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