What are your essential programs?
 

What programs could you not do without? The ones that you install immediatly after formatting your computer?

For me, the only ones I can think of while I'm sitting here at work are:

Winamp - Yes, I'm one of the few people that still use winamp. Most of the people I know have switched over to WMP long ago. I'm not sure why I still use winamp - it's always served me well, and I've not seen a need for switching to WMP.

Microsoft Office - Obvous... I havn't found anything that works better (or is more universally compatable)

Norton Anti-Virus - I've always used norton, and once again, I havn't found anything that works better.

Daemon Tools - I much prefer using this over Alcohol 120% (Which I used to use). It does it's job well, and I've never had a problem making a cd or dvd copy from an image mounted by it.

Nero Burning ROM - I've tried many burning apps, searching around for a free one, but nothing works quite as well as a cracked copy of Nero :)

AdAware - Same situation as Nero, I've tried many others, but AdAware works best (especially the cracked SE versions, lol)

Some of mine are:

-Opera: For browsing the web. I think its much better than IE. I haven't tried Firefox.

-Winrar: Packing/unpacking stuff obviously.

-3dsmax: I am a 3d graphics/animation student so i need this for my studies.

-Winamp: Playing music.

-mIRC: Chatting with friends over the internet.

-Photoshop: I need this aswell for my studies.

-some minor other programs such as FlashFXP, adobe reader and utorrent.

iTunes - The only reason I have 8,000+ songs on my computer. Organization is key, and iTunes organizes music perfectly.

Norton Internet Security 2006 - It's a 60 demo, but it comes with NAV and AntiSpam which is a must have. Without it, browing the Internet is like living in a commerical... too many ads. AntiSpam blocks 99% of ads on the Internet.

FrontPage 2003 - only because I have my own web site (www.cyantre.com)

Mac:

Firefox: Please don't make me explain this.

Final Cut Pro: Premiere, Pinnacle, and iMovie can kiss my ass as this is the best all-around nonlinear video app I've used in like ever lol. I mean, look, it even prompts a grammatically-incorrect "lol." Avid is powerful as all hell but FCP seems to be more intuitive and, to date, hasn't limited me in any way in terms of what I can and cannot do. I'm certain at some point my knowledge and skill will surpass some of the few limitations of FCP and I'll need to graduate to Avid, but for the time being Final Cut is THE app for me.

DVD Studio Pro: Companion app to FCP, takes movies exported with FCP and burns them to DVD with full animation and interactivity functionality in menus. Basically an insanely robust DVD authoring/mastering suite.

Adium: Nice multiprotocol instant-messaging utility. Gaim is nice, but I really don't want to have to open up X11 every time I want to use it. I only wish Adium supported GPG crypto on messages, as I'm a paranoid InfoSec student and privacy-obsessed Slashdotter who's convinced of any and all Illuminati conspiracy theories I've heard. Seriously, though, Adium is nice.

Cog: Basically Foobar2000 for OS X. Great for when I want to just spin some tunes and not have the memory-devouring iTunes open. Don't need gobs of metadata for playing back some metal, plzkthxbye. iTunes is fine for Podcasts and iPod updating, but for playback, Cog has a nice, small memory footprint and just plain works. If they'd only add a "new window" item to the file menu, I wouldn't have to quit and relaunch every time I accidentally close the playlist/control window.

Thunderbird: Again, please don't make me explain this. Best E-mail client in evar liek wut lol. LIEK WUT LOL.

VLC, Mplayer, and QuickTime Pro: Between these three, there's nothing I can't play back with the exception of the hideous WMV3 codec (that I avoid like the plague even on my Win32 box). VLC has some nice advanced features too, such as streaming over networks.

Mac the Ripper: DVD ripping app. Pretty straightforward, though I need to see if there are any updates that tell Sony's ARccOS Fair-Use-Denial scheme where to cram it.

DVD2OneX: DVD compression app. Squeeze DVD-9 to DVD-5, remove unwanted audio/subtitle tracks (great for ripping anime DVDs, removing the Japanese audio and subtitles, and watching my sub-whore friends puzzle over how to get JP audio. Yes, I am an asshole.)

Max: CDParanoia-based CD ripper with support for encoding with LAME, FLAC, OGG, and a few other codecs. Great app, and supports multiple drives so I can do 3 CDs at once with my FireWire burners. FF6 soundtrack rip COMIN LIEK WUT.

MP3 Alarm Clock: Most useful Mac app nobody's ever heard of...ever. Does exactly what its name implies: plays a playlist of MP3 files at a designated time, has a snooze button, and a few other nifty features like gradually decreasing snooze time and gradually increasing volume.

OSXvnc: VNC remote-access client/server pair for OS X. I'm a remote-access whore and hate being away from my box (Heeho, addiction for all!), so it's great to have in a pinch.

Toast: GREAT CD-recording app for OS X. Mac users in general should be no strangers to the splendours of Toast. Supports multiple image formats, has built-in transcoding for VCD/SVCD/DVD, does picture-CD, does all the stuff Nero does on Windows and looks prettier while in the process.

NeoOffice/J: Java-based OpenOffice implementation for Mac. Slow as hell to launch, but it supports OpenOffice's file formats and hey, it's open-source.

GIMP: Don't usually feel like going through the install steps for Photoshop (read: pain to crack, not worth it), and I've grown to like the GMP's interface better anyway.

And possibly the most useful Mac app of all, the Terminal. UNIX shell access to my whole box.

Here we go...

Firefox - Gotta love mouse gestures plugin and tabs!!

Azureus - Can't live without torrents you know!

KDE - Without this, my computer is nothing...Plus GNOME SUCKS!

XMMS- Winamp for linux is the best way to describe it, I sure miss Foobar2000 though

ClamAV - Just in case really...

PureFTPd - FTP server daemon

K3B - Burning CDs/DVDs

//

I could go on, but we'd be here forever

Firefox - There are alternatives, but none as nice

vim - Because you have to edit files and code, you know?

GNU Compiler Collection, make - Seeing as I DO do programming for work/school and all that

mplayer - Watching Videos, Playing Music, it does it all

GAIM - Talking to people. Yeah.

sshd and ssh - Transferring stuff and maintaining stuff across different machines.

cvs - see above

Openoffice.org - For those times when I actually have to send my work to other people and format it all pretty.

Mono/Monodevelop - For those times I'm forced to work in *sigh* .NET.

Heh here I go

FireFox - WEB
`- FileZilla Client - MORE WEB
`- FileZilla Server - EVEN MORE WEB
`- Hamachi - VPN Software

FrostWire - Basically limewire but with no future DRM rubbish.
`- uTorrent - Gotta gave torrents.
`- XDCC - Leeching fom IRC bots

TabIt - Gotta have my tiny music program
`- Synthfont - Gotta have my tiny music program sounding nice
`- FL Studio - I don't even use it but whatever
`- Winamp 2.9 - Winamp 5 is a bloated peice of crap in my opinion ^_^

AVG - Need virus protection and all that
`- Ad-Aware - Don't you spy on me sir
`- Spybot Search & Destroy - FU

WinRAR - Obvious RAR and ZIP handling plx
`- WunUHA - The UHA format sometimes acheives 50% that of RAR <3

Quake III - I Will still love this game for a long time yet
`- Worms World Party - Serious Funtime
`- Unreal Tournament GOTY - Alternative
`- A whole load of other games I always install =\

WindowBlinds / UXTheme patch - I use either.
`- ObjectDock Plus - I don't use a taskbar at all.
`- IconXP Plus - Gotta love secksy desktop icons
`- IconPackager - Do 3 hours work in 3 seconds ^_____^
`- Bootscreen - Secksy sysem startup screens.
`- LogonStudio - I don't log on to my workstation. I log on to my FUNSTATION.
`- Wormouse - A Personal program of mine, it makes your mouse point where it's heading =D
`- ClearInfo - Good to know bandwidth usage / IP adress / CPU usage etc just by looking at my desktop.

That's all I can think of for now, I know there's more.

Mozilla Firefox - Web, yo.
foobar2000 - Music, yo.
Azureus - For all my BitTorrent-ing needs.
blackbox - In Windows, I use this as my shell instead of explorer.
cygwin - Does not need much explanation.
xplorer2 - ...and I use this as my file manager. Love.
GAIM - Chatting.
zsh - My favorite command line shell.
svn - Subversion, for version control.
apache2 - For my own web server on my Linux box. It's my SVN server too, and I set it up to access my stuff from anywhere with the Internet.
FileZilla - For my FTP needs.
XWin - My X Server for Windows platforms.
EditPlus 2 - My Windows notepad replacement.
mIRC - My IRC client to spam #gfmp3 on irc.xelium.net.
Cisco Systems VPN Client - I use this this from home to access exclusive university stuff, and even on campus sometimes just for a better connection.
VLC Media Player - My video player of choice, along with the popular codec packs (CCC, those "alternvative"...).
xemacs - The universal text editor of choice.
GoogleTalk - I never use it, but it's always running to let me know of incoming gmail.
pureFTPd - MY FTP server of choice.
[Adobe] Macromedia Studio - For my web development needs.
Microsoft Visual Studio 2003 - I use this among other powerful choices for programming IDEs.
eclipse - I use this often enough too.
Nero Burning ROM - 1 of 2 CD burning programs I use.
Alcohol 120% - This is the other.
Adobe Acrobat/Reader - P-D-F.
Irfanview - A nice utility for viewing images and some basic processing.
PuTTy/Pageant, ssh, sshd - Popular choices for SSH-ing.
Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, pine - e-mail.
NOD32 - My AV of choice.
Spybot S&D, SpywareBlaster, SpywareGuard, Microsoft Antispyware, etc. - Requirements for running Windows.
Daemon Tools - For ISO loading.

That's about it for programs/suites that are always running or I would use at least once about every three days.

Firefox: Adblock + G.Filterset = 99% of ads automatically gone. And the few that are left are usually as easy as a right-click to dispose of. I have mouse gestures installed, yeah... but I don't use it much. I just mainly use the right-to-left click that comes with it to navigate back and forth.

Foobar2000: With the Scheduler addon, this handy little app has literally become my alarm clock. =D

OpenOffice: Since I'm too poor to afford Office, I have this. Just as good, and free.

Azareus: It's a memory hog, but it's MY memory hog!

Norton Antivirus 2004/AVG Free Edition: The only reason I have Norton on my desktop was because I patched it for free updates until 2050. :tpg:

Gaim: I don't have AOL, so I use this to be free of the bloatware that is AIM.

Media Player Classic: With the... I think it was the Defiler pack, I can play literally EVERYTHING, and do it faster than WMP, too.

Adium: Easily the best instant messenging program I've ever used. If you're on a Mac, you already know that iChat sucks for anything that isn't video chat, and Mac AIM isn't much better. Adium is made out of win and god.

VLC: It supports just about every video codec you can imagine, and thank goodness. Otherwise we'd be screwed!

Azareus: I think most people will agree that this is the best for BT.

Firefox: Good browser

Foobar2000: Very nice music player, by far my favorite

MPC: Best video player I've ever used. I also grab defilerpak to make various codecs readable.

VirtualDubMod: Necessary for video editing

Emule: Good for getting rare games, much better than bittorrent in that regard

DC++: Music and Movies

7-Zip: Free-er version of WinRar

Miranda-IM: Customizable instant messanging program

Litestep: I can't handle explorer anymore and Nonstep does everything I need it to do.

OpenOffice.org: As good as MSOffice and costs no money.

Firefox - Still the best web browser, IMO. I love the interface, I love how the tabbed browsing is designed. I still have to keep IE around for all these morons who design websites that don't work in anything but IE, but I'd really rather just use Firefox for every single website. I employ the Fasterfox plugin and there is one that colors the tabs which I like to use as well.

Winamp - I've never found much reason to switch off Winamp to another player. I've had to use WMP as of late because my MP3 player requires a program that can sync with it (or I could do it manually but I'm lazy). I just saw that Winamp has a new sync feature. I haven't tried it out yet, but I'm excited at the thought of being able to get off another inferior MS product.

TextPad - I got into using this because it was what my computer science department recommended for Java programming. It is a full-featured text editor. They improve it vastly from version to version. It is quite easy to configure and completely free. Any computer I use this is probably the second program I install (after Firefox) because I use it for everything from writing notes and reminders to myself to writing posts.

Nero - Still the best burning program, I think.

Media Player Classic - I keep this around because I prefer it for videos to Winamp. Nothing too special about it.

IrfanView - I don't need a fancy picture browser. For anyone who's been around computers more than a decade, I used to love C-Show and C-Show 2000. I just like simplicity, and IrfanView provides that.

Paint Shop Pro - This is my preferred image viewer. I could go Photoshop but I don't need anything that full featured and I'm quite used to PSP.

ABC - This is my torrent client. This is kind of like Winamp for me where I've been told often that there are better programs, but I'm plenty happy with this one and I'm used to it.

mIRC - IRC is a great source for hard-to-find MP3s and, of course, chat. Nothing has ever surpassed mIRC as a client and I doubt anything ever will.

File Renamer Basic - I don't like tagging my MP3s, I really just care about artist, album title, track number, and song title, so I name my files as such. I'm very meticulous about my files all having the same naming conventions, this program makes it very easy to do that.

Microsoft Office - I've tried OpenOffice and I quite like it, but seeming that I have a legal copy of Office, this is just easier. Plus, when I was teaching, I did my lectures on PowerPoint and OpenOffice PPT files just didn't work well with the Office on the computers in the lecture halls so I was stuck with MS Office anyway.

Emulator Software - I prefer ePSXe, ZSNES, NEStopia and VisualBoyAdvance.

Programs Just to Make Sure the Computer is Functional - Spybot, Ad-Aware, Tweak UI, Tweak-XP Pro, O&O Defrag, PartitionMagic, Adobe Reader, WinRAR

# Mozilla Firefox
- I need to browse the web, right? With lots of great functions, this is a must.

# Foobar2000
- My music player, great configuration possibilities.

# MSN Messenger
- Used for talking with my friends.

# ZSNES and FCEU
- For all my emulation needs!

# Photoshop 7.0
- Everything from website graphics to cropping to photo manipulation.

# TextPAD
- Simply the best editor for web programming <3

# VideoLAN
- Used for playing movie media.

# Microsoft Office 2003: Word
- For schoolwork.

# NOD32 Antivirus / Ad-Aware
- For keeping my computer clean and safe!

# PuTTY
- For SSH business.

# FlashFXP
- Everything FTP done with this baby!

WinAmp I have over 20gbs of music, playing them is definately essential.
Adobe Photoshop CS 2 I do plenty of freelance design jobs, plus run my own website, graphics are essential.
Dreamweaver MX 204 On top of graphics, I love to code, mostly PHP. I love using Dreamweaver for my coding needs.
Flash FXP I have my own dedicated server, kinda need a good client.
MS Outlook Email client of chioce, I get a lot of important business related emails. Definately couldn't do without it.

Here's an alphabetically sorted list of mine.

- Abiword
For when people go "OMG DOC ONLY!" And it's a good editor on its own for formatted documents.

- Apache/1
I strongly dislike Apache 2, and I run a lot of local web development stuff, so this is fairly necessary. It's nice to manage, too.

- GAIM
It handles AIM, MSN, Jabber, and bunches more. What's not to like?

- gFTP
FTP program. Handles what I need quite well, and bookmarks seem much more extensive than that any Windows program has provided me.

- mplayer
Does everything except handle softsubbed movies well from the GUI interface. If I need subs, I can launch it from the command line to get them, and it frankly kicks xine a hundredfold. Can't forget the w32codecs for massive format support, either.

- Opera
Web browsing is helpful, and Opera's the best~

- Squid
This is a proxy, for those who do not know. I basically made it so that it only accepts local connections, and dropped the adzapper script into it. This helps greatly with ad blocking in things like Opera when I'm too lazy to outright block a site, and it's very light on resources.

- vim
Best text editor/programming tool ever. Customisable syntax highlighting, and in Linux fashion, a gargantuan .rc file you can play with.

- wxMusik
Since I hate Quod Libet and Amarok like nothing else, this is my choice. Really slick program, and it actually supports ID3v2.4/UTF-8 (unicode ID3 tags), which both the former seemed to not do.

Currently on my quick select (aka my A-List)
foobar2000 0.8.3 Best dedicated music player period. I don't know why anyone would use Winamp over this.
Firefox 1.5.0.1 What can I say, I'm a sucker for Adblock and Gmail Notifier
Media Player Classic 6.4.8.9 Looks like the minimalist WMP 6x, but does everything right that WMP does wrong. Plus it supports an immense amount of formats.
WinRAR 3.51 Has a better interface than all other compressors I've tried, plus RAR's have great compression.

Exact Audio Copy 0.95 beta 3 Self explanitory, anyone who takes accuracy seriously with DAE should know about this program.
Ad-Aware SE Professional 1.06 Just so I have a anti-spyware program.
The Gimp 2.2.10 Like Photoshop, but free.
µTorrent 1.4 build 402 Doesn't suck up RAM and has a really simple interface.
WinHex 12.8 SR-9 Because I love the Hex editor and the other abilities after I cracked this $180 util (edit: found a new keygen!).

AVG - first thing I install. I have been pretty satisfied with this antivirus.

Firefox - second thing I install. Then I install the noia extreme theme, the foxytunes plugin {though I don't really use it much anymore}, and the gmail notifier.

foobar2000 - my music player of choice. I used winamp for a long time, but pretty much five minutes after I started using foobar, I knew I wouldn't go back to winamp.

Trillian 2.something - some people like miranda or gaim or any number of other IM clients. I happen to like this particular version of Trillian and have been using it for what, 2 years.

AstonShell - initially I started using Aston because I thought the various visual themes were interesting. Now I use it for the hidable side toolbars and the easy to configure global hotkeys {Winkey+P for photoshop, winkey+I for internet browser, winkey+M for music player, winkey+O for outlook client {have to have for work :puke:}, winkey+c for command prompt, winkey+t for task manager, etc}

ipod software + itunes - because I like my ipod and sort of need to be able add songs to it.

Admin Toolpack - on my work computer I add this, so that I can unlock dummies' AD accounts.

MS Office 2003 - again because of work

Spybot S&D - because it is my preferred spyware cleaner

Photoshop - because sometimes I like to edit images and photoshop is easy as hell to use

CDex - to rip my cds so that I can put them on my ipod. I have bought 10 or so cds since buying my ipod and I have not listened to a single one. Simply pulled them out of the case, ripped them, put them back into the case, and tossed the case into a box in my closet.

Nero - sometimes I have to burn cds or dvds. I use this in such occasions.

Anything else gets installed when I actually need to use it, as opposed to day of OS installation like these applications that I listed.

Firefox - Absolutely essential, and so much better than IE.
Azureus - Yeah, I know that it uses up a bit more ram than µTorrent, but at 1 gig, I don't have to worry too much.
AIM version 5.9.3690 - It enables sharing with all the other folks who use AIM without the pain-in-the-ass ads; and I don't use any other messaging systems, so it works out well.
Mplayer - The most down to earth, and most cpu-unintensive, media player I could find, without sacrificing quality and quantity of decoding.
Foobar 2000 - For everything that Mplayer cannot handle.
Nero 7, cracked - nothing really needed to say here
7zip Very simple, and integrated into the interface of windows.
AVG Antivirus - Why spend money?
Norton Firewall - It is still very handy, despite the fact that it is a pay-for utility

My essential programs, in no particular order, are:

Firefox - Duh.
Thunderbird - An excellent e-mail client.
ZoneAlarm Firewall Pro - My firewall of choice.
Spybot S&D
AVG free
dBpowerAMP and DMC - My music player and converter of choice, I love the music collection feature and the support for just about any codec you would need (and some you don't)
foobar2000 - For the stuff dBpowerAMP can't play, mainly .spc and .psf
Sibelius v3.1 - Much better than Finale, but version 4 isn't as good as version 3.1

Essential programs:

Firefox: -_- everyone else took my answer >.<
ITunes: categorizes music... and LOTS of it
GAIM: ...kill AOL (they send me their trial cds every two or so months... it gets annoying)
Azureus: my resource hogging BT client
WinRAR: excelent compression program
CCCP: the only codec pack I use
Nero: great burning software
Spybot: Free adware/spyware protection, whats not to like?

Firefox - Oh how I love thee and your adblocker...
Ad Aware - Best spyware killer out there that I have used
AVG - One of the first virus scanners I ever used, and I have become hooked on it since day 1.
Photoshop - For all of your image needs and then some. A must for anyone with a website.
Dreamweaver - See last segment above. Always liked it much more than Microsoft's offering in web page editors.
Winamp - Always loved the interface on this one, which is why I have stuck with it all these years.
Registry First Aid - Nothing like keeping the computer in tip top shape.

Firefox - My favorite bloatware ever (since I get to decide what the bloat is).
Gaim - Handles all protocols and is cross platform.
Beep Media Player/Winamp Lite - Play that music, do nothing else!
VLC & MPlayer - Both with strengths and weaknesses but as a team they get pretty much any video playback job done (save for those damn but good looking ssa/ass subs).
XChat - Good client for advanced IRC stuff, cross platform as well.
The Gimp - Like I could afford Photoshop...
K3b - Made CD/DVD authoring a Linux-only thing for me ... how big is a Nero install these days anyway?
EasyTAG - I don't know how much more time I'd have spent with a different tagging/renaming method...
Antivir & ZoneAlarm - Yes, sometimes I still use Windows.

I completely agree with this line here.

Erm about programs..

Winamp - because i couldn't get foobar2000 to play .sid/.mod music with the first try.
FlashFXP - It is the perfect FTP client.
ZoneAlarm - Used to it.. and no problems so far, other than some fullscreen games asking the first time.
MSN Messenger - The best microsoft product so far.
Firefox - I can't imagine switching back to IE.
Irfanview - It's simple and effective.
ZSnes - I play the best games with the best emulator.

Macintosh
Just recently bought a new machine and started from scratch and I've found the following vital.
Adium: While it still fucks up multible MSN multi chats it's the most awesome chat client ever. So fast, so stable and so powerful.
Photoshop: I only have 7 but no matter, need something, anything on here.
SNES9X: I can pretend my computer has good games on it witht hsi.
Graphic Convertor X: Supports pretty much every file format ever. It's slow but simple cheap and powerful.
Yasu: Mac users, get this now. It's the ultimate disk maintainence utility and so painless and easy to use. Cron jobs, permissions, does them all.
Transport: It's just an ftp app and while it's slow when dealing with a large number of files, it's interface is identical to that of the Finder so it's just so easy and natural to use.
And all the standard Mac programs; iTunes, iCal, iPhoto, Safari, Mail, Appleworks (fuck this Pages shit) etc. Apple are pretty much the best software developer of all time. I mean I like the way they struck gold with Safari in the very first beta test. It supports all web standards perfectly and is faster than Firefox. It's like Opera but not horrible and complex.

Firefox: It's the best web browser that I've used. Fully customizable too. Me likes.
Nero: Makes burning CD's and DVD's simple.
FileZilla: Since my ISP doesn't let me use BitTorrent, then this is the next best thing. Especially on GFF.
MS Office: Simply because it's the best for my college work. I haven't tried OpenOffice, but I'm happy with what I've got, so why change?

I use FileZilla as well, but not the client; the server. It's easy to use, and someone wanted to give a file via FTP, what better way than using my PC for the transfer?

Just a few that I have on each computer I own:

- Winamp - My primary music player.

- Firefox - I switched to this browser after having problems with IE, and I haven't changed since.

- WMP/BS Player - I tend to use both in case one file doesn't work with one player.

- Trillian - I find it easier to have all chat programs in one.

- MS Office - Necessary for school.

- Bitcomet - I've been using this one for awhile now, and I haven't had any problems with it.

- mIRC - Although I don't chat much or use it for getting files anymore, it remains on my computer in case I need it.

My essentials:

Adium - the best multi-IM client on OS X, hands down.

Transmit - the best FTP client anywhere, hands down.

Colloquy - my favorite IRC client yet.


Most of the other apps I use every day come with the OS already: Safari (my web browser of choice), Mail, iTunes, Address Book and iCal... OS X has lots of sweet included apps.

Essentials....

Ad-Aware: Use with Ad-watcher kill adware + spyware
Azureus: Torrents, whoring memory
BbLean: :aargh: sex with my desktop.
Internet Explorer: For sites that hate Firefox
Mozilla Firefox: Tabbed Browsing, whoring memory
Mozilla Thunderbird: Email
Photoshop CS 2: Digital art
Media Player Classic: /w ffdshow to play movies
Microsoft Office: Reports
Ms Paint: Quick editing, pixel art
Total Recorder: Recording music from protected files.
Trillian Pro 3: Multi-Im, though I only use AIM, kinda whores memory
Spybot - Search & Destroy: Combine with Ad-Aware
Typing of the Dead: Working up WPM:juggler:

So far, these are probably the ones I'd go and immediately reinstall:

Trillian - I have to stay in contact with my people (minus a few)
Winamp - I need it to listen to my soundtracks that are in other formats
WavePad - I use this program to make voice clips
MS Office 2003 - since I bought it for $200, I think I'd better keep using it
BitLord - my favorite BitTorrent client
WinRAR - I don't like WinZip or the one that's installed in Windows anymore
Acoustica MP3 Audio Mixer - I'm beginning to mess with recordings now
Nero - I don't like the program that came with the computer
DCPlusPlus - pretty self-explanatory

I find myself installing the following programs whenever I format my computer:

Winrar - First and foremost, I need it unpack all of my things. I think its version 3.40, I suppose its time I look for a updated version.

Autopatcher - Helps me quickly update winxp without getting my internet to work.

AVG, Sygate firewall, Spybot, & CCleaner - The minimum I'll install before browsing the internet.

Firefox 1.5 - I need not explain =).

Winamp 5.2 or foobar2k - It really depends on the computer I'm working on, but it never hurts to have the ability to play music.

MSN 7.5 - I'd use AIM but most of my friends are on this IM client.

Smartftp - Never hurts to have it around. And perhaps use it to grab any programs I forgot to toss in my usb drive.

Microsoft Office - Its better than wordpad ._.

Mozilla Firefox - Obviously used for web browsing and having many pages open at the same times in multiple tabs. Adblock alone makes this just about the best web browser avalible.

Mozilla Thunderbird - Fast, customizable and easy to use E-Mail client. Granted it currently lacks some features of MS Outlook (i.e. a calendar) but for personal use it works just fine.

Foobar2000 0.8.3 - The only player for music on my system. Its customization options, ease of use and high system performance set this apart from all the rest in my opinion. It is really the only player that enables you to have full control over the playback chain. From output method, to the DSP array, you can achieve optimal playback quality with just about any sound card.

Media Player Classic - My first choice for media playback. Supports a plethora of internal filters, output (both audio and video) rendering methods, resize options (i.e. customized pan and scan of 16:9 clips) and direct support for inline subtitles. With the right codec packs, you can basically playback any a/v format currently in use today. And of course, it is very resource friendly.\

Miranda IM - My IM client of choice. Supports just about every IM protocol, which enables you to manage all of your accounts from one place and ensure you are always connected to your buds. This is also very customizable and external plug-ins can add a wide range of functionality to the program. Not good if you want to do fancy things like voice chat with the latest version of MSN messenger, but more than adequate if you just want to chat and maybe sent files from time to time.

uTorrent - After using BitComet for about two years, I wound up settling on this baby as my new client of choice (after BC became banned by just about every tracker I frequented.) The installation itself is small (runs from a singe executable) and uses system resources quite efficiently, even for torrents with a great deal of seeds/leechers.

CoolEditPro 2 - My audio editing/album mastering program of choice at the moment. It offers a wide range of options for the editing and manipulation of audio clips and recordings. Multi-track mode is great when you want to have full control of a stereo mixdown form a multi-channel source as you can easily move clips around (from channel to channel or backwards/forwards in the timeline.) It is a bit buggy though, and really memory hungry but only for really large files recorded at high sample rates.

Aston Shell - My GUI replacement of choice. Provides a nice alternative to Explorer and enable greater customization of the interface. Not exactly what I would call my favorite program, but I have grown to live with it.

Xnews - A great newsreader that is best use to download content from newsgroups. Several aspects of this program annoy me, including how it always pops up a dialogue offering to search Google if a post is not found on the server (which is annoying if you are navigating though sets of images); and the fact that several key functions (i.e. Next Message) cannot be assigned a shortcut key

Nero Burning ROM - My CD/DVD burning program of choice. Offers a great deal of options and is easy to use.

Microsoft Office - I primarily use this for editing/composing Word documents and spellchecking every forum post I make (yes I do it every time.) I used to use Excel quite frequently for school, but now I use it only if decide I need to compile data for miscellaneous things (like price lists, job hours reporting, etc.) I could just use OpenOffice, but I have found it easier to just use something that is recognizable by 95% of people I will sent things to.

CuteFTP - Have been using an ancient version of this FTP client for about 5-6 years now. I have tried running an updated version of this program before but was never able to get it working. This is one of those things that has always worked, so I never see reason to fix it.

SpyBot S&D - My only line of defense against unauthorized changes to my system (since I do not run A/V software.) Is really helpful in pinpointing know suspicious files and registry entries, and features some really powerful system tools (for editing the HOSTS file, viewing registers network protocols, securely shredding files, etc.) The TeaTimer app is one of the most important applications I currently use. I find its ability to instantly inform me of registry changes (be they good or bad) to help in my defense against the worst the web has to offer.

ZSNES - My SNES emulator of choice. There is nothing sexier than running a gorgeous game like Chrono Trigger at 1280x1024 with an AA filter in place running at 60FPS (synced with your monitor resolution). Granted the emulation still isn't perfect for all games, but it is the closest one can get to perfect emulation of this system.

I have a pretty strict set of apps that I install to my PC.

Adobe Reader - Use it for PDFs, what else? Kind of hoggish on resources, though.

BitComet - Great BT client. I'd rather not use a Java-based client, like Azureus.

Daemon Tools - Absolutely essential for reading ISOs, be it movies or games.

Dreamweaver 2004 - I don't use this much, but I may start to as my design business starts picking up.

DVD Decrypter - One of the best DVD rippers/burners out there. I rip a lot of PS2 games with this.

FileZilla - Great opensource FTP client. Very easy to use.

Firefox - Truly standards-compliant browser. To hell with Internet Exploder.

FontFolio OpenType Edition - Not really an app, but really useful to me anyways. It's a huge collection of professional fonts that I use for my web design.

Miranda-IM - Great lightweight chat program. Supports a ton of different chat protocols, and has plugin and skin support.

Nero Burning ROM - Best burning software period.

NOD32 - Best antivirus I've ever come across. Incredibly lighweight and powerful. Supposedly picks up the slack most other AVs leave behind.

OpenOffice - To hell with MS Office. This is a fully featured Office clone, and costs absolutely nothing vs. $400 for MS Office. Some little things aren't quite up to par yet, but it's still free.

Photoshop CS - Used for web design. Nuff said.

Sygate Firewall - Yeah it's discontinued, but it's still loads better than a lot of other firewalls. It may be time to start looking for a new one.

Ventrilo - Used for games and better than Teamspeak. Nuff said.

Winamp - I like it cuz it's tiny and skinnable.

WinRAR - Does everything WinZip and 7-Zip do. I only use RARs and ZIPs anyways. Does a great job at compressing files.

And of course, I have my games installed as well.

Foxit Reader- It's like Acrobat Reader minus the bloat and annoying startup times.
Bulletproof FTP Server and DynDNS updater- Can't nobody say that I never did nothing for the peoples. ^^
FileZilla Client- The inverse of the above. I use it to download music from other people.
Winamp- My favorite music player, and it can play a bunch of formats that iTunes doesn't support.
iTunes- I use it to sync my iPod, and occasionally as a music player. Winamp is smaller and nicer for playing, though.
uTorrent- the smallest, fastest BitTorrent client that I've found. It's replaced BitComet for me, since that seems to be banned at an awful lot of trackers.
SonicStage- It's crap, but it's what my burner came with. I should pirate Nero, or something. ;_;
The GIMP- Useful for all sorts of basic image editing tasks. It's a far sight cheaper than Photoshop.
WinRAR- The perfect archive program, bar none. It's shareware, but it's worth the money/the nag messages/finding a torrent of it.
WindowBlinds (or uxtheme, if I'm lazy)- The default Windows XP theme looks like it was designed by Playmobil, and this makes it look nicer.
OpenOffice or Microsoft Office- My laptop has MS Office, my desktop gets OpenOffice. For my rather basic purposes, they're about the same, and they beat Notepad for serious work. ^^
ZSNES, ePSXe, WinUAE, MAME32, DOSBox and RockNES- The best emulators (well, DOSBox isn't exactly an emulator, but that's not the point) for their respective systems. Yay for old games!

Azureus - Don't need to say anything about that
Adobe Premiere Pro - For Video Editing
Adobe Photoshop CS2 - For Photo Editing, Manip and what not
Firefox and Thunderbird - Don't need to say anything bout that.
MP3 Tag Tools For fixing tags on MP3s and everything like that
Exact Audio Copy w/ LAME - For VBR encoding of CD's
Rhapsody - Recording WAV files with my MP3 player and converting them into VBR
Express WebPictures - Mass grabbing of picture files.
WindowsBlinds Different Shell for XP
StyleXP - Side bar for watching CPU, Page Files, HDD space and Weather.

Mine should:

Winamp - great player
WinRAR - great compressing and extrating files
Office - word, excel,.....
Nero Burning ROM - my burning program
PowerDVD -
WSFTP - great FTp program
AIM and MSN - chat with friend
Mcaffe firewall and anti virus

Microsoft Office - School
Windows Media Player - Music
DivX Player - Movies
Azureus - Torrent
Limewire - Individual song downloads
Diablo II LoD - Oh yeah...
MSN - What I use to talk to most of my friends online

Hmm.. I think for me... its:

Firefox - </3 IE
Thunderbird - I've left Outlook Express as well
mIRC - Spend most of my time here
Adobe Photoshop - Photo Editing.. duh :o
Yahoo Messenger - More contacts :D Haha.
AVG - Since I gave up on Norton as well ;)
Winamp - Havent used any other MP3 player aside from this.
MS Office - For School work, and others
Daemon Tools - Erm, to be able to install my other "softwares"
Winrar - Needed to install as well
Winzip - Likewise
Style XP (yes) - I just cant stand the blue color :p
Litestep (yes again) - and just to take out explorer ;) Haha

winamp - i have about 10 plugins for this, and it's a small player that isn't bloaty (WMP)

mIRC with nnscript - regular mIRC blows; i like being able to connect when opening it and have scripts.

MCK - used to make chiptunes

notepd.exe - notepad with custom everything and a toolbar, mainly used with MCK

mozilla firefox - tabbed browsing

openoffice.org - something to type with, assuming i don't find my office cds.

windows xp - duh, but i couldn't use linux without giving up a lot of functionality.

media player classic - does everything WMP does, but it's 4MB and loads quickly.

razorlame - mp3 encoding

oggdrop - ogg encoding

WSFTP95LE - it's outdated and such, but i still use it.

virtualdubMP2 - decodes dvds pretty well, basic video editing

putty - connecting to unix / linux command prompts at school here

CPU-z - used a lot when overclocking

speedfan - regulate fan speeds and see temps

atiTool - see temps of video card, overclock it

zonealarm - decent firewall

MuMML - frontend for MCK

AOL IM - maybe i should switch to gaim someday, but i still use this a lot.

steam / counterstrike - i play this way too much still.

so basically, yeah, those are the programs i install when i reinstall windows first.

The main ones are:

Mozilla Firefox: Best browser period.
Mozilla Thunderbird: Gets my email for me!
Photoshop CS2: Perfect for image editing and web design.
Nero: CD/DVD Burning...
Azureus: Torrents
Foobar 2000: Best music player hands down.
BSPlayer/VLC Media Player: What video files the one won't play the other always seems to...
EAC (Exact Audio Copy): CD Ripping.
Textpad: HTML/PHP/CSS/etc. text editing.

mine:

firefox (a given)
foobar2000 v0.9 (good to listen to music, great to customize =p)
photoshop (a must)
uTorrent (best torrent client)
acdsee (gotta view all them digicam pics)
gaim (aim is poo)
nero (a given)
color cop (eyedropper tool, a must have for me)
unlocker (best lil program ever)
netlimiter (im on dsl, gotta limit the upload)
CLCL (clipboard manager)
flashget (download manager)
rainlendar (gotta keep schedules)
dc++, zpoc, soulseek, etc (gotta pirate)
media player classic (video)
evillyrics (i like to read what im listening to)
winamp cd case (displays album art, but works with foobar =p)
visual studio .NET (homework)
microsoft office (homework)

that list turned out kinda long

I only have a short list of must-have software!

FireFox - The best browser I've ever come across!
Winamp - Must have music!
Media Player Classic/DefilerPak - A combination which has never yet failed me.
Miranda IM - Useful for connecting to multiple IM protocols at once.
Exact Audio Copy/Lame - For the rare times I decide to rip albums.
ABC/BitLord - Two bittorrent clients, since I find BitLord is better for batch torrents, but is banned from quite a few trackers.
PeerGuardian 2 - For protecting myself while pirating!
ImgBurn - For burning ISOs.

Thats all that I can think of just now, if anything is missing its because I haven't had need to install it yet!

Firefox
MSN 7.5 with MSN plus/stuff plug plug in - more customizable options
windows media player - never used anything else, winamp scares me
winRAR - to derar stuff
Bitlord - used Bitcomet until some sites started blocking it
Limewire/Shareaza - just started using shareaza, so used to limewire I cant rid of it
Nero Express - for burning cds
Object dock - kick ass tool bar since I hate average run of the mill icons on the desktop
Style XP or Windowsblinds - I get bored of only 3 XP skins to choose from
Wallpaper Master - I'm too lazy to switch my wallpaper myself
D-link Airplus - It makes my internet work since the internet is downstairs
random codecs - to play files such as avi

Firefox - Abso-fucking-lutely the best browser ever to be used by FLEX. No way I'm ever going back to IE.
Winamp - Best music player I've run across. Ass-loads of skins, too.
VideoLAN Media Player - Plays nearly every movie file on God's green Earth.
BitLord - Best bittorrent client I've run across.
EditPlus 2 - Sophisticated text editor. Great for editing html and php.
JaSMiN 3D Color Changer 4 - Without it, I couldn't customize my desktop
DisplaySet - see above
Nero Burning ROM - For burning CDs.
Trillian Pro - Does what Miranda IM does.
RazorLAME - For mp3 encoding
LimeWire - For pulling files and music off Gnutella
eDonkey - One of my lesser favs.....too slow and bitchy.
Switch - Wonderful (and small) color picker.

Macromedia Studio MX - Mainly Dreamweaver MX for WYSIWYG web development and Freehand for vector art.
Adobe Creative Suite - It's bloated, but all of the programs in it (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc,) are the standard in graphic design.
Reactor Server - It's a Server In A Can™
SmartFTP - Preferred FTP client

Anti-Virus, firewall and scanning equipment:
Spybot S&D
Lavasoft AdAware SE
NOD32
ZoneAlarm Pro

Here's just a couple that I use frequently.

Safari : For some reason, Firefox runs really slow on Mac OS

iChat : SmarterChild is at the top of MY buddy list :biggrin:

iTunes : Silence definitely is NOT golden.

Azureus : The first and only bittorrent client I've used. I should probably look around for a new one...

Quicken : What with the checkbook and all.

Stickies : To keep myself "posted" on what I need to get done. Er.. sorry for that bad pun there...

I have a few that really take the cake...

AVG Free - Anitvirus software... and free
Spybot - Love the teatimer registry protector. Always know what is going on.
Firefox - Is there an alternative?
AquaDock - Mac dock on my Windows XP... beautiful
Media Player Classic + FFdShow = Play any file worth playing
Winamp 2.9 - It has never really been beaten yet
Razorlame + Lame 3.97b2 + V4 = best transparent MP3's at small sizes
DVDFab Decrypter - Gets any DVD on my hard drive
DGIndex + MeGUI + x264 + NeroAAC + Mp4Box = Best video encoding on the planet. Period.
Cool Edit 2000 - Hacked, but beautiful WAV editing
Paint Shop Pro 9 - Cheaper than Photoshop, while just as useful
LimeWire - When I need a video or audio file, I know where I can get it (NBC Office Episodes liek waht)
Nero - Whichever version comes with my burners. Great stuff.

You should know what the below does by now so I have no need to say why I need them:

Firefox
WS_FTP Pro
Smart FTP
winRAR

Photoshop CS
ImageReady CS
Microsoft Office
dBpowerAMP

Windows Media Player
DivX Player
Media Player Classic

Downloading Needs
Bit Comet
Frostwire

ZoneAlarm Pro
AVG Free
Webroot Spysweeper
Lavasoft AdAware SE