Tiny applications run faster because they require far less computing power. They’re useful for several types of computer users.
If you run a slower computer box, the less resource an app uses, the better.
If you have a slower internet connection, smaller apps that access the internet typically make far less demands on bandwidth.
If you’re a gamer, the game is your "heavy" app in the front, so using light apps in the background allow the game to run more smoothly.
Here are 5 of the better tiny apps.
This is for use of the AIM messenger service.
Available for both Windows and Mac. I use this personally. Tab support, linked account support, secure login option, and an extremely small footprint.
This is also an instant messenger but supports many different protocols such as Yahoo, MSN/Windows Live, ICQ, Jabber (Google Talk) and more.
Unfortunately this client doesn’t do multiple accounts per protocol easily, however that will be coming soon with the next release. If you only have one account per protocol however, this will work just fine.
For those with really old computers or old OS virtual machines, the ANSI version of this software (available directly on the download page) will work on Windows 95 and 98.
This is a very compact email client and will easily run off a USB stick. In fact it’s so small it will even run off a floppy disk (assuming anyone uses those things anymore). It does POP and SMTP, secure login support, has junk mail filtering and more.
It is a Windows app but runs just fine under WINE for those of the Linux persuasion.
This is a small and light FTP client that supports traditional FTP and Secure FTP as well. If you tried FileZilla but wanted something less resource intensive and faster, WinSCP is what you want.
The 0 is a zero and not the letter O.
0irc is the lightest GUI-based IRC client for Windows I’ve ever seen. It barely takes up any space at all at only 67k. Make sure to read the README so you know how to configure it first (and that’s really, really easy).
