SIW - System Info for Windows - everything you'll want to know about your system

Win 7 users - Right click desktop, select new folder, name it "Godmode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}", hit enter = everything you'll want to do to your system

Any recommendations for keeping an Audio diary that is more effective than using Sound Recorder every time?

Edit I just realised OneNote - which I highly recommend - has an insert Audio Recording option which is pretty handy

I have a movie in avi format on my comp. What I want to do is make an animated GIF of a 10ish second clip of it, and resize it into an avatar. What's the best free software to do that with?

I'm no expert and may be totally wrong here, but I think Gimp will do it.

Whats the best program for keeping your drivers up to date?

Free Internet filtering
http://www1.k9webprotection.com/

PS. Yes there are internet sites after porn is filtered out.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...&postcount=197

What is the best software to automatically batch identify a large number of MP3 files and properly format them with corrected data and album covers etc.

iTunes is not an option given the need for a credit card to register an account.

Digsby > Pidgin

http://musicbrainz.org/

level? Digsby is pretty awful iirc

Not a level, I couldn't get my AIM account to work with Pidgin. I'm not sure what Pidgin has to offer, but I have my MSN, AIM, and Yahoo messengers plus Yahoo mail, Gmail, Facebook, and Twitter on Digsby right now.

I did use Digsby for a while but it seemed quiye a drain on my pc/laptop and have just found pidgin so much better

This is why Digsby is junk, imo.

Let's walk through the install screen.

Here we have our first opt-out box.



This is the next screen you'll see. Where is the opt-out box? Just Decline and Accept? Most people will click Accept because they might think that clicking Decline will close the install.



Here's the third screen. Yet more items to opt-out of. Please note that the 3rd box grants Digsby permission to use your spare CPU cycles in grid computing.



And finally this is what your computer looks like if you don't opt out. New toolbar, new home page, new browser search module, and a new Firefox add-on.



I don't fault Digsby for trying to make money, but there is no reason to have three different opt-out screens. One of which I believe to be purposefully deceptive. At least they have cleaned up their act somewhat in this release. They used to bundle a lot more crapware.

yeah that is pretty awful.

lol, classic.

Wow, that is bad, I don't remember going through all that crap but I'm sure I did.

I just couldn't get AIM to work on Pidgin, that's one of the main reasons why I like Digsby more I guess.

what about DVD playback...just windows media player?

VLC or KMPlayer

Personally, VLC is nice to have on a flash drive where you might want to bring something with you to watch outside of home since you don't need codecs, at least for me anyway.

I think WMC is more lightweight and from what I read, there are other options, like KMplayer, Zoom player, etc, which get better reviews.

Don't get me wrong, I like VLC, but not as much as before, especially since it's been buggy for me on W7.

WMC=Windows Media Center? Imo, it's quite bloaty, all things considered. It doesn't play any format so you're basically forced to install ffdshow, Haali, and sometimes more stuff to make it usable.

The two best options are VLC and Media Player Classic Home Cinema iyam.

VLC's default settings don't work for every PC. Especially with older or uncommon GPU and drivers you might have to tweak settings manually. (This happened on my old D620 laptop with NVIDIA NVS graphics.) So what you're seeing could be expected behavior rather than bugs.

3after, I meant windows media player classic when is said WMC, sorry if I didn't make that clear. Yea, the home Cinemea is what I use and I think it's excellent.

My computer is i7, blah blah blah, it can handle it fine, so that isn't the issue. Dunno, I guess it's not a big deal, but yea, I prefer WMC over pretty much anything else for the time being.

Obivously I can't speak about your specific situation, but VLC only got GPU-assistance in version 1.1, and before that, it was all processed by the CPU. Thus, it shouldn't be affected by odd graphic cards problems.

I meant 1.1. btw, for anybody reading along: on Windows, you should only use 1.1 as all other official builds have known security holes

does anyone use gmail drive? It's supposedly a little app that allows you to use a gmail account as a storage drive. If it actually works that would be pretty cool.