Your PC Must-Haves (programs, etc)

[ComicChick]

Congrats! You've just gotten a brand new computer and put it together. You've just turned it on for the very first time and now it's time to get to work.

What are the "must-have" programs you install/download, etc for this new computer? Recommend some programs for fellow users and which ones you've been a fan of.

examples:
Antivirus/Spyware/Firewall
Image Editing
Social Networking/Instant Messaging
Widgets
Customizations/Themes/Icons
Word programs
Creative Suities
Games
etc.

also if they're accessible online be sure to post a link for everyone to check them out. Legal links of course

 

[Why Are You Crouching Spock?]

Hijack this (free)

See and change what processes are starting up when your computer launches

http://majorgeeks.com/download3155.html

SpyBot Search And Destroy (free)

Clean computer from maliware/spyware

http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html

Steam (free)

Valves digital game service, has some free games to play as well as amazing deals on retail games. Excellent service.

http://store.steampowered.com/

Windows Media Centre (already built into your windows, check start menu)

If you are in the UK it allows you to steam sky-tv through the internet. It also allows you to (unsupriingly) use it as a media centre. DVD/Blueray/TV tuner. It also downloads and updates tv listings. Also allows you to record and pause tv realtime.

Nvidia Inspector (free)

http://downloads.guru3d.com/NVIDIA-Inspector-1.94-download-2612.html

Only if you have an nvidia card. Allows you to use advances options for games such as forcing ambient occlusion on games the default nvidia control panal wont allow.

Fraps (not free)

Allows you to see your frames per second during games, record your gameplay and take screenshots (steam does this as well).

http://www.fraps.com/

 

[Mr.LethalWeapon]

Palemoon Project browser (Firefox)
A version of Mozilla Firefox optimized for Windows. Offers significant performance advantages over stock Firefox.

Comodo Firewall (free version)
Very good firewall software.

MediaMonkey
The organizer for my music collection; there is no competition.

QSoft RAMDisk Enterprise
The best RAM disk software I've come across. Great speed, great reliability. Loads as a device so it immediately runs on start-up instead of waiting for a user to log-in. I installed Subsonic and Mezzmo on the RAM disk (see below).

Subsonic
Server software that makes my digital music collection available to me wherever I have an internet connection. Turned my smartphone into a multi-terabyte mp3 player. It now streams video files too.

Mezzmo
DLNA server software that makes the movies and TV shows stored on my PC watchable on my big screen in the living room, or any other DLNA compatible device on my network.

MusicIP Mixer
Still available for download, but no longer supported. This program is great for those of us with tens of thousands of mp3 files, and can't think of what song to listen to. It acoustically analyzes your music collection and makes playlists for you based on what kind of music you feel like hearing. You pick one song, and it will make a playlist full of songs that would fit together well. It's like Pandora, but for the music you already own.

VLC Media Player
Has played (almost) every format of video file I've thrown at it.

Nero Burning ROM
CD and DVD burning software.

Daemon Tools (lite)
Use disc image files (.ISO) without having to burn them to optical media.

Wootalyzer
Sits on my system tray and shows me what new items get put up on "Deal-of-the-day" sites like Woot.com, NewEgg Shell Shock, Amazon Gold Box, and many other sites.

Recurva
Undelete software, for when I empty the recycle bin when I shouldn't have.

Putty
Does your company block websites you want to look at? This little program helps me SSH to my home computer (in concert with Remote Desktop Connection) so I can browse any site I want without worry t:.

Notepad++
Feature rich replacement for notepad; comes in handy often.

 

[ComicChick]

i just wiped out my computer and reuploaded Windows 7, so i'm essentially starting from scratch.

Here's what I've uploaded so far

* Malwarebytes
* CCleaner
* AVG Security 2011 (good til 2025)
* Opera (web browser)
* MyHeritage (genealogy application)
* Roxio Creator DE (for my d: burner to burn dvds/music/etc)

i used to have AVG 9.0 and i upgraded to Security 2011 today, but I still have my serials and all for AVG 9.0, if i upload that too will it give me added protection?

 

[ComicChick]

i have also added

*Skype
*Wordperfect
*ArcSoft
*Adobe Creative Suite CS5
*Itunes
*AresP2P
*utorrent

 

[Kane52630]

My list

Firefox 4.0
The best web browser.

Adblockplus
Removes every ad you see on the web.

Skype
Call/Chat with friends and family around the world.

Photoshop CS5
Create/Edit/Modify your photos/images professionally.

Microsoft Office
Must have for students/workers for work.

VLC Player
Forget Windows Media Player or Real Player, This media player plays it all, you name it, it plays.

AVS Video Converter 7
Video converter for any format you want for TV, PS3, iPod, ect.

ClamWin Antivirus
A good free Antivirus that wont eat up your memory.

Spybot - Search & Destroy
Another good free antivirus that also wont eat up your memory.

MalwareBytes
Remove Malware with ease.

Video DownloadHelper addon
Download most video from any flash player (Sites like Youtube, DailyMotion, Myspace, ect)

Greasemonkey
Customize the way a web page displays or behaves, by using small bits of JavaScript.


and some others..

PowerISO

DOSBox

D-Fend Reloaded

SopCast

StreamTransport

CDisplay

HJ-Split

WinRAR

Divx codec

Veetle webplayer

 

[ComicChick]

nice list Kane, from your list I downloaded WinRAR and DiVX and CDisplay yesterday. i had written down all the programs I had before wiping out the system for the ones I might want again.

I need to redownload Office and PowerISO

i used to have Clamwin way back win. is it still solid and easy to use?

 

[Kane52630]

I have no problems with Calmwin so far and it's still very easy to use. You should have that along with Spybot just to beef up your security.

 

[Why Are You Crouching Spock?]

I forgot about VLC player, indeed it is awsome.

 

[Aesop Rocks]

You can have user names that long?

 

[Kable24]

Here's what I got in mine

Firefox 4.0.1 w/adblock
Microsoft Security Essentials
CCleaner
Malwarebytes
Adobe Photoshop 7.0
iTunes
TVersity
CDisplay
Image Burn
Thunderbird
Azureus
WinRAR
Office 2007

 

[ComicChick]

it's been nearly 2 years since this thread was created. any new must-haves?

 

[Thought Crime]

***

 

[Micromind]

Most have been mentioned here.

Others Free software are -

Gimp

(Image manipulation software like older version of Photoshop.)

Win X Video Converter

(useful to convert small video files from any format to any other format, like *.flv to *.avi or *.mp4)

Super Anti Spyware

Open Office

 

[Thought Crime]

***

 

[3rdstone]

One little proggie I haven't seen mentioned here is IrfanView.

It's a free picture viewer with some neat features I've been using probably for over 10 years now. I think it's very handy since it's not only a good picture browser, but also very easy to use if you want to toggle between fullscreen or original size, resize, crop, manipulate the pic (kinda like a MS Paint lite)etc, etc.

Since there are plugins for it, you can also play sound files and it supports some movie formats as well. It's a bit too primitive in those functions to be really good though, IMO.

But as a pic viewer/browser I think IrfanView is superior.