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.

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 uke:}, 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.