale enterprise. The flexible options let you pick the best antivirus on the market, at competitive prices.

Don’t settle for less. Download NOD32 Home Edition and Save Up to 25% now!

(4 votes, average: 3.5 out of 5)

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Mozilla Firefox 3 Beta 5

Yesterday, on April 2, the Mozilla Foundation released the latest beta build of Mozilla Firefox 3, Beta 5. Apparently, there have been 750 changes since Beta 4, and some sites will perform better with Beta 5. A lot of bugs have been fixed, and Gmail is much faster.

A blog on ZDNet covered this release and talked about the memory leak fixes. Someone on CNET also mentioned the Back/Forward button issue, which John C. Dvorak also mentioned on his most recent Tech5 episode.

(3 votes, average: 3.67 out of 5)

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