Essentials for Audio PC's


The following is a list of essential programs and utilities for optimising your PC further and ensuring stability along with links to the relevant Web Pages so that you can download them quickly and easily:


TweakUI (By Microsoft) and ItweakU (By Jockesoft) are two very similar tweaking utilities, both are free to download but offer extended functionality to registered users who pay a small fee:


NT TweakUI (http://www.microsoft.com/ntworkstation/downloads/PowerToys/Networking/NTTweakUI.asp)

ITweakU (http://www.jockesoft.com/itweaku.shtml)

 

For fully customisable Windows installs and the fantastic IEradicator (Which completely removes Internet Explorer from an existing Windows install along with all dependencies on it - Highly recommended) have a look at the 98 Lite site. Windows 98 and ME are supported Windows 2000 Lite is coming:


Windows Lite (http://www.98lite.net/download.html)

 

Compression agents are essential to almost all PC users. The most popular are WinRar, WinZip and WinAce. Winzip is not really necessary since WinRar and WinAce can handle Zip archives and do the job better than WinZip:

WinRar (http://www.rarsoft.com/download.htm)

Winace (http://www.winace.com)


WinZip (http://www.winzip.com/download.htm)

 

Opera is by far and away the best internet browser. It's much faster and much more stable than IE or Netscape plus it has a built in e-mail client and is far tidier than IE. It's also free:

Opera (http://www.opera.com/download/)

 


Adobe Acrobat Reader is useful for reading help files and documentation supplied with programs which is often in Acrobat PDF format:

Adobe Acrobat Reader (http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/alternate.html)

 


Microsoft have homepages for each of their versions of Windows which are host to information, updates and other Windows related downloads:


Win 2000 homepage (http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000)

Win ME homepage
(http://www.microsoft.com/WindowsMe)

Win 98 homepage
(http://www.microsoft.com/Windows98)

Win 95 homepage (http://www.microsoft.com/Windows95)

 


The Driverguide is a useful site for finding drivers for all sorts of hardware:

Driverguide (http://www.driverguide.com)

 


ZDNet has now merged with softseek to offer downloads galore. there are huge amoun
ts of freeware/shareware and demos available:

ZDNet (http://www.zdnet.com/downloads)

 

Quicktime (By Apple), Shockwave and Flash (By Macromedia), RealPlayer (By RealNetworks) and Windows MediaPlayer (By Microsoft) are web-based multimedia programs which handle various media types:

Quicktime Player (http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download)

Shockwave Player (http://www.macromedia.com/go/getshockwaveplayer/)

Flash Player
(http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer/)

Real Player 8 Basic (http://www.real.com/player/index.html)

Windows Mediaplayer (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia)