Must-have applications for PC??

A friend of mine got some pretty nasty viral crud on her laptop and asked me to format it for her, get it running again, and so after I backed up her documents I formatted it and started over. I got to thinking - what are the must-have applications on your computers?? This is a 21-year-old college student, if that helps anything. Don't leave anything off, guys!

microsoft office.

if you cannot afford the original

try this free stuff, supposed to be fully compatible and has everything you want.

http://www.openoffice.org/

enjoy.

-A decent media player of some sort.
-Be sure to install all the needed players and readers (Real, Adobe, etc.) so that you dont get asked to fix that later
-Open Office is good as TinderBox said.


-C

For me, it'd be
- Office suite: MS Office 2K, Open Office, or Abiword
- Web browser: Firefox
- Instant messaging: Trillian Pro or GAIM
- Media player: WinAMP (and maybe RealOne)
- Image editor: GIMP or GIMPshop
- Adobe Acrobat Reader - can't live with it, can't live without it
- Unzip utility: Windows XP's own, or 7-zip
- Spyware, virus protection, and firewall: (I haven't used Windows extensively for awhile, so this is blank.)

IrfanView for viewing pictures/pr0n. Best performance/$ there is.
Miranda Instant Messager. I haven't tried Trillian so I won't rule that one out either.
VLC for viewing video/pr0n. Best performance/$ here too and no codec problems ever.
+1 on open office.

Whoa, I forgot those apps Winny mentioned.
+1 Irfanview
+1 VLC

Good stuff. I wish I had Irfanview on Linux.

Good suggestions above. For free spyware removal, AdAware and Spybot works well. Browse around here for those and other interesting free downloads:

http://www.majorgeeks.com/
http://www.download.com/

It goes without saying that you use any of the links (especially the lesser known stuff) there at your own risk, some apps may be buggy (it's shareware/freeware/betas afterall). Would stay away from RAM optimizers.

"Disable/Remove Windows Messenger" in the messaging section of Majorgeeks is a must-do for me, since I don't like the program built into XP. All the other ones (Yahoo, MSN Messenger, ICQ, etc.) are all here.

Bandwidth meters are fun to play with too.

Well lets see...

Open Source/ Non-pay Software
------------------------------------
Open Office - Office & Productivity Application
The GIMP - Photo Editing
PDFCreator - PDF via windows printer
Foxit Reader - PDF reader (others use Adobe Viewer)
Keepass - Encrypted password storage (others use passwordsafe)
NVU - Web page creation
Firefox - Web Browser
Thunderbird - Email Client
growisofs - DVD writing software
cdrecord - CD writing software
7-Zip - Compression & Decompression software
ClamWin - Antivirus
FeedReader - RSS feed aggregator
GraphCalc - 2D/3D Graphing Calculator
Spybot Search & Destroy - Spyware removal

There are a lot more, but without knowing what her career/skill set is, it would just be a long list of apps.

Hope this helps.

Sincerely,

Shaman

Most of them have already been mentioned, MS Office, a good Internet Security system and I like PowerDesk Utilities for PC file maintenance.

Excellent, thanks everyone!

My standard Wintel loadout is:

Windows 2000 Pro--updated
Office 2000 Pro--updated
Acrobat Reader 6
Norton Antivirus 2003--updated
Winzip 10
Irfanview--If they want more than MS Photo Editor
AdAware
Spybot
K-Lite Codec Pack with MP Classic
Real Player
Quicktime

Optional:

Nero 6 for CD burning
Acrobat 5.0 for PDF-ing

I like light systems--wish more people would realize that a basic P3/700 feels faster in daily use than a P4/1.6 with the usual OEM junk.

And after you have it reinstalled, get NORTON GHOST so when it happens again, it only takes 15 minutes to restore it back to the exact same way it was with everything installed that was there before. Don't even have to re-enter any product codes or figure out your internet connection. Allready had to use mine once. Crazy program.

+1 Ghost. We use it to image the computers at school. Incredibly convenient, except when you try to ghost multiple computers... Windows networks don't like when multiple computers have the same system names.

Laptop users - Notebook hardware control (NHC)
Laptop users - Mobilemeter

Desktop users - Speedfan

Universal recommendation - Irfan view

Norton Ghost
Port Explorer
Ethereal
Autoruns
Directory Opus
UltraEdit-32
RootkitRevealer
BartsPE

For those who do not wish to pay for ghost there are...

g4u (ghost 4 unix)
g4l (ghost 4 linux... New one, not the original)

Bootable CD and/or floppy (if memory serves me correctly). This combined with the "ultimate boot cd" makes a good tool for those in the IT/IS fields. Granted they are not commercial, but (with a little practice) they get the job done (without money spent).

Sincerely,

Shaman

Quicken

602 office suite...MS Office clone, but freeware...

cyberhobo said:

Directory Opus

Click to expand...

Dir Opus absolutely rocks, been using it since version 3.42, which was on the Amiga.

Geoff

BugOutGear_USA said:

602 office suite...MS Office clone, but freeware...

Click to expand...

...not free anymore.