When I switched to Mac, 1 thing I was worried was the availability of freeware apps since I use many freeware apps in Windows. A lot of Mac apps are shareware, but the availability of freeware apps is not as bad as I thought. Here's my Top 10 Mac freeware apps:
1. Firefox
Sure, Apple wants you to use Safari, but there is simply no substitute for the flexibility of Firefox and its extensions. Having used Firefox in Windows ever since it was called Firebird, the first thing I installed on my Mac was Firefox. Firefox 3 is an excellent browser. It might not be advertised to be as speedy as Safari, but it is secure, follows web standard, and extremely expandable with add-ons. Check my Top 5 Firefox add-ons.
2. XLD
Most users are fine using iTunes as their main CD-ripper and lossy encoder. However, iTunes was not good enough for me, considering I've been using EAC and Lame MP3 in Windows for years. XLD started as an encoder, and it supports .cue + wav image file, which is the way I backup my audio CDs. I used to use Max as the CD ripper on Mac, but now XLD will also function as a CD-ripper, able to rip a CD into a .cue + wav image file, and a secure ripper too! XLD uses the latest Lame MP3 encoder. Besides MP3, XLD also able to encode to AAC, Apple lossless, OGG, and FLAC. An excellent and must have tool!
3. MacMP3gain
The obvious Mac version of MP3gain, a utility useful in normalizing MP3 files. the Mac version has simpler GUI.
4. Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection
I'm using my iMac as my primary computer, but I also have a few Windows PCs. Wouldn't it be great if I can control those Windows PCs without leaving my Mac? That's what Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) is for. Simply enable remote desktop on the Windows machine, and you can log-in to the machine from MacOS. Note that remote desktop is only available in Windows XP Media Center & Professional, and Vista Business & Ultimate, not on XP Home nor Vista Home Premium & Basic. Another reason why I recommend people to get either Vista Business or Ultimate only. IMO, MS RDC is better than Leopard's screen sharing function. In RDC, I can have sounds played from the Windows PC to be played on my Mac, set a custom screen resolution, and the Windows PC is locked while RDC is connected. Another note is that if you want to control a Windows PC without keyboard and mouse, make sure it is connected via ethernet. If the Win PC is connected via wifi, you have to log-in on the actual Windows PC first (to load whatever drivers necessary for the wifi card) before RDC can connect to it.
5. SuperDuper
SuperDuper is a backup utility. It can create a bootable image of your Mac's hard-drive. Extremely useful for backing up. The free version is limited to creating a full image every single time, while the paid version will allow you to do a smart update (only backing up things that are changed), making the back up process faster. No biggie. I use the free SuperDuper to create a full image of my hard-drive once every couple months, while Time Machine does the daily backup.
6. Seashore
iPhoto is great to manage photos, and Apple's own Preview app in Leopard is powerful enough to crop/resize pictures. But what if you just want to add some text on a picture without using heavy duty programs like GIMP/Photoshop? Windows have MS Paint, a basic image editing program. Seashore is a similar program for the Mac. It's free!
7. Perian
Want to play Divx, xvid, AVI, and Matroska videos on the Mac? Look no further. Simply install Perian, and you can play those media in Quicktime. Simple and straight forward, unlike the official Divx codecs. Works in Frontrow too, but I find playing Matroska files via Frontrow is a bit dodgy and unstable.
8. XBMC
XBMC (XBox Media Center) started as a media player for a modded original Xbox. Now it's a multi-platform Media Center app, available for Windows, MacOS, Linux, and even Apple TV. If you don't like Frontrow, or want a more customizable media center program with better codec support, get XBMC. It is not as user friendly and the setup screens are a bit geeky, but its extensive codec support is worth it if you want to use your Mac as an HTPC.
9. Truecrypt
Heralded as the best and free encryption program. It's also available for Windows and Linux.
10. Handbrake
Need to encode videos for your iPod? Handbrake is perfect for the job. It has presets fro PSP, PS3, iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, etc. It uses x264, a free H.264 encoder, which I find to be pretty fast. It can create chapters that is compatible with iTunes and iPods, useful for long movies, concert videos, etc. The only downside is that I have yet to find a reliable DVD ripper for the Mac. Handbrake itself can rip DVDs, but I find to not work on most commercial DVDs I have. IMO DVDfab Decrypter to be the ebst DVD ripper, but it's Windows only.
Showing posts with label firefox. Show all posts
Showing posts with label firefox. Show all posts
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Friday, October 10, 2008
My Top 5 Firefox Add-ons
Add-ons (extensions) are the reason I use Firefox. There are times when I got tempted by other browsers (Safari, IE7, Chrome), but I always return to Firefox. These are my top 5 must have Firefox add-ons.
1. Adblock Plus
I understand that nothing comes free, and many "free" content on the net are supported by ads. Advertising is one thing, but I despise ads that are super intrusive. Blinking banners and long-loading-crash-prone-flash based ads are so common place now that they disrupt my internet activity. Not only that, they're using up my bandwidth and slowing down my browser. Enter Adblock. Right click on the annoying ad, and you can set up a wild-card filtering, and that ad (and all ads related to the wild-card criteria) won't show up anymore, forever. Of course, doing this one by one can be tedious, considering there are sites where there are too many banner ads around. Enter Adblock Plus. You can subscribe a list of pre-determined wild cards and voila, no more annoying ads. If there are legit elements that got blocked, you can simply whitelist them.
2. NoScript
A must have for anybody that are concern about security. There are too many web scripting exploits out there, and blocking one by one is tedious, if not impossible. NoScript will disable every scripting (java, flash, etc). Then, you can whitelist the webpages that you trust. In the beginning, it's somewhat annoying whitelisting websites since almost any websites now use some kind of scripting. Very useful when you're browsing questionable websites and for blocking sites that use script to plant tracking cookies. Coupled with Adblock Plus, you will experience a lean and safe web browsing environment.
3. Foxmark
Very useful if you have multiple PCs using Firefox. Foxmark will sync your Firefox bookmark to the cloud. When you have a new installation of Firefox on a new PC, simply install and log-in to Foxmark, and your bookmarks will downloaded and synced. I used to use Google's browser sync, which have more syncing features than just bookmarks. Alas, Google abandoned the project when Firefox hit 3.0.
4. Screengrab
Let's say there's a part of a website that you want to save, or you just bought something online and want to save the receipt. Saving the HTML sometimes is a hit & miss, especially on SSL pages. Printing the page is a waste of paper. Enter Screengrab. With Screengrab, you can save a part or the complete page of a website as an image file. No worries of different HTML rendering or wasted paper. Extremely useful!
5. Rikaichan
Recommended by a Yan Dao. Ever browse a Japanese website, and wonder what is the meaning of certain words, but don't want to keep copying/pasting them to a translator? Install Rikaichan, and the Japanese dictionary. When enabled, it will automatically show the possible translations of the word that your mouse pointer is on.
Let's compare the other browsers. I don't see any capabilities of the above possible on IE7 or Chrome (not yet). There is Adblock for Safari, and you can sync bookmarks using MobileMe (not free). Still, I find Firefox to be the most flexible. Firefox maybe slow at times compared to the other browsers, but the add-ons are worth it.
1. Adblock Plus
I understand that nothing comes free, and many "free" content on the net are supported by ads. Advertising is one thing, but I despise ads that are super intrusive. Blinking banners and long-loading-crash-prone-flash based ads are so common place now that they disrupt my internet activity. Not only that, they're using up my bandwidth and slowing down my browser. Enter Adblock. Right click on the annoying ad, and you can set up a wild-card filtering, and that ad (and all ads related to the wild-card criteria) won't show up anymore, forever. Of course, doing this one by one can be tedious, considering there are sites where there are too many banner ads around. Enter Adblock Plus. You can subscribe a list of pre-determined wild cards and voila, no more annoying ads. If there are legit elements that got blocked, you can simply whitelist them.
2. NoScript
A must have for anybody that are concern about security. There are too many web scripting exploits out there, and blocking one by one is tedious, if not impossible. NoScript will disable every scripting (java, flash, etc). Then, you can whitelist the webpages that you trust. In the beginning, it's somewhat annoying whitelisting websites since almost any websites now use some kind of scripting. Very useful when you're browsing questionable websites and for blocking sites that use script to plant tracking cookies. Coupled with Adblock Plus, you will experience a lean and safe web browsing environment.
3. Foxmark
Very useful if you have multiple PCs using Firefox. Foxmark will sync your Firefox bookmark to the cloud. When you have a new installation of Firefox on a new PC, simply install and log-in to Foxmark, and your bookmarks will downloaded and synced. I used to use Google's browser sync, which have more syncing features than just bookmarks. Alas, Google abandoned the project when Firefox hit 3.0.
4. Screengrab
Let's say there's a part of a website that you want to save, or you just bought something online and want to save the receipt. Saving the HTML sometimes is a hit & miss, especially on SSL pages. Printing the page is a waste of paper. Enter Screengrab. With Screengrab, you can save a part or the complete page of a website as an image file. No worries of different HTML rendering or wasted paper. Extremely useful!
5. Rikaichan
Recommended by a Yan Dao. Ever browse a Japanese website, and wonder what is the meaning of certain words, but don't want to keep copying/pasting them to a translator? Install Rikaichan, and the Japanese dictionary. When enabled, it will automatically show the possible translations of the word that your mouse pointer is on.
Let's compare the other browsers. I don't see any capabilities of the above possible on IE7 or Chrome (not yet). There is Adblock for Safari, and you can sync bookmarks using MobileMe (not free). Still, I find Firefox to be the most flexible. Firefox maybe slow at times compared to the other browsers, but the add-ons are worth it.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Playing with Windows Vista
I got to play with a new Windows Vista 64-bit system.
Quick first impression:
-Why is it so hard to find out my IP address? In Vista, I have to open up the Network & Sharing center, and click on the small obscure "View status" text to get the same result as right clicking on the same icon and choose properties in XP.
-The "start menu" seems to take too much space. Sure, you can now type in the program's name in the search box ala Mac OS' spotlight, but the point of GUI is to point & click, not type. There is an option to use the classic start menu, but it's less pretty. I guess it just takes time to get used to.
-I wanted to enable AHCI on the BIOS. Bam, Vista gave me BSOD. WTF? Apparently it's a well-known issue. Follow what Microsoft says to fix it. (change the BIOS setting to IDE, do the registry edit, and re-enable AHCI). And yes, Vista still use the dreaded registry.
-Settings for simple things like changing screen resolution, uninstalling programs, etc seem to be scattered all over the place. Again, takes time to get used to from XP.
-UAC is super ANNOYING! Sure, OS X has the same system, but it never pop up as often as Vista's UAC. On the bright side, with OS X, I have to re-enter my admin name & password, while with UAC, as long as I logged in as an admin, all I need is to click the continue button. Still, it pops up too often.
-Start-up can be fast/slow. There are times when I rebooted the system, after going through the BIOS screens, the system seems stalled. No hard-drive access. At first I thought it crashed. I reset the PC, and bam, Vista yelled at me that it wasn't shut-down properly. Another time this happened, I waited, Vista loading screen later pops up. Dunno if this is the problem with Vista or the hardware.
-During the logging-in process, the desktop + icons almost instantly showed up after I entered my password! (Although I knew Vista is still loading by watching the hard-drive access and the tray icons loading one-by-one.) Still, it's a nice change. With XP, even on a fairly good system, sometimes it takes quite a while for Windows to show the desktop and load the icons.
-Too much eye candy. I like the transparency, but the fading-in/out is too annoying, and seems to "slow" down the UI as the fading speed is too slow. Good thing they can be disabled. Where's the TweakUI for Vista 64?
-Flip3D? Kinda useless. OS X's expose is much more useful.
-Windows update has its own app, no need to load IE first anymore. Yay! And Vista keeps track of the updates itself, so no more long waits for the Windows update website to figure out what updates I need, like it was in XP.
So, no wonder people are not liking Vista. It's quite a big change in the UI. Moving from 98 to 2k to XP is easy. Most of the settings are in the same place. Not with Vista. Whether it's for the better or not, who knows, but Windows 7 will highly likely follow the same setup as Vista, so I guess users better adjust to it.
One thing I learned from this process is about Firefox. I have Firefox on my Mac to save my login passwords. I want the newly installed Firefox on Vista to have the same info, without having me remembering/retyping all the passwords. Apparently it's just a simple file copy of 2 files. Read it here. Don't bother with extensions, etc that may/may not work. Just copy & paste the 2 files (key3.db & signons3.txt) and it's good.
So, why Vista? If you buy any new windows PC, you'll get Vista. No point in crying to get XP. No, I still use my iMac + Leopard. But there are things that are still best done on a windows machine.
1. Bittorrent. No uTorrent for Mac OS.
2. DVD ripping. DVDFab HD decrypter is a freeware for windows, and it's awesome. No solution exist yet for Mac OS.
3. Games. Yes, I do still have some PC games that I want to play.
Now, there are different flavors of Vista. I got the 64bit ultimate, and IMO everybody should at least get the business version. Why? Remote desktop and Volume shadow copy/previous versions. Neither of those are available with Home premium and Basic. Remote desktop is very useful in any setup that have more than 1 PC networked. Volume shadow copy/previous versions is a life saver! They're enabled by default, and doesn't require an additional drive (unlike Leopard's Time Machine). Only a couple hours into playing with the system, I already had to use the feature since I accidentally deleted some folders (I'm used to press shift+delete in deletin stuff in windows). IMO, MS should just make 2 versions of Vista, Ultimate as the Home version, and Business.
We'll see how it goes. So far, I think Vista is okay. The main barrier of entry is adjusting to the new UI and control panel stuff. After that, on a well equipped system (dual core, min 2GB of RAM, dedicated video card), I think Vista will run fine, and is the obvious next step of Windows before Windows 7.
Quick first impression:
-Why is it so hard to find out my IP address? In Vista, I have to open up the Network & Sharing center, and click on the small obscure "View status" text to get the same result as right clicking on the same icon and choose properties in XP.
-The "start menu" seems to take too much space. Sure, you can now type in the program's name in the search box ala Mac OS' spotlight, but the point of GUI is to point & click, not type. There is an option to use the classic start menu, but it's less pretty. I guess it just takes time to get used to.
-I wanted to enable AHCI on the BIOS. Bam, Vista gave me BSOD. WTF? Apparently it's a well-known issue. Follow what Microsoft says to fix it. (change the BIOS setting to IDE, do the registry edit, and re-enable AHCI). And yes, Vista still use the dreaded registry.
-Settings for simple things like changing screen resolution, uninstalling programs, etc seem to be scattered all over the place. Again, takes time to get used to from XP.
-UAC is super ANNOYING! Sure, OS X has the same system, but it never pop up as often as Vista's UAC. On the bright side, with OS X, I have to re-enter my admin name & password, while with UAC, as long as I logged in as an admin, all I need is to click the continue button. Still, it pops up too often.
-Start-up can be fast/slow. There are times when I rebooted the system, after going through the BIOS screens, the system seems stalled. No hard-drive access. At first I thought it crashed. I reset the PC, and bam, Vista yelled at me that it wasn't shut-down properly. Another time this happened, I waited, Vista loading screen later pops up. Dunno if this is the problem with Vista or the hardware.
-During the logging-in process, the desktop + icons almost instantly showed up after I entered my password! (Although I knew Vista is still loading by watching the hard-drive access and the tray icons loading one-by-one.) Still, it's a nice change. With XP, even on a fairly good system, sometimes it takes quite a while for Windows to show the desktop and load the icons.
-Too much eye candy. I like the transparency, but the fading-in/out is too annoying, and seems to "slow" down the UI as the fading speed is too slow. Good thing they can be disabled. Where's the TweakUI for Vista 64?
-Flip3D? Kinda useless. OS X's expose is much more useful.
-Windows update has its own app, no need to load IE first anymore. Yay! And Vista keeps track of the updates itself, so no more long waits for the Windows update website to figure out what updates I need, like it was in XP.
So, no wonder people are not liking Vista. It's quite a big change in the UI. Moving from 98 to 2k to XP is easy. Most of the settings are in the same place. Not with Vista. Whether it's for the better or not, who knows, but Windows 7 will highly likely follow the same setup as Vista, so I guess users better adjust to it.
One thing I learned from this process is about Firefox. I have Firefox on my Mac to save my login passwords. I want the newly installed Firefox on Vista to have the same info, without having me remembering/retyping all the passwords. Apparently it's just a simple file copy of 2 files. Read it here. Don't bother with extensions, etc that may/may not work. Just copy & paste the 2 files (key3.db & signons3.txt) and it's good.
So, why Vista? If you buy any new windows PC, you'll get Vista. No point in crying to get XP. No, I still use my iMac + Leopard. But there are things that are still best done on a windows machine.
1. Bittorrent. No uTorrent for Mac OS.
2. DVD ripping. DVDFab HD decrypter is a freeware for windows, and it's awesome. No solution exist yet for Mac OS.
3. Games. Yes, I do still have some PC games that I want to play.
Now, there are different flavors of Vista. I got the 64bit ultimate, and IMO everybody should at least get the business version. Why? Remote desktop and Volume shadow copy/previous versions. Neither of those are available with Home premium and Basic. Remote desktop is very useful in any setup that have more than 1 PC networked. Volume shadow copy/previous versions is a life saver! They're enabled by default, and doesn't require an additional drive (unlike Leopard's Time Machine). Only a couple hours into playing with the system, I already had to use the feature since I accidentally deleted some folders (I'm used to press shift+delete in deletin stuff in windows). IMO, MS should just make 2 versions of Vista, Ultimate as the Home version, and Business.
We'll see how it goes. So far, I think Vista is okay. The main barrier of entry is adjusting to the new UI and control panel stuff. After that, on a well equipped system (dual core, min 2GB of RAM, dedicated video card), I think Vista will run fine, and is the obvious next step of Windows before Windows 7.
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