FastStone MaxView 1.6

[nickles]

Let me say one thing up front...I love PTE and it is my No. 1 slideshow production software....but....

I recently purchased my wife a laptop computer...just to get her off my computer...which she often times manages to screw up. She is not computer saavy in the least...so I have been trying to set it up as simple as possible...with very few complicated software applications. She still uses a type writer for correspondence or hand written.

She manages internet browsing with Firefox quite well...and participates in a lot of Disney and Food forums.

I have a collection of scanned and digital photos in excess of 22,000. They date from the early 1900s to present. She loves to browse these photos and occasionaly has me print one to put on her refrig with magnets. Unfortunately Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop are lousy for general browsing. But I discovered a neat little program called FastStone MaxView 1.6. She mastered it in just a few minutes. Even let's you browse with a simple slideshow with music (definitely not a PTE replacemnt but super simple). It's free and you can download here:

FastStone MaxView 1.6

If you need something really, really simple it's definitely worth a try.

I also maintain a catalog of music that encompasses over 9,000 MP3 files that date as far back as the 1920s...everything from country, classical, rock&roll, etc. She plays this music in the background. I use some music library software called MediaMonkey for managing and cataloging this music. My wife doesn't need anything this complex. The simplest and easiest to use software that I've found is a little player called Billy. It has no frills whatsoever but steadfastly plays music with know skips. It can be found here:

Billy

If you need something really, really simple it's definitely worth a try.

I'm now looking for a simple photo print software that you just highlight the file to print and maybe indicate the size in inches you desire and select print. I haven't found one yet but still looking.

Just thought I would share my finds so far.

.....ken

[e.b.west]

Thanks a lot for the link. That's exactly what I've been looking for for my wife to email pictures with out going through resizing before sending.

[Leif]

Re Billy: Billy is very nice but its development is put on ice.

An alternative is Evil Player which is similar to Billy, looks quite nice (despite its name), and is (also) freeware: http://www.evilplayer.server-host.com/

[Jimbo]

FASTSTONE also has a very good editor/viewer, freeware and seemingly without any spy/ad extras. Easy to use and it manages to do a lot of nifty tricks.

http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm

I've been using it for a few months now without problems

Jim.