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Free (or cheap) software you really love

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I should have recommended Oolite a long time ago. I've tried it a few times over the last few years and it's matured into a proper stable version of Elite. Completely free still.
 
I don't think anyone's mentioned web development. In the past I've used eccentric software like FrontPage and complicated and expensive software like Dreamweaver. But Wordpress has changed everything and put a free tool for decent quality web development into the hands of the amateur. Then there are all those dedicated php developers who write all the free plugins that make Wordpress a fairground full of free rides.

I'd also like to put in a word for WPS Office - much nicer to use than LibreOffice, in my opinion. I've actually stopped using MS Office since finding WPS.

Did anyone mention Ninite?
 
Have you looked at Amaya? It's a standards-compliant reference browser with editing built in.

http://www.w3.org/Amaya/

At least with that, if your pages don't display correctly on a browser you know it's the browser that is at fault and not your pages.
 
Once upon a time I used to hand-code web sites and Amaya might well have been useful (I know of one such site that's still going nearly ten years on - footsie 100 company, too!). Nowadays most of the bells and whistles I spent days programming are available as free Wordpress plugins. Wordpress doesn't need an editor, other that the one that's built-in.
 
Yes, but does Wordpress produce compliant code? I haven't worked on web code for some 14 years but knew a web admin who used some load of cr*p on a Mac that produced nonsensical HTML output.

A quick Goog showed it was no better 3 years ago.
 
I was trying to diagnose what I suspected was an excessive CPU temperature issue on my notebook and look around for something to report the CPU temperature. I found HWMonitor from CPUID which did exactly what I wanted in a very unfussy way; see http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html and yes the problem was under a particular circumstance the CPU getting way too hot (105 C) and shutting the system down. For the time being I have reduced the maximum processor utilisation from 100% to 95% and now the CPU peak temperature doesn't go above 75 C but when I have time I need to take it to bits and clean the CPU cooling system.
 
Black Hole said:
Best of luck - I want to service the fan on mine, but there's a screw I can't get out.
Click to expand...
I had it to bits last year to fit a new keyboard (which is integrated into the top part of the casing and has the motherboard mounted on it) so I am pretty confident it will come apart; whether I can improve the thermal performance is another matter. Plan is to clean everything and apply new thermal paste between CPU and cooler.
 
I used to use hwmonitor and speedfan on a desktop. My laptop seems to do the job for itself.

BH: have you burred over the screw head then?
 
(Imagines 2kw electric drill fitted with jeweller's screwdriver bit.)
 
I'm getting rather fed up with the BT/Yahoo web mail browser UI - especially now they seem to have forced the "new look" on me (WHY???). I use the iOS native IMAP client when I'm on the iPad, but I only have it linked to my main email account because I am nervous about what would happen if I linked it to more of them.

Can anyone recommend an IMAP email program I can run on the PC (Win7/64) to ditch the BT/Yahoo web front end (and its adverts)? What happens when one links to more than one email account - is it straightforward to tell which account an email arrived at, and know which account an outgoing email is being sent from?
 
Thunderbird is probably the easiest option. It isn't a great IMAP client but will be fine unless there's a lot of churn in the mailbox (it tries to keep a local mirror database containing metadata for each message - that isn't uncommon for IMAP email clients though).
It's straightforward to create and link to multiple accounts, each of which can have multiple identities (in case you want to be able to send from, for example, af123@hpkg.tv or admin@hpkg.tv on a per-email basis). The From address is always shown in the composition window so you can see where it's going from and each account can be configured with separate outbound mail server details.

Outlook isn't actually too bad either these days and provides a similar experience.

For a real IMAP client look at http://www.mulberrymail.com/ - great in terms of technical implementation but most users find the interface archaic and lacking!
 
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