format

Not too long ago I got the urge to play with F-18s, Yuris, Rocketeers, and Apocalypse Tanks; surely it was 'cause I'd just spent time with EK and remembered fondly his e-bullying via Westwood servers in high school. I got a bad copy of Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2 that came with a dirty keygen; after a botched install I ended up having to format the laptop. No big, except it's only about two weeks later and somehow the C:/ drive on this thing only has 8 gigs and some change in free space. Now, downloads these days are more like a prostate-problem-trickle than the firehose jet they were previously; having less than 10% HDD capacity left on the notebook at this point means a reformat (and a reinstall of the vitals) before I vacation.

These programs are free; the resource footprints they leave on my processor are airy and light.

• BitTorrent (filesharing): For embracing your inner pirate, chitterling timbers and YARGH and all that.
  
  
• Digsby (messaging): Digsby is one combined buddy list for all your AIM/MSN/Yahoo!/ICQ/Google Talk/Jabber accounts and it also allows you to manage your Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL Mail, IMAP and POP accounts right from the program window. Works great and it seems they're in constant development with regular updates and bug fixes. Never got the Facebook integration thing to work – so devastated I am.
  
  
• Google Chrome (web browsing): It's stripped down and minimalistic. Installation isn't bloated by harebrained add-ons - like useless icons and toolbars - and background processes. This equals speed. Chrome is skinnable, for the OCDs concerned with browser aesthetics. I wish they'd stolen Opera's mouse-gestures when they took its Speed Dial interface.
  
  
• Google Picasa (photo editing): Allows you to arrange, edit, and export your image files with ease. Lots of photographic effects for your faux-creative types. Picasa Web Albums offers a free 1GB of online storage; the option to download all images in any shared album (at their original sizes, no less) is ace. I like the “Collage” tool and haven't even started messing with the facial recognition name tag thing. I may have to try Adobe's Lightroom to see if it's got better *.NEF support, the only complaint I have is this sort of bogs down when I'm editing larger pictures.
  
  
• KMPlayer (video) – A free multi-format media player, I haven't downloaded a single codec since I switched over.
  
  
• MediaMonkey (audio) – ...and you will know us by the trail of discarded digital media players. This one is for me the most functional and has more customization options than you can shake a stick at. It was created with massive audio collections in mind and wins because it hasn't nuked my music library once.
  
  
• OpenOffice.org – Lets me work with all Microsoft Office file formats (Access, Excel, Powerpoint, and Word) without forking over a cent to Daddy Gates. Although I'll admit it's a little buggy and not as nice to look at as the branded products (that incidentally cost a fortune), this software's code is open-source and allows users to study, change, and revise it to their liking. I've got my fingers crossed for an OpenAbleton release.