The Mentat Bundle

One of my favorite blogs, Lifehacker, had published a software download bundle for their readers.  It’s got a lot of interesting programs you would want to use to make your PC or laptop more useful and for you to be more productive or entertained.  The list, however, doesn’t have everything I need for my purposes.  So here’s my version of the software bundle you might want to have.  Everything you’ll need for legit and free.  Most of these are also opensource.  No need for piracy here, folks.

Work / Productivity
OpenOffice – A great office suite for productivity.  It has built in compatibility with MS Office documents and is just as robust and easy to use.  Making PDF documents is just as easy as it’s also built-in.

Inkscape – A vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to
Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X.  For all your drawing or painting requirements.

The Gimp – Short for GNU Image Manipulation Program.  Not just a worthy substitute for Photoshop.  It is my replacement for Photoshop.  Plus it’s got plenty of tutorials online.

Foxit Reader – A light and easy to use PDF document reader that replaces Adobe Acrobat Reader.  It’s definitely not a resource hog.  If you want an even smaller yet full featured PDF reader, there’s CoolPDF for less than 700kb download.

PDF Creator – A printer driver that takes anything you want to print from any program and outputs it as a PDF file.  Just make sure you select PDF Creator as your printer when you print.

Firefox – I’m putting this one on the productivity part of the bundle because I do a lot of work from my browser.  For example, if I want to use a lightweight office document editor and then share it with someone afterward, I use Google Docs.  I don’t use an email client, either.  Gmail is my email client of choice.

Communications
Pidgin – All around versatile communicator for your online life.  Supports numerous instant messaging protocols and networks.  I use it to keep track of multiple IM logins.  But it has no voice capability, though.

Skype – This is what I use for voice and video calls.  It works even better without video if your PC is slow.  It’s free for PC to PC calling.  However, since it’s voicemailbox comes at a price, I sometimes prefer to use Yahoo Messenger itself for voicemail needs.  Yahoo Messenger sends my voicemail to my Gmail as an MP3 attachment which makes it very convenient for me.

Utilities
Enso – I am a keyboard whore.  I much prefer to navigate using the keyboard as much as I can and ignore the trackpad or mouse altogether.  This is a nifty program for me to feel like a hacker, typing furiously away at my keyboard without need of a pointing device.

7-zip – I have not encountered a compressed file that this little program can’t open.  Zip?  No problem.  Rar?  Sure.  Cab?  Easy.  It also supports encryption if you don’t want your compressed files opened by just anyone.

Everything – Small and fast search utility to replace Windows’s default search program.  How fast?  Well, how fast can you type?

uTorrent – It’s light and easy on system resources with a whole load of features you can’t find anywhere else.  You’ll even have the capability to remotely start or stop torrents over the net.

Revo Uninstaller – Windows is definitely not a tidy housekeeper.  This little program will uninstall everything about a program.  Including the orphan files.  Leaves no trace of the programs you kill.  The perfect software assassin.

FastCopy – Replaces Windows’s default copy/move program and allows you to customize the context (right-click) menu for the Explorer.

ImgBurn – CD/DVD/Blu-Ray writing software.  Write an image file from a disc.  Write an image file to disc.  Build an image file for later writing to disc.  Makes everything so easy.  Use this to replace whatever came with your PC/Laptop and you won’t regret it.

Photos and Videos
Picasa – Cool image and video viewing program.  You’ll be able to find image files on your computer that you’ve forgotten about.  Plus it does quick work of uploading your pictures to your Picasa albums.  I also use this for quick photo edits where The Gimp’s powers are not required.

SMPlayer – A multiplatform video player based off the MPlayer software from Linux.  It’s versatile and can playback anything you throw at it.  I’ve not encountered a video or audio format it can’t play.  Yet.  Plus it allows a slew of keyboard commands to be customized.  Keyboard whore, remember?  But, just in case, I still have VLC as a backup.  Which hasn’t been used for over a year now.

Music
Songbird – Almost an iTunes replacement.  If you don’t own an iPod like me, this is definitely a program to have to manage those gigabytes of music you have.  Works almost like iTunes, too.

File Backups
Filezilla – This is an FTP client, actually.  Free, of course.  I don’t use other paid services to backup my files though it might be more convenient.  Since my server host has given me ginormous amounts of storage, I figured I’d use it for off-site backup.  Just have to make sure my subscription’s paid on-time, everytime.

Security
KeePass – This is the program you trust to keep all your passwords safe and sound.  It’s got lots of plugins for different browsers so you can login to your online accounts with ease.  Now all you have to remember is one password.

AVG Free – Anti-viral software.  Free.  ‘Nuff said.

SpyBot Search and Destroy – The list goes on and on so I also recommend you read their website.

Ad Aware – A crossover for SpyBot S&D but also a must have for your system’s health and safety.  Especially if you use the internet for p0rn.

Sandboxie – So you see a new, untested, program you want to get a shot at but not sure about how your system will react to it.  You run it sandboxed, of course.  This program prevents whatever program you run in it from touching your harddrive and your system’s existing settings.  If you don’t like the program just end the sandbox session and delete.  All gone, system back to the way it was.  Exactly.

TrueCrypt – Free, opensource, and very easy to use.  If the onsite documentation is not enough for you, there’s tons of how-to’s available on the web.  Google it.  Encrypt your system and data from curious, prying eyes.  Your data is the most important part of your PC.  Don’t let anyone else fool you into thinking otherwise.

I wanted to put everything into a zip file for you to easily download this stuff in one go but thought it best not to.  By providing you the links you can be guaranteed of getting the freshest versions available.

So enjoy, have fun, and stay safe.  The net can be a jungle.

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