It's time that we had a thread for you to let us know the Windows apps that you think are essential!

My list:

Firefox and Opera
I feel like you should have both. Opera is my main browser and use FF for a few other things.

Irfanview
This is the quickest image editing program I've seen - it's free, fast, and good for those times when photoshop is too much.

Flashget
Best downloading app ever.

Trillian
Until we get a Windows port of Adium, this is the IM client to go with

uTorrent
I switched from Azureus and have been very impressed. Small footprint.

SysSense
If you check your adsense totals a lot like I tend to do, this app sits in the taskbar and updates itself automatically. Very handy. (Google Ads are the only thing keeping this up, so it's always nice to know how much is in the bank)

NetStumbler
For finding free wifi.

Pixie
A great little app that tells you the color codes of whatever you mouseover.

FlashFXP
The best FTP app I've seen for Windows.

AVG Antivirus
Possibly not the best, but free for personal use. (free.grisoft.com)

Sygate personal firewall
Too paranoid to use the windows firewall (appears to be discontinued by symantec, found it on tucows though)

Spybot s&d
Remove those annoyances that come with surfing irreputable websites (http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html)

These always go on my windows installs immediately.

Also, dont forget those essential tools for mac things:

Macdrive
Access your mac-formatted disks from windows.
(http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive6/)

Transmac
Like the above, but more an app than a driver.
(http://www.asy.com/sharetm.htm)

UltraISO
Manipulates ISO images, convert from one format to another etc..
(http://www.ezbsystems.com/ultraiso/)

Adobe Photoshop

Soundforge favourite sound editor

ThumbsPlus basic image editor and image database

Nod32 antivirus software

Limewire for P2P

Roxio easy media creator because it's childsplay

ISO Recorder v 2
Free, SP2 and Vista compatible, and extremely small download. It's very basic - adds ISO handling to right-click menus, so you can burn or rip.

Right click a directory and make an ISO, also.

PuTTY
Tiny and intuitive fully-featured Telnet and SSH client, a must have on any Windows installation of mine.

PDFCreator
Another must-have for my systems, the free PDFCreator acts like a native printer driver for Windows, allowing one to essentially "print" to a PDF document from any application. This makes distributing professional publications online a world easier.

winopen.exe - opens a window or windowed application from the command prompt

command here - (MS powertool) - opens a command prompt in the current or selected windows folder

I would love to have the latter feature in OSX - to open terminal already CD'd to the current directory from wherever you are in Finder.

Also VI and Grep.

ACDSee (older versions, not the current bloated do-everything-but-not-well version)
WSFTP Pro (V.8, the latest version sucks).

Winzip with Command Line extension (V.9 since V.10 is much slower), WinACE - love that one, WinRAR.

Laptop:
RMClock - reduce CPU voltage, thus reducing heat and lower power consumption

AceMegaCodecPack - codec pack that's huge, plays everything I throw at it. use "its Dashboard" to utilize it's full power

BitSpirit - BT Client. Looks like BitComet but 100% better. Can regulate reading/writing cycles to hd, excellent for huge RAM systems, and for people that don't want their HDD to die after a year to do the excessive reading/writing to the HDD BT requires

GraphCalc - my Window's Calculator

Everest Home - System information gathering tool

Xnews - my newsgroup reader/downloader

Tweak UI - remove bloated looks throughout XP

Foobar2000 - my music player. highly customizable

Miranda-IM - multi-protocol IM that has great customizable features

Daemon tools - reading cd/dvd images w/o burning

Firefox w/ Tabs, gestures, download manager, Adblock, NoScript = Disturbance free browsing

Synergy - maps one set if input device to multiple computer system. Clutter-free your work area from excessive input peripherals with this software.

ActiveSync

Microsoft ActiveSync provides a great synchronization experience with Windows powered PCs and Microsoft Outlook right out of the box. ActiveSync acts as the gateway between your Windows powered PC and Windows Mobile powered device, enabling the transfer of Outlook information, Office documents, pictures, music, videos and applications from your desktop to your device. In addition to synchronizing with a desktop PC, ActiveSync can synchronize directly with Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 so that you can keep your e-mail, Calendar, Notes, and Contacts updated wirelessly when you’re away from your PC.

F-Secure SSH Client

Reflection for Secure IT (formerly F-Secure SSH) is WRQ’s SSH-based security solution. Built for both UNIX and Windows environments, Reflection for Secure IT protects networks from spies, hackers, and industrial espionage.

Mozilla products: Self explanatory

EditPlus

EditPlus is an Internet-ready 32-bit text editor, HTML editor and programmer's editor for Windows. While it can serve as a good replacement for Notepad, it also offers many powerful features for Web page authors and programmers.

TopStyle pro

Then tap into the power of cascading style sheets (CSS) and XHTML

DaemonTools

DAEMON Tools is an advanced application for multiprotection emulation. It is further development of Generic Safedisc emulator and incorporates all its features. This program allows running Backup Copies of SafeDisc (C-Dilla), Securom, Laserlock, CDCOPS, StarForce and Protect CD (and many others) protected games. Also included is a Virtual DVDROM drive (Generic DVD-ROM) enabling you to use your CD images as if they were already burned to CD! DAEMON Tools works under Windows9x/ME/NT/2000/XP with all types of CD/DVDROM drives (IDE/SCSI) and supports nearly any CD protection.

Diskeeper

Diskeeper 10 Professional Edition provides high-speed automatic defrag along with advanced settings and features that allow you to fine-tune its operation.

UltraIso

UltraISO is an ISO CD/DVD image file creating/editing/converting tool and a bootable CD/DVD maker , it can directly edit the CD/DVD image file and extract files and folders from it, as well as directly make ISO files from your CD/DVD-ROM or hard disk. At the same time, you can maintain the ISO bootable information, thus creating your own bootable CD/DVDs. You now have the power to make and edit your own ISO files, and then burn them to CD/DVD for your own needs.

HiJackThis

HijackThis examines certain key areas of the Registry and Hard Drive and lists their contents. These are areas which are used by both legitimate programmers and hijackers. It's up to you to decide what should be removed. Some items are perfectly fine. You should not remove them. Never remove everything. Doing that could leave you with missing items needed to run legitimate programs and add-ins. This Page will help you work with the Experts to clean up your system. For those of you needing instructions on how to Copy and Paste the contents of a text file into a Forum Post, please look at the Table of Contents. A link to the instructions is included.

NOD32

NOD32 Antivirus System provides well balanced, state-of-the-art protection against threats endangering your PC and enterprise systems running various platforms from Microsoft Windows 95 / 98 / ME / NT / 2000 / 2003 / XP, through a number of UNIX/Linux, Novell, MS DOS operating systems to Microsoft Exchange Server, Lotus Domino and other mail servers.

WinRar

WinRAR is a powerful archive manager. It can backup your data and reduce size of email attachments, decompress RAR, ZIP and other files downloaded from Internet and create new archives in RAR and ZIP file format.

Windows AntiSpyware

Windows AntiSpyware (Beta) is a security technology that helps protect Windows users from spyware and other potentially unwanted software. Known spyware on your PC can be detected and removed. This helps reduce negative effects caused by spyware including slow PC performance, annoying pop-up ads, unwanted changes to Internet settings, and unauthorized use of your private information. Continuous protection improves Internet browsing safety by guarding over fifty (50) ways spyware can enter your PC.

VMware:

VMware Workstation is powerful desktop virtualization software for software developers/testers and enterprise IT professionals that runs multiple operating systems simultaneously on a single PC. Users can run Windows, Linux, NetWare, or Solaris x86 in fully networked, portable virtual machines.

Photoshop: Self explanatory

Nero: Self explanatory

Norton Antivirus Corporate - It is the best in terms of protection and resource usage

Sygate Personal Firewall - The Best. I love it

Window Blinds 5, Logon Studio, Boot Skin, Icon Packager - Make my comp look sweet. hate the XP theme

Nero - Burn stuff

Paint Shop Pro - Picture Editing

WMP10 - Music

WinRAR - Extract stuff

Alcohol/Daemon 4 - Virtual Drives

VMWare - My main OS is emulated, the base is a performance oriented gaming OS.......i have like 5 services running

Firefox

Flashget - Perfect Downloader

Drivers - MB, nVidia

Firefox and its extensions

Mcafee Security 2006 : security

Nero : 7 premium

Bittornado : the ebst client ive ever seen

Adobe Acrobat : pdf editing

Office 2003 : AUK

Progdvb : Technisat satellite receiver software

Itunes & Jriver media Center : itunes for ipod ..jriver for PC

WinRar & Winzip : archiving utilities

Klite codecs pack & Bsplayer : for viewing movies

Flashget & flashgit : downlaod manager

Alcohol % 120 : virtual disx

Torrent harvester : Best torrent search proggie

Real Draw : Vector editing

StyleXP : themes for XP

and some games for killing time

I wonder why no one listed MS Office yet. Well here's my list:

Zone alarm + AVG (free edition). Both are free and a deadly combination for your internet security

Firefox + Thunderbird. I prefer browsing with Safari though (although its KHTML engine sometime failed to render certain pages).

MS Office, self explanatory isn't it? My job is mainly about writing and this is the only solutions for professional writings. I prefer using Apple's Pages which has a better rendered fonts. It's because of the OS I assume.

Photoshop, not a heavy user but I do install the whole suite of Adobe family on my laptop just in cases.

Macromedia Dreamweaver. Same as above, just an occassional user. Installed the whole suite on my PC.

iTunes, like it better than WinAmp.

I'll post more

NLITE!!!

Dood does nlite work properly for u??? How?? All the CD's i made have some small bugs. ALWAYS some small {censored}.

Maybe you used an old version? or you removed the wrong parts. I had never problems with it, works flawlessly

float's Mobile Agent - For my Sony Ericsson phone

Ad Muncher - Does much more than just blocking ads

POP Peeper - Webmail/POP mail check + notifier

Laptop Software

Windows Blinds :: OSX Theme

Reactor Server :: Apache 2, PHP 5, and MySQL

McAfee SDAT Scanning Engine (x5000) :: /adl /all /clean /delete /program /report report.txt

Macromedia Studio 8 :: DevTools Include

Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, GoLive, AfterEffects

CCleaner :: Beta Version

Mozilla Firefox :: Nightly Build Updated Daily

Mozilla Sunbird :: Nightly Build Updated Daily

VMWare Workstation :: Running Win98SE, Ubuntu Linux, and Caldera Linux - SCO Group

foorBAR :: Custom Design and Personal Plugs

RainMeter :: Custom Skin

Thats all I keep on the system by Default. Always looking for good stuff

Heh... Couldn't tell you. I formatted my Windows drive a long time ago!

Hiren's BootCD is a must for you using Windows OS

Firefox, Outlook, iTunes, Remote Desktop, Alcohol 120%, Dreamweaver, Flash, Photoshop, Word, Putty, VMware, IntelliJ Idea

Additions:

- Bluetooth for Windows
- Widcomm v5.0.1.802
- Skype


I have been tinkering around with my Bluetooth headset and the somewhat new and patched Widcomm driver stack v5.0.1.802 for the past few days. I finally figured out a way to use my Bluetooth headset as an audio gateway in conjuction with Skype, MSN, Yahoo, gtalk, and any other Windows messenger that allow voice or VOIP. I mostly use skype because the audio and video streams is so much more crisp than the other messengers I have used.

iTunes iPod thing.

PuTTY SSH and Telnet.

DVD Decrypter you know

DVD Shrink You know, also

AC3 Filter For getting AC3 very well handled, even DTS can be decoded.

Active Perl Sure I love perl.

CygWin Unix things without booting in another OS

AutoCad To maintain happy my significant other

SonyEricsson Theme Creator Create my own phones themes

eDonkey2000 No comments.

UT 2004 Essential

VMware Mac OS X thing.

SpeedFan Temperature monitoring tool.


I use a Linksys PAP2 phone Adapter with my VoIP account and a free VoIP and free Thelephone number from ipKall

Thinking to buy a WiFi VoIP Phone too.

iTunes - iPod

VOIP Stunt - Free VOIP to Landline Calling

MPlayer Classic - The best Media Player

Azureus - torrents

PeerGuardian2 - For protection of my "privacy"

Daemon Tools - For ISOs

TA Spring - The best remake of the best RTS game of all time

How is FWD these days? I had a horid experience with it last time I used it. I think a WiFI VOIP phone is well spent if VOIP quality gets better. Those in the USA, most parts of Europe, Canada, Japan, and South Korea will have the best experiance. Others can will just regret purchasing hardware, a dedicated IP, and a phone number. Of course I'm speaking in regards to Skype and Vonage services.

I do not use FWD, I get an account with fonosip.com, it works fine, of course I haven't much calls to my number because I'm in Mexico and my friends too, but I get it for demonstrations purposes now that I begin with VoIP recommendations/business.

I always install the cygwin tools on any Windows installation. http://www.cygwin.com.

Otherwise:

1. FileZilla
2. SecureCRT
3. iTunes
4. vlc
5. UltraMon
6. FireFox + Session Saver + Adblock
7. Thunderbird
8. Daemon Tools
9. CDBurnerXP Pro, although sometimes I have used Nero
10. uTorrent
11. Peerguardian

Then on pay tools, I always have Office and Photoshop, among other things.

Similar to some of your lists...

Firefox - Lightyears ahead of IE. And half the bugs!

XLink-Kai - Why use XBLive, when you have a friendly, open-source community that also supports mods?

FlashFXP - For all your FTP needs.

iTunes - Because I am just another pawn in Apples quest for world domination.

Azureus - Had no problems...though I might try uTorrent now because of you guys.

Cubase SX3 - Me + Music Recording = Enjoyable waste of a Friday night

Stepmania - Yeah...I've become addicted to DDR. 343 songs and counting.

1) Office XP -used all time obv.
2) MSN messenger
3) PCDJ FX VRM

some good free ones are:

crapcleaner (from ccleaner.com) & process explorer (procxp from sysinternals.com)

crap cleaner is great for fixing broken regisry links (removing) and removing clutter. I use procxp for seeing what is running under windows and toggling off unnecessary processes before gaming)

& Object dock for the mac look



day to day I use mainly firefox / incredimail / office 2003 / macaffee security suite

(I use azerues for torrents on my desktop; and dvddecrypter/shrink there; ultraiso/poweriso/ nero)

I find nero showtime is the best player for me, esp with shrunk dvds

Font Expert is a great app for those who need to manage a lot of fonts. I looked around for a good program to do this and it's the best one I've found!

After years of messing around with fonts I've found just a handful which I always put on any system I build, and I keep a few others handy for special jobs. The ones I install by default are -

Dark Courier. Yes, it's Courier but a specially crisp version - if you're a writer you NEED this to satisfy publishers - normal Courier just looks feeble on the page with most laser printers.

Distressed Olympus. (usually called F***ed Olympus) - great 'old' typewriter font.

Gill Sans.- the whole set. Just nice, clear and sharp for sans-serif work.

Girls Are Weird. - I used this odd font on a website years ago and, well, I just like it. It's weird and I'm a girl.

ITC Garamond 2000. I used an old version of Corel Gatineau on a website and then lost it in a disk crash. It took years to find another Gatineau/Garamond font which had italics with matching uppercase and lower case slants (some don't), and with the hooked "H" and drop apostrophe. Corel's version had been brought into line with Garamond and lost some of those features. ITC has the whole lot.

London Tube. An imitation of the script used in London Underground signs.

Marriage Script. A nice joined-up script font for fancy work.

Monsoon. A very clean and tidy handwritten script.

Mylius. This is the font used by British Airways. I use it for all my printed correspondence, it's really nice.

Pica. Another typewriter font.

Village. If you ever watched 'The Prisoner' you'll recognise this.

Witzworks. A comic-book speech-ballon script.

For editing fonts (and removing the er, unwanted glyphs from samples, and changing the text) I use Font Creator Pro3.

Most of the above are links which will download the font or a zipfile with all the font parts. Note they are WINDOWS TrueType format. I haven't linked Mylius because BA are very proprietary about it. The rest are public domain to the best of my knowledge - at least I found them all on the web without any restrictions. If you think they shouldn't be here PM me and I'll remove them!

Edit - I searched the web and discovered that lots of people are trying to get their hands on Mylius and you can't download it anywhere. As it's commercial, very expensive and under copyright I won't be risking linking to it.

Many of the above programs and:

treesize, http://www.jam-software.com/freeware/index.shtml
A tny little app gives you a right click menu in windows explorer. will tell you the size of all directories within the directory or drive you right click on. extremely useful for locating source of what's filling up your hard drives.

also

context highlighting text editor, http://www.context.cx/

Stickies for windows

I always install DVDshrink and videora ipod converter (i havent found anything better) if the computer has a dvd drive (i use old computers form time to time ). Mozilla Firefox is a must, and so is itunes. never liked winAMP. i also always install objectdock, because its the best way to access your programs. period. i also tried desktopX on my 1ghz laptop, and it runs great. widgety goodness . teamspeak, xfire, and trillian are also a must, even if im not gaming. best messengers ever.

and i also refuse to use MS Office if i have a choice. i use openoffice.org2.0, because it is free, not as buggy, and has more utilities intalled.

Easy..

Textpad
uTorrent
Filezilla and Filezilla Server
Firefox
Thunderbird.

Ta

I like the SPOTLIGHT in mac .... which is the best search program for Windows ? may be some thing like spotlight

This is been a great thread....object dock is lovely ..thanks for the info non sequitur

Itunes
Firefox
DamnNfo
BsPlayer
VLC Player
DVD Shrink / AnyDVD
Trillian Pro
FlashFXP
utorrent
Kaspersky Anti-Virus 6.0
Alcohol 120%
WinRAR
Photoshop
Office
PowerIso

No one mentioned the best filemanager , there's a copycat on every os but the original is

TotalCommander http://www.ghisler.com/

I find scary that many people mentioned Itunes eeewww

uTorrent,
firefox (flashgot, stumbleupon, answers, adblock, adblock filterset.g updater, reveal),
thunderbird,

kerio personal firewall,
Avast!,
ad-aware
spybot SD

itunes (podcasts and mp3s),
DivX player
7-zip,
Alcohol 120%

daemon tools,
VM-ware (native installs only),
partition magic,

Blender,
Adobe CS2,
NVU,
Synfig,
Flash 8,

Steam (DOD, DOD:S, CS, CS:S)

it goes on and on really

All I really use is Bit Commet and VMWare.

Litestep

iTunes

Trillian

Microsoft Virtual PC (i try out alot of oss)

Azureus

Motorola PST (for my phone so I can hack that)

DVD shrink/ decrypter

Roxio easy media creator suete 8

Magiciso

Hard Drive Killer pro (for the feds if i get audited)

adaware se

spybot s & d

Mozilla Firefox / Opera 9 beta 3

I'd say Gaim is the best chat client for windows. But I use Linux, so I may be partial.

I use both because i have the bsd, and that requires it... i much prefer trillian

ethereal : network analyzer
putty : connect to stuff
winrar : extract everything
daemon tools : mount iso's
reason : sound mixing/fun
gaim : linux's answer the aim-ing
firefox : web browser
thunderbird : email client

just my list, theres alot more great stuff out there of course ...

msn messenger

windows media player

sufficiant anti-virus

nice high-speed

a ready to use Windows with essential applications

what about "the tools" like

softice

IDA

W32DASM

PEID

HexWorkshop

and finally

modbin6 for some bios hackin`

iTunes

Alcohol 120%

Kaspersky Internet Security 6

MS Office

Firefox

DVD Shrink

7-Zip, the best archiving tool there is, imo

uTorrent - Azureus is huge, even with 2 gb of ram i hate it.

VLC Player

Flyakite 3.5

sd4hide

I won't repeat the ones already mentioned because I use alot of them but...

WinHIIP - PS2 Harddrive tool

UltraVNC - Remote desktop software

UltraMon - Multiple monitor tool

In addition to all your suggestions (thanks for them) I recommend
"SUPER"
as an Audio/Video converter, which has the ability to master about any file format and codec I can think of (including ipod video format and those used by some mogile phoses): "A GUI to ffmpeg, mencoder, mplayer, x264, mppenc, ffmpeg2theora & the theora/vorbis RealProducer plugIn", see the homepage for details and free download.

Willi

Firefox
Thunderbird
Winrar
Trillian
W32Dasm
IDS Pro
Hex Workshop
ResHacker
"some mem dumping progs"
Adobe CS 2 ( work :-D )
Macromedia Studio 8 ( work again )
VMWare
ScummVM (Monkey Island rullllleeeessss!)
Alcohol 120%
Antivir
Nero
Truecrypt
ISO Commander


Got an Image File with all the stuff installed besides 2 or 3 progs which are a bit often updated like antivir.... these are my esstentials :-D

My list of essential Windoze apps... let me think:

NONE !!!

I'm running 100% hackintosh and I've found Mac counterparts for EVERY win app to be superior and I don't have ANY desire to use anything MS or windows.

And it's all thanks to this forum !!!

Thank you INSANELYMAC...