voiddeck.com

If I had the choice of using just one platform, obviously I’d use OS X for work and personal day in day out. But I have to use a PC/Windows XP (yes finally upgraded from W2K after that crashed in Dec last year) in the office.

There are a few apps that are really gems which make my daily Windows experience so much better. An added bonus is that they are free. So in this rare Windows featured post, here’s my (rather short) list of, I think lesser known, Windows freeware gems.

w.bloggar

I am using this right now to blog. It works so well that it’s a comfortable replacement to Ecto which I use on the mac. I can even easily upload files/images and automatically have that linked/presented within the post, easily edit previous posts, perform inline formatting and everything you’d expect from a blog client. 4.5 stars (out of 5!) from me! (5 stars if it can resize my images as Ecto is able to)

FastStone Capture

This one is a mega gem. I love it so much that I wish I had this for OS X with the same feature set. It is essentially a screen capture tool that is BETTER than the rather expensive Snag It. I found it after searching for a freeware alternative to Snag It after my request for that was denied.

As a PM, I write briefs a lot and screen capture is an essential tool to have. Sure you can print-screen and all, but only Snag It allows you to capture, say a long web page, which you otherwise can’t as you’d need to scroll. Then I found FS Capture and it does that and more! Capture selected regions, active windows, scrolling content, output to editor/clipboard/auto-save/etc…

Its latest upgrade even includes editing/drawing tools, edging options and more! It is also updated fairly often. I just upgraded to 5.2 today. It also comes in a portable standalone exe version which I keep on my usb flash drive so I can screencap as I need to on other Windows computers.

True that it’s actually free only for personal use, but since I can’t define what I want to buy in the capacity of my company, the best I could do was to donate a little to them.

It’s fantastic and I could not ask more from them. All the shots in this post were captured using FScapture!

ATnotes

This is a great alternative to the commercial software Post-it notes. I can create stickies on my desktop, select some to be ‘always-on-top’ and in a ‘minimized” state that allows me quick easy access to them by just hovering my cursor on it.I keep a list of frequently called numbers in one of these notes. I can also set alarms so that a note is pushed to the front of all apps when the time comes, and select random colors - for mine I use a horizontal gradation which gives me a nice surprise each time I start a new note.

Sadly it has been discontinued.

Strokeit

This fab app allows you to use mouse gestures OS wide. I use it the most to maximise, minimise, close a window and have had people go ‘what the heck did you do?’.. you can also ‘draw’ an E for Windows Explorer, w for Internet Explorer or define any other custom gesture to launch anything.

Filezilla

Somehow I find FTP on PC faster. Don’t ask me why, I just find it so. I remember one night last year when I needed to launch a site and simply could not upload from my mac till I switched to a PC. Filezilla just works great and it’s free as well. Well this is a common hot favourite, so I don’t need to talk much about it.