Metropol

So I've given in, and after two years of suffering with a Mac I'm changing back to Windows. (Partly prompted by the fact that the Mac is broken and my insurance policy expires in two days). I've made sure i've got more than enough RAM and disk space and graphics memory to cope with Vista, too, so it's upgrade-proof for a little while. But not having used Windows a great deal for two years, I'm struggling to remember what I actually need on there.

I'm thinking of things like WinZip, and Acrobat Reader, which serve no purpose on a Mac.

So, all you PC users, fancy offering me your suggestions of what programmes you need to actually make a PC workable? What apps could you not live without, and what advice would you offer me for dealing with Windows, given i've not used it for so long?

My list would have the following:


Adobe Acrobat
Tweak UI (an xp powertool, helps tweak a few things)
WinRAR
Real Player
Flash Player
Quicktime
Skype/MSN - If you use them
Nero Burning
MS Office (2007 is in beta atm, free for a year and rather good)
DivX, Xvid and other codecs for bits and bobs.
CDex (cd ripping app)
Ultramon (only if you have more than one monitor)
Norton/McAfee or other AV app
Firefox/Thunderbird
Winamp

Plus several hours finding and installing all the latest drivers, apps for the PC's various bits and bobs to keep it running.

VLC media player is a good one if you download stuff, it'll play whatever you throw at it.

Winzip I couldn't live without - the in built handling of zip files by default in Windows drives me round the bend.

I also could not live without Winamp either, to play music stored on the computer and CDs.

An office package. Microsoft Office 2003, but Notepad and old school ASCII art does not suffice for me. And Adobe Acrobat (the proper thing, not the reade) is useful too as you can PDF stuff. Also, if you use non webbased mail such as that of your ISP, then I can recommend Outlook 2003, and it also has a calendar/task wotsit buiilt in so you can use it as a diary. I like having all my email and calendars in one place.

Antivirus and firewall. I would steer clear of norton and mcafee's consumer bloatware and use the enterprise versions if you can get hold of them. They're much better and less hand holdy. Failing that, the freebie AVG antivirus will suffice if you have strong moral convictions about 'borrowing' software from work.

CD/DVD burning. Nero version 5 - anything else above is bloatware. Just check out the latest version of Nero - ughhh!!!!!!!

Also, it really depends what you do on your PC. Simply me offering a bunch of apps might not be of any use to you, since what you do might be different to what I do, and your needs might be different to those of mine.

Vista in my opinion is pie in the sky and nothing more than Windows XP with a new skinm, a few changes and shitloads of DRM - they appear to have ditched many of the new features they were working on and seem to have about a gazillion editions too.

Thanks for that, Bail

Can you explain to me a couple of things:

MSN/Live Messenger. Is Live Messenger replacing MSN Messenger, or is it replacing Windows Messenger? Or is it replacing both?

IE7 - I've read that it's not actually all that terrible, so do I still want Firefox?

Office Beta - I looked at this. I have Office 2003, but if the new Office beta lasts for a year (presumably some sort of in-built count down timer stops it after 12 months?) then I'd get that... but how stable is it?

MSN/Live Messenger. Is Live Messenger replacing MSN Messenger, or is it replacing Windows Messenger? Or is it replacing both?

Windows Live Messenger will replace MSN messenger in time. Windows Messenger (the enterprise comms thing) is separate and generally designed for IMing within an organisation so it's not going anywhere yet.

IE7 - I've read that it's not actually all that terrible, so do I still want Firefox?

IE7 and Office 2007 are still in beta and therefore I wouldn't recommend using it in a 'production' environment - that is, on your main computer which you'll use day in day out because if it breaks then it'll be a bit of a pain to fix.

Firefox? Well it's horses for courses really, whatever browser suits you best. But if you choose to use Firefox then for the love of god do not become a fanboy (and by that I mean someone who creams their pants in excitement on the day of release of the latest Firefox update and likes to ram the browser down people's throats at every opportunity). But don't clog up your machine with crap you don't want, use or need.

Bail wrote:My list would have the following:


Adobe Acrobat
Tweak UI (an xp powertool, helps tweak a few things)
WinRAR
Real Player
Flash Player
Quicktime
Skype/MSN - If you use them
Nero Burning
MS Office (2007 is in beta atm, free for a year and rather good)
DivX, Xvid and other codecs for bits and bobs.
CDex (cd ripping app)
Ultramon (only if you have more than one monitor)
Norton/McAfee or other AV app
Firefox/Thunderbird
Winamp

Plus several hours finding and installing all the latest drivers, apps for the PC's various bits and bobs to keep it running.

I'd take everything on this list (except WinAmp as I loathe the program and WinRAR for reasons I'll explain below) and also:

Izarc (better unzipper, handles RAR as well and looks like Winzip + it's free)
Google Earth - because it's cool
OpenOffice (if you can't/won't get Microsoft Office) as it can also print to PDF files + it's free
Sun Java (as Windows XP doesn't come with Java now like it used to)
Virtual PC - for those programs that won't work in XP
PowerDVD - if you have a DVD Player on your system
Every Windows Update going - all 50 odd of the things since Service Pack 2 came out :roll:

Should be covered then

I user PowerArchiver myself

Is there a program other than Open Office and the expensive Adobe Acrobat that allows you to print PDF files? On the Mac it is a pretty standard feature in all apps.

cat wrote:Is there a program other than Open Office and the expensive Adobe Acrobat that allows you to print PDF files? On the Mac it is a pretty standard feature in all apps.

http://www.pdfforge.org/products/pdfcreator/ - but don't install the toolbar.

office 2007