More On Keeping Your Computer Super Operational

As I was thinking about this I stumbled upon this link at http://del.icio.us/popular/ : http://killspyware.shorturl.com/ . It explains everything I was stressing in the other post about this, and then some. Today I am going to tell you about my add/remove programs function, and tell you all the programs that are in it. I know what every single one does. You too should know what all of your programs do, and why they are there. It's a pretty good way to decide what is spyware and what is not, if you are having a problem.

Action Replay XBOX 1.31: This is something I used to soft mod my Xbox. I don't really need it any more, but I haven't uninstalled it. As you can see, I haven't used it in more than a month. The last time it was used was to mod a friend's Xbox.

Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Professional: Adobe's program to read / make PDF files

Adobe Photoshop CS: Adobe's excellent image editing software. Note: I suck with this program.

AOL Instant Messenger: lol

Audioscrobbler Component for Foobar 2000: This is what gives me those audioscrobbler statistics I have blogged about in the past. It is a plugin that reads what songs are playing and sends information to the audioscrobbler website (http://www.audioscrobbler.com)

BitComet: I have blogged about this. It's a pretty good Bittorrent client.

CCleaner: This was discussed in the previous entry.

CDex Audio Extraction: A great and free program that allows you to rip CDs and encode them into different compressed format, most notably MP3. Lots of other formats supported as well though.

Copernic Desktop Search: I don't use this too much, but desktop search programs are pretty cool for us Windows users. It's just a way of searching files that is faster and works better than the built in Windows Search.

Craxtion4: I use this to extract Xbox ISOs.

DAEMON Tools: I use this to mount disc images to virtual drives.

DeadAIM: An addon for AIM that gives me tabbed browsing among other things. The tabs are most important though.

DefilerPak 1.19: A package of video / audio codecs that let me view most of the popular formats out there.

FlashFXP v3: File Transfer Protocol client.

Foobar2000: This is an amazing and highly configurable audio player for Windows.

GetDiz 3.0: NFO text format viewer.

Google Gmail Notifier: Gmail icon in my system tray to alert me to new mail.

Hello: Chat (rarely used) and Blogger image uploader.

IconPackager: Handy software that allows me to change default icons.

iPod for Windows 2005-01-11: Software for iPod.

J2SE Runtime Environment 5.0 Update 1: This is like Java or something lol

Ok, enough of this. By now you get the picture. If you're really interested in knowing EVERYTHING I have installed, email me and I'll be happy to tell you all about it.

The point is, I know what everything on my computer does. I can tell you off the top of my head, which is what I just did. I knew why I had those programs, and why they were useful to me.

• If you are the sole user of a computer, try to know what everything does.
  

• If you are unsure about a program, try to do a google search on its name and find out if it's a malicious program or something you need to keep.
  

• Try not to have more than one program that does the same exact thing.
  

• Try to use a program that suits your needs and your style well without giving you too much grief.

In many cases there are a LOT of different products out there and a lot of them are out there for the taking, so take advantage of them! Believe me, your computer does not have to run like a broken piece of shit. Unless of course it's really broken, in which case you need to get that piece of shit fixed. You own your computer, do not let it own you.