Friday, September 19, 2008

Installing Windows

Its that time again - I have a new computer. Its been about 6 to 8 years since I have bought something new for my home PC. I'm buying a beast in a box (Micro ATX, Quad Core, 8gig memory, Blue-ray, Wifi, etc) and hopefully it will be another 6 to 8 years before I have to buy another PC.

The big question is what software I should re-install?

Windows ultimately ends up as an unstable dog with fleas due to failed attempts at finding reasonable software. Having learned from my many mistakes with software of all types, the following is a list that I consider being the most effective in their category. I have linked to the author's website so that in future the latest version may be downloaded.

There are still a few items that I am looking for (suggestions welcome):
  • Photo touchup and image Editing
  • Media Player and Media Organiser
  • Offline CD Collection Organiser
  • Archive Organiser (Old Documents, Projects, Backups, etc)
The following list is linked to its author's website. Free may be open source, freeware or freely downloadable (subject to license, eg: ie8, etc).










Operating System

Windows Vista Operating System
Retail
Windows XP SP3 Operating System
Retail

Office Suite

Microsoft Office Documents
Retail
Open Office Documents
Free
Star Office Documents
Retail (Inexpensive)

Internet Browser

Fire Fox Internet
Free
Google Chrome Internet
Free
IE 8 Internet
Free

DVD Player

Windows Media Player 11 Media
Free
Power DVD Media
Retail

Tools


Acrobat Documents
Free
KeyNote Documents
Free
DVD Shrink File Archive
Free
Image Burn File Archive
Free
IZArc File Archive Slick Free
Dyna DNS Internet Dynamic DNS name Free
Free Download Manager Internet
Free
uTorrent Internet
Free
Google Earth Map
Free
VLC Media Player Media
Free
Dot Net Platform
Free
Java 6 Platform
Free
Shockwave Platform
Free
CC Cleaner OS Tool I don’t like it phoning home Free
Daemon Tools OS Tool Mount CD images (old games, etc) Free
Easy Cleaner OS Tool
Free
FreeUndelete OS Tool Install this before you need to Free
Process Explorer OS Tool Replace Task manager Free
Treesize OS Tool
Free
Tweak All 3 OS Tool Helps removing Browser Helper Objects Free
UnixShell OS Tool wget, grep, etc Free
Who Lock Me OS Tool
Free
Terminals Remote Desktop Multi Tab - VNC, Telnet, SSH, Citrix Free
Google Desktop Shell
Free
Launchy Shell Incredible ** Free
TeraCopy Shell
Free
Xplore2 Shell Plugins required Free
nLite Slipstream
Free
Virtual Box Virtual Machine 3-5% slower than VMWare but free Free
Tomcat 6 Web Server
Free

Development Tools

Hibernate Development
Free
HSSQL Development
Free
Inno Setup Development
Free
IntelliJ IDEA Development Amazing Retail
JDK 1.4.2, 5.0, 6.0 Development
Free
Maven Development
Free
Subversion Development
Free

Internet Tools

FireFTP Firefox Plugin
Free
Adblock Plus Firefox Plugin
Free
Bookmark Duplicate Detector Firefox Plugin
Free
Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer Firefox Plugin Same bookmarks at home and at work Free
FoxyProxy Firefox Plugin
Free
IE Tab Firefox Plugin
Free
NewsFox Firefox Plugin
Free
PDF Download Internet Better flexability when clicking on PDFs Free

Web Resources

Life Hacker Internet Resource Life Free
DZone Internet Resource Development Free
Google News News Resource
Free
SlashDot News Resource Technology Free
Old Version Internet Resource
Free
Softpedia Internet Resource
Free

Thats my list of software. Suggestions and recommendations welcome. This list is actually future documentation for myself and it may help others make their life easier.

-Tim

2 comments:

Kai Hendry said...

You seem to be more of development type user so I am very surprised you simply aren't running Ubuntu.

Here is a old list compiled by a friend that might inspire you.

http://www.xiven.com/weblog/2003/04/14/

BrYan (aka Brattex) said...

Hey Tim

You want an organiser?

http://www.getlibra.com/

Pretty cool tool and it's a PRETTY tool too... (say that a few times over, quickly).

I'm also a big fan of portableapps.com and all the goodness it brings in a bag. I'm doing the same thing as you, blogging my list of essentials software, so keep an eye out for it on my blogspot.

Bryan