Applications and Utilities

This list is as much for me as for anyone else – I reinstall computers fairly regularly, but I never seem to keep the same applications and utilities. The idea of this list is so that I can keep a reference of the apps I use on a regular basis.

I’ll enable comments, so if you’d like to suggest suitable apps and utilities you think I should try, please feel free to!

Ninite – http://ninite.com/

Ninite is my first port of call and is absolutely brilliant for installing a lot of my regularly used apps and utilites. It’s basically a one-stop installation shop for a huge number of apps allowing a single-click batch install.

All tools are free unless stated.

Skype – video calling and IM

Pidgin – IM for multiple protocols

iTunes – digital music and video player

VLC – fantastic video player

Spotify – streaming music

Paint.NET – Lightweight image editing

Picasa – Photo library organisation

GIMP – Heavyweight image editing and creation, photo manipulation

OpenOffice – Open source and credible Office alternative

Adobe PDF – the original PDF reader

AVG Antivirus FREE – free Antivirus

Microsoft Security Essentials – very competent Antivirus from Microsoft

uTorrent – my personal favourite BitTorret client

Dropbox – 2GB of free cloud storage, sync’d to a local folder on your PC (256mb extra free with this link!)

7-Zip – powerful and fast compression software

WinSCP – Secure file transfer over SSH, SFTP or just FTP

PuTTY – excellent SSH, Telnet and console application

Notepad++ – very extensible Notepad replacement text editor

vSphere CLI/PowerCLI – Tools for managing VMware ESX/i servers

PCTools Password Utilities – Password generation utilities (can’t find the download)

Seesmic Desktop – Twitter desktop client

CamStudio – Desktop screen recorder

Quest PowerGUI – PowerShell scripting environment

Remote Desktop Connection Manager – Tabbed RDP sessions

RDTabs – Tabbed RDP sessions

WinDirStat – See where all your hard disk space has got to

Windows Live Writer – Desktop blogging software (this blog is written largely in WLW)

Wireshark – Packet level analysis of network traffic

RealVNC – Remote Desktop Software

VMware Workstation (not free) – fantastic desktop virtualisation software

Veeam Backup and FastSCP – Backup VMDK files from your ESX/i hosts

Microsoft Web Platform Installer – Very simple way to get IIS, PHP and MySQL running on your Windows PC (and lots of open source web applications too)

Microsoft Visual Web Developer – develop .NET web applications

ISO Recorder – burn ISO images

Daemon Tools Lite – mount ISO images

Getif – SNMP walk and viewer

ProcessExplorer – replace Task Manager with something more useful

VM Check Alignment – ensure your VMDK files are efficiently aligned with storage