List some software that you consider as being essential

Post Reply New Topic

Here is my list:

Firefox
Openoffice
Emule
Foobar2000
IMGburn
Media Player Classic
Utorrent

Any web browser, any email program, a word processor, etc...

WinRAR, unzips most types of compressed files
VLC Player, most compatible media player out there
Power Defragmenter, very fast and efficient free defragmenter that is superior to the one bundled with Windows
AVG Free (if you're not going to pay for an anti-virus suite)
Registry Mechanic, pretty self explanatory, cleans up your registry
Irfanview, surprisingly powerful image editing tool for a free program

Azureus is a decent alternative to utorrent, it's not as minimalist bare-bones as utorrent, but its ability to simultaneously stream the videos you're downloading is worth looking into.

Heres my list that I prefer to use
Avast Antivirus
Azureus torrent Client
Executive Software Diskeeper
Firefox
FLV Downloader
ImTOO iPod movie converter
Media Player Classic
Openoffice
Picasa2
WinRAR
VLC Player
Google Earth
Tracks Eraser Pro
Starry Night Pro Plus 5
StyleXP
Spybot Spyware remover

Here's what I use or find essential:
Firefox
XChat
Digsby
AVG Free
Carbonite Backup
Eclipse IDE
uTorrent
Windows Vista

I need to get a new office suite, the broken spellcheck in OpenOffice Writer cost me 5-10% on an essay.

I have two list of free essentials, depending on the user skill (and they overlap, so sorry my post is so long.)

Free stuff I'd bundle with a computer for an average user:
Opera
Open Office.org
AVG antivirus (free edition)
Windows Defender (only works on XP/2003/Vista(included) Spyware Doctor starter edition if they have a different windows)
Online Armor
Avorax shield
Standard browser plugins (flash, java, etc.)
K-lite mega codec Pack with quicktime/realPlayer alternatives and media player classic
PDF-XChange Viewer free version
7-zip
CDBurnerXP
Scribus
The rest of these are somewhat less essential or depend on user needs:
Humanized Enso Launcher
GnuCash
GIMP
Audacity
FreeMind
Exact Audio Copy
isobuster
Electric sheep or Really Slick Screen Savers
Google desktop
(for fun, depends on skill and taste:)
Celestia
Google Earth
Enigma
Neverball
C-evo
The Battle for Wesnoth

For an advanced user I have a different list: (this is subjective, so I went overboard. Your mileage may vary.)
(office)
Open Office.org
(coding)
NetBeans
Python
Nvu / Kompozer
(art)
Blender
inkscape
the GIMP
Audacity
project dogwaffle
(maybe) DAZ/Bryce
Scribus
(security)
AVG antivirus free edition
TrueCrypt
Sandboxie
(Internet)
Firefox (standard plugins, Wikipedia and AOL video search engines, download statusbar, downthemall!, pagezoom, maybe fasterfox, and whatever else you like)
(maybe)Google Web Accelerator
K-lite codec/VLC, etc etc.
BitTyrant
(other)
7-zip
VirtualBox
CDBurnerXP
DebugMode Wink
Enso launcher
Arainia Gizmo Drive
GraphCalc
Restore Desktop
FreeMind
Revo Uninstaller
JKdefrag
(not installed)
Knoppix (as a live-boot disk for emergencies)
Restoration (on a usb drive. I don't know if this is a very good undelete utility because I rarely use it.)
siw (you could install this if you want, but I also have one on my usb drive)

Maybe also some of the less essential things from the average list if you want them. What advanced users consider essential depends on what they do.

A whole slew of free games (maybe not essential), but that's another list

If you think you have a better (free) alternative to one of these I'd like to hear about it.

1. WinRar
2. Windows Media Player
3. Symantec Client Security[ The Professional, Lightwieght version of Norton. Used by the Gov`t, School System and is a very trusted tool in my words.]
4. DivX Player
5. OpenOffice [The one thing i hate about M$ is thier Office Suite, Microsoft Office.]
6. Command Prompt [So i can run my scripts.]
7. SpyBot S&D
8. Microsoft Windows XP Professional
9. CCleaner
10. Google Earth
11. Mozilla Firefox

Note- I don`t like Windows XP Home due to the fact that there is very little freedom when it comes to turning off services, Scripting Tools, Ect. Windows XP Media Center is a Pig made for users who want to kill all thier resources to do the same damn things you can do with XP Pro.
Vista Buisness is a good Operating System but i`m waiting for mre updates to be released.

Last edited by gamefreak on 18 Apr 2008, 11:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

In addition to many of those listed above, for Mac:

DarkAdapted X (This is by far my favorite program ever. It helps immensely with eye strain, and nights at the observatory.)

And these I love simply because computers are built for convenience, and self organizing lists are superb:
Booxter
YummySoup!
Moody

dang, I must be an advanced user...

Free/semi-free

Daz Bryce/Daz Studio
Poser 5 (7 is current, but I got 5 for free)
Blender (some good modeling tools, but yowsie, the interface...
Wings 3d (modeler, some good plugins for it too..
Topmod - a topological modeler. Some interesting shapes come out of this
Avast Anti-virus
Lavasoft Ad-aware
Mozilla Firefox
P3do explorer (shows thumbnails of any pictures in a directory. by Yarp)
the Gimp (for people who want Photoshop, but just cain't afford it..

that's all that comes to mind too late after 40 hours at the lathe...

This really all comes down to a few essential categories:

• web browser
• word processor/office suite
• media player
• security software (for Windows, anyway)

Here's what I use on Windows...

• Mozilla Firefox
• OpenOffice.org
• iTunes
• CA Security Center (free from ISP, but otherwise, probably ZoneAlarm, Windows Defender, and AVG)

On the Mac...

• Safari (though some pages will need Firefox)
• NeoOffice (an OS X port of OpenOffice)
• iTunes (works best on OS X, actually)

I'll admit, I don't use security software with my Mac...

I tried to keep it mostly free, but if I was on Linux, I would swap iTunes for VLC and Safari for Konqueror (because KDE is my favorite desktop--Kubuntu FTW!)

Firefox or Opera
Windows Media Player
Avast Antivirus
Counterspy and/or Spybot
Sysinternals Process Explorer
CCleaner
Digital Clock Screen Saver

Top 8 (in that order)

1) Firefox
2) Gmail (any other mail client is too complex for my tastes)
3) Solitaire (I seriously need it to get through classes sometimes)
4) Itunes (I got an Ipod 5th generation so I'm kind of locked in there)
5) winrar
6) PowerISO (I actually back up my perishable data onto one huge cd image that I copy to two other locations)
7) Gimp
uTorrent

Firefox
Photoshop
Guitar Pro
Gmail
iTunes
VLC

PC Specific
-------------
EditPlus
uTorrent
MS Office
WAMP (Apache, MySQL, PHP server)

Mac Specific
--------------
Quicktime with Perian addon
Quicksilver
Keyclick (app to make click sounds when you type, way cool!)
Smultron
MAMP (Same as WAMP but for Mac).

1) MS Office 2000/2003 & Open Office
2) 7-Zip
3) Far Manager (Norton Commander clone for Win32)
4) ImgBurn
5) Adobe Reader
6) DJVUSolo & WinDJVU
7) uTorrent
WinGet 1.6
9) GIMP
10) Some C/C++ compiler (Open Watcom, MinGW etc.)
11) QIP (ICQ client)
12) FireFox

The operating system, of course! After it, I would cite (for a advanced user or system administrator running Windows):

Opera
Regedit
Diskeeper
Process Monitor
WinRAR
Adobe Reader
MS Office
Nmap

Safari
AppleScript
iTunes
Fireworks
Photoshop