Here are the bare essential programs I find myself installing on the windows machines within my sphere of influence. I take no responsibility for the ensuing madness or system malfunctions that will occur from using any of the following. Also, useful list of tools at http://www.hanselman.com/tools Scott Hanselman's blog.
3DMark + PCMark
http://www.futuremark.com/
Learn how inadequately your rig performs compared to others.
7-Zip
http://www.7-zip.org/
A good archiving compressor/decompressor, with the number 7 in front.
ActivePerl
http://www.activestate.com/
Compile code incomprehensible to most mortals.
Audacity
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Windows sound recorder on steroids.
AVI2DVD
http://www.trustfm.net/divx/SoftwareAvi2Dvd.html
Use to make your Eggloft video watchable in a DVD player
AVIMux
http://www.alexander-noe.com/video/amg/
Sound and Video, together at last.
AviSynth + AVSEdit
http://avisynth.org/
Do amazing things with your media files (prereq. PhD in Computer Science)
Azureus
http://azureus.sourceforge.net/
Download torrents of hidef movie trailers (among other things)—
meh. I prefer to steer clear.
CCleaner
http://www.ccleaner.com/
Clean up cache/history/registry etc. mess.
Console
http://sourceforge.net/projects/console
An improved terminal for access to the command prompt or other shells.
Copernic Desktop Search
http://www.copernic.com/
The digital pack-rat's way to find files.
Cygwin
http://www.cygwin.com/
Pretend like windows has a useful shell. Better yet, remote access your linux desktop and pretend like windows isn't windows.
DVDShrink
http://www.mrbass.org/dvdshrink/
Magically back those DVR recordings into a smaller space at high quality.
FileZilla
http://filezilla-project.org/
Exciting name, boring file transfer.
Firefox
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/
"take back the web", where shall I take it?
Add ons
Adblocker plugin for Firefox
http://adblockplus.org/en/
It's like stealing from the advertisers - who are trying to install spyware on you.
Delicious plugin for Firefox
http://del.icio.us/
All your bookmarks, conveniently located at an address you can never type properly on the first try.
nah. Digging diigo instead.
FlashGot
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/220
Send downloads straight to FlashGet
SiteLauncher
http://www.donesmart.com/sitelauncher/
Bookmark bar: bye bye. Keyboard access to bookmarks: hello.
Tab Mix Plus
Decent tab manager. Saved sessions and can open tabs adjacent from the launcheing tab.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1122
Tree Style Tab better IMO
Tree Style Tab
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5890
Keep reasonable track of unreasonable numbers of tabs.
Add ons useful for EeePc
Creating more space in Firefox at [eeeuser].
Classic Compact Theme
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3699
Eeety bitty icons
Full Fullscreen
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1568
Perhaps not so useful if you don't have any toolbars.
Tiny Menu
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1455
Pack all of Firefox's menu items into one drop-down list
iFox Smooth
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1830
Nice theme, OSX style
FlashGet
http://www.flashget.com/index_en.htm
With my satellite "fast-as-spit-net", I'm constantly getting unrecoverable downloads. This nifty util seems to do the trick to close the deal but it has some qualities I haven't fully embraced quite yet.
Ghostscript + Ghostview
http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/
Helps deal with Postscript, even scarier than the name suggests.
Gimp
http://www.gimp.org/
PhotoShop shmotoshop, Gimp is free AND even harder to use.
ImgBurn
http://www.imgburn.com/
Nice way to burn out legitimate rips of optical discs
Inkscape
http://www.inkscape.org/
AWESOME graphics editor. Use in combination with MikTex's ps2pdf to import postscript output and edit line graphics individually!!
IrfanView + Plugins
http://www.irfanview.com/
Scroll through the millions of pictures of landscapes and kittens on your hard drive.
JKDefrag
http://www.kessels.com/Jkdefrag/
Heralded fast and efficient defragger. I still haven't tried it myself.
KeePass
http://keepass.info/
One keyring to rule them all
MD5sums
http://www.pc-tools.net/win32/md5sums/
Generate the MD5 hash from a file to find out if you spent the last 2 days downloading a corrupt Ubuntu ISO.
From the website:
MD5sums can also be easily added to the windows shell. Use Windows Explorer to access your user profile directory (one level up from the "Start Menu" directory). Locate the "SendTo" folder and create a shortcut inside it to "md5sums -p" (pause before returning).
MikTeX + TeXnicCenter
http://miktex.org/
http://www.toolscenter.org/
A typesetting program that's not just smarter than Word, it's smarter than you!
Notepad 2
http://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html
Notepad's geekier older brother.
NTFS Link
http://www.elsdoerfer.info/=ntfslink
We all know NTFS is SUPPOSED to be able to make hard-links. To heck with useless "shortcuts"; realize your filesystem's potential with this utility and discover a new way to corrupt your disk.
Quicktime Alternative
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/QuickTime_Alternative.htm
Watch quicktime without installing the apple virus.
Sandboxie
http://www.sandboxie.com/
AWESOME. Run windows programs (especially email and web browser) from inside of jail, where they belong.
Skype
http://www.skype.com/helloagain.html
Easy video chatting… learn that everyone prefers you stick with text only.
SyncView
http://software.sdecnet.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=18
Sound and Video, together at the same time!
SystemRescueCD
http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page
Make drive image points for backup and easy restore. Especially nice after getting windows the way you like it (with all the updates) and not having to run through the install process again.
Thunderbird
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/
The best application for checking your spam.
Note: to specify a custom mail/profile directory, first launch the Profile Manager with thunderbird -P (see here)
Trillian
http://www.ceruleanstudios.com/
A great way to ignore your friends from anywhere in the world!
Ultimate Boot CD
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
Essential utilities to diagnose the reason your system died when you ran 3DMark.
UNetbootin
http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/
Make USB thumb drive boot friggin anything and any combinations of anythings.
UnixUtils
http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/
Why suffer the uselessness of the windows command prompt? Add Unix command functionality!
Unlocker
http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/
WTF do you mean I "cannot delete file". Nuke it properly with this handy app.
VirtualDub
http://www.virtualdub.org/
Like splicing VHS with scotch tape, only slower.
Whats Running
http://www.whatsrunning.net/whatsrunning/main.aspx
Hunt down and kill bloat/spyware you have from installing the programs on this list.
WinDirStat
http://windirstat.info/
The prettiest map of crap you'll ever see. Find out what folders and files are eating all your hard drive space.
XviD
http://www.xvid.org/
Make and watch video compressed beyond the quantum limit
