help a windows nub out.

[jmiller]

Alright guys, so here's the deal. For the last 5 or so years I have been a Mac user, and have barely touched windows aside from working with a spreadsheet or two at work.

The other day however I picked up a shiny new laptop running Windows Vista Premium.

While I seem to know my way around the OS itself pretty well I am totally lost when it comes to third-party software.

What I'm looking for are recommendations for basic/must-have applications ie: tweaks, word processing, audio/video, utilities, security, etc.

So give me a list of your favourite apps.

Thanks guys.

[[JSH]John]

Here are a few of my favourites for windows, all tried and tested to be good. :)

Word Processing:
Microsoft Office 2007
Open Office (www.openoffice.org - freeware)

Audio/Video
Windows Media Player 11
Winamp
iTunes
VLC Player

Utilities
Winrar
Nero 7 (Burning DVDs/CDs etc)
Microsoft SyncToy
Ares/Limewire (Try before you buy? :P)


Security
AVG Antivirus
Comodo Firewall
TrueCrypt (Encryption)
AdAware

[Ben]

All are either free or open-source:

DeepBurner - CD Burning (Audio, Data, and Images)
Winamp - Music
VLC - video
PowerArchiver - archives
AVG AntiVirus - AV
OpenOffice.org - Office suite
GNUCash - Think Quicken, only free
Firefox or Opera - I'm assuming you already guessed this one
Thunderbird - Email
Sunbird - Calendar
uTorrent - Torrent files
Pidgin - AIM/Y!/MSN/ICQ/JABBER
HydraIRC
SmartFTP
GIMP

To learn which services you can disable to improve performance: http://www.blackviper.com

[jmiller]

[JSH]John and Ben,

Thanks alot for all your input. Very much appreciated. :)

[Keagle]

Yup.
Utilities
Windows Live Messenger w/ Plus (http://www.msgpluslive.net/download/)
Opera
Notepad 2.0 (If your ever going to be doing any form of Coding, I'd get this, otherwise go for Notepad. However - this can be run off a USB drive).
Filezilla (FTP)
Audio/Video
VLC Player
iTunes
WMP 11
Security
I use Zonealarm - and so far it's been pretty good. However, you might want to team it up with some other spyware checkers, such as Spybot.

[themoose]

Pidgin (for all IM needs)
Opera
Notepad 2.0 (like Kurt said)
iTunes
AVG antivirus
OpenOffice
Azeurus

[Ben]

Oh, I forgot! Thank you, Keagle, for unintentionally reminding me.

AdAware (http://www.lavasoft.us)
Spybot Search & Destroy

And I'd say at least once a week head over to http://www.pc-cillin.com and http://www.bitdefender.com and do their online scans, just to be safe. Or, once a month if you're lazy. PC-Cillin's is called House Call, and with BitDefender, just scroll a bit on the main page and you'll see "Scan Now!" or something along those lines.

Also, if you want to do any kind of Windows development, then MS offers Visual Studio Express for free. Well, at least they offer Visual C++ Express for free.

[leannecoady]

Ccleaner and ATF Cleaner are more useful software for windows, they'll clear your cookies and clean up any mess left behind after surfing the net. Spybot Search and Destroy is another good piece of security software. It'll help remove spyware.

For organinsing photos etc, I recomend Picasa. Core FTP, would be my choice for an FTP client.

[Ben]

Ccleaner and ATF Cleaner are more useful software for windows, they'll clear your cookies and clean up any mess left behind after surfing the net. Spybot Search and Destroy is another good piece of security software. It'll help remove spyware.

For organinsing photos etc, I recomend Picasa. Core FTP, would be my choice for an FTP client.

If he chooses to go the firefox route, it has its own cleaning functions built in that you can enable on browser exit. If he chooses Opera, well, I don't use Opera nearly as often so I can't vouch for that.

[leannecoady]

If he chooses to go the firefox route, it has its own cleaning functions built in that you can enable on browser exit. If he chooses Opera, well, I don't use Opera nearly as often so I can't vouch for that.

Opera does as well, you can select to have your cache cleaned on exit if you wish. Ccleaner still is useful, I think anyway. Just to make sure everything is gone :)

[Blaster]

Ok now go back to the store and say that you want your 300 dollars back and to remove the operating system. Go to www.ubuntu.com and download and put on a cd. Put the CD in your computer and restart. Click install.

There you go everything you will need. :)

However if you really want to stay with windows then use the following

VLC
Adaware
Spy Bot Search And Destroy
Fire Fox
Gaim

Thats all you really need.

[Matt8]

My list of essentials:

iTunes - IMO, best music player as far as organization goes, and you are already used to it.
Pidgin - AKA Gaim. Best IM client.
Filezilla - Easy to use FTP client.
CCleaner - Good temp cleaner
Paint.net - Great free paint shop pro/photoshop alternative
Firefox - Flaming wars...begin!
VLC - Without a doubt, best media player
uTorrent - Easy, lightweight torrent downloader
7-zip - Great RAR and ZIP program

That pretty much sums it up for me.

[Ben]

My list of essentials:

iTunes - IMO, best music player as far as organization goes, and you are already used to it.
Pidgin - AKA Gaim. Best IM client.
Filezilla - Easy to use FTP client.
CCleaner - Good temp cleaner
Paint.net - Great free paint shop pro/photoshop alternative
Firefox - Flaming wars...begin!
VLC - Without a doubt, best media player
uTorrent - Easy, lightweight torrent downloader
7-zip - Great RAR and ZIP program

That pretty much sums it up for me.

How does Paint.Net compare with Gimp? I've never heard of it before.

Blaster: He specifically said for windows. Even though I like Linux, it really pisses me off when people say ---- like that. "Can't we all just get along?"

[Blaster]

Ben when saying that I was joking around. I wasn't meaning to be serious. Thats why I said a list also.

[Matt8]

How does Paint.Net compare with Gimp? I've never heard of it before.

Its similar, but in a better interface IMO. It reminds me of a Paint Shop Pro from the Jasc Software days...

[jmiller]

Thanks again, guys. You've all been very helpful. =)

I do have a couple questions:

Is PuTTY still the best SSH/Telnet client available for windows?

Am I better to go with ZoneAlarm + Avg or stick with Windows firewall + Norton? Or any other combination for that matter?

How does Miranda compare to Pidgin? The only real thing driving me towards Pidgin right now is the OTR support.

Also, right now I am using iTunes for audio playback as well as managing my iPod. Is this my best bet? Or am I better off using something like Winamp for audio and some other tool for managing the iPod?

Thanks.

@Ben - BlackViper has helped me out a tonne. Thanks for passing on that link, you're a lifesaver.

[Blaster]

I would use itunes for all. It just makes it easier in the long run

I like Pidgin better because its easier to work with but this is only my opinion.

[Ben]

Thanks again, guys. You've all been very helpful. =)

I do have a couple questions:

Is PuTTY still the best SSH/Telnet client available for windows?
As far as I know, yeah, but then again I haven't really used anything else. PuTTY is PreTTY powerful. As far as Pidgin goes, I've never used Miranda, but I've used Pidgin for years (as Gaim, of course). And I don't have any experience with ZoneAlarm, so someone else would be better suited to answer that.


Also, right now I am using iTunes for audio playback as well as managing my iPod. Is this my best bet? Or am I better off using something like Winamp for audio and some other tool for managing the iPod?
This, I think is just personal preference. I manage my iPod via iTunes (or, used to when I used Windows), but organize my music in Winamp. I always liked how in iTunes all your playlists are shown in plain view, I was just too lazy to organize all of my music in it when it was already organized in Winamp.



@Ben - BlackViper has helped me out a tonne. Thanks for passing on that link, you're a lifesaver.

No problem

Oh, and to follow up on what I said about development, Ultimate++ (http://www.ultimatepp.org/) and CodeBlocks (http://www.codeblocks.org/) have been pimped on AntiOnline recently, if you develop in C++ and don't want to use the MSVC++ IDE.

[Keagle]

Am I better to go with ZoneAlarm + Avg or stick with Windows firewall + Norton? Or any other combination for that matter?


Zonealarm is okay, when you've got past it popping up annoying windows to ask if you want blah and blah to run blah and blah or connect to blah and blah. But then it calms down ;)

[carlito]

Thanks again, guys. You've all been very helpful. =)

I do have a couple questions:

Is PuTTY still the best SSH/Telnet client available for windows?

Am I better to go with ZoneAlarm + Avg or stick with Windows firewall + Norton? Or any other combination for that matter?

How does Miranda compare to Pidgin? The only real thing driving me towards Pidgin right now is the OTR support.

Also, right now I am using iTunes for audio playback as well as managing my iPod. Is this my best bet? Or am I better off using something like Winamp for audio and some other tool for managing the iPod?

Thanks.

@Ben - BlackViper has helped me out a tonne. Thanks for passing on that link, you're a lifesaver.

iTunes is amazing. Sure, it is its faults, but no other media player compares in terms of the sheer potential for anal organisation of one's mp3 library.

[ashish]

tweaks,
Word Processing:
Spend some money and get MS office

Audio/vVdeo:
VLC player, does not need codecs and plays almost all formats.
Real player, for .rm files.

Utilities:
Winzip/Winrar
Skype
MSN
Nero
Gtalk
Picasa
Webshots


Security:

Webroot spy sweeper - bit of a system hog, but better than the free ones available and does catch.block most spyware.
ESET NOD32 - easy on the system, catches everything, better than norton.

[leannecoady]

Thanks again, guys. You've all been very helpful. =)
Am I better to go with ZoneAlarm + Avg or stick with Windows firewall + Norton? Or any other combination for that matter?


For security, I'd use Kaspersky Internet Security. It's lighter on your system and I find it works better than Norton.

[LeX]

Nero7's bloated IMO. If you need burning software, either try Deepburner like Ben recommended, or you can use CDBurnerXP Pro, also free. I've used both, and deepburner didn't work out for me.

Avira's free antivirus software works for me. It's free, you only get an ad screen when you update the virus database, it doesn't put load on my system, it doesn't try to interfere with anything, and I haven't experienced any software conflicts so far.

I don't really recommend using Norton. It's also bloated, and I've heard that virus writers like to target it because of its relatively large userbase.
I've tried Kaspersky once, didn't like it, for reasons I now don't remember.

List of my essentials:
Photoshop
Office 2007
Winrar

Free:
Filezilla - FTP client
Ad-aware 2007
Winamp lite
CDBurnerXP Pro - CD/DVD burning software
Avira AntiVir Personal Edition
VLC

[bigperm]

http://shsc.info/UsefulWindowsSoftware

[Clucked]

Thanks again, guys. You've all been very helpful. =)

I do have a couple questions:

Is PuTTY still the best SSH/Telnet client available for windows?

Am I better to go with ZoneAlarm + Avg or stick with Windows firewall + Norton? Or any other combination for that matter?

How does Miranda compare to Pidgin? The only real thing driving me towards Pidgin right now is the OTR support.

Also, right now I am using iTunes for audio playback as well as managing my iPod. Is this my best bet? Or am I better off using something like Winamp for audio and some other tool for managing the iPod?

Thanks.

@Ben - BlackViper has helped me out a tonne. Thanks for passing on that link, you're a lifesaver.

I'm not sure if it's the best, but I do use PuTTY. In terms of an antivirus, it's better to shy away from AVG and ZoneAlarm. I'd suggest Kaspersky but Norton would be fine too. Lastly, stick with iTunes.