When I brought home my shiny new laptop running Windows Vista Home Premium earlier this year, I didn't know how lucky I was. My new PC shut down when I asked it to, slept when I closed the lid, and didn't cause glitches every time I started playing audio.
After spending some time pulling my hair out trying to get to the bottom of things, I figured the easiest way to solve some of my problems would be just to do a clean install of Windows. While programs like CCleaner are great for dusting the cobwebs of your windows registry, nothing works as well as reformatting the hard drive.
Of course, this was also an excellent opportunity to make sure I have a good backup of all my important data files, and to download and install just the applications that are most important to me in daily life. So after the jump is a list of the applications I started loading on my PC after restoring Windows. We'd love to know what programs you can't live without and what are the first things you load on a new PC?
Security applications
- AVG Free (anti-virus)
- Windows Defender (anti-spyware)
Graphics and video applications
- Irfanview (image viewer/editor)
- Media Player Classic (movie player)
- Quicktime Alternative
- RealAlternative
- AllCapture (screencasting application)
Office applications
- OpenOffice.org (office suite)
- AbiWord (A great light-weight word processor for when you don't need all of OpenOffice.org's features)
- Microsoft Outlook (mostly for synchronizing data with my Windows Mobile PDA)
- Windows Mobile Device Center (for syncing with my PDA)
Audio applications
- Audacity (audio editor)
- Cool Edit 2000 (yeah, I know, old school, but I've had a licensed copy lying around for years)
- Reaper (audio editor)
- Winamp (no, really)
- Juice (podcast aggregator)
- WinLAME (audio compression utility)
- Levelator (excellent tool for making your audio recordings sound good)
- Sandboxie (lets you install applications in an isolated environment)
- 7-Zip (compression utility)
- Absolute Uninstaller (alternative to Windows uninstaller
- doPDF (install a virtual printer that lets you print any document as a PDF)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
11-16-2007 @ 3:05PM
Conda said...
funny, i just did a clean install yesterday on a spare hard drive to try and solve a problem (another story not for here). first things i installed were Avast, Firefox, Thunderbird, and OpenOffice.
Reply
11-16-2007 @ 3:05PM
Conda said...
funny, i just did a clean install yesterday on a spare hard drive to try and solve a problem (another story not for here). first things i installed were Avast, Firefox, Thunderbird, and OpenOffice.
Reply
11-16-2007 @ 3:29PM
Jon said...
CCleaner , Firefox, Good ole spybot , AVG free , Nero 8 ultra , DVDFab Platinum, 7-zip, and Bit tornado experimental ... I just had to reinstall last friday because MS auto downloaded a Nvida video card driver that killed my Vista
Reply
11-16-2007 @ 3:29PM
Jabapyth said...
Wow! Thanks for this great list! (i use ubuntu, but ill send this to my parents)
Reply
11-16-2007 @ 3:29PM
mayhew1956 said...
Some similarities but I also use Google pack for all in one Firefox, Picasa, Adobe and Google Earth.
Then Alzip and Alshow for effortless archives and divx playback.
RedKawa software for video conversions for portable devices (psp & iPod).
Lastly iTunes because I have to but it really doesn't play nice with Windows.
Reply
11-16-2007 @ 3:30PM
dagwood said...
I install Ubuntu after a new install of Windows. That way my dual boot works properly, and I have two fresh OS's to work with. Then I leave the windows one alone until I absolutely need it.
shortlist for windows
firefox
avast
windows defender
VLC
MS Office
Reply
11-16-2007 @ 3:31PM
murph said...
doPDF is a new one for me. is it better than CutePDF?
Reply
11-16-2007 @ 3:31PM
robotrock said...
Unlocker Assistant! (XP Install)
Reply
11-16-2007 @ 3:41PM
westudi said...
I have a fairly extensive install list after a clean install (which I do at least once a month on our various systems). Firefox is at the top of the list, but I also install programs like SMPlayer, tweakers for the specific OS, Eraser, Daemon Tools, Avast, etc.
Reply
11-16-2007 @ 3:48PM
philosopherdog said...
I'd second unlocker and add Clipmate 7, T-clock 32, Onenote 2007, VLC.
Reply
11-16-2007 @ 3:48PM
yofadahead said...
Everything on Microsoft Update, ACDSee 5.0, Nero 6, Symantec Antivirus 10, Symantec pcAnywhere, 7-Zip, dopdf, Foldershare, vlc, Powertoy Calculator, MS Office 2007, uTorrent, Winamp 2.81, Webrunner, DUMeter, and Google Pack with Adobe Reader, Google Desktop, Earth, and Photos Screensaver, and Firefox, and iTunes.
Reply
11-16-2007 @ 3:54PM
francesco said...
Nice list.
1) why don't use VLC instead of MediaPlayerClassic, Quicktimealternative and Realalternative?
2) You don't need outlook. Your PDA can be syncronized with Thunderbird and Lightning with BirdieSync
Reply
11-16-2007 @ 3:57PM
Halo2Master said...
My list:
Firefox
iTunes/QT
VLC
Launchy
Xplorer2
Reply
11-16-2007 @ 3:59PM
Brad Linder said...
francesco:
Honestly, I've never liked VLC's interface that much. And I didn't realize until just now that it sported a Firefox plugin. Knowing that, I might just have to go check it out for my Quicktime needs. But it dosn't player RealVideo files, so it's not a perfect solution.
Reply
11-16-2007 @ 4:04PM
Sam said...
dude, VLC is where its at with audio and video playback
and what exactly do you have that plays realplayer? real is garbage software
and if you have the option to stream media, do it with quicktime or windows media player. there much more efficient then real.
welcome to 2007.
Reply
11-16-2007 @ 4:04PM
Jake said...
Firefox (wiith FireFTP and ScribeFire), Office (only Word, Excel, and Outlook), uTorrent, Pidgen, Paint.NET, iTunes, SUPER, Audacity, Windows Live Writer, Flickr Uploadr, FreeOCR.
Reply
11-16-2007 @ 4:05PM
Brad Linder said...
Oh yeah, I completely forgot to mention that I use FEBE and CLEO to backup my Firefox extensions before starting.
As for RealVideo, when I have the choice I choose to use Windows Media or QuickTime. But you don't always have a choice, so I like to have my bases covered.
Reply
11-16-2007 @ 4:11PM
Lane said...
VLC???
Reply
11-16-2007 @ 4:11PM
Josh said...
In no order:
Internet:
Firefox
Windows Live Messenger
AIM
uTorrent
Media:
iTunes
Last.fm
VLC
Miro
VeohTV
Joost
Security:
AVG
Spybot
Ad-Aware SE
Other:
Photoshop
Dreamweaver
Flash
RkLauncher
Taskbar Shuffle
Styler
Winrar
OpenOffice.org
I also almost immediately hack my uxtheme.dll and get something usable up and running
Reply
11-16-2007 @ 4:20PM
Halo2Master said...
Lane:
VLC is an open source media player. Simple and small, it will play nearly any format you can think to throw at it. If you want to check it out, Google it.
I don't use it for music files, because iTunes is so full of features. But for video, its the way to go; Windows Media Player should hang its head in shame.
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