Web browser: Firefox, Google Chrome or Opera.
Just pick whichever you like. I prefer Firefox but it's mostly personal preference. Internet Explorer 9 is decent as well but I assume most people already have it installed.
Email client: Thunderbird or a web-based one.
I recently started using Thunderbird because I have like 5 different emails, and Thunderbird allows you to have them all in the same place. If you just send a few emails once in a while then the web based client provided by your email provider will most likely be enough. I prefer Thunderbird over Outlook by the way.
I don't use IRC that much so I don't really have that much to comment on here. Please note that neither of these programs are free (as in free beer). Both will give you a free trial version but XChat will stop working completely after 30 days, and mIRC will have you wait for like 30 seconds at each startup after the trial has ended.
Torrent client: µTorrent
Lots of people on /g/ are paranoid about µTorrent since it is used for a lot of illegal activities, and is closed source. Sadly, I haven't found a better alternative which is open source as well. If anyone know one, please let me know.
FTP client: FileZilla or your web browser.
If you are like me, and don't use FTP a lot, then your web browser might be enough. Firefox supports it, Chrome supports it and so on. The reason why you might want a fully featured FTP client such as FileZilla is because it gives you a lot more options and control.
Video player: MPC-HC with a proper configuration or VLC 2.0.
I prefer MPC-HC and I've explained why before. I also have VLC 2.0 as a "backup" but it's not really needed with MPC-HC.
Music Player/transcoding: Foobar2000
Lightweight, plays all formats I've ever tried and very very customizable. You can find lots of skins for it on DeviantArt. It also has a ton of addons available for it. You can find a list of most of them on HydrogenAudio.
Foobar2000 can also transcode audio like FLAC to AAC as long as you have the necessary codecs installed.
Image viewer: IrfanView or the Windows default one.
I use IrfranView because it supports animated .gif files. Don't be fooled by the crappy site. It is good. The default one is decent as well but does not support animated gifs.
Image/video editor: Adobe collection
Not much to say here. I simply prefer the tools from Adobe over for example GIMP. Yes it's expensive but you can sometimes get it for free from your school, or simply pirate it. The best way of pirating it is by downloading the trial and then edit your host file. That way you don't have to download some strange crack which might be a virus.
Video encodning/transcoding/: HandBrake
Free program which gets the job done. Not much more to say.
Office suite: Microsoft Office 2010 or OpenOffice/LibreOffice
I don't know the difference between OpenOffice and LibreOffice so I won't comment on that. I use Office 2010 and is very pleased with it. The ribbon UI is fantastic once you get used to it.
PDS viewer: Foxit Reader or SumatraPDF
I use Foxit but both programs gets the job done just fine.
Text Editor: Notepad++ or Notepad.
Notepad is built in to Windows and will be enough for most people. Notepad++ has some very nice features over Notepad such as syntax highlighting.
Archiver: WinRAR or 7zip
I am pretty sure 7zip is better than WinRAR in every single way, but I for some reason prefer WinRAR.
Oh, and if you want to activate WinRAR then just place this file in your WinRAR installation folder. You can open the file in a text editor if you think it's a virus. It's just a file which tells WinRAR you have a licence. The licence the Federal Agency of Education have bought, to be precise.
Optical drive emulator: DAEMON-Tools
There are a ton of different ones but I've always used DAEMON-Tools and it works just fine.
Anti-Virus: Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE)
Free, low false positive, high defection rate, low resource usage and lots of other good things. I don't recommend pirating an anti-virus program because it might contain viruses.
File recovery: Recuva
Recover files you have accidentally deleted. Please note that it might not work. Especially not if you have written data to the drive after the file was deleted.
Hardware monitoring: Speccy, CPU-Z, GPU-Z
Speccy gives you a basic overview of your components. CPU-Z and GPU-Z gives you very detailed info about your CPU/RAM and GPU.
Temperature monitoring: HWMonitor
Pretty self-explanatory. It shows you the temperature of all your components.
Virtual machines: VirtualBox
I use virtual machines quite a bit for downloading and running things which might contain viruses. It's still not 100% safe but it's more safe than just running the program in your real OS.
Runtimes: Flash Player, Java, .NET, Silverlight, DirectX
Just some runtimes you will most likely need.
Other: Dropbox, Steam,
Dropbox - Online storage.
Steam - Game store with great prices.
Video player: MPC-HC with a proper configuration or VLC 2.0.
I prefer MPC-HC and I've explained why before. I also have VLC 2.0 as a "backup" but it's not really needed with MPC-HC.
Music Player/transcoding: Foobar2000
Lightweight, plays all formats I've ever tried and very very customizable. You can find lots of skins for it on DeviantArt. It also has a ton of addons available for it. You can find a list of most of them on HydrogenAudio.
Foobar2000 can also transcode audio like FLAC to AAC as long as you have the necessary codecs installed.
Image viewer: IrfanView or the Windows default one.
I use IrfranView because it supports animated .gif files. Don't be fooled by the crappy site. It is good. The default one is decent as well but does not support animated gifs.
Image/video editor: Adobe collection
Not much to say here. I simply prefer the tools from Adobe over for example GIMP. Yes it's expensive but you can sometimes get it for free from your school, or simply pirate it. The best way of pirating it is by downloading the trial and then edit your host file. That way you don't have to download some strange crack which might be a virus.
Video encodning/transcoding/: HandBrake
Free program which gets the job done. Not much more to say.
Office suite: Microsoft Office 2010 or OpenOffice/LibreOffice
I don't know the difference between OpenOffice and LibreOffice so I won't comment on that. I use Office 2010 and is very pleased with it. The ribbon UI is fantastic once you get used to it.
PDS viewer: Foxit Reader or SumatraPDF
I use Foxit but both programs gets the job done just fine.
Text Editor: Notepad++ or Notepad.
Notepad is built in to Windows and will be enough for most people. Notepad++ has some very nice features over Notepad such as syntax highlighting.
Archiver: WinRAR or 7zip
I am pretty sure 7zip is better than WinRAR in every single way, but I for some reason prefer WinRAR.
Oh, and if you want to activate WinRAR then just place this file in your WinRAR installation folder. You can open the file in a text editor if you think it's a virus. It's just a file which tells WinRAR you have a licence. The licence the Federal Agency of Education have bought, to be precise.
Optical drive emulator: DAEMON-Tools
There are a ton of different ones but I've always used DAEMON-Tools and it works just fine.
Anti-Virus: Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE)
Free, low false positive, high defection rate, low resource usage and lots of other good things. I don't recommend pirating an anti-virus program because it might contain viruses.
File recovery: Recuva
Recover files you have accidentally deleted. Please note that it might not work. Especially not if you have written data to the drive after the file was deleted.
Hardware monitoring: Speccy, CPU-Z, GPU-Z
Speccy gives you a basic overview of your components. CPU-Z and GPU-Z gives you very detailed info about your CPU/RAM and GPU.
Temperature monitoring: HWMonitor
Pretty self-explanatory. It shows you the temperature of all your components.
Virtual machines: VirtualBox
I use virtual machines quite a bit for downloading and running things which might contain viruses. It's still not 100% safe but it's more safe than just running the program in your real OS.
Runtimes: Flash Player, Java, .NET, Silverlight, DirectX
Just some runtimes you will most likely need.
Other: Dropbox, Steam,
Dropbox - Online storage.
Steam - Game store with great prices.
A couple suggestions,
ReplyDeleteTorrent client: Transmission-qt
Port of transmission to windows, it ain't that bad.
Music Player: Clementine
Has pretty much anything you could want in a music player, great for those who find setting up foobar a hassle.
Optical drive emulator: WinCDEmu
Very light weight, feels native to windows, very nice little program.
Anti-Virus: ESET NOD32
While its not freeware, its pretty easy to find keys or cracks. Runs on pretty low resources, no false detections. Been using it for quite a while.
Others:
TeraCopy - Copy and moves files between drives faster than explorer, lots of nice options like check or shutdown when completed. Feels pretty native.
Secunia PSI - Finds out of date software and updates them automatically, or gives you a direct link if it cant.
ImgBurn - My personal favorite for burning cds/dvds, very lightweight, never had problems with it.
Visipics - Finds duplicate pictures, very useful at times
the list could go on and on...
I can suggest a few I use successfully.
ReplyDeleteUltradefrag, set to boot defrag will keep things pretty and running.
Crystal disk mark for those SSDs.
Eraser and Truecrypt for the paranoids.
Cobian Backup for localized backups to external HDDs.
F.lux
Launchy
malwarebyte's antimalware
Rainmeter for rice
qbittorent works really well for me
paint.net if you don't need gimp/photoshop