10 must have apps...

hdmi · Nov 9, 2021

TigerTom said:
oh yes, that was really helpful on older Intel-Dell laptops!

On a laptop with a newer Intel CPU it can still be really helpful also. I use it to keep my cooling fan from spinning up loudly as a result from the fact that Windows has a bad tendency to act as if I am too deaf to be able to hear the noise it makes. The easiest way is to just disable Turbo Boost and turn it back on later.

The ThrottleStop Guide (2024): Lower Temperatures, Increase Performance and Battery Life

Author's Note: I wrote the first edition of this ThrottleStop guide for UltrabookReview as part of a short undervolting/tweaking guide several years ago. I

www.ultrabookreview.com

While Throttlestop cannot be controlled directly from the command line, there are scripts available to work around this limitation.

TechnologyGuide

Thank you for visiting the TechnologyGuide network. Unfortunately, these forums are no longer active. We extend a heartfelt thank you to the entire community for their steadfast support—it is really you, our readers, that drove

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TigerTom · Nov 9, 2021

Really? I should try it out again. Because usually I keep my laptops upside down to allow more airflow to the fan.
(And no, I don't work under a glass table to see the screen..I use an external monitor and keyboard

)

TheMystic · Nov 9, 2021

hdmi said:
On a laptop with a newer Intel CPU it can still be really helpful also. I use it to keep my cooling fan from spinning up loudly as a result from the fact that Windows has a bad tendency to act as if I am too deaf to be able to hear the noise it makes. The easiest way is to just disable Turbo Boost and turn it back on later.

The ThrottleStop Guide (2024): Lower Temperatures, Increase Performance and Battery Life

Author's Note: I wrote the first edition of this ThrottleStop guide for UltrabookReview as part of a short undervolting/tweaking guide several years ago. I

www.ultrabookreview.com

While Throttlestop cannot be controlled directly from the command line, there are scripts available to work around this limitation.

TechnologyGuide

Thank you for visiting the TechnologyGuide network. Unfortunately, these forums are no longer active. We extend a heartfelt thank you to the entire community for their steadfast support—it is really you, our readers, that drove

forum.notebookreview.com

If the fan spins loudly, there is a reason for it to do so.

Do you think these 3rd party utilities are more reliable than what the OEM has designed the hardware to do? While it is good to have more control over the hardware, it may not be the best thing for the laptop to override how it is designed to function.

Personally, I prefer the OS (or OEM built-in utilities) managing these things and I don't bother with them. If I start taking control of these aspects, I believe that it will hamper my user experience (because you are constantly looking for a problem and trying to tweak it).

hdmi · Nov 9, 2021

TheMystic said:
If the fan spins loudly, there is a reason for it to do so.

Do you think these 3rd party utilities are more reliable than what the OEM has designed the hardware to do?

In the specific case of ThrottleStop? Yes, very!

TheMystic said:
While it is good to have more control over the hardware, it may not be the best thing for the laptop to override how it is designed to function.

Personally, I prefer the OS (or OEM built-in utilities) managing these things and I don't bother with them. If I start taking control of these aspects, I believe that it will hamper my user experience (because you are constantly looking for a problem and trying to tweak it).

To the contrary, keeping the fan silent when I am trying to listen to some music or watch a movie is better for my laptop than anything. That's just because if it gets loud, it makes me want to hit it with the biggest hammer I can find. I know that it's possible to disable unnecessary processes and apply additional tweaks in order to reduce the power consumption even further still. If you look at @TairikuOkami forum sig there's a link to a very lengthy batchfile available on GitHub, it does very many things a lot of which personally I would never do, but I am only mentioning this to show you that there exist some ppl who do. By comparison, setting Speed Shift EPP to a higher value or disabling Turbo Boost only slows the CPU in exchange for heavenly silence during those times when changing the Power plan in Windows Settings (or via powercfg command) is not enough to ensure heavenly silence. With Throttlestop these extra settings become easily accessible. In a number of ways, Windows is like having a car with the steering wheel lying on the passenger's seat of someone else's car, not realizing where this steering wheel belongs nor thinking about why the car manufacturer in question never actually even bothered to hand it over to you anyway in the first place.

TheMystic · Nov 9, 2021

hdmi said:
In the specific case of ThrottleStop? Yes, very!

To the contrary, keeping the fan silent when I am trying to listen to some music or watch a movie is better for my laptop than anything. That's just because if it gets loud, it makes me want to hit it with the biggest hammer I can find. I know that it's possible to disable unnecessary processes and apply additional tweaks in order to reduce the power consumption even further still. If you look at @TairikuOkami forum sig there's a link to a very lengthy batchfile available on GitHub, it does very many things a lot of which personally I would never do, but I am only mentioning this to show you that there exist some ppl who do. By comparison, setting Speed Shift EPP to a higher value or disabling Turbo Boost only slows the CPU in exchange for heavenly silence during those times when changing the Power plan in Windows Settings (or via powercfg command) is not enough to ensure heavenly silence. With Throttlestop these extra settings become easily accessible. In a number of ways, Windows is like having a car with the steering wheel lying on the passenger's seat of someone else's car, not realizing where this steering wheel belongs nor thinking about why the car manufacturer in question never actually even bothered to hand it over to you anyway in the first place.

You are focusing on the symptoms rather than the problem. If the fan runs fast when you are playing music or watching video, there is a lot more happening behind the scenes than it should. Why would you slow down the fan when it is trying to cool your system down?

This is like taking a paracetamol to bring down the fever, when your body is actually increasing the temperature to kill an infection. In other words, fighting your own body instead of helping it!

Either you have malware, or badly coded programs that are doing too much than they should, or you have too many things running in the background. Whatever the case may be, the fan is trying to cool your system down and by slowing it down, you are doing just the opposite of what is required. The fan running loud is just a symptom. Treating the symptom won't address the underlying problem. It would actually make it worse because symptoms are good, they point you to a problem.

Corona · Nov 9, 2021

ReflectBin
procexp64
Greenshot
Peazip
BurnAware
CoolEdit
eSword
PS
Gimp
Apophysis
Jux
UF

TheMystic · Nov 9, 2021

Corona said:
ReflectBin
procexp64
Greenshot
Peazip
BurnAware
CoolEdit
eSword
PS
Gimp
Apophysis
Jux
UF

PeaZip doesn't have a clean analysis on VirusTotal. One of the engine flagging it is Malwarebytes.

TigerTom · Nov 9, 2021

TheMystic said:
If the fan runs fast

it's partially bad HW design on the laptops. My HP Elitebook has a high pitched "dentist" sound from the fan, drove me nuts... Finally I mounted the laptop behind the screen to soften it.

Ok, but now, back to the topic :)

Wisewiz · Nov 9, 2021

TheMystic said:
What are the 10 or more must have (or your most favourite) apps/ softwares that you always install on your Windows system?

While you're learning from these answers, you might have a look at this from a few months ago:

What are the ten most indispensable programs on your Windows 10 PC? - Windows 10 Help Forums

Not counting games and gaming software, and not counting anything MS installed (Edge and Snipe & Snitch don't count), how many programs do you have? I've divided my inventory into those that I chose to INSTALL, and those that don't mess around with Pr

www.tenforums.com

Macrium Reflect
Malwarebytes
CCleaner
Chrome
IrfanView
Clavier +
NoteTab Light
LibreOffice
Everything
Autoruns
CPU-Z
7Zip
Resource Hacker

Corona · Nov 9, 2021

TheMystic said:
PeaZip doesn't have a clean analysis on VirusTotal. One of the engine flagging it is Malwarebytes.

I trust PeaZip more than MalwareBytes.

Wisewiz · Nov 9, 2021

Corona said:
I trust PeaZip more than MalwareBytes.

Wow!

Corona · Nov 9, 2021

Wisewiz said:
Wow!

MalwareBytes has gone the way of Piriform etc.

Hey, remember AdAware? Avast?

The Pool Man · Nov 9, 2021

Fabler2 said:
HWiNFO64

I'm so happy you listed this because I always have trouble remembering its name. So, and in on order --

Firefox
LibreOffice
Gimp
VLC
HandBrake
OBS Studio
Plex
Greenshot
HWiNFO64
WinXCorners
AutoHideDesktopIcons
Pinned Google Web Apps (Gmail, Messages, Contacts, Cal, Keep, Translate, Maps, Photos) and pinned Yahoo Mail

The Pool Man · Nov 9, 2021

Corona said:
MalwareBytes has gone the way of Piriform etc.

What does that mean?

FrancoDT · Nov 9, 2021

These are my must haves for my computers. All freebies since I don't think I should have to pay for more PC efficiency, customization and useful information on my systems.

Bitdefender Antivirus Free
CPU-Z
Firefox
HWINFO64
Macrium Reflect
Malwarebytes
NirSoft Wireless Network Watcher
Photoscape X
Rainmeter
Revo Uninstaller
Thunderbird
Ultimate Windows Tweaker
Winaero Tweaker
WinFi
WPS Office
Your phone App

I also use two very small useful little apps called Crosshair 1.1 that adds a cross hair to my mouse cursor when I hit the hot key and Minibin 6.6 that puts a little configurable recycle bin icon on my task bar.

Wisewiz · Nov 9, 2021

Corona said:
MalwareBytes has gone the way of Piriform etc.

The Pool Man said:
What does that mean?

Yes, Corona, please let us know what that means.

TheMystic · Nov 9, 2021

FrancoDT said:
These are my must haves for my computers. All freebies since I don't think I should have to pay for more PC efficiency, customization and useful information on my systems.

Bitdefender Antivirus Free
CPU-Z
Firefox
HWINFO64
Macrium Reflect
Malwarebytes
NirSoft Wireless Network Watcher
Photoscape X
Rainmeter
Revo Uninstaller
Thunderbired
Ultimate Windows Tweaker
Winaero Tweaker
WinFi
WPS Office
Your phone App

I also use two very small useful little apps called Crosshair 1.1 that adds a cross hair to my mouse cursor when I hit the hot key and Minibin 6.6 that puts a little configurable recycle bin icon on my task bar.

There is always a payment involved. Either in cash or by data. :)

PerpetualCycle · Nov 9, 2021

Here are 11 (categories at least):

1. Photoshop (creative cloud), DXO PhotoLab, Color Navigator7 and i1 profiler (display color calibration)
2. Office 365 Suite, Thunderbird, Firefox, Foobar2000
3. Steam, Epic, Bethesda, Origin game launchers
4. System/hardware monitoring: HWInfo64, Aida64, CrystalDiskInfo, Windirstat, Microsoft SysInternals Suite, CPU-Z, GPU-Z, CDCheck, RAPR
5. Asus AISuite (mainly for fan control), Asus Armoury Crate for RGB
6. Macrium Reflect
7. Shell programming: powershell, python, AutoHotKeys, Ubuntu/bash
8. 7-Zip
9. Disk tools: MiniTool Partition Wizard, Seagate Seatools, WDC Data Lifeguard, PrimoCache
10. Stress Tools/OC tools: Prime95, OCCT, Realbench, Cinebench, memtest, TM5, thiaphoon, MSI Afterburner, UBU
11. Biking: Garmin Connect, Shimano E-tube