Arrow
Old-school composer
http://www.theomniverse.com/swnosuck/
This site is a total BOON, I swear. I downloaded bbLean, Firefox Preloader, Xplorer2 Lite, uTorrent, ZipGenius, and Notepad2. I'm considering OfficeSuite, but I've heard of some people that have had problems with it. I'm about to grab Foxit Reader in a minute.
bbLean is amazing. It totally replaces shell.exe (if you're so inclined; default mode is just to run on top unless you actually force it to replace shell). Most of the major configuration is done through ".rc" text files that you must edit manually, but EVERYTHING is configurable. And it hogs a lot less memory than shell.exe ever does. I'll grab a screenshot once it's fully configured just so you can see how it looks. (and feel free to ask me any questions since I've managed to configure it mostly the way I want it already, and can already help you with not-immediately-clear things like moving the toolbar from the top of the screen to the bottom)
Firefox Preloader just simulates Windows' native talent of having chunks of MSIE running underneath everything in secret so that when you actually try to start MSIE, it loads faster than it would normally. It just does it with Firefox instead.
Xplorer2 Lite isn't on that site; get it here. It's a different version of Windows Explorer, with a few less options in some cases, but a few more in the more important ones. (tabs for folder locations, dual panes, mass rename, etc.)
uTorrent I've actually had for a while (Blaze linked it originally in #srb2 one day), and it's not listed at this site. Get it here. It uses the least amount of memory of all the torrent apps out there, and it's quite standalone; you don't even need to put it in Program Files. You can just download the solitary EXE file and drop it wherever you want. It supports piece/partial downloading just fine.
ZipGenius... better than Winzip since it supports every compression type known to man. I hear 7-zip is nice too; I'll have to try that out later.
Notepad2 is genius. Everything I wanted from Notepad in such a way that I wonder why I was ever using default Notepad to begin with. Even supports various programming languages (including web-based ones) and auto-colors the code for you.
EDIT: As promised, here's a screenshot of bbLean now that I've got it configured the way I want. On the bottom, you can see the new style Taskbar (there's 10 included color styles; you can download much more). On the far left, the word "alpha" shows what Workspace I have loaded. Workspaces are bbLean's versions of virtual desktops. It's set at install to give you four (the other 3 being beta, gamma, and delta of course), but you can have as many as you want. So if I click the name or the two arrows beside it, I'll scroll to the next desktop, and the programs currently open will vanish. Useful when I want to do several things but not have 50 tasks in my taskbar. Then, of course, there's the standard tasks, followed by a little circular button that, when filled in solid, will force all programs to display on all workspaces. System tray after that of course, followed by two arrows that scroll through your currently open programs (yay for not having to press Alt-Tab anymore). Finally, you have your date field, which I've obviously customized, because "1 Wed 3:13" wasn't good enough for me. Through editing bbLeanBar.rc in Notepad (which can actually be gotten to quickly in the right-click menu), you can add extra 'lines' to the taskbar, and move or delete every single thing I listed as you see fit. Customization on this thing is killer.
At the top you see the standard right-click menu, which is set to show normally when you right-click the desktop, the clock, or that little bit of space at the top of the monitor left open so that you have somewhere to click if all your programs are maximized (note that, by default, the taskbar is actually at the top of the screen when you install this; you can change that fairly easily too). Start and Quick are for the Start Menu and Quick Launch obviously. BlackBox gets you into the shell's settings, Styles changes the style, and Goodbye gives the shutdown options. Explorer opens Windows' default shell and taskbar back up (I took it out of the right-click menu since you can modify the menus just as easily as you can modify the taskbar, and since I hate Windows default shell, which is the whole reason I downloaded this thing in the first place). System... well, you can see from there. Possibly the best thing about this is how you can click System, then My Computer, and then pretty much surf your entire PC, floppies, CD's and all, with a single right-click. You can go as deep as you want (you can also see my ridiculous collection of Power Rangers episodes stored on my computer), and all the functions to copy/cut/paste/delete/open/explore in normal right-clicks are available too. You may never have to open folders in Explorer again; the Recycle Bin (called the BitBucket by default even though it's the exact same thing; I had to change that too) is right there in the same menu.
bbLean is totally the best thing ever.
This site is a total BOON, I swear. I downloaded bbLean, Firefox Preloader, Xplorer2 Lite, uTorrent, ZipGenius, and Notepad2. I'm considering OfficeSuite, but I've heard of some people that have had problems with it. I'm about to grab Foxit Reader in a minute.
bbLean is amazing. It totally replaces shell.exe (if you're so inclined; default mode is just to run on top unless you actually force it to replace shell). Most of the major configuration is done through ".rc" text files that you must edit manually, but EVERYTHING is configurable. And it hogs a lot less memory than shell.exe ever does. I'll grab a screenshot once it's fully configured just so you can see how it looks. (and feel free to ask me any questions since I've managed to configure it mostly the way I want it already, and can already help you with not-immediately-clear things like moving the toolbar from the top of the screen to the bottom)
Firefox Preloader just simulates Windows' native talent of having chunks of MSIE running underneath everything in secret so that when you actually try to start MSIE, it loads faster than it would normally. It just does it with Firefox instead.
Xplorer2 Lite isn't on that site; get it here. It's a different version of Windows Explorer, with a few less options in some cases, but a few more in the more important ones. (tabs for folder locations, dual panes, mass rename, etc.)
uTorrent I've actually had for a while (Blaze linked it originally in #srb2 one day), and it's not listed at this site. Get it here. It uses the least amount of memory of all the torrent apps out there, and it's quite standalone; you don't even need to put it in Program Files. You can just download the solitary EXE file and drop it wherever you want. It supports piece/partial downloading just fine.
ZipGenius... better than Winzip since it supports every compression type known to man. I hear 7-zip is nice too; I'll have to try that out later.
Notepad2 is genius. Everything I wanted from Notepad in such a way that I wonder why I was ever using default Notepad to begin with. Even supports various programming languages (including web-based ones) and auto-colors the code for you.
EDIT: As promised, here's a screenshot of bbLean now that I've got it configured the way I want. On the bottom, you can see the new style Taskbar (there's 10 included color styles; you can download much more). On the far left, the word "alpha" shows what Workspace I have loaded. Workspaces are bbLean's versions of virtual desktops. It's set at install to give you four (the other 3 being beta, gamma, and delta of course), but you can have as many as you want. So if I click the name or the two arrows beside it, I'll scroll to the next desktop, and the programs currently open will vanish. Useful when I want to do several things but not have 50 tasks in my taskbar. Then, of course, there's the standard tasks, followed by a little circular button that, when filled in solid, will force all programs to display on all workspaces. System tray after that of course, followed by two arrows that scroll through your currently open programs (yay for not having to press Alt-Tab anymore). Finally, you have your date field, which I've obviously customized, because "1 Wed 3:13" wasn't good enough for me. Through editing bbLeanBar.rc in Notepad (which can actually be gotten to quickly in the right-click menu), you can add extra 'lines' to the taskbar, and move or delete every single thing I listed as you see fit. Customization on this thing is killer.
At the top you see the standard right-click menu, which is set to show normally when you right-click the desktop, the clock, or that little bit of space at the top of the monitor left open so that you have somewhere to click if all your programs are maximized (note that, by default, the taskbar is actually at the top of the screen when you install this; you can change that fairly easily too). Start and Quick are for the Start Menu and Quick Launch obviously. BlackBox gets you into the shell's settings, Styles changes the style, and Goodbye gives the shutdown options. Explorer opens Windows' default shell and taskbar back up (I took it out of the right-click menu since you can modify the menus just as easily as you can modify the taskbar, and since I hate Windows default shell, which is the whole reason I downloaded this thing in the first place). System... well, you can see from there. Possibly the best thing about this is how you can click System, then My Computer, and then pretty much surf your entire PC, floppies, CD's and all, with a single right-click. You can go as deep as you want (you can also see my ridiculous collection of Power Rangers episodes stored on my computer), and all the functions to copy/cut/paste/delete/open/explore in normal right-clicks are available too. You may never have to open folders in Explorer again; the Recycle Bin (called the BitBucket by default even though it's the exact same thing; I had to change that too) is right there in the same menu.
bbLean is totally the best thing ever.
