How Computer Software Has Changed, Sort of

I’ve been cleaning out my computer a bit, mostly uninstalling programs I don’t use anymore. Amazing how many programs I had installed. For some odd reason started to thinking about how things have changed for me throughout the years on how and what kind of software I use. Back in the day my first computer was a Commodore Vic-20 and there were some programs that you could buy mostly in cartridge form, but I wasn’t interested in any. I mostly spent my time learning how to program the Vic-20, at first and the reason why I wanted a computer in the first place was to write my own games but how that changed. It wasn’t long I took a real interest in writing utilities and things just went from there for me. As for video games I would I rarely ever bought any for the computer, I mostly bought games for at first Atari 2600, Nintendo, and now Wii. It wasn’t long that I would have my first pc, good old XT. At that time there were a few bbs’s I could connect too. From here I rarely bought any software I believed that if there was anything I really wanted I would just write myself and that’s what I did, but on the bulletin board’s there was a growing list of available programs one could download, most were freeware or public domain and a few were programs writen by folks like myself, all at the time freeware. It wasn’t long before shareware programs started to appear and I considered those to be double edge swords. It was easy to download a shareware program and take it for a test run and one would learn very quickly if the program was good or crap, and most were crap. Back then as well I did not have or use many programs, you could only run one at a time and a 10mb hard drive would set you back over $400.
Time goes on technology not only gets better, bigger and faster but the price goes down as well and well then the internet makes an appearance and everything changes big time. I now had easy access to more computer programs that I could ever wrap my head around and I download just about everything that was freeware, open source or public domain whether I needed the program or not. This also resulted in my interest in writing computer software to diminish, it became rare that I would write anything when I could easily do a search and voila already done all I had to do was download it. Then Steve Gibson would expose spyware and this would be another big point in my life as it relates to computer software. That’s when I started to have some serius trust issues with software companies, it blew me away how many were using spyware to add or increase  revenue, not to mention more evil plans.I remember before most of knew about spyware how unstable Windows OS was but once removed boom very stable, still had it’s crashes but far less frequently.

I did buy a few programs, for example WindowBlinds. But the novelty would wear off after about a year or so and I never renewed, I don’t use it anymore. Acronis True Image is a program I subscribe too, it has saved my butt on many occasions. Several years ago I found True Image (this was before Acronis and I just can’t remember the name of the company then even though it’s sitting right there at the edge of my brain), there was a discount bin with outdated programs, I think I paid $10 for True Image can’t remember what version at the time but pretty old. It did not take long before I fell in love with the program, bought an upgrade and have been keeping up with it ever since. Also a few months later (I think anyways) I bought Paint Shop Pro v6 for $10 or $15, v9 I believe was the latest at the time. I mostly used Paint Shop Pro to crop images, today I use Fastone Image Viewer which does everything a simple person like me needs. I never bought another version of Paint Shop Pro or any other paint program, I just never had a use for such a program and lets face it using a powerful paint program to crop images is over kill.

Here’s a few programs I use a fair amount. Microsoft Visual C++ v6.0, I bought this one a while back and made good use of it, but I wasn’t programming all that much any more but my interest in programming has returned so I have dowload Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition, free. Right now I have to admit I know very little,  it has changed a lot from v6.0 and at least right now don’t know what the actual difference are between the express edition and others. I did buy a book Visual C++ 2008 from Ivor Horton’s so I am looking forward to reading this book and learning.
Notepad++, just beats MS Notepad hands down. I do have some friends who prefer other text editors over Notepad++ like PSPad and Notepad2. I use Real Alternative and Quick Time Alternative with Media Player Classic to view videos etc. I simply do not trust Real Netowrk and Apple from my point of view is dangerous, they like to install other program you don’t want or even have asked for through other software of theirs, so how can I trust Apple since they are already doing the wrong thing. As I already mentioned I use Fastone Image Viewer, I do have a friend who also really likes Google’s Picasa. I use Keepass to store all my usernames and passwords, this is very handy since I have some rules on passwords, no hacker will be able to brute force my passwords, of course there are other means. I used to use and to some degree still play around with TinyCad to draw out electronics schematics. I now use a program an uncle has writen. I don’t have a lot of games on my computer, that’s what the Wii is for but I do have Sokoban++ and I bought a box set of StarCraft, the original game and an extra expansion cd. VirtualDub, Ascii Generator dotnet. Google Talk, Yahoo and Windows Live messenger, Pigdin, Skype, SpamMotel, NetMeter (I bought and used to use Stat ‘n Perf but the company is defunct now) Gravity (for the grc.com news groups) and of course Firefox, Thunderbird. I’ve also recently download Google Chrome to try out, so far it looks like I’ll be sticking with Firefox. Stellarium, Winamp which is way too bloated so I’ve also download Aimp2 to try out and so far Aimp2 is awesome. Audacity and an old program that I can’t remember where I got it from Gram, it’s an audio spectrum analyzer. I also have FASM but have to admit I rarely use it, it’s been a long time since I’ve written assembly for a computer and right now don’t plan on changing that instead I’ve decided to not take on too much and just work on assembly for pic chips and Visual C++ for the computer.
And finally utilities some old some newer. InCtrl5, a few program from SysInternals and so forth.

I’ve also recently discovered a neat little program called Sandboxie, not sure if I’ll buy it or not. I have a growing interest in programs like VirtualBox. I also have OpenOffice installed on my computer, I did buy a long time ago Microsoft Office, needed it when I was in school but I have absolutely no need for such powerful programs today and only have OpenOffice on my computer just because once and a while I’ll get an e-mail with a powerpoint or excel etc. attachment.

Which brings me to cloud computing. I do have an interest in this, I would love to remove OpenOffice from my computer and when someone sends me a powerpoint or whatever attachment I can just go to the cloud to view it. I can do that now and it’s something I’m playing with. That’s not to mention Gmail etc.

That’s just a partial list of programs I use and you may have noticed most are freeware or open source. That’s something I wasn’t paying attention too until recently. Not that I don’t look at comercial software but in many cases they just don’t match up to the free ones, for example Fastone Image Viewer, I haven’t found another program free or otherwise as good. Chat program like Yahoo suck, Pigdin is the best alternative to all of them that I’ve found. I used to use Trillian but it was buggy so I never bought the pro versions and lately they’ve started to include the Ask.com toolbar which for me is a deal killer. I also used to use Digsby but they’ve started with spyware/adware so they are out of the picture. As for programs I did buy, well Microsof OS’s I’ll always at least as far as I can tell indirectly buy their OS. And for Acronis True Image, there’s DriveImage XML which free (that’s it before Acronis it was Drive Image from Power Quest woohoo) and it’s not a bad program but right now I still prefer True Image.

So what programs do you use, what one program per category must you absolutely have. Here’s mine.
For utilites it’s Acronis True Image
Graphics, Fastone Image Viewer
Music Aimp2
Internet Firefox, I love Thunderbird but I can use Firefox to check my e-mail online.
And for miscellaneous hmmm I’ll go with Stellarium.