If you just buy a new PC / Laptop with included Windows OS, which other softwares will you install later on? Different persons will install different softwares of course, depending on their preferences. For me, at this time, I will not expend some money for expensive softwares for home use due to limited budget. I have been testing many free softwares and find that some free softwares can really help you but some can also turn your PC or laptop into "a pain in the ass". Before adding new softwares on my new PC / Laptop, I will make an image of the disk so that I will easily revert back to the original if I make some mistakes during installation. For disk image burner, you may use bundled softwares from the PC / laptop vendors or Acronis True Image which is not free but I guess it's the best.

Here is the list of the free softwares which I consider the best to date:

1. AVG Free 8.0 (Anti Virus & Spyware): Easy to install, configure and maintain. I disable their LinkScanner because it seems that the scanner runs slower than expected. I install McAfee Siteadvisor instead
2. CCleaner (System Optimization and Privacy Tool): very handy to clean all your trashes and registry inside Windows and keep it running fast
3. Go for "Google Pack" at google site, and you may choose:
• Adobe Reader (pdf file reader)
  
• Mozilla Firefox (Web Browser): easy to manage its settings and install useful add-ons
  
• StarOffice (Includes Java) - similar to MS Office but free
• Google Talk (for free phone to other google mail members)
4. HijackThis (In-depth tool for scanning computer for spyware)
5. Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP (Miscellaneous fun and powerful Gadgets for Win XP such as Tweak UI and Power Toy Calculator)
   
6. Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (Security Analyzer from Microsoft will check your security settings in your Windows Environment)
7. McAfee SiteAdvisor for both Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox: a faster internet site scanner
8. Mozilla Firefox Add-Ons:
• DownThemAll (makes your downloads much easier and manageable especially if interrupted downloads frequently happens)
• Flashblock (Block the flash so that webpages show faster, but you can still watch the flash if you want to by clicking on the placeholder)
• DownloadHelper (you can download embedded movies such as youtube etc)
  
9. Fortunately, I have got very useful bundled softwares from the manufacturer of the laptop such as:
• CyberLink Power2Go (Disk Burner)
  
• ArcSoft PhotoStudio (Scanner and Image Editing)
10. Useful backup software from Western Digital Hard Drives when you buy their small backup drives (WDSync): very easy to use and save my time for saving backups
11. Windows Live Messenger : you can exchange messages with friends using yahoo id also!! So that I disable the original windows messenger. Moreover you can make phone calls to other live / hotmail users around the globe!

One more thing, I also install Linux Mint 4.0 Daryna and use its bootloader to choose between Windows XP or Linux OS at startup. Both have run smoothly for around 1 year. It suits for Desktop PC or Laptop. But for server you may choose others. I never install Linux for server yet but it says that Fedora is one of the choices. Linux Mint is within top 10 best hit ranking at DistroWatch. Beside its beautiful appearances, I prefer Linux Mint because it uses Ubuntu repositories which allow you to install and manage free softwares inside Linux from the repositories easily. Linux Mint also improve the manageability of the updates both the system and installed softwares.

From Ubuntu repositories, you can install helpful and fancy softwares. One of them is Pidgin ("...multi-protocol Instant messaging client that allows you to use all of your IM accounts at once). Remember to install firewall for your Linux because there is no firewall by default.

I welcome any comments, corrections and suggestions to make the list of free good softwares better and better.

For detailed updated infos, please visit my other blog at http://rdy888.blogspot.com.

Hasta la vista!