I thought I’d make a list of applications I usually need after a fresh windows install and what order I install them in. Since this time I’m using Windows 7 (W7) Beta I’ll be commenting about major differences I take notice of about W7 along the way too – I’ve had tastes of Vista before so I know my way around their new control panel and other menu changes. Note I’m running the 64-bit version so some of my links are to 64-bit apps/drivers.
Windows 7 bugged me about anti virus right away so I grabbed that first…
AVG Free
Firefox 3
Nvidia video drivers, found out they’re integrated in windows update for W7 Beta.
UltraVNC (for work)
Steam (For Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead)
Set my workgroup to reach my samba shares (control panel > system > change settings > workgroup)
W7 Then bugged me about a product key so I registered a windows live account and they emailed me one after a few steps through their site (Looks like they haven’t run out of their 2.5M keys yet)
While I was browsing some websites I noticed something foreign to me…ads, I realized I had forgotten the holy grail of Firefox addons, adblock+ and Filterset.g. Continuing my application installs…
Creative SBX-Fi Drivers
Foobar 2000 (music)
VLC (video)
CCCP (Video Codecs & MPC)
Logitech G15 Keyboard Drivers.
Ventrilo
WinRar (surprised I didn’t need it before now!)
Foxit Reader (Free Adobe Acrobat replacement & improvement)
CDisplay (aka Comic Book Reader)
I then “unpinned” Window Media Player and Internet Explorer from W7′s new taskbar and pinned Foobar and FF3 instead. The new taskbar is a nice merger of quick launch icons and task bars applications.
