The Family Blog

My experience with operating systems and computers is happily pretty varied. The first computer we had at home was a Texas Instruments keyboard terminal-type computer that you could hook a tape recorder up to when you wanted to save your work. My most recent computer (via work) is a MacBook Pro Core Duo that I thoroughly enjoy. In between, I was a Windows guy high school through college when I stared to learn Linux. In college I used Windows, Linux, and Solaris. When I graduated and went to work, I used Linux and Solaris, and Windows only as necessary for particular applications. When Apple switched their MacOS to a BSD core (it is linux like) I started watching them and when my trusty dell laptop died a few years ago, I ran out and got a Mac that I dual-boot Windows and MacOS. Anyway, the point of all this is that for quite some time, I’ve been non-windows focused. Recently I visited one of my favorite blogs Life Hacker after being away for a while. There were a number of top 10 lists that I looked at and I found some really cool utilities. I thought I’d post about them, just in case you happen to be interested.

• WinDirStat is a really cool little app that scans your disk and gives you a graphical breakdown of the contents, color-coded by categories. I’m always running out of space and this little app showed me exactly why. Plus, it is cute
• TaskSwitchXP is a replacement for the normal windows Alt-Tab functionality that lets you switch between apps. It shows you a picture of the app as you alt-tab through them. It is freaking sweet.
• Launchy is an application that scans all your program shortcuts and then gives you a little windows to enter their names. This lets you open new programs without using the mouse/trackpad at all. For someone who spent years using a CLI, I’m psyched to start using this more. I know other people use tools like this, maybe Slickrun, but for now, this does all that I need. If I need more functionality, I’ll open up Cygwin and rawk the bash shell!
• ALZip is a replacement for the included Windows Unzip capability. Windows unzip basically only understands straight zip format. ALZip gives you a graphical interface for many more formats. To me, the GUI is strongly reminiscent of WinZip (complete with the little tips at startup). Since WinZip technically charges you, I’ll try ALZip for a while to see how it turns out.