1) QTTabbar: ever imagined using explorer windows in a Firefox style tabbed interface? This is essentially what this (terrific) freeware does, but it also manages to deliver a range of nice functions, including the ability to browse contents of folders without clicking into them (see screenshot), the option to bookmark groups of open tabs, a searchbox for filtering files, image previews on mouse-hover, as well as a slew of others.
QTTabbar is extendible through a handful of plugins that provide extra functionality, including a “folder memo” plugin to add notes to folders.
2) Taskbar shuffle: this freeware Windows extension gives you the ability to reorder the tabs in your taskbar (on the bottom of your desktop) by dragging them at will.
3) Thumbview: you might have noticed that some image file types (e.g. JPG, GIF, BMP and a few others). display preview thumbnails in Windows Explorer while others do not . What Thumbview does is provide support for 19 additional image file types such that Explorer is able to provide thumbnail previews for those as well. It also adds tooltips for image files in Explorer such that hovering over an image file displays its type, dimension, bitdepth, and filesize.
4) Unlocker: have you ever tried to move, delete, or perform other operations on a file or folder only to be notified that it is locked because it is being used by another process? Enter freeware Unlocker to the rescue. This software can (a) identify the process(es) that are using your files/folders and holding them hostage, and (b) will let you “unlock” these or optionally to kill the offending process so its no longer running.
Unlocker installs a convenient entry in the Windows context menu that can be used to right click any file or folder and investigate the processes that might be working with it, if any.
5) Visual Task Tips: [XP only] a lightweight freeware utility that brings thumbnail previews to minimized task bar items in Windows XP. Simply hover over a minimized taskbar button to display a preview pop-up (Windows Vista already has this functionality built in).
6) OpenOffice: It’s basically Microsoft Office so you need little else with this installed. It has MS Office support (in both reading and writing) so this fantastic suite is fully compatible.
7) Color Cop: A very handy tool for capturing colours anywhere on your screen. Color Cop makes it quick and easy in those situations where you need to know what colour is being used.
VLC Media Player: A very popular application; a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats. It will play just about anything too.
