This is a list of Windows software I like. Your mileage may vary. I maintain this page primarily for myself so that I know what I would have to install after a Windows reinstall. But you might discover a tool you haven't known about yet.
I also have collected numerous command line applications that I've put
into a single directory (with PATH pointing to it).
I create a backup copy of that directory regularly.
If you also have many command line utilities that would be a lot of work if
you had to collect all of them again I can only recommend that approach.
| Name | Creator | License | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 40tude Dialog | M. Mönnig | shareware / freeware | News and email client. |
| ACDSee | ACDSystems | commercial | Image viewer (plus editing and conversion functionality); customer support is good (if you register); I bought ACDSee 3.1, later versions unfortunately have been very unstable for me. |
| Acrobat Reader | Adobe | free | PDF document viewer. I've tried replacement viewers, but they don't render complex PDF files as fast as Adobe's product for me. The program does automatic updates and uses JavaScript. Some tips on disabling JavaScript and speeding up the startup process. |
| Agent | Forte | commercial | News client (plus integrated email client). I would recommend against the free version. |
| Eclipse | IBM | free | An integrated development environment for Java. |
| Filezilla | Tim Kosse | free | An FTP client. |
| Firefox | free | A web browser. | |
| foobar2000 | free | An audio player. | |
| GNUWin32 | various | free | All kinds of Unix utilities as precompiled binaries. |
| GSview | ? | free | PostScript document viewer; can also display PDF, but better use Acrobat's own reader for that; make sure to also download GhostScript 6.50 or higher; should be linked from the webpage |
| Hamster | free | A mail and news server. Becomes inefficient once you use it with large article numbers. | |
| Java Runtime Environment (JRE) | Sun | Free | Software package to run Java applications; if you want to develop yourself, get the JDK and make sure to also get the documentation. Has an automatic upgrade check feature. Disable it in the Java control panel. |
| LeechFTP | free | FTP client. Discontinued. See the Filezilla entry for an alternative. | |
| MiKTeX | ? | free | LaTeX distribution, including DVI viewer |
| Miranda | ? | free (GPL) | Instant messenger for ICQ and other instant messaging protocols. Stable, with a plugin system. |
| MySQL | free | A relational database management system. | |
| Nero | ? | Commercial | CD burning software. |
| Opera | Opera software | free (including ads) or commercial version | web browser / mail, news; lost some of its great stability in version 7.x |
| Picasa | Google Inc. | free | Image and video file management. You should turn off automatic updating (phones home all the time) and annoying special effects in the options dialog. |
| PuTTY | Simon Tatham | freeware | Telnet and SSH client. |
| TortoiseCVS | freeware | CVS client that integrates with the file Explorer. | |
| Ultraedit | IDM Computer Solutions, Inc. | Commercial | Programmer's text editor. |
| VLC (videolan client) media player | freeware | Video player. | |
| WinRar | Eugene Roshal | Commercial | GUI app for several archive file formats; note that the RAR format was extended in version 2.9 or so, older versions can no longer read RAR archives created with WinRar 2.9 or higher. |
| WinSCP | Martin Prikryl | GPL | Secure copy (scp) for Windows, with a GUI. |