I began to see a pattern on the kind of applications I was installing on every PC/laptop and in a way, it indicates to me how I'm making use of my PC and it turns out that I use my PC for mainly managing photo, video and audio media files and downloading the said items from the internet.
So, here is my list of apps that I ALWAYS install on my machines.
Productivity
- MS Office
- Adobe Acrobat - for editing and creating PDF files
- Acrobat Reader
- Primo PDF creator - free PDF creator of any file or web page
Photography
- Picasa - Google's free photo editor and cataloger, with face recognition built-in
- Adobe Photoshop & Bridge - umm....there's nothing more to say
- Fast Picture Viewer - I use it as a specialist software for tethered shooting with a Nikon camera, but it also allows fast viewing of RAW image files, batch editing of EXIF metadata among other things. See a separate post on this subject.
Music/Audio
- iTunes
DVD
- DVD Shrink - compresses DVD-9 format into standard 4.7Gb DVD and to make a backup of DVDs. Sadly, the development of this little app has stopped since 2005 but the most recent version still runs OK in Windows 7.
- DVD Decrypter - burns ISO and IMG files to a DVD. Again, like DVD Shrink, this app has stopped development but it also runs OK in Windows 7.
- Nero Burning ROM - burns DVDs. A stand-alone app which comes with the Nero package.
- VirtualCloneDrive - allows you to create virtual DVD drives from disc image files (ISO and IMG formats). In other words, it allows you to watch movies from image files using VLC or any other media player, without first having to burn the image to a disc. Similar to Daemon Tools, but much easier to use.
Video
- VLC Player - for playing ALL types of video files. There's none better!
- Easy Video Splitter & its sibling Easy Video Joiner - The names said it all, really.
- Fast Video Converter - converts one video format into another. Got it for free as part of a promotion of some other software. Not bad and the conversion speed is respectable.
File Handling
- Free Commander - Windows Explorer replacement with dual pane view and many more. My favourite functions are renaming of multiple files, and searching files.
- Winzip
- WinRAR
- QuickPar -
- Beyond Compare - the best app for comparing the contents of folders, as well as merging and synchronising similar folders on different media
- Treesize Professional - shows disk usage on internal and external drives. Essential too for finding out where all your hard drive space have disappeared to.
- TextPad - Powerful text editor.
Download
- Newzbin - My one and only app for downloading all types of media and apps from Usenet. A full tutorial on using Newzbin is shown here.
- YouTube downloader - This is not an app in itself but an Add-on for Firefox for downloading videos from YouTube in various formats, such as mp4 and flv, as well as audio file in mp3 format.
Freebies that comes with Windows
- Windows Disc Image Burner - for burning ISO disc images to DVD
IM & Communication
- VZOChat - For video chatting with people who don't use Google Video chat
- VOIP Stunt - for making free calls (to mobiles and landlines) around the world, provided you have enough credit in your account
- Google Video chat - Make audio and video calls direct from Gmail contacts
Protection
- Avast! Free AntiVirus - Of the many free anti virus apps out there, I prefer this over the rest. It's low in CPU usage, small foot-print in terms of disk space and very un-intrusive, everything that's the opposite of Norton and McAfee.
Firefox Add-ons
- Firebug - Inspect and modify HTML elements on a webpage
- Facebook Photo Zoom - allows you to view photos without having to open each photo in Facebook.
- FireShot - the best screen capture utility
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