Windows Software that I Usually Install

Here is a list of the software that I like to have installed on my Windows machines.

Basic Tools

Avast Antivirus – Free anti-virus on-demand scanner that is MUCH faster than McAffee

betaclock – Detailed time in system tray. I use the following for my format string in order to show the date, time, and battery power in a 2 row system tray: ~%ac %timebatt~|~ddd, ~MMM d~|~h:mm~tt

Digsby – An Instant Messaging tool that allows you to sign into multiple services at the same time.

FastStone Capture v5.3 – Screen Capture software, version 5.3 is Freeware, newer versions are shareware, but v5.3 has all the functionality I need. This Lifehacker article has some additional freeware screen capture programs in the comments.

FileBox eXtender – Add favorite folders to Explorer Windows and any File->Open/Save dialog

Firefox – My favorite web browser.

Foxit Reader – PDF reader that is much faster than Acrobat.

SuperCopier 2 – (search for “English” on the webpage and click it) – Modifies Windows Explorer copying to not stop if there is a problem. Also gives much more status for copies.

Taskbar Shuffle – simple, small, free utility that lets you drag and drop your Windows taskbar buttons to rearrange them

Thunderbird – An email client program

Unlocker – If you try to delete/rename a file and it is being used by another program, it will tell you which program is using it and will allow it to be unlocked if you want.

VNC – Remote control your PC. Don’t need to fill out the form on the VNC webpage, just click on “Proceed to Download” at the bottom of the page.

XnView – JPG and movie viewer

Advanced Tools (Freeware)

Astra32 – This program performs computer configuration analysis and provides detailed information on your computer hardware and its working modes.

cygwin – Unix utilies for Windows

Daemon Tools – Mount CD/DVD ISO images on hard drive as a drive letter

Imgburn – Utility for creating CD/DVD .iso images (also does burning of images)

Process Explorer – Equivalent to Windows Task Manager but much more powerful. Gives the full path to the executable that started a process (along with command line parameters). Allows you to discover which processes are locking a file. Allows you to change the priority of a process.

PuTTY – Free SSH client (I usually use openssh for client and server under cygwin, but there are some occasions where PuTTY comes in handy).

VMWare Server – Free virtualization program.

WinSCP – Free SFTP/FTP client for Windows with Norton Commander like dual pane interface.

Non-Freeware Tools

Beyond Compare – A fantastic tool for comparing directories and files.

SlickEdit – A very powerful programmers editor – highly recommended.

Tag & Rename – Great utility for mass editing of tags in MP3/WMA files.

Firefox Addons

PDF Download – Allows you to choose how to deal with PDFs – display in browser or open in PDF reader

SwitchProxy – SwitchProxy lets you manage and switch between multiple proxy configurations

User Agent Switcher – Adds a menu and a toolbar button to switch the user agent of the browser.

IE Tab – an extension from Taiwan, features: Embedding Internet Explorer in tabs of Mozilla/Firefox.