How I roll...

Things are starting to settle in the PC software department for me...

Windows XP (operating system)
AVG Free Edition (antivirus)
Spybot (antispyware)
Firefox 2.0 (web browsing)
Thunderbird (e-mail)
OpenOffice (desktop publishing)
GIMP (image manipulation)
WinRAR (archive management)
BitTorrent (BitTorrent client)
FrostWire (P2P client)
foobar2000 (audio playback)
VLC (video playback)
GEAR PRO (audio and data burning)
Alcohol 120% (disc copying, image burning)
CloneDVD (DVD back-up)
ConvertXtoDVD (DVD creation)

Nine of those programs are completely free, most of them are simple, lightweight, and unobtrusive, and the default configurations for most are more than adequate for the casual user's purposes. Alcohol made the list because it supports a number of formats and options that GEAR does not.

I would, however, like to point-out something about Firefox's default configuration. I've noticed a number of concerns regarding the browser's memory usage since version 1.5 was released. It seems to use an awful lot of RAM for a web browser (I've seen it go over 150MB and stay there on my main PC), especially when considered alongside Internet Explorer 7 and Opera 9. People have made accusations of memory leaks and sloppy code, but the fact of the matter is that it's a design decision intended to help smooth-out the browsing experience. By default, Firefox stores copies of viewed pages for each tab in the system's memory. This practice allows for quicker page-rendering, for example, when you click the 'forward' and 'back' buttons and switch between tabs, but at the cost of requiring more RAM. Thankfully, the Firefox team has made efforts to keep this memory usage from getting out of hand. Firefox bases its overall memory usage for these cached pages on the total amount of physical RAM in the system so that the browser never really bogs-down your system performance. If, however, you're neurotic like I am, and want your Firefox experience to leave a smaller footprint on your system, read this page. Following those instructions, you can reduce (or increase) the amount of RAM used to store the aforementioned data (or just turn off the feature altogether), and even have the browser free large amounts of RAM when minimized. Based on my experience, the performance gains from this memory usage are insignificant, and I appreciate being able to minimize the browser to free resources instead of having to close it. Memory usage after these tweaks now tends to hang around 20~40MB; 2~6MB when minimized.

From the Games department: NHL2K7 was proving to be just too easy on the "Pro" level, so I've restarted my season on "All-Star". I picked-up F.E.A.R.: Extraction Point and Need For Speed: Carbon Collector's Edition. Still working on Project: Snowblind and Need For Speed: Most Wanted though, so they'll have to wait. Picked-up The Legend Of Zelda and Link's Adventure re-issues for GBA on the cheap; about half-way through the first one so far. Finished Astro Boy the first time through (it needs to be played through twice to be finished), but I'm setting it aside to get into Gunstar Super Heroes for now. Found a sealed copy of Rez for PS2 (only domestic version ever released). While it is 'jaggier' than the Dreamcast version, it's not an issue; the game is still a work of art. The increased framerate over the Dreamcast version is also nice, and the slowdown is negligible. If you ever find this game, for either platform, buy it. Also, I heard back from the video game store, and they say Starfox works just fine... Looks like there's a problem with my SNES... Rats.

Oh, hey, I thought these were clever: http://tv.truenuff.com/mac/