5 software I cant live without on my laptop (Windows) – A look inside the self confessed geeks laptop and mindset

Hello fellas,

I purchased a new HP DM-3210AU machine in October, an amazing piece of hardware and one of the highest rated netbook/sub notebook of all time, and yes, I am quite impressed with its performance and capabilities. I finished my share of Call of Duty 4 on it, prepared GNS3 Topologies over it with ease and the machine chomped away everything like a no brainer. In case, ou have been wondering where I had been, you might like to read about it or want to join the Facebook page where I post more frequently .

Well..continuing to my desktop,here is how it looks : ) .

Well..then out of blue (and I think it was Redbull) I decided to write an article on 5 software I cant live without on my new machine , which allows me to simultaneously multitask on it with ease and efficiency. Consider it as a follow up of Top 10 software I cant live without on my PC.

Windows Live Mail

Now here is one of the good things Microsoft has invented, the next generation of Outlook express, simple, easy to use, intuitive and FAST. Though you will argue why I don't use Mozilla Thunderbird over it , well..Mozilla thunderbird is almost takes the same amount of memory as its Windows counterpart, but is twice as slow in terms of interface, and speed matters to me much while checking emails, I do hope you will agree with me. Although I do hate the calendar feature of live (which is a pain due to various issues) but still, it does the primary job it was conceived for.

Download it from here.

Virtual Wifi Router

Again, an amazing piece of software that frees you from the headaches of Android Adhoc wifi patching and the likes of purchasing buggy paid software like Connectify for creating wifi network with ease. I was fed up of creating adhoc networks on Windows 7 and check that my HTC Wildfire (Cyanogen mod 7, version 2.3.7) was not able to properly detect it, there came Virtual Wifi Router to the rescue and trust me, its the best Wifi Network sharing software you will ever get. Highly recommended !!

Download Virtual Wifi Router

K-Lite Mega Codec Pack

Power user friendly yet easy to install , this codec pack will just blow you away, no need to install any other x-y-z player to do the job if your windows media player can play everything (i actually like to keep my laptop clean and use it with minimum software) from the most popular formats to arcane ones..and even allows for great amount of tweaking using its ffdshow interface. link it up with Virtualdub and you have a true gem. Included tools like Gspot, mediainfo and more add the cherry to the already delicious cake . Again, no need of VLC (unless you are into multicast streaming, to confess, i am not much of a VLC fan) and no need of anything else, one codec pack to rule them all : ) .

Download from here

GNS3

I dont think I need to elaborate upon it, since the time I have joined Tulip Telecom, it has been a part and parcel o my life, simulation of complex network topologies and whacky late night experiments (you know about them if you have been following the facebook page) are all possible because of this open source tool. Be it Cisco or juniper, it handles it with ease and the best part is that its hackable, configurable and programmable till the last drop. I have my custom version running over windows (self compiled :) ), pair it with putty connection manager and you are good to go. Also, you might want to look at sample GNS3 tutorials I posted at Prohack or more at the Facebook page.

Download it from here

Google Chrome

Now again..love it or hate it, yet I find chrome as indispensible as a browser, I had issues with Mozilla Firefox (old memory bastard) and Internet Explorer 9 (old bastard), Opera is a favourite but again, I had some issues with it again (opera link issues, broken plugins) , so I finally settled on chrome for general browsing and acceptable response times, but when it comes to testing some web based apps, i jump to Opera for the same for its intuitiveness. Trust me, when it comes to choose a browser, i call it as a choice between evils. So go with the lesser one Open-mouthed smile . You might also want to look at Google Chrome Easter eggs Smile