Must-have apps in the System tray?

[longrun]

I'm afraid the no-avatar look reflects my no-frills tastes; I was perfectly happy with the look and feel of DesqView! Incidentally longrun is used in the sense of "In the long run we're all dead." I'm not a runner.

[mouser]

or maybe i should say:

[Select]

:)

[lanux128]

but MSGTAG Status is invaluable (tells when someone's read my email; great tech support).

-longrun (March 20, 2006, 11:30 AM)

now that looks quite useful... i didn't know there was such a program/service -> www.msgtag.com

[rjbull]

my no-frills tastes; I was perfectly happy with the look and feel of DesqView!

-longrun (March 20, 2006, 01:00 PM)

DOS+QEMM+NDOS/4DOS+DESQView was the most productive system I ever had...

[scruffdaddy]

Hey all,

Here are some programs that run all/most of the time for me:

Must-have apps in the System tray?

My Systray

Must-have apps in the System tray?

Screenshot Captor - The one we all know and love 

Must-have apps in the System tray?

Slickrun http://www.bayden.com/SlickRun/
SlickRun is a free floating command line utility for Windows. SlickRun gives you almost instant access to any program or website.

Must-have apps in the System tray?

Gizmo - http://www.gizmoproject.com/
Gizmo Project uses your internet connection (broadband or dial-up) to make calls to other computers.  Works like Skype, but opensource friendly.

Must-have apps in the System tray?

Find and Run Robot (super happy version lol)

Must-have apps in the System tray?

Free Ram XP Pro - http://www.yourwaresolutions.com/
Freeware application to free and optimize your computer's RAM (Random Access Memory), resulting in an increase in system performance and productivity. Automatically configures itself for ease of use and also features advanced options and customizability.

Must-have apps in the System tray?

SpeedFan - http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php
Like Motherboard Monitor, I like this a little more though.
SpeedFan is a freeware program that monitors voltages, fan speeds and temperatures  in computers with hardware monitor chips.

Must-have apps in the System tray?

Dachshund Software - http://www.dachshundsoftware.com/index.html
A suite of Apps that optimize, accelerate and improve windows.

Must-have apps in the System tray?

Servant Salamander - http://www.altap.cz/salam_en/index.html
Oh my, what can I say about this one  ...better than any File Manager I have used, and I've tried alot! Deeper than first impressions give, fast and reliable; I can't be without this one for sure.

Must-have apps in the System tray?

Agnitum Outpost Firewall 3 - http://www.agnitum.com/products/outpost/index.phpOne of the best firewalls IMO, haven't had any problems with this version so far, but I've heard of issues from others from this forum.

Must-have apps in the System tray?

KDX (server) - http://www.haxial.com/products/kdx/
Small, multi-platorm, BBS style chat, file transfer etc. "KDX is like a swiss army knife for internet and intranet communications."

Must-have apps in the System tray?

Peer Guardian - http://phoenixlabs.org/pg2/
IP Blocker for windows.  Even if you don't use P2P, you'd be surprised what IP's are knocking at your door constantly. You need this (or something like it.)

Must-have apps in the System tray?

HLWin - http://scifi.pages.at/iceman18/
I play alot of Half Life, and this program allows me to play full screen, windowed...I can alt+tab and not leave my game.

Must-have apps in the System tray?

Avast! Antivirus - http://www.avast.com/i_kat_207.php?lang=ENG
This antivirus rocks, plain and simple.

Must-have apps in the System tray?

CPU Idle Extreme - http://www.cpuidle.de/
Keeps your CPU rested. Check the site for info.

Well, that's about it.  looking forward to other members Systray programs.  Cheers!

- scruff

[mouser]

love the way you laid out the images scruffdaddy!! how did you do it?

2nd question - hahaha you are using both find and run robot and slickrun?!!? don't they do the same thing? i think you better tell me what slickrun has that find+run doesn't have that makes it still nescesary because whatever that thing is it must be something good

[scruffdaddy]

Why I used Screenshot Captor of course!   Screen Capture on 'roids

Then I used imageshack http://imageshack.us/ to host the pictures. Seems to work good.

As far as Slickrun is concerned Mouser, I guess I like, for instance, just typing d for digg.com and the ENTER key and it pops up the Digg.com webpage and I don't have to even look at it.  This is gonna sound dumb maybe, because I know that F+R Robot does that too, but in F+R Robot I have to: look and see that the correct pgm is in the list, then press an extra key to select it (1,2,3 etc)....now don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, it's just an extra necessary step with that pgm that I don't have to do with Slickrun.     For finding files though, I like F+R Robot, which Slickrun doesn't do as far as I know.  So, they both have their place in my heart (and tray..lol).  Great question, comments welcome! 

- scruff

[mouser]

that's useful to know..
i think you can do what you want if you create an alias called d
and have one entry there, for digg.com.

and make sure farr is configure to "launch first entry when pressing enter"

that should let you type d and hit enter to do what you say.

id be interested to hear if you can get it to work and what further suggestions you might have about making it easier and cleaner, as i can definitely see why that would be something that one would want to be able to do quickly and easily, and there is no reason farr shouldnt be made to fulfill that purposes.  maybe a nice simple wizard would be useful to help people make aliases..

[mouser]

i think i should probably add a 16x16 and 32x32 preset size menu entries to the "select preset size" submenu in edit menu, seems like it might help with this task in the future.

[mouser]

Then I used imageshack http://imageshack.us/ to host the pictures.

you know you can attach pictures to a post (just select the Additional Options choice at the bottom of post screen), and than insert them anywhere in your post (see https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=1996.0 for how).

[f0dder]

Must-have apps in the System tray?

Free Ram XP Pro - http://www.yourwaresolutions.com/
Freeware application to free and optimize your computer's RAM (Random Access Memory), resulting in an increase in system performance and productivity. Automatically configures itself for ease of use and also features advanced options and customizability.

-scruffdaddy (March 25, 2006, 12:28 PM)

Hrm, these programs JUST DON'T WORK. Period. All they do is to page stuff out. Pay heed to the wisdom of FreeBSD: "unused RAM is wasted RAM". The memory defragmenters, cleaners, et cetera are nothing but system pessimizers...

[Darwin]

Sadly, I've spent a FORTUNE over the years on various applications that claim to do either of two things: clean my registry or optimize my RAM. I don't run any of them anymore. I've been uninstalling fluff from my systems and am in the ongoing process of carefully evaluating what I have running/installed. Part of that process includes thinking hard about the real benefits that I have seen from using the application. With both classes of applications I can't think of any! In the case of registry optimizers, the only effects that I remember are those times when I had to run system restore/restore a disk image because the registry cleaner was overzealous in scrubbing my registry and renedered my system unstable or knocked out an application. I certainly can think of no time when performance was noticeably improved following a registry clean and reboot.

With RAM optimizers, I've come to realise that I became addicted to the little graph/numerical display in my system tray telling me how much RAM I had free and the "thrill" of seeing the amount of free RAM increase. I guess it gave me a sense of control over my system. That's about it, though. Thinking hard about the benefits - the improvements in performance - I just can remember any. Before uninstalling the latest of the RAM optimizer I spent a week experimenting with running it or not and finally came to conclusion that really the only thing that it did for me is to make me fixate on how much RAM I have free! Whether I have 600 MB or 250 MB free doesn't seem to make any difference in performance and I don't miss running an optimizer at all. In fact, I feel released from the constant visual report about the state of my RAM. Never think about it now...

My final point isn't really a point. Here's a link to what Fred Langa has to say on the subject of memory optimization:

http://www.langa.com...004/2004-12-16.htm#2

and a teaser for Mark Russinovich's opinion here (unless you have a subscription to windowsitpro):

http://www.windowsit...cleID=41095&pg=2

[brotherS]

Must-have apps in the System tray?

Free Ram XP Pro - http://www.yourwaresolutions.com/
Freeware application to free and optimize your computer's RAM (Random Access Memory), resulting in an increase in system performance and productivity. Automatically configures itself for ease of use and also features advanced options and customizability.

-scruffdaddy (March 25, 2006, 12:28 PM)

I used to believe in this tool too... now I second what has been said about it above. A better vmem config really does work better.

[f0dder]

Registry cleaners are ho-humm too. Registry lookups are very efficient in NT because of the way the structures are stored, so you won't get much performance just because there's "fewer keys to look through" (even if this was the case, consider that you'd probably remove only a few hundred of the many thousand existing keys).

What you can really benefit from, though, is to make sure your registry is 100% defragmented... oh, and there might be some benefit related to COM object cleanup too...

[wreckedcarzz]

Off topic a bit...

Windows Security Alert (i'd like to get rid of this, but can't...)

-lanux128 (March 14, 2006, 08:50 PM)

Actually you can get rid of that annoying shield...
Open it up and click on the last option in the left hand side's little box, and uncheck all the boxes (3 of them). Ta-da!

[lanux128]

Actually you can get rid of that annoying shield...
Open it up and click on the last option in the left hand side's little box, and uncheck all the boxes (3 of them). Ta-da!

-wreckedcarzz (April 12, 2007, 09:45 PM)

thanks, actually you're the 2nd person to point out to me, after Veign..

[Hirudin]

Here's what I got... I'm pretty surprised of 2 things here...
1a. A lot of the stuff I have other people don't.
1b. A lot of the stuff others have, I don't.
- to each his own I guess
2. Nobody else has their start menu 2 layers tall.

Anyway... (I'll skip the normal stuff)...

My own "search" AHK script for searching Dictionary.com, Google, Wikipedia, UPS and many others with 2 hotkeys and a highlighted word.
-
-
AnyDVD
Outpost
Process Explorer
Stupid Logitech thing - Lazyness
Stupid Epson thing - Lazyness
KeyPass
Maomi - Utility to turn on the screen saver by putting the mouse curser in a certain area of the screen
TrueCrypt
G15 Keyboard thing - I shold use this more, but I'm wasting almost all the power of this keyboard...
nVidia thing - Lazyness
-
-

Yeah, looks like it might be good for me to invest in a tray manager... but I'm too darn lazy.

[Darwin]

You're right, Hirudin - we don't share a single systray app in common (and the only one that I actually have on my machine that your run in tray is Process Explorer). Interesting, but as you say, to each his or her own!

[lanux128]

Hirudin, you can use Mike Lin's Startup Control Panel to remove the OEM icons that came with the hardware..

[Renegade]

Hmmm... A very interesting selection there and I will definitely have to investigate a few of those.

For me, I like CLEAN... No extra crap. I like lots of RAM available and lots of CPU available and I use it all! (I regularly have way too many windows open, and managing them is hellish already - Now where was that Explorer window for the screen shots I need???)

While I really like ScreenCaptor and use it daily, I would not recommend it for most people. For those of us that work in software, it's a MUST though.

I'll heavily second Free Ram. That's almost a no brainer. For everyone.

I didn't see anyone recommend PureText:

 http://www.stevemiller.net/puretext/ 

That's a MUST for everyone. It makes life so much easier. It lets you paste TEXT. Almost stupid, but so necessary.

[lanux128]

Steve Miller's PureText is a very handy clipboard tool but its function can be replicated via Autohotkey, that's why no one mentioned it, i think..

e.g. Skrommel's PlainPaste

[app103]

This discussion is very similar to this one.

In my post there, I gave a list of what I have that goes along with this scary image:

[Perry Mowbray]

There's an App that I'd definitely like in my System Tray, but it ain't there... Somewhat similar to XNeat, but for the System Tray so that I can get some order in there. Mine often looks like App's, and sometimes the search for the icon to get to the menu just takes too long!

Not just hide icons (which happens now), but rearrange them and put them into menus. I did see some software to do that somewhere, but I can't remember now, but I think it was relatively expensive.

- Perry

[app103]

PS Tray Factory let's you choose the order, what icons show and which are hidden, and lets you put things in the tray that would normally be cluttering up your desktop and/or taskbar.

It's what I use to shove console windows in my tray.

Personally, I don't really like hidden icons, hidden files, hidden folders...or anything else that tries to pretend it's not there. That's why my tray seems to look very cluttered.

[Curt]

The harsh words against Free RAM PRO are based on a wrong angle. Why should anyone care that this program OF COURSE will slow down a PC that has 200 MB free RAM ?? Why would such a PC owner install this program in the first place? No, the situation is not relevant! Free RAM PRO is a fine program if you have very little RAM at all, but many programs, and right now you have say 20 MB free RAM left but you want to start an app that you know needs 100 MB RAM. Thats when Free RAM PRO is relevant. And it does the job a lot better that the others I have tried - says the guy with a total of 448 MB RAM to share.

scruffdaddy; how do you get Free RAM PRO to work together with Dachshund Hare ?? I wouldn't imagine that was posible.

scruffdaddy; if these Dachshund programs are half the good as the author claims they are (no updates for 4½ years?), you really should start a threat about them! The author's praise makes them sound as if out of this world fantastic! I am going to try them out!

link: