figured i might as well share with others what i consider to be my "cant live without" and some other "use frequently and wont willingly uninstall" apps that i have come across so that maybe someone else will feel that joy joy feeling in the bottom of their cold black heart....

all of these apps are completely free to use (with the exception of AtGuard...which is in a bit of a grey area because the company who owned it went bankrupt and all thats left is an unsupported app that hasnt been updated for 4 years...but still kicks the crap out of whatever yer using)

i will do my best to give some Q and A on the howto on alot of these, but remember, im not tech support and chances are neither are the applications authors (as is the way with alot of freeware) so...as with anything in life...your mileage may vary (alot in some cases)...

order of importance (to me at least)

AtGuard
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This is IMHO the only firewall i will ever trust on any rig ever, im pretty sure its public domain considering the company that owned it went south back around 1999 and this last revision has been floating around the internet kept alive by peeps who know just how good it is...

a word of warning, it will ONLY work if XP is SP1, dont even try it otherwise...

http://www.geocities.com/atguard3222000/gpa_ag322.zip
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IZarc
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A complete replacement for all compression formats....seriously...that uses an almost identical interface to Winzip...allows you to open any compressed file and convert it to any compressed format...supports spanning and encrypting and password protecting...if you have ever had to download more than 1 or 2 different archiving apps to open 1 or 2 diff files, and felt the frustration of crappy or different interfaces....this is for you...

http://www.webattack.com/download/dlizarc.html
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Tesseract
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Alot of network monitoring apps claim to be alot of things, contain stuff you will prolly never use, and are just a plain pain in the ass to use....this one isnt....it runs in the systray, is small, stable, easy to read and use, and allows immediate WHOIS lookup at the right click of the mouse...found myself using this in tandem with AtGuard alot and its saved me a million times from accidentally allowing the rules assistant to trust the wrong connections (due to easy whois lookup and hostname resolution)...

http://www.webattack.com/download/dltesseract.html
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AllSnap
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show of hands of people who would like to make their windows and desktop apps *snap* to the edge of other windows and desktop the same way winamp does....wow....all 3 of you....oh well, thats what this little app does, and it does it well...
not very useful in theory...but for some reason it makes arranging and manipulating my desktop much nicer, and allows you to line up IM's and downloads and even monitoring apps in a nice row...

http://cad.f1-network.de/deu/link/asnap125.exe
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Speed Fan
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without a doubt the most complete system information and advanced hardware tweaking tool available that will run in windows...gives cpu speed, temperatures (cpu, system, hdd, any other diodes on winbond or whatever monitoring chip your mobo might have), has advanced overclocking features for many motherboards, automatic fan control (?), S.M.A.R.T. diagnostic with overall drive health and performance, and DRAM info along with flow charts for all system statistics that might change over time...

http://www.webattack.com/download/dlspeedfan.html
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I WILL BE EDITING THIS POST OFTEN

This deserves a rep point

hey, great post, i was wondering, do you know any app that i could use to mess with people when they bring there comp over, like when there hooked up to my network, open cd rom trays and stuff. thanks and again, great post

without revealing too much...what you are looking for is called a remote administration server and client....put simply, one makes the host computer Jenna Jameson, and the other Ron Jeremy....trojan and remote....two files for all intents...

you install the server on the host computer (noob at lan party)

you start the remote and specify his local IP (or external IP if using this over the internet)

and the fun ensues....considering the program below not only give you control of alot of vital functions....but also displays his desktop in a convinient window for you....and you get to manipulate it as though it was your very own all the way to him freaking out over his mouse moving on its own...

heres a free one from snapfiles, if you want a retail one, get Remote Anything...

http://www.webattack.com/download/dltightvnc.html
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I WILL BE EDITING THIS POST OFTEN[/QUOTE]

Great finds...I look foward to more of your input.

Jazz