Useful Software for Professional / Personal Use

Here is a generic fun post for our readers. Below are some software that help self-manage at home and also useful for enterprise level.

Virtualization Software’s for desktops

a)    VMware Workstation for Windows and Linux desktops

b)    Microsoft Hyper-V in Windows 8

c)    VMware Fusion for Apple Mac-OS

d)    Oracle Virtual Box

Accessing the Windows machine through remote (RDP Managers)

a)    Remote Desktop Manager (unlimited entries in free version)

b)    Royal TS (Free version limits to only #10 entries)

c)    mRemote

d)    mstsc/remote desktop connection

Web Browsers

a)    Default Microsoft Internet Explorer

b)    Google Chrome

c)    Mozilla Firefox

d)    Apple’s Safari

e)    Opera

Office Application Suite

a)    Microsoft Office latest version

b)    Apache office

Text Editors (for log analysis)

a)    Notepad2

b)    Notepad++

c)    Crimson Editor

PDF reader and editor Software

a)    Adobe Reader and/or Acrobat latest version

Media Players (for media lovers)

a)    VLC player for that to play most of the file types out there

b)    Real Player

c)    Windows Media classic player

OS and updates

a)    In case of Windows, Turn on Automatic updates

b)    Have all of the important and recommended updates installed as the first step

Security Software

a)    Antivirus Software: Like Symantec Endpoint Protection, MacAfee Virus Scan or free apps like AVAST, Microsoft Security essentials.

b)    Firewall Applications and any other security products

Browser plug-ins

a)    Adobe Flash

b)    Sun Java JRE (or have complete JDK installed)

c)    Microsoft Silverlight

d)    Macromedia ShockWave player

Download managers (for Home users)

a)    JDownloader (feature rich app and greatly simplifies larges number of files)

b)    Rdesc to auto download from most popular sites

c)    Free Download Manager for rest of sites

Archive Software

a)    7-zip (Open source)

b)    winrar

c)    winzip

Software Distribution (DVD writer or ISO creators)

a)    Roxio 2011 (comes with DVD writer, ISO creator, media player, image editor, etc,.)

b)    ISO buster to directly read/recover iso images (also enables reading .bin/.cue and many other files types) (Free)

c)    Daemon Tools Lite (Free for home users) to create virtual drives and mount iso image files

d)    Power ISO