Your essential format applications..

[JayMax]

Directory Opus

I didn't realise that was still going, I tried it years ago. Is it worth a revisit?

 

[JayMax]

And to add something useful to the thread - mailwasher with spamcop and zen.spamhaus as blacklisters.

 

[Hairybudda]

Drivers
Putty
Firefox
Foobar
uTorrent
sab
uxthemepatch
Notepad++
Steam
7-zip
Virtual Clonedrive

 

[Fuzz]

Bit torrent

 

[jp_bl_68]

1) Restore latest backup from Time Machine

</epic troll>

Another Mac user here. Firefox is the only essential app but I'd probably grab VLC and Steam too.

 

[crunchee]

EDIT

 

[bobbydigital]

Ninite.

That is all.

Started using this very recently and is awesome for fresh installs

 

[Van Hellseek]

I install GD and facebook.

 

[Le_Petit_Lapin]

Ninite.

That is all.

Drivers, overrated.

 

[FoxEye]

Geforce Drivers (don't bother with chipset drivers)
DirectX monthly updates
AV (normally Avira)
WinRAR
Flash player plugin
Sumatra PDF
VLC (+ a few codecs for WMP)
Chrome/ Firefox
Speedfan (software fan controller)
Java RE

Steam
Office

 

[Glaucus]

Drivers, overrated.

W7 does a great job on drivers and no need to install any, unless you get a specific problem.

 

[FoxEye]

The good thing about a default Windows 7 install is that I've yet to encounter a hardware spec that it can't install a driver for. The only one I go hunting for after updating is the latest graphics driver (even though Windows will install a default and update it). Everything else is covered, including wireless. Which is one thing Ubuntu always had over Windows XP/Vista for me.

It has drivers for most things, but they don't always work

Just the other day the built-in EW7711Uan wireless driver failed on me. It showed me networks in range, but wrongly detected them all as WEP networks. Connecting would fail with "invalid password" errors (pw known good).

Had to install the proper Edimax driver, after which Windows detected surrounding networks correctly (WPA2/AES).

 

[Brian8bit]

It has drivers for most things, but they don't always work

Just the other day the built-in EW7711Uan wireless driver failed on me. It showed me networks in range, but wrongly detected them all as WEP networks. Connecting would fail with "invalid password" errors (pw known good).

Had to install the proper Edimax driver, after which Windows detected surrounding networks correctly (WPA2/AES).

You reminded me, one piece of hardware I did have a problem with was a wireless PCI card in a machine I built for my brother. Think it was the Netgear W311v3 card. Similar problem to yours. Showed networks but tried connecting to home WPA2 network and it was failing. Had to manually download the latest drivers from Netgear, that fixed that.

So yeah, other than that, Windows 7 has been pretty good on drivers.

 

[Raymond Lin]

It's call Apple Time Machine

No idea honestly, I have a Mac and I have never installed a driver lol

 

[asim18]

1. Graphics card drivers
2. Eset Smart Security
3. Windows Updates
4. 7zip
5. Defraggler & CCleaner
6. Firefox
7. Foobar
8. Media Player Classic HC + related stuff like Haali, AC3filter etc.
9. Office 2010
10. Adobe CS5
11. Windows Live Messenger
12. Imgburn
13. Newsleecher
14. Malwarebytes

 

[Twentyone]

1. Drivers etc
2. Firefox
3. Winrar
4. Winamp
5. VLC
6. Photoshop

 

[Le_Petit_Lapin]

W7 does a great job on drivers and no need to install any, unless you get a specific problem.

I don't trust it though. So I install them myself.

 

[Efour]

firefox then i download the rest.

 

[Dewotter]

1. Drivers
2. MSE
3. Office 2010 Pro Plus
4. iTunes
5. Dropbox
6. Firefox
7. K-Lite Codec Pack
8. Skype
9. Live Messenger 2010
10. 7-Zip
11. TeamViewer
12. VMware Workstation
13. Adobe Acrobat Pro 9
14. iPhone Explorer
15. PList Editor for Windows
14. Adobe Photoshop CS5

 

[EdGey]

Graphics
Audio
Internet
Xfire

Then the rest comes in what ever order I try to use it and realise its not there.