Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Office, Productivity, Freeware, Windows x64
Easily install popular programs after a reformat with Smart Installer Pack
by Lee Mathews Apr 24th 2009
That's when something like the Smart Installer Pack might come in handy. It's a pre-packed set of popular applications that you'd likely want to install on your own system (or a friend's) after a fresh format.
It includes a host of apps like Firefox, Chrome, OpenOffice, Winamp, Skype, Daemon Tools, Picasa, Winamp, Thunderbird, Adobe Reader and Flash, WinRar, Rocket Dock, CCleaner, and more. Everything downloads in a single file, so you won't be cluttering up your drive with a bunch of separate installers.
SIP has two drawbacks. First, the installers are interactive, not silent, so you'll have to click through manually. Second, there are a few apps I'd normally install instead - like 7zip and Sumatra PDF. Shortcomings aside, this is still a handy way to get a system up and running quickly with a solid group of commonly-used programs.
I've got a bit of a stumper on my hands. Tomorrow, UPS willing, a brand new hard drive (and a couple other choice upgrades) will be arriving on my doorstep. The new drive is a 250GB SATA number--not a monster, but much bigger and much faster than the ancient 80-gigger I've relied on the for far too long, so the new drive is taking the throne as my system drive ASAP. Here's the stumper: Should I be lazy and just transfer the contents of my C: partition over to the new drive, or should I put a daisy-fresh Windows XP install on it and go through the dance of installing all my apps and tweaking all my settings again? With the former I'm up and running again in a matter of hours right where I left off, which is both good (everything is exactly where I left it, including all my settings and shortcuts) and bad (everything is exactly where I left it, including my bloated registry and debris all over my system folders). With the latter I blow the weekend on installing and configuring stuff and doing the inevitable troubleshooting, and the next two months tweaking it until it feels comfortable again. So which is the lesser of two evils?
With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet.
They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...
