Quote from chanoman315 :

Games:
F1 Challenge

WTF?!! The cheapest I can find this for PC is $89.99usd!!

Directory Opus: Get used to it once and you won't believe all the stupid things that Windows Explorer does, like not display full file names, remove file extensions when renaming, abort a complete file move batch because of one error, change drag and drop behavior depending on type of drive, not allowing a dual view, no tabs, no wildcard filter, no folder size display, err, I could go on and on.

Quote from J.B. :

Directory Opus: Get used to it once and you won't believe all the stupid things that Windows Explorer does, like not display full file names, remove file extensions when renaming, abort a complete file move batch because of one error, change drag and drop behavior depending on type of drive, not allowing a dual view, no tabs, no wildcard filter, no folder size display, err, I could go on and on.

This one looks interesting. I'm totally fed up with Vista forgetting how I want to view my folders when I close a window. For instance, I want my "Movies" (aka my own home-made videos) folder to display file details such as size, type and date. However, if I re-visit the folder tomorrow, I know that it will display the following in "big thumbnail" view: "Name", "date taken", "tags" (WHAT?) and "rating". Or sometimes it might go down the music route with useful information such as "contributing artist" or "track #", even when none of the files or folders contain such information. I will give this Opus thing a try...

Quote from AjRose :

WTF?!! The cheapest I can find this for PC is $89.99usd!!

LoL

IMO
CS4 master collection if your in to graphical stuf and website making

Browser :- Firefox. The best by a long shot.

Anti-virus/Spyware:- Nod32 and Spybot. Vary rarely bother to have them turned on though.

Music :- Winamp. Why bother with anything else? Plays every format going.

Video :- VLC. Plays every format going, easy to adjust out of synch sound, no need for any other player.

OS:- WinXP. Vista is pointless bloatware. May move to Windows7 on release though, looks promising

Torrent Client :- uTorrent. Best performance, small memory footprint.

Maintenance :- O+O defrag (version 8.5, later versions not so good) The best defrag programme. Essential.
CCleaner. Easy to use, cleans all the crap on your machine quickly and efficiently.

Others :- LFS, nKPro and FS 2004 The only essential gaming i need. These three alone could keep me amused for as many years as they have already
Ventrillo. Far better quality than any other voice comms.
Trillian. The best chat client. Incorporates all the best known instant messengers.

Browsers

Firefox- Personally I stopped using it after it would give me BSOD in 3D apps after opening it, was fixed in later versions but I couldn't be bothered. I've been running IE7 since then and I like it very much.

Anti Virus

AVG and/or Avast! - Free for personal use, used together give you a good secure net.
Spybot Search and Destroy - Free, constantly updated and works well!
Malwarebytes Anti Malware - Kind of like Spybot, used it on a few occasions to get me out of trouble

Video

Windows Media Player - Use with a complete codec pack and it's pretty good, as a second I use FLV player and Realplayer as a third.

Audio

Windows Media Player, again you can get codecs for the wierd files and it just generally works well. Otherwise I'd use Winamp but I'm not for migrating to new software

OS

Windows XP - Good for the all round home user/gamer, alot of products availible
Mac - Haven't used it myself, but I hear it's very good for the designers/artists among us, and you can run Windows on it just as well as a Windows machine.

Misc

Adobe Photoshop - Clearly.
Some form of Torrenting program, Bitlord works for me (although I'm not promoting the use of them)
Microsoft Office - for the work stuff.
WinRAR - An essential
MSN - Obviously
Xfire - Track your gaming!
Steam - A must for anyone who plays HL or anything else that's on Steam
Some HD cleaner - Don't use any myself but you should use one, really.
Games - Ones you like, weirdly enough.

Operating System= Windows XP (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-xp/)

Chatting=
Xfire(http://www.xfire.com/)
Pidgin(http://www.pidgin.im/)
Teamspeak/ventrillo

Browser= Google Chrome(http://www.google.com/chrome)

Audio= Itunes(http://www.apple.com/itunes/)

Security= AVG(http://free.avg.com/)

Awesomeness=Live For Speed (http://www.needforspeed.com/)

Quote from SidiousX :

Awesomeness=Live For Speed (http://www.needforspeed.com/)

LOL! I see what you've done there. :hide:

Quote from dawesdust_12 :

BitComet sucks, get uTorrent.

i agree.

msn is important for contact with foreign family and friends...

lfs tweak is also great for phun timez...

Daemon Tools.
Windows media player classic (With codec pack)
Winamp
Camstudio (Records thing on screen, great for camwhores :>)
Utorrent
MSN
mIRC

Pretty much have all been mentioned above except:


Anti-Virus:
Computer Associates AV 2009 - http://shop.ca.com/virus/antivirus.aspx

Best value AV on the market IMO, (I've never trusted "free" AV).
Only has one issue in that it seems to keep causing LFS to pop out of the application. Might be an issue with Vista though I'm not sure, never had any problems with earlier versions on XP.


Registry Cleaner:

Jv16 Power Tools - http://www.macecraft.com/

Only Reg cleaner I trust - others have shown themselves not to be safe by deleting keys that mess up the OS.

Anti Spyware:

Ad-Aware - http://www.lavasoft.com/products/ad_aware_free.php

A bit old hat now but I've never really had any issues with Malware or Spyware anyway so it suffices. Still better than most of the others I've tried though.

and finally something everyone with a conscience and a modern computer should have:

Distributed computing client:

BOINC - http://boinc.berkeley.edu/

All I can think of right now.

Quote from amp88 :

Alternatives to packages you use or new things altogether.

Some thoughts:

The free version of RealVNC does not allow file transfers which is a must have IMO. Use TightVNC instead, which is free, full featured and open source.

Foobar2000, with the Kernel Streaming support (don't forget to select the KS output in the Preferences), is the best audio player quality wise.

Codec Pack xxx: get rid of codec packs. Use Ffdshow with Media Player Classic - HomeCinema and its internal codecs. That and VLC and I bet you can play any video.

AutoGK: have you tried AviDemux ? It's not that hard to use and despite of its name it can open, convert and save from/to many more containers than AVI only. Backup your DVD's with H264 video + AAC sound and enter the HD world with a higher quality than DivX/XviD + MP3 for the same file size

Browser :- Firefox. The best by entire planets

Anti-virus/Spyware: Panda Anti virus.
SuperAnti Spyware easy to use gets rid of al of it

Music : iTunes

Video :- VLC.player when Media player acts weird.
Some kind of sync tool forgot the name..

OS:- WinXP. Vista is crap as my sis her laptop proved to me had to fix it alot of times(anoyed the hell outa me)
Windows 7 looks good im considering it

Torrent Client :- uTorrent.Best I aver came acros for torrent.

Maintenance : CCcleaner for getting some extra work space free again.


Games: LFS, Rfactor is fun,GTR evo STCC addon, Richard burns rally,
Crysis.

Browser -

Firefox with various extensions (for downloading)
Firefox (incredible speed due to messing around with the java file in Firefox mini) Cant downloda things though only good for browsing

Software -

Mediamonkey
Process explorer
K-Lite video codec pack (to use good old fashioned Windows media player)
Jarbox (Detecs If virus exists if a thumb drive is plugged in)
MSN
Rave In a box (very handy and easy to use)
Magix Music maker (for making my tunes)
Fruity loops (for also making my tunes)
Photoshop CS3
Sony Vegas
Power Toys for xp
App locale
Telnet (drauhts version)
Putty *server* for having fun at school.

Virus protection -

Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware
And a custom made program too scan or nasties in the registry

OS -

XP Professional edition (**** vista) ...

Quote from Ian.H :

DOpus (Directory Opus).. was _the_ filemanager to have on the Amiga, and now shining on windoze too (I find it hard living with a box without this): DOpus

Regards,

Ian

Quote from J.B. :

Directory Opus: Get used to it once and you won't believe all the stupid things that Windows Explorer does, like not display full file names, remove file extensions when renaming, abort a complete file move batch because of one error, change drag and drop behavior depending on type of drive, not allowing a dual view, no tabs, no wildcard filter, no folder size display, err, I could go on and on.

Wow. Thanks for the suggestion guys. DOpus is amazing as an Explorer replacement. I've only been fiddling about with it today but already I'm massively impressed.

Quote from Lotesdelere :

Some thoughts:

The free version of RealVNC does not allow file transfers which is a must have IMO. Use TightVNC instead, which is free, full featured and open source.

Nice, you're right about TightVNC. Thanks

Quote from Lotesdelere :

AutoGK: have you tried AviDemux ? It's not that hard to use and despite of its name it can open, convert and save from/to many more containers than AVI only. Backup your DVD's with H264 video + AAC sound and enter the HD world with a higher quality than DivX/XviD + MP3 for the same file size

I haven't played about with this yet but I'll be sure to give it a try.

Thanks for all the other replies guys. This has turned out to be more helpful to me than I thought it would be (and it looks like other people liked it too).

Windoze Vista - I need an OS... simple as

Norton 360 (not really a can't live without program) - Complete pile of crap, due to be uninstalled when I can persuade my parents that we'd get more value from the subscription by just getting rid of Norton, rather than waiting till the subscription end

Malware Bytes' Anti-malware - 100000% better than Norton. Picked up a bunch of trojans that Norton couldn't find

Photoshop Elements - Having discovered it came free with my PC after a year of not knowing (:razz, and having learnt to use it, I couldn't live without it.


Internet Explorer - For interwebs n shizz, y0

Microsoft Office - For school work

WinRAR - For Unraring stuff that needs unraring... Lol

7-Zip - As above, but replace rar with 7z

Adobe Reader 8 - For readin' PDFs n shizz, y0

Windoze Live Messenger - For talkin' n shizz, y0

LFS - Duh

Crap Cleaning:

CCleaner
Auslogics Disc Defrag

Ok, help me make this list please

Quote from Jakg :

Music:
XMPlay

I you.

Will post mine list today :P

Visual Studio - Hands down the greatest computer program that's ever been written.

Firefox - There are better browsers, but nothing with this level of extensibility.

Windows XP - I rely on it everyday, and its never let me down. Well, once...

VLC Media Player - I used to hate watching videos on my PC, but VLC makes it fun, cause it always works.

YouTube - It's like TV, except on the Internet... and, as if possible, more inane.

7-Zip - Like VLC, it works every bloody time.

World of Warcraft - More joy, sadness, laughter, tears, insanity and friendship than you can imagine.

Notepad++ - It's like VLC with syntax highlighting...

Python - Cause it's just beautiful.

Live for Speed - Scawen is my hero.

some of mine, may edit it later

Opera (best browser imo, fast and stabil, and with a superb email client)
WinAmp (works good with video streams (MoE) too
Last.FM
Winrar
GIMP (needs some time to get used to)
Irfanview (good for resizing and converting)
Azureus (older version without Vuze)
Media Player Classic (faster than the new one)
FLV-Player (saved youtube stuff)
Avira Antivir
AMD Dashboard
MS Office 2003

Hardly essentials but I use these all the time:

JKDefrag, best and fastest defragmenter available.
File Commander, orthodox file manager, blinding fast, GUI equivalents just suck, been using it since 1995.
CrystalCPUID, handles CnQ on my overclocked uP.
Speedfan, de facto standard for hardware monitoring (i.e. all the rest suck more than this one)
Foobar, music player, everything else feels bloated and usability-impaired.
Irfanview, great viewer with batch support but also does basic processing tasks.
Google Chrome, use it instead of Firefox for all the JS heavy sites (including Gmail), until 3.1 is out.
ClamWin, offline virus scanner, use it once weekly just in case.
PuTTY, great telnet/ssh client.
UltraVNC, fast, full-featured VNC client (remote desktop)

Extensions for Firefox would need a thread of their own.

LFS related, LFS Replay Analyzer by wsinda and VHPA by Bob Smith.

I've started using Directory Opus (recommended earlier) and it is a seriously good tool. Quite pricey, but worth it for the extra functionality it provides.

Quote from Becky Rose :

Linux - Pain in the smegging smeg recepticle, how can it be the future when it's based on a 1970's concept of an OS? Why do [other] techies like it? Why are there arguments over pronounciation when I speak like the Queen, dammit. Why does compiling an app on Linux involve acts of wild desperation, googling, and random guess work via trial and error and still result in inexplicable failure.

These issues are only encountered by idiots. Linux is really easy to use and compile apps for. Hilariously enough, the 'difficult' OS to compile for is Windows. Linux and OSX are relatively and comparitively easy.

To be fair, Dustin - Although I haven't had first hand experience I feel I'm well placed to have an opinion on Linux based on reading about the experience of people here, and of what my own personal friends have experienced and told me...

If I wanted to install some drivers, say for my wireless onto Windows, no problem. I'd just run the CD that came with the software (or use a USB drive or something which contains the drivers I've already predownloaded) and after running the instalation, all I may have to do is possibily restart.

If I were to install Windows, it's a matter of clicks, a small form to name your computer and after a few updates, you're ready to go...

With Linux you have to decide which version you want, if you want to install something it's a royal pain in the ass. Fafing about with all sorts of problems you may encounter along the way - Unfortuantly, Windows is an OS that you can use, although there isn't much you can do to 'mess about with it'.

Linux is the OS for geeks who have nothing better to do..