The current Windows software baseline....

[poltr1]

This past weekend, I spent some time downloading and installing my "must-have" software on the new laptop.

Without further ado, here's my software baseline for additional free and open-source software for Windows XP SP3, in no particular order.


Adobe Reader 10 to display PDF files
Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 (only because IE 6 is standard with XP SP3)
Adobe Flash Player 11 (IE) to display Flash content in IE
Firefox 7.0.1 web browser
Adobe Flash Player 11 (non-IE) to display Flash content in Firefox
Google chrome web browser
Crimson Editor is an excellent text and program editor. Only thing it's missing is viewing text files in hexadecimal.
Thunderbird 7.0.1 email and news reader
Cygwin power tool to give you a bash (Unix) shell and commands under Windows.
Pidgin multi-protocol instant mesage client
PuTTY SSH and telnet client
FileZilla file transfer protocol client
Microsoft Windows Media Player 11 (Requires Windows Genuine Advantage validation)
OpenOffice 3.3 word processor/spreadsheet/presentation/database suite
AVG Anti-virus antiviral software
Ccleaner optimizer and cleaner
Defraggler disk defragmenter
Recuva file recovery tool
Speccy system information tool
WinMerge file comparison and merge utility


I don't think I'm missing anything, but I might have.

What's on your must-have software list that I don't have?

Comments

[billroper]

Alpine for reading e-mail.

But I'm a troglodyte. :)

I also use AntiVir instead of AVG for anti-virus.

[hms42]

Java for web pages that require it and Winzip 9.0 go into a base image at work that I have created over the years. Also, PDF Creator from Sourceforge.

[poltr1]

Oh yeah....forgot to list Java.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

I strongly prefer VLC Player to Windows Media Player.
I also require both vector and raster graphics editors; in this case, those would be Inkscape and The GIMP, respectively.
For audio editing, Audacity is Teh Bomb.
BurnAware is the best free disc burning software I've found yet.
I also use both BitTornado (v. 0.3.17) and uTorrent (v. 1.8.3 - later versions get problematic about phoning home, so I turn OFF automatic updates).
CoreTemp is a pretty good monitor for motherboard and processor temperature, which I rely on when I'm doing lots of transcoding.

That should round out the box pretty well (except for a video editor, and I understand Windows Movie Maker isn't too bad.)

[poltr1]

I've used VLC player, and like it a lot. But when it comes to ripping MP3 files, I prefer Windows Media Player. And the associated database that fills in the track names and downloads the album art.

I've tried Audacity and like it. I think I use that more than Sound Forge.

And I still don't do torrents.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

Torrents are useful for some things, like picking up Ubuntu ISOs, and the live concerts that I listen to (which are, for the most part, a gray area under the law, at worst).

Why rip with WMP if you have Audacity? And why watch/listen with WMP when you have VLC? Each does the job better than WMP, and the fewer products, the better. (Though to be fair, Microsoft Security Essentials seems to be pretty good, and is free.)

[gundo.livejournal.com]

Foxit Reader rather than Adobe Reader.
Editpad for my text editor.
Dropbox to manage band files and song book.
VLC -- nothing better for video.
LibreOffice rather than OO.
XnView for photo viewing.

And here I feel older than Bill...I use Putty to login to my boxes and run Mutt from there.