CottonConsulting.Biz

Category: Software

Some recommendations, mostly freeware, for thing that should have come with Windoze operating system.

  • Miranda Instant Messenger

    Update 1-21-2021: Looking over old posts I see this project was abandoned 2012. But a new “clone” has come up I have yet to test. But for those interested it is Miranda-NG

    Miranda Instant Messenger

    If you use Yahoo IM or AOL IM or MSN IM or ICQ or Jabber or just want in house network IM this is one handy Open Source (No Charge!) Internet Messaging client.

    I have a few people on each service that I like to stay in touch with but its memory (resource) intensive to run all the brand name clients so I was looking for some way to have them all in one.

    Actually I have been using Trillian for this purpose for several years and it has a free version which works well but you really need to buy their Pro version to get full use of it. It is very good, but my $ is going to medicine and food these days, so a little more searching led me to Miranda.

    Miranda has loads of Plugins that will not only let it interact with other IM servers but has added features for RSS feeds, Weather feeds, Stock feeds and more. It’s not as easy as perhaps the Yahoo IM itself to set all this up, but its not unreasonable either.

    This is now one of my standards for OS Setups.

  • PSPad – freeware HTML editor

    PSPad – freeware editor,PHP editor, XHTML, JavaScript, ASP, Perl, C, HEX editor

    Once in a while I run into a real gem of a program and can’t believe it’s not better known.

    I’m not a programmer but I play one on the web. 🙂

    As such I need to work with text files and read them as a real programmer would, recognizing line numbers, programming formatting, and comparing file differences.

    I have used Context free version for some time fairly happily but it is a little lacking of features in the free version.

    I used Win32PAD and found it fast, but the line numbering doesn’t stay with the line when you word wrap.

    Now I did a little searching today for a free file compare program and ran into PSPad at NoNags.com. This is truly a *GEM*!

    Not only is it doing normal text editing wonderfully but it has a file compare feature built right in. I has FTP built right in. It has excellent help files (in many languages) built right in. A spell checker built right in.

    If you want a replacement for Windows Notepad just about anything will do but this program has everything I can imagine any normal human will ever need.

    In my book it’s five star *****