Software for windows
I agree with Luke Maciak's post about windows software. I use 90 % of the stuff he recommends for new installs, but he did open my eyes to a couple of cool new bits of software. This is his list:
Web Browser: Firefox
Text Editor: Vim
Video Player: VLC
Music Player: Foobar 2000
IM: Pidgin
Launcher Program: Launchy
Compression: WinRar
SSH + SCP: SSH Secure Shell Client
LaTex IDE: TeXnicCenter
Java IDE: Eclipse
Perl/Python/PHP IDE: Komodo Edit
Twitter Client: Snitter
Screen Shot App: Cropper
IRC Client: Xchat
POSIX Compliant Shell on Windows: Cygwin
Calculator: Windows Power Calculator
Remote Assistance Tool: CrossLoop
Misc: Tclock2
The new ones to me are Launchy, which is amazing. Komodo edit, which looks really good, and CrossLoop, which i havn't tried yet, but looks really useful. I have to admit that i don't use latex, so i don't know about TeXnicCenter, but pretty much everthing else i use, with a couple of exceptions:
Instead of Foobar 2000 I settled on mediamonkey because of it's advanced tagging functionality (it can download art and racknames from amazon, then autotag your tunes.) as well as talking to y ipod too.
At the moment i am using Miranda IM for IRC and IM, as it does everything, & it's, main window can be onfigured to autoscale, have no title or status bar, and just contain ontacts, so it uses virtually no real estate.
I use PuTTY and WinSCP for ssh & scp, instead of SSH Secure Shell Client.
I would also add to the list:
FileZilla for ftp (although i tend to use FireFTP firefox plugin more now),
AstroGrep for windows grepping,
Beyond Compare (commercial) for visual diffing
WireShark for network sniffing
Thunderbird for email (with lightning add in for calendar)
PStools for remote admin stuff.
Avast for free antivirus, although clamwin si supposed to be really good now.
Comodo firewall
innotek virtualbox for virtual machines
imageburn for writing iso's to disk
poweriso (commercial) for making them, and mounting them (like daemon tools, but far better, and no spyware)
ColorPic for web design stuff, along with
JR Screen Ruler
