Alternatives to Popular Software

[Austin]

We've all been in a situation where as much as we despise a certain program, we have trouble finding a suitable replacement for it. This is a thread where you can recommend to the rest of the community alternative to popular software.

To start with, I'll suggest Foxit Reader, a PDF reader and an alternative to the popular Adobe Reader. I just dislike Adobe in general and in particular this program. It's insecure and has to update constantly as a result.

 

[Kazumi]

Well, as a start I like to use a relatively well-known application called 7zip as an alternative to Winrar for my file archiving utility. It's free, open source, faster, and more efficient than Winrar. Plus, with 7zip you don't have to put up with that annoying "trial over" message or god forbid buy the program. I would highly recommend 7zip and honestly don't see why people would continue using a deprecated piece of software like Winrar.

Another application that I love is called foobar200. It's a free audio player with many advanced features. It is powerful and highly customizable with many different options for playback, library management, and custom skinning so you can make it work to your liking. Plus it supports essentially every audio format under the sun including lossless formats like FLAC. I would highly recommend it to anyone who is looking for options for managing and playing their music library.

 

[Zenox]

Another application that I love is called foobar200. It's a free audio player with many advanced features. It is powerful and highly customizable with many different options for playback, library management, and custom skinning so you can make it work to your liking. Plus it supports essentially every audio format under the sun including lossless formats like FLAC. I would highly recommend it to anyone who is looking for options for managing and playing their music library.

I'd like to second the recommendation of Foobar. It has a surprising number of features for how little resources it uses. It's also quite customizable, though I still can't figure that out.

Austin's recommendation of Foxit Reader is also great. It has every feature Adobe Reader has, but it opens insanely fast and it uses next to no resources. Honestly I have no idea why it isn't more popular.

Kaz recommended some video player to me the other day. I think he called it Media Player Classic. I'm going to go check that out and you guys should too. Kaz knows what he's talking about.

 

[DarkLordMenchi]

GIMP - The GNU Image Manipulation Program is a nice simple and free alternative to Phototshop for those who cant afford or have the time to download Adobes programmes. Its easy to use and small in size my fave programme for messing with pic.

 

[Fred Flintstone]

Open Broadcaster Software is a nice subscriptionless replacement to Xsplit. Still you need the upload speeds I don't have. Of course there are Apache OpenOffice - The Free and Open Productivity Suite , google docs, and many other alternatives to microsoft