Essential Software to Install on a new computer
Update: Be sure to check out the comments on this post as well. Some good recommendations there (aside from the regular "just use linux" trolls)
I recently got a new laptop. here's what I installed in the first couple of days:
Installed:
- Office 2007
- FireFox (with addons below)
o TabMix Plus (Control tabs in firefox better)
o AdBlock (Block any annoying ad forever from showing on your browser)
o IE Tab (Allows using IE inside firefox for those "special" sites out there
- MemInfo tray (Shows memory usage in tray icon)
- Free Download Manager (As the name says)
- BsPlayer (Great player, I have the pro version. Beats VLC and Media Player Classic for my taste). Note: the free version contains ads!
- KLite codec pack (Codecs to watch every type of movie format out there)
- Total Commander (The best file manager out there for my taste, though there are others people like)
- Notepad2 (Fast, free notepad replacement with syntax highlighting and not much else)
- IrfanView (Blazing Fast, free picture viewing program)
- DirectFolders (not free, but awesome extension for explorer which makes file and folder dialogs in windows actually usable)
- QuickTime (And remove all the crap that it installs using Autoruns from sysinternals)
- SysInternals Suite (best free set of tools for admins and developers to find out system info and do system things you never thought possible)
o Use autoruns to remove all the crap
- Camtasia (Great software for recording screen movies. You might also want to see if windows media encoder would work for you, as it's free)
- SnagIt (Quickly and easily take snapshots of the screen, from the same company who brought you Camtasia. lots of free alternatives for this out there)
- CoolEdit pro (old version of now Adobe's audio editing tool)
- WinRar
- TortoiseSVN ( Free and open source source control client for subversion)
- AnyDVD (So I can see DVDs from ANY region on my DVD drive. I can't believe I need such software at all, but reality sucks)
- Keepass (For keeping my passwords safe)
- LiveWriter (blog posting client from microsoft)
- Live Messenger (with addons below)
o Enable Spelling (this seems to be no longer needed on my latest install of live writer. cool!)
- Google Desktop Search (I can't live without my Ctrl-Ctrl shortcut anymore. This also replaces any start-run replacements out there)
- VS 2005
o Resharper (Best VS 2005 addin since CodeSmart for VB6)
- FolderShare (Sync files and folders automatically on multiple machines)
- VMWare (what MS Virtual PC wants to be when it grows up)
- Omea reader(Great rss and news reader from the people who brought you resharper)
Am I missing something?