The Most Important Programs in the World
The most important programs in the World are those you install the moment you get a new computer, and continue to use regularly.
I just got a new Acer Aspire 5920 laptop (which I may review some time, although that may not be necessary), and so recently had the pleasure of rediscovering what are the most important programs in the World to me. Here they are in no particular order:
Firefox
The first thing I installed, and I suspect the same to be true for many others, was Firefox. It needs no introduction; the best browser in the World. This was necessary almost immediately to start gathering other essential software from the Internet.
7-Zip
My favourite archiving utility, 7-Zip is fast, lightweight, supports everything and is open-source (my favourite kind). This was used right away, as many of the applications I would be downloading were archived (99% were zip-files, so I could have gotten by with Windows built in extractor, but man that gets slow when the archives get big…).
VLC Media Player
It’s very easy to love VLC; it’s really small and really fast, and can play almost anything you throw at it. It has loads of other features too, like network streaming and encoding/transcoding, but they’re not worth delving into right now. Sufficed to say, this is the quickest way to get up and running if you need to play anything.
Daemon Tools
Daemon Tools is a CD/DVD-ROM drive emulation tool, in which you can mount and run ISO images (it also supports other image files such as cue files Nero images). It sounds simple, but this is a genuinely great piece of software, and my favourite of it’s kind.
Microsoft Office 2007
Microsoft Office being an essential piece of software is pretty much a given in any circumstance, but I thought it was worth mentioning the latest edition, 2007, in particular. I’m a huge fan of the visual refresh the Office Team has developed in the form of the Ribbon Bar; and as a persistent user of Office I can testify to its usefulness. This is good stuff.
One for the developers, this is my preferred source-code editor. It has a nice extendible architecture, with a variety of plugins available as single DLL files.
FileZilla
I didn’t get very far without an FTP client; FileZilla is the best.
CCleaner
CCleaner is quite simple; it cleans all the crap of your computer. Really, really useful. Don’t take my word for it, witness it’s universal acclaim.
Last.fm
Last.fm is one of my favourite sites at the moment, and I consistently have the software running for hours on end. If you don’t have an account, I strongly recommend signing up for one. In fact, get a premium account, it’s €2.50 a month.
iTunes
I actually hate iTunes, but I love my iPod so I put with it. You can download the latest version here.
Adobe Reader 8 and Foxit Reader
Adobe Reader is a well-documented performance nightmare, whereas the also free Foxit Reader is lightening fast. I have them both installed because Adobe Reader will create nice-thumbnails of the PDF files; and Foxit Reader will open them in seconds.
Google Earth
Simply because I love Google Earth.
Visual Studio 2005
Although I haven’t actually used Visual Studio in a while, most of my coding lately has been web-based, I know I’ll have to load it up sooner or later.
I guess that’s it; I’m sure I’ve missed a few, and this is merely a snapshot of the many, many programs people use day in and day out. It’s a small sample of the most important programs in the World.
