Favorite Files

1. BetterJPEG
2. FastStone Image Viewer
3. Free Launch Bar
4. Maxthon (v2)
5. Mozilla Firefox (v2) for Windows
6. Mozilla Thunderbird (v3.1) for Windows

Recent Posts

1. 
   Review - Opera for Windows

   9.22 Build 8796 Beta (Jul 7, 2007)

   Constantly innovating, getting better all the time. I keep trying other browsers for the odd 'must have' feature, but I always go back to Opera after a few minutes...
   
   I'd like to see improved middle click on the personal bar to open all links in a folder.

2. 
   Review - BetterJPEG

   1.5.0.0 Beta (Jan 3, 2006)

   New beta is getting better all the time.
   
   One thing I'd like to see is a toggle button on the crop toolbar to allow/disallow crops outside the image. It's a pain having to go back and forth in the preferences.

3. 
   Review - FastStone Image Viewer

   2.26 Beta 2 (Oct 10, 2005)

   hurzx - I'm not gonna say that FIW is bad...
   
   So why give it one 'star' to drive down it's rating?
   
   The rating should be based on the software and not personal preferance for another package. XnView is only free for the basic version while Faststone is free for all non-comercial uses.

4. 
   Review - OpenOffice.org for Windows

   2.0 RC2 (Oct 9, 2005)

   For the money (i.e. Free), a very good package. I'm not comparing it to MS Office (which I've use for years and use at work), but for most people I think it does everything they would want to do with an office suite.
   
   geekboy2000 - I have a colleague with Office 2003 who can't even open a doucment I created in Office 2000... I think Microsoft will be moveing to new (default) file formats very soon to prevent people accessing their files as easily.

5. 
   Review - BetterJPEG

   1.3.9.0 Beta (Mar 7, 2005)

   BetterJPEG is good at what it does. I use it as the initial program I use having taken the pictures off my camera. I crop to 4x6 and use read eye reduction before saving copies to the same folder as the originals.
   
   I only fire up PSP9 if they need to be messed around with prior to sending to Shutterfly for printing, due to the JPEG degradation.
   
   Saving all modified pictures in a lossless format is not on if you have an overactive 2 year old, and an even more overactive - and shutter happy - wife ;)
   
   A features I like to see would be the 'Save As' name having _crop added rather than _copy if a crop has been performed, and _re if only red-eye had been performed, and even automatically making the save a 'Save As' if the image had been modified - I never want to modify the content of the original.
   
   Overall, well worth the money.