System Utilities & Upgrades

The “Undervolting” Guide
A guide to “undervolt” your machine. Especially useful for laptops. By reducing voltage consumption, it cools down processor and graphic card, and extend battery life.

Advanced SystemCare
For Windows Vista. Tweak windows system and improve overall system performance & security. Run once per format. Remove after that, or keep for SmartRAM service.

CCleaner
Cleanup system and registry rubbish, free up disc space and improve windows performance. Includes useful startup management tool.

Defraggler
Nice defragment tool.

Launchy
Keystroke application launcher.

Microsoft AppLocale Utility
Enables you to run different language software without changing the system language locale.

Revo Uninstaller
Software uninstaller and cleaning tool.

7-Zip
Best archiving tools. Able to compress and extract .rar and .7z files. Built-in encrytion & decryption.

Alcohol 52%
Free CD-image mounting and burning software.

Unlocker
Simple solution for annoying windows error message like “Cannot delete file: Access is denied” etc. That site is quite confusing, includes too many information. To download, look for the keyword “Download Unlocker 1.9.2 – 32 and 64 bit version” in that site.

KeePass
Simple password manager. Offers a portable version that doesn’t require installation.

Office, Multimedia & Graphic Tools

OpenOffice.org
Free and Open Source office suite. Compatible with Microsoft Office. Built-in PDF exporter.

Foxit Reader
PDF reader, free and good alternative for Adobe Reader. Fast startup time, small and light.

K-Lite Codec Pack
Codec pack, enables many audio/video file types playback. Come with free Media Player Classic.

Real Alternative
For some reasons, K-Lite codec pack doesn’t support real media files (licensing thingy). Install this codec pack, to enable real media files playback. Come with a free Media Player Classic.

Photoscape
Photo editing software. Useful batch edit and resize tool.

Inkscape
Vector Graphic editor. Free and good alternative for Adobe Illustrator.

Gimp
Free & Open Source Image manipulation program. A free and good alternative for Photoshop.

Internet Tools

Google Chrome
Fast, light, and reliable internet browser.

Mozilla Firefox
Popular browser, with a lot of extensions available for download.

HotSpot Shield
VPN services, offer web surf anonymity and access to blocked website.

Skype
Instant messenger and video conference client.

Thunder 迅雷
*Right click save target as
Old version, but is my favorite. Mainly used for BT downloads, as it bypasses streamyx p2p blocking during the night.

Orbit Downloader
Just another download manager, but it has a useful (but buggy) Grab++ tool that allows you to grab flash video links from almost any website (and not just youtube). To avoid the bug, install only on firefox, and use the toolbar instead.

Programmer’s Tools

FileZilla
Free and Open Source FTP client.

Komodo Edit
Free and Open Source editor for HTML, CSS, PHP.

PuTTY
Free telnet and SSH client.

TeamViewer
Remote desktop access and sharing over the internet.

Java SE
Java Development Kits, essential for Java developers.

JCreator LE
Free Java IDE, useful for basic Java development. Note that only the LE version is free, Pro version is not.

Desktop Customization

Vista Shortcut manager
Removes shortcut arrow overlay on icons.

Donate CPU power

Donate your CPU idle time for the greater good of the world. Check out this post!