Last edited: October 2, 2005
Here’s a list of software I have personally used and recommend. I’ll be reviewing some of these programs over the next few months. Review links appear to the right of the product name. A dagger (†) after an entry in this list means the program is currently installed on my main working system.
Digital Music and Media
- Album Art Fixer for WMP and MCE
- eMusic Tag Editor †
- FLAC Frontend
- mkw Audio Compression Toolkit †
- QuickTime Player
- RealPlayer 10
- Snapstream Beyond TV 3.5
- Windows Media Player 10 †
- Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 †
Digital Photography and Image Editing
Internet and Web Apps
- FTP Voyager †
- Laplink Gold
- Maxthon Browser
- Mozilla Firefox †
- Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0
- NewsLeecher
- TightVNC
Security and Privacy Tools
- AnalogX SuperShredder
- Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer 2.0
- Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware Beta
- Norton Ghost 9.0 †
- Password Corral
- PurgeFox [review]
- PurgeIE
- SnadBoy’s Revelation v2
- Trend Micro PC-cillin Internet Security 2005
- Windows XP Service Pack 2
Really Useful Tools
- Active Words
- AI RoboForm †
- AI RoboForm Adapter for Mozilla/Netscape †
- BitTorrent
- ClipCache Plus
- ClipMate †
- CmdHere Powertoy for Windows XP
- Copernic Desktop Search
- Diskeeper Professional Edition
- Dymo LabelWriter Software †
- eFax Messenger 4.0 †
- FileSync †
- FileTargets
- FinePrint †
- Google Toolbar (Internet Explorer and Firefox versions) †
- Nero 6 Ultra Edition †
- Powermarks 3.5
- Printer’s Apprentice
- Registrar Lite 2.00
- Startup Control Panel
- SnagIt 7 †
- SyncToy †
- TaskTracker
- Tweak UI †
- VMWare Workstation 5 †
- Weather Watcher †
- WinRAR
- X1 Desktop Edition †
Blogging Tools and Web Feed Readers
Office and Its Add-ins
- ClearContext Inbox Manager for Outlook [review] †
- Microsoft ActiveSync 3.8 †
- Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003 †
- Microsoft Office OneNote 2003 SP2 †
- Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003 (Service Pack 2) †
Dull but Useful
- Adobe Reader 7.0 †
- Java 2 Runtime Environment
- Microsoft Money 2004 †
Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1(Dull? What was I thinking? See the following section…) †- Microsoft IntelliType Pro 5.0
- TaxCut 2004
- Zinio Reader
Beautiful, if you’re a developer
You’ll find an excellent list of free software at Jim Eshelman’s Windows Support Center.
I also recommend Zaine Ridling’s Great Software List for links to reliable and useful Windows software.