Or call it “The must have softwares/utilities on Windows XP/Vista/7 old or fresh”. One thing about softwares in Windows is; it dominates by Microsoft products which were much inferior than readily available alternative software out there. Namingly; Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player, though many Windows users never know of such better software out there. Of course, you can’t argue about the Office products from Microsoft which is far better than the free OpenOffice suite. Well, that’s the difference between a paid and free product, what can you ask more? Anyway, this topic is not about paid software. Let’s see what software you can replace on your Windows freely. By the way, you’ll be amazed on how great the alternative software compared to Windows’ one.

Internet browser

According to Google(the Chrome OS introduction video), internet browser is the most used and the most important software on your computer right now. Which is quite true indeed; you check mails, online shopping, chatting(web messenger), blogs, Youtube, Facebook…basically your most active time was on the browser.

Internet Explorer is still the most used internet browser since the demise of Netscape. Every Windows OS is bundled with Internet Explorer. This is the very sole reason why Netscape wasn’t able to compete with Internet Explorer back during the dial up days, it was too slow to download an alternative browser. Which eventually leads Microsoft into antitrust lawsuit from the US government.

This doesn’t mean Internet Explorer is the best internet browser here. There are few browser which is far better than the one comes from the Windows installation DVD. Opera, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. All simply faster and gives better user experience than the Internet Explorer.

While Opera is the fastest browser, I still prefers Buy “”, Buy “”, Buy “” Without Prescription Google “” generic reviews Chrome for its simplicity and compatibility. Firefox is out of my browser recommendation list as it has become more like a bloatware and also its memory leak problem.

Why Google Chrome?

• Startup almost instantaneously. Once clicked, it launches in a second. Comparing to Opera, Firefox or Internet Explorer. Chrome wins hands down in this category.
• Fast loading a.k.a fast scripting engine. Web pages now were loaded with tonnes of multimedia content which uses heavy Javascripts programming.
• Multitab in multitask mode. This might be too techie-term here. Let me explain a little in layman’s. Each new tabs that you opened is an “individual” Chrome. Once that tab crashed (mostly caused by Flash), you don’t have to restart the whole browser and loses your half edited mail,Facebook messages or blog editing in other tabs. You can simply just close that individual tab and the rest of the tab remained uninterrupted.
• Loads of plugins and customizable theme. Go to Google Chrome Plugins and it explains all. The Gmail plugin is really a big winner here as it notifies any incoming mail with a cute animation. See below.

Convincing enough to leave your Internet Explorer behind? Download Google Chrome here.

Media Player

Windows Media Player(WMP) is great, only for playing musics. Playing DivX, Mp4, XviD videos is not possible with WMP without a plugin update. Even with the plugins, is still not a great video player. Basic video functions like changing aspect ratio and post processing is not even found in WMP. And just like most softwares, WMP has evolved into a bloatware as well. It runs slower even on a fast machine than the older version, and it gets slower for each iteration of the new WMP.

Earlier last year, I introduced GOM player, a multipurpose player which plays most audio and video codec. It was a good media player, I use it to play FLV video files which I downloaded over from YouTube and as well as some MP4 and WMV videos. It is a good alternative video player to WMP.

GOM Player, however is just the alternative’s alternative player for me. Confusing? My main video player is VLC. I have to say, this is the best video player ever. While Media Player Classic comes close to VLC functionality, i’d still prefer VLC over its small, sleek and yet intuitive interface.

Apart from the fact that it plays almost any video and audio codecs, it is also a very efficient video player. It uses very little of your RAM and CPU timing. Playing a video which normally needs 30-40% of CPU usage, VLC only needs 1-10%.

The best part of VLC? It doesn’t even need installation. You can even copy the whole installation folder/directory of VLC to your thumbdrive. Bring it to the office or computer lab, you can play almost any video or audio over there.

So, why is it my alternative’s alternative player for me? That’s because of the drawbacks of VLC. It doesn’t play FLV videos from YouTube nicely, the same goes for WMV files. For FLV files, you can’t even move the slider to fast forward the video and for WMV, the video doesn’t produced nicely when you move the slider to fast forward.

Another drawback for VLC, the latest version of VLC has become a bloatware. Reading this article till this stage, you might ask, What is bloatware? Bloatware is a software that has integrated with more functionalities(some were not useful) than the previous versions which inadvertently uses more resource.

Therefore, this is the download link for old version of VLC. The one sitting on my PC right now is 0.8.6i. This is the version which I recommend most.

Better than Windows Media Player? You’ll never watch video over Windows Media Player once you tried VLC.

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