Two things

[cleolinda]

While we're waiting on the laptop:

1) Since I'm going to have to set everything up from scratch, I'm trying to remember all the programs and Firefox extensions I use. I mean, I'm sure as the need comes up, I'll think of them, and I'm not going to run out and re-download everything just for the sake of it if it turns out I'll never need it again at all. However, I will definitely go out to download.com (or other sites as necessary) and get Firefox, AVG (virus protection), Media Monkey (mp3 player), CCleaner, AdAware, Semagic (Livejournal editor), TweetDeck, Yahoo Messenger, Skype, the KMPlayer (for .flv files and screencapping), and LJArchive. And then there's also toolbar buttons for quick adding to Delicious and Google Reader.

I try to use as few Firefox extensions as possible, to keep the browser from dragging (well, but I do have more memory and a better processor now...), but I use NoScript, ScreenGrab, an expand-all function for JournalFen (LJ has it built in now), a video downloader (good on YouTube), and... something else, I can't remember what at the moment.

But I'm sure I'm forgetting something. Anything else you'd recommend I look at?

2) Can you help out sirius20_81 with any job leads? She's in the Indianapolis area, trying really hard to find work for months, has a young son, and is near eviction.

Comments

[robinmc.livejournal.com]

Do you use AdBlock Plus for Firefox?

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's another one.

[schneefloeckli.livejournal.com]

LJ Addons is fantastic. You can also get it over at ljaddons or here (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4536). A few of the many features are:
- Friends page monitoring;
- new messages observation (in "Message Center");
- new comments tracking;
- friends' birthdays reminder;
- "Friends/Friends of" lists lurking;
- comments folding and unfolding: by comments, threads or by pages

[aliaspiral.livejournal.com]

i second lj addons. i love the comment unfolding trick.

[strife-caecus.livejournal.com]

You got a lot of your bases covered! Hmm...let's see...

Archival/Unzip:
Free: 7-Zip (http://www.7-zip.org/)

Office Productivity suite-types (if you intend on using them):
Free: OpenOffice.org (http://www.openoffice.org/)
Paid or (ahem) "acquired": MS Office 2003? 2007?

Utilities:
Defrag (free): Smart Defrag> (http://download.cnet.com/Smart-Defrag/3000-2094_4-10759533.html#rateit). Among other things it features a way to automatically defragment according to a schedule.
I personally use PerfectDisk 2008, but it isn't free and I'm not sure if you want to mess with making it a no-cost option (read: not-so-legal serial key).

[queenanthai.livejournal.com]

Oh, right, 7-Zip. Forgot that one. Heavily seconded.

[sparky-ca.livejournal.com]

I use TeamViewer to access my home computer from work (for facebook, myspace and other banned items) but if you have to travel and leave the computer at home, turned on and hooked to the internet, you can access it with any computer that is internet connected with a small app on a stick drive. (Think Hardison on Leverage)

Plus, it's free for personal use.

[jedigirl.livejournal.com]

I like using the Firefox "post it to delicious" bookmark add on. It makes it easy to add something to delicious.com. Use it ALL THE TIME, lol.

[queenanthai.livejournal.com]

For Firefox add-ons, get AdBlock plus. I also use ReminderFox (I have the worst memory evar) and TwitterFox.

For applications, I STRONGLY recommend Spybot and MalwareBytes on top of Ad-Aware. Between the three, I've never had to deal with a shred of malware. (Well, since I got the programs, anyway.)

[the_rainbow_jen]

If people clutter your friends list on LJ with LoudTwitter posts, this is what I was told to do:

Add Greasemonkey: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748
Get the script: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/17139

After installing the script, I recommend you visit the Greasemonkey options menu and add the url http://*.livejounal.com/friends?skip=* as well, otherwise the script will only work on the first page of friends view.

This has been a great help.

Also, do you use the VLC player for other media? A good free spyware program is SuperAntiSpyware - I like it better than AdAware, more thorough.

My add-ons that I live by are:
Undo Closed Tabs Button
Smart Bookmarks Bar
SkipScreen
Password Exporter

[sawcat.livejournal.com]

Xmarks is nice- backs up your bookmarks and passwords (if you want) so you can access it from another computer or transfer it to a new one.

Only ones I use are Xmarks, Adblock Plus and Downthemall, but you may not have much use for the latter.

[cofmanynames.livejournal.com]

Seconding Xmarks, was just about to recommend it myself.

[pocket-size-g.livejournal.com]

I like Flashblock, so I can choose when/if to play flash.

[pocket-size-g.livejournal.com]

And just remembered, Fetch Text (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/518) can be very handy too!

[bibliotech.livejournal.com]

DownThemAll and Greasemonkey?

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Well, Greasemonkey goes without saying. : )

[melchar.livejournal.com]

For word processing, I'd recommend 'Open office'. Even if you are having Word installed, it's a good idea to have a 2nd option.

[requiella]

expand-all function for JournalFen

what add-on does this?
I did a search and just found a comment blocker.

[jheen.livejournal.com]

It's actually a greasemonkey script - so you'll have to add greasemonkey. There are two of them but I use this one (http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/5552) as it as an "Unfold All" option. You'll just need to remember to add *.journalfen.net/* to the allowed pages list and it won't work on every journalfen page, but it'll work on FW and most of the associated communities :)

[cofmanynames.livejournal.com]

I've got ColorZilla for hex codes (although I suppose that's more a specialized thing?) and the DownloadStatusbar (because the Downloads window is annoying). Video DownloadHelper is nice too. Also have Deepest Sender for LJ on Firefox, but it sounds like you've got that covered.

[anatsuno.livejournal.com]

I always use VLC (videolan.org) as my media player - it plays all videos without any codec issues ever, and .flv and other encapsulated flash vids too. It also is great for screencapping manually or automatically. I know you have a video/media player already and a screencapper already but, yeah. VLC's a rockstar in my world.

Second someone above...

[pandorasblog]

When I had Firefox I used to find the download statusbar very useful. Ditto the delicious toolbar button. Unfortunately delicious makes it VERY hard to find the place to download that; I've had that problem a few times when I had to re-download after having to reinstall everything on my computer. So here's the link to the toolbar add-ons:

http://delicious.com/help/tools

[violetfrosting.livejournal.com]

I have Twitterfox rather than tweetdeck. It sits nice and discreetly at the bottom of your browser (just a blue "t" at the bottom corner) and you can browse and tweet concurrently without switching between windows. It automatically opens links in new tabs. Sweet!

Download Helper is a must-have add-on. Good for grabbing media that won't let you download it usually (like youtube vids)

I'm a fan of Spybot S&D - it now comes with a file shredder for extra secure deletion as well.

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

Agreed across the board. I actually install Spybot on every computer I come across, but mostly for TeaTimer -- if a bit of malware's clever enough to elude antivirus, typically the first sign of something going horribly wrong is TeaTimer, and TT's saved more than one infection from becoming fatal.

[brandyllyn.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I live by morning coffee. If you have several pages you visit every day, you can set up your morning coffee and with one click it opens them up in tabs. You can limit some to certain days, or just weekends. Whatever. I read a lot of webcomics that are updated on different days. Morning coffee is a total time-saver for me.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2677

[aliaspiral.livejournal.com]

my morning coffee opens all of my favorites every single time i open firefox. i love it!

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

Just two I'd add -- BBCode (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/128) (which I've blathered about previously) for right-click HTML/hyperlink formatting, and DownloadHelper (http://www.downloadhelper.net/) for saving almost any embedded video (YouTube, Google, DailyMotion, all sorts) to disk. Others mentioned above I have to ditto-mark would be Greasemonkey and DownthemAll, too.

[choiseul.livejournal.com]

Hm, I haven't used it in awhile (though I do wish I had it redownloaded from time to time) but I know there was a Firefox add-on that would let you open links in essentially a new IE tab within Firefox. It was handy when you didn't want to switch browsers but something just didn't run right in Firefox.

[flameraven.livejournal.com]

Ooh. If you figure out what that is, I may have to grab it. Deviantart doesn't always play nice with Firefox, and of course there's other things like Microsoft that simply won't let you use it at all. :/

[cbm321.livejournal.com]

IEview, for those annoying web sites that work better in IE. A right mouse click opens the annoying page for you.

Invertcolors, if you have to do a lot of reading, a dark background with light text is less of a strain. I know it does not look as nice, but it is better for the eyes. You can even invert the colors on a website by website basis

And I also recommend xmarks VERY highly.

Good Luck

[sirius20-81.livejournal.com]

I just wanted to thank everyone for their suggestions and donations. Thanks to you guys, I should be able to pay the rent. You have no idea how much this means to me. I appreciate this from the bottom of my heart. As hokey as it sounds, I really do have a renewed faith in the kindness of strangers.

-Brandi

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Aw, yay!

[sgt-majorette.livejournal.com]

I don't know know if anyone suggested this already (if there are more that 50 comments, I run in terror) but you should probably get an uninterrupted power supply. New computers draw more power, and trying to run on less than optimal power could fry its guts. And it sounds like your home has flaky power flow.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Oh, I've got one charging right now. : )

[sabra-n.livejournal.com]

Tab Mix Plus! A great session and tab manager; these days I get annoyed whenever I have to work without it.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Oh! I had that one too!

[cindyg.livejournal.com]

Speed Dial (http://preview.tinyurl.com/2hhn7a) is one Firefox extension I've grown positively addicted to. It turns your home page into a grid of your most frequently accessed pages. Customizable to show as few or as many clickable thumbnails as you want.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Ohhhh, I like the sound of this one.

[guinevere33.livejournal.com]

If you watch a lot of YouTube videos (and I bet you do), you know that the comments are a den of filth and idiocy. I present the solution: YouTube Comment Snob (http://www.chrisfinke.com/addons/youtube-comment-snob/). It censors comments based on things like bad spelling, lack of capital letters, and excessive punctuation. It saves my sanity.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Heh--I never bother reading them at all.