Bag of Beans

The PortableApps Suite has just reached 1.0. This is a useful collection of open source programs for Windows that you can run directly off of a USB flash drive.

PortableApps Suiteâ„¢ is a collection of portable apps including a web browser, email client, office suite, calendar/scheduler, instant messaging client, antivirus, sudoku game, backup utility and integrated menu, all preconfigured to work portably. Just drop it on your portable device and you’re ready to go.

• Link (via Lifehacker)

Here’s a great site that highlights some really useful open source applications for windows with short, concise write ups.

• Link

IEEE Spectrum has written a nice article on Blake Ross, one of the co-founders of the Firefox project, and on what he is working on next.

But there were others in the cubicle trenches who hadn’t conceded the browser war to Microsoft. Late one night in the summer of 2002, at a nearby Denny’s restaurant, Ross fell into an impassioned discussion with Dave Hyatt, a senior engineer at Netscape who shared his vision for a leaner but more flexible browser for the masses. Rather than starting from scratch, the two took the Mozilla browser, which they thought was bloated with super­fluous features such as chat rooms and an e-mail client, and began stripping it to the bare essentials. They felt they were raising the Netscape browser from the ashes and so named their stripped-down version Phoenix. But the rebel project became anathema to some Mozilla diehards. “I don’t see the need for Phoenix,” posted one detractor at the time. Another was more succinct: “Phoenix sucks,” he blogged.

• Link (via Digg)

…or, Why your Windows desktop is cluttered with crap you didn’t want.

I often find myself saying, “I bet somebody got a really nice bonus for that feature.”

“That feature” is something aggressively user-hostile, like forcing a shortcut into the Quick Launch bar or the Favorites menu, like automatically turning on a taskbar toolbar, like adding an icon to the notification area that conveys no useful information but merely adds to the clutter, or (my favorite) like adding an extra item to the desktop context menu that takes several seconds to initialize and gives the user the ability to change some obscure feature of their video card.

• Link (via reddit)

Lifehacker has collected together some of the more useful config tweaks for Firefox 2.

The Firefox homepage calls the web browser “fully customizable to your online life,” and that’s not just marketing claptrap. Beyond the extensive options available in its menus and dialogs, there’s a lengthy set of advanced Firefox preferences that can customize the browser to your specific needs. Sure, your brother-in-law’s not likely to edit Firefox’s default configuration, but you? You’re a power surfer and you want your web browser your way.

• Link
• Here’s another useful guide to tweaking Firefox 1 & 2

A workaround has already been found to bypass the IE7 Windows validation check during install.

You must have Windows XP Service Pack-2 (SP2) in order to install Internet Explorer 7.0. But still you will face a problem while installing this new Internet Explorer if your copy of Windows XP is not a genuine (non-pirated) one, since IE 7.0 installation requires genuine windows validation!!! So what to do??? Don’t worry… There are some tricky steps through which you can install IE 7.0 even in your pirated copy of windows XP bypassing the genuine windows validation.

• Link (via Lifehacker)

Dana Hanna, who calls himself a Software Jedi, is writing a windows application a day for 30 days. He has already finished 25 apps. A number of the apps are actually quite useful, like the Jedi Window Dock which allows you to dock a bunch of applications into a single tabbed window. And best of all, all of the C# source code is available under the GPL.

I plan on writing an application everyday for 30 days straight. May the world benefit from the purposeful destruction of my personal life. I’m writing apps as of 9/15/2006.

• An App A Day blog
• Apps

Update: The Software Jedi has created a new website to host the applications he created, here.

The Road to Know Where has compiled a list of over 150 free programs for Windows and Office that have been released by Microsoft. Check the comments at the end for a few more as well.

• Link

This is a cheat sheet of windows programs you can launch from the command-line or the Run menu.

• Link (via Digg)

ThePCSpy.com has compiled some benchmarks to find out how much your system is bogged down by various software packages. Norton Internet Security 2006 tops the list with a 57.78% increase to boot times!

The aim of this article is to find out what types of application slow down a computer the most. I’m going to be measuring the“speed” as the time it takes to shutdown, restart and get back to desktop (with auto-login) and start an application in the computer’s start-up settings.

• Link (via Digg)

Here’s another extensive list (with reviews) of lots of useful programs in many categories. Includes both free and non-free software.

• Link (via the DonationCoder forum)

Coding Horror has posted a howto on reducing the size of Windows XP virtual machines.

Now that Virtual PC is finally free, I’ve become obsessed with producing the smallest possible Windows XP Virtual PC image. It’s quite a challenge, because a default XP install can eat up well over a gigabyte. Once you factor in the swapfile and other overhead, you’re generally talking about around 2-4 gigabytes for relatively simple configurations.

My best result so far, however, is a 758 megabyte virtual machine image of a clean, fully patched Windows XP install. Not bad. And here’s how I did it.

It isn’t mentioned in the article, but it may also be worth looking into nLite to create a stripped down Windows XP installation disc before you install it into the virtual machine to reduce the initial size.

• Link

eConsultant has many useful lists in different categories. In particular, their freeware and open source software lists are very comprehensive.

• I want a Freeware Utility to … 450+ common problems solved
• Open Source Freeware : 400+ free applications and utilities

Gizmo at Tech Support Alert has just made some major updates to his recommendations for the best freeware utilities available. Lots of useful stuff here.

• Link

The latest version of TrueCrypt encryption software has been released. This is one of the best tools available out there for securing your data.

TrueCrypt 4.2 Released

April 17, 2006; 1900 GMT

We are pleased to announce that TrueCrypt 4.2 has been released. Among the new features is the ability to create a TrueCrypt volume under Linux, ability to create a ‘dynamic’ container whose physical size (actual disk space used) grows as new data is added to it, ability to change volume passwords/keyfiles under Linux, ability to create keyfiles under Linux, ability to restore and backup volume headers under Linux, and many more.

This release makes the Linux version of TrueCrypt completely independent on the Windows version. However, both versions will continue to be mutually compatible. For a comprehensive list of changes, please see http://www.truecrypt.org/history.php

• Download here

This is a useful little utility for Windows that helps you simply resize windows.

Sizer is a freeware utility that allows you to resize any window to an exact, predefined size. This is extremely useful when designing web pages, as it allows you to see how the page will look when viewed at a smaller size. The utility is also handy when compiling screen-shots for documentation, using Sizer allows you to easily maintain the same window size across screen grabs.

• Link (via Lifehacker)

Vertigo Software has a nice howto on setting up a Subversion version-control repository under Windows.

• Link (via Digg)
• Here’s the article that was the basis of the howto.
• SVN 1-Click Setup may also help simplify the process.

New release of Thunderbird email client available. Many new features, including automatic updates, and a nicer RSS feed interface.

This page lists some of the best extensions currently available for Firefox.

There are hundreds of firefox extensions on the web. Which ones do you use? Here is my attempt to collect the 50 best and popular firefox extensions which make your browsing, downloading and navigation in Firefox as easy as possible, while harnessing the full power and features of Firefox.

This is an excellent resource page that has links and short reviews to some really useful, free programs.

There are a lot of great freeware products out there. Many are as good or even better than their commercial alternatives. This list features my personal pick of the “best of the best.”