There are a lot of people who complain about Vista, and most of it is justified. Unfortunately, Windows is a fact of life if you want to use a PC and can’t (or don’t want to) convert to Linux. Luckily, there is a lot you can do to make up for some of Windows more glaring shortcomings, here is a list of a few applications for the power user in us all.


Power Tools

BBLean

Windows Vista’s layout is not for everyone. It’s a little heavy, non-intuitive and for the performance purist it often leaves you feeling like you’re wading through mud. There are numerous little tweaks you can do to the interface to make it a little more palatable, but why bother when you can just throw the entire thing out of the window? BBLean is a shell replacement for explorer designed for the minimalists among is. It’s lightweight, simple and unlike many other shell replacements it is basically stable.

I won’t give you a full tour, but you can expect the following.

  • No icons or start menu.
  • Program menu available by right-clicking on any white space.
  • Alpha channel and transparency effects.
  • Multi-pane desktop.
  • Tons of available themes and widgets.

I would suggest testing it out extensively before making it your default shell, BBlean is not for everyone and there are some weird issues that can crop up but for most people, after an hour or so of getting to know the UI, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.

Thunderbird

Mozilla’s take on email and a worthy alternative to Outlook for anyone who either didn’t get it pre-installed onto their system, or has misgivings about some of Outlook’s less savory security features. The one complaint I have about Thunderbird is that as it stands, you can’t get Xobni to work with it. If you don’t know what Xobni is it’s an organization plugin for Outlook that makes it dead simple to organize your email conversations.

Even so, with near automatic setup for Gmail, rock solid security and some useful addons in it’s own right, Thunderbird is a fully featured and worthy email client.

Open Office

Open Office can be a nuisance at times, but it has one huge advantage over Microsoft Office, it’s absolutely free. My suggestion is to try it out with an open mind. It has a full set of “Office-like” applications to play with and for normal tasks you shouldn’t notice too much of a difference.

If you have been an Office user for the last decade, the conversion might be a little harder but it shouldn’t take you too long to be zipping along as usual.

e Text Editor

If you are switching from a OSX to Windows, somewhere in your huge pile of complaints might be, “where is Textmate?” Luckily for you, e Text Editor provides a robust port of the popular text editor using Cygwin to give you most of the functionality that you would expect from TextMate. You can even transfer Bundles over as-is if you use Cygwin’s unzip function to handle the illegal filenames.

Console

Sometimes you just need to use the console, and if you have spent any time at all using Windows you are well aware of the fact that its command shell leaves much to be desired. Enter the aptly titled “Console.” This is a command shell replacement that includes tabs, some eye candy and most importantly the ability to use any and all command line based applications in one window. If you are a heavy user of Cygwin, a command-line based code editor or any other piece of software that has you staring at cmd all day long, Console is for you. If it isn’t your speed, you might want to take a look at another alternative — Powershell (Monad).

Cygwin

Cygwin is a great tool for running Unix/Linux applications on Windows. It’s somewhat limited in that you will need to rebuild the application from source in order for it to work in Cygwin but it can be extremely powerful for certain tasks. Cygwin also acts as the backbone for many other multi-platform applications, so you would do well to pick up a copy. For UNIX junkies, combined with Console this can be a partial solution to your command-line fix.

Chandler

There are a lot of productivity applications on the market, and Chandler is one of the best of the bunch. Chandler provides you with a Triage list, and lets you organize your tasks around the labels NOW, LATER and DONE. Not only that but it gives you fully functioning calendaring that will export to iCal and Google Calendar. Chandler also lets you set alarms and remainders for yourself and syncs with a web application so you can carry your tasks with you wherever you go.

The only downside is that Chandler can be a resource hog so be advised if you are trying to run it on a less-than-ideal box.

Ubiquity

You should download this Firefox plugin not for what it can do now, but for what it has the potential to do in the future. Ubiquity is an experiment from Mozilla in allowing you to “create your own mashups.” What it amounts to is a command-line that sets in your browser that gives you easy access to a ton of different sites. Do you want to find out what a word means? Highlight it and type define into Ubiquity and you can see it without having to change tabs. Ubiquity also lets you do cool stuff like insert maps into emails with one command.

Right now it is in very early ALPHA, but even so it has a strong development community that is continuing to add additional commands and functionality.

Bubbles

Between Google Gears and Bubbles it has never been easier to take a website offline. Bubbles provides a wrapper that lets you turn any website into its own “application” with ease. You can create a shortcut on your desktop and run it like you would any standalone program.

More interesting still is that Bubbles lets you create extensions for these “programs” that will allow, for instance, you to receive a notification in your tray every time you receive a new email or let you be reminded when a task in your Google Calendar is coming due. If you find yourself using the same five web applications over and over again, Bubbles could be just the tool for you.

Object Dock

Object Dock isn’t just eye candy, well, it’s mostly eye candy but with the right docklets it can be a much more powerful way of navigating your commonly used programs than the start menu. Object Dock allows windows users to enjoy an OSX-esque dock. You can customize the look and feel, and extend it with widgets that range from weather scripts to full system monitors.

xPlorer

Now that you have rid yourself of the Explorer shell, why are you still dragging around that clunky Windows Explorer window? xPlorer is a powerful alternative that offers multi-pane file browsing as well as a ton of other customizations if you decide to plunk down a few bucks for the paid version.

Even if you stick with the free version, you’ll be more than pleased with the ability to work in one window and the clean interface.

What’s your favorite “windows enhancement?” how do you squeeze the most out of your PC?

(Forum)