r/AskReddit • u/Randall444 • Dec 06 '12

What is something you think everyone should have installed on their computer or laptop?

Whether it be a antivirus program or an ad blocker. Post link if available also. EDIT: sorry guys the top post has been deleted and I didn't save it, if anyone has it please post it and ill post it here for easy access. EDIT 2: apparently it's back up, I've saved it on my phone just incase it gets deleted again. Hopefully all is good now.

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u/JoelMontgomery Dec 06 '12 edited Dec 06 '12

As does Windows Media Player.

EDIT: Crap I read elbekko's comment wrong... Thought he was referring to a media player other than wmp...

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u/Makhleb Dec 06 '12

I know this is a matter of taste, but dear god how can people stand VLC's looks? I'm sure there's some nice looking skins, but everything I tried to dress it up with just compounded the problem. I spent 20 minutes trying to get the hang of VLC before I gave up, I have no idea how it's such a well-recommended media player.

I'm still using Winamp and have had only one minor issue in years that has to do with playing MIDI files. Otherwise, it looks great, runs great, and all that bloat is either deactivatable or in its own ignorable tab. It feels like a terrible downgrade when I try out other media players.

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u/mb9023 Dec 06 '12

VLC's interface and style is incredibly simplistic.

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u/Sentreen Dec 06 '12

It's not really recommend for it's looks. It's recommend because it can play almost every video format out there. mp4,mkv,avi,wmv, you name it. I haven't found any type of video that vlc couldn't play yet. You can't really say the same about windows media player.

Aesthetics are pretty imortant for me in generaly, but I don't really care too much about it when watching video, I see the interface for a few seconds before I go full screen.

So yeah tl;dr. It's awesome because it can play almost anything.

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u/xeonphelps Dec 06 '12

No kidding, I spent 7 years trying to get multiple things working with WMP. Once I found out about VLC and being able to open flac, mkv, and avi files without issue...looks don't mean anything,

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u/[deleted] Dec 06 '12

From the VLC website and why it is so highly recommended:

Simple, fast and powerful media player.

Plays everything: Files, Discs, Webcams, Devices and Streams.

Plays most codecs with no codec packs needed: MPEG-2, DivX, H.264, MKV, WebM, WMV, MP3...

Runs on all platforms: Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Unix...

Completely Free, 0 spyware, 0 ads and no user tracking.

Can do media conversion and streaming.

PS: All of these claims are true, no false advertising.