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[mrfredman]

I just got a new harddrive for an older rig who's last hard drive passed away. I thought about loading linux on it, but I just bought it a new 3d card, so I feel like it'll be going to waste if I can't use it for gaming. You're welcome to try and convince me to run linux, but your chances of success are slim.

I just finished installing XP, but its like the crappiest version possible, so it comes with zero preinstalled apps. I'm still in the process of re-installing all my drivers, but soon the time will come to actually start using it for stuff again. The thing is I can't decide what I should install on it, the pressure is daunting, I don't want to install garbage and I also don't want to pay for anything. What good free windows apps do you recommend?

Here's what I need:

Anti-virus program
Photo managing program
Music managing program
Text editor (I'll probably use openoffice, but if you know of something better...)
CD Burning Program
Something widget like or some other way to get a good system monitor on the desktop

I'm sure there are other things I need that I couldn't think of right now, and I might update the list tomorrow when I actually start installing stuff. But my real question is what are your necessary windows apps? Are there programs you can't live whithout? What the hell should I put on this harddrive?

[Hideous]

NOD32
IrfanView
iTunes
OpenOffice
ImgBurn (works, don't know any other freeware like that)
Conky, were you on Linux


You can dualboot Windows and Linux, by the way.

[Terry]

 

[Core Xii]

Notepad++ is the text editor to have. Also you should get the K-Lite Mega Codec Pack (includes Media Player Classic) for your visual media playback. Winamp for music, obviously.

[Hideous]

VLC for Video, ofc.

And Notepad++ is only good as a replacement for Notepad, if you want office-like stuff then you need OpenOffice.org.

[muku]

Launchy. Wouldn't want to live without it anymore, so give it a try.

And Foobar2000 as a lighter/more customizable/more powerful alternative to Winamp (or, ugh, iTunes).

7-Zip as an archival program that supports about every format you'll ever need.

[kyn]

Winamp for music, obviously.

Obviously not, that is.

^{This post was sponsored by foobar2000}

[Trevor Dunbar]

if you don't use winamp, how else are you going to use winamp plug-ins to listen to game music in PSFs, GYMs, and SPFs?  Unless you'd like to get players for each native game music format

Anti-virus: AVG.

For a system monitor, use intel's system monitor if you have an intel processor and motherboard

You also need a toucan desktop
http://e.imagehost.org/0689/Toucan800600.png

and grab Blender while your at it and make pretty graphics (by pretty graphics, I mean 3d toucans):
http://www.blender.org/

For a game,
grab Gravity Bone, Rescue the Beagles, The Underside, or Knytt stories if you havent beat it. You've played cave story too many times already.

For Retail games, might I suggest installing steam and grabbing Left4Dead, Aqauria, and Team Fort 2, or Audio Surf?

[The-Imp]

With Terry:
 

[J.G. Martins]

Yep:

AVG, NOT winamp (too heavy), GIMP (meh), OpenOffice, Notepad++

Oh, and Ubuntu in dual-boot

[kyn]

I actually prefer running Ubuntu in VMware, although I don't find much use for it, but it runs flawlessly I guess.

[Problem Machine]

Daemon Tools (old version)

[Trevor Dunbar]

not the newest winamp. winamp 5.
http://www.filehippo.com/download_winamp/613/

[imaginationac]

AVG is good for anti-virus software.
I liked Picasa for photo management.
iTunes or Songbird for music.
If you're looking for a text editor, I recommend Notepad++; if you're looking for a word processor, OpenOffice.org.
For disc burning, I use InfraRecorder.
I never  used widgets when I had XP. But I tried out Yahoo! Widgets once. Some of it was useful, but I don't really like widgets. The name reminds me of economics class too much.
Also, Launchy is a must!

[Core Xii]

Winamp for music, obviously.

Obviously not, that is.

if you don't use winamp, how else are you going to use winamp plug-ins to listen to game music in PSFs, GYMs, and SPFs? 

Exactly.

[kyn]

I have no idea of what you're talking about. All I know is that when I look at winamp.exe in the processes table it scares the shit out of me

[agj]

• Antivirus: AVG (free version)
  
• Images: XnView
  
• Music: foobar2000 (has plugins for game music rips)

[Cray]

Spybot & Malwarebytes or something like that? Anti-virus programs don't catch everything

You also need a toucan desktop
http://e.imagehost.org/0689/Toucan800600.png

Awesome background Draco, using it now

[Trevor Dunbar]

If you need to shut down your computer after you say, I dunno, Keep it on to listen to music before you sleep or just want to have it shut off after a specified time.
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/dotnet/shutdownwin.aspx