Favorite Open Source Software Tools and Services

Just some of the great open source/free software tools I use everyday:

• Email/Calendar - Gmail and GCalendar, activate offline support in the browser, perfect for the train.  I have not used a thick email GUI in years.   If you want a thick email client look at Thunderbird 3.0
• VirtuaWin - Windows Virtual Desktop Manager 
• http://sourceforge.net/projects/virtuawin/
• DropBox - free distributed file manager 
• https://www.dropbox.com/
• KeepPass - Password Safe for all your credentials
•  http://sourceforge.net/projects/keepass/
• Evernote - Distributed note taking application:  Web, windows, Iphone, Android based.  Take notes only once and have them everywhere.
• www.evernote.com
• Bookmarks - Delicious Book Marks plugin for Firefox.  Bookmarks in the cloud, just tag them.
• Web based documents - Google Documents.  Everything in the cloud.
• Notepad++, best free text editor.   Good plugins
• http://sourceforge.net/projects/notepad-plus/
• MS Word Replacement, too easy
• http://www.openoffice.org/
• Web Page Development:  Firebug plugin for Firefox.
• DVD ripping
• DVDShrink and DVD Decrypter (doom9.net)
• DVD Decrypter might not work with the new formats, so try the free version of DVDFab for that.
  
• Pictures
• Picasa, http://picasa.google.com/
• Creating PDFs from any applicatio, via print driver
• http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
• Windows Cleaning Tool - Clean Windows easily.
• http://www.ccleaner.com/
• Zip/compression - 7Zip
• http://www.ccleaner.com/
• File Backup.  Areca Backup.  Backups to another filesystem, such as a external hard disk.  Simple and easy.
• http://sourceforge.net/projects/areca/