Throughout my experience with the various windows operating systems i have searched, downloaded, used and experimented with a number of third party applications starting from antivirus and security solutions, multimedia applications like players that can play a variety of file formats, multimedia file converters and rippers, word processing/editing, photo editing, video editing etc etc... I have tried most of the free softwares and open source applications.
I have had all kinds of experiences in the course of my experimentation - some quite pleasant and some not so pleasant- one thing that i have found out however is that in most cases, the applications with a small download size and installation footprint were usually the best. However, some of the programmes which started out as very small and effective, have over the years lost track of their basic design philosophy and have joined the bloatware bandwagon today.
I have had all kinds of experiences in the course of my experimentation - some quite pleasant and some not so pleasant- one thing that i have found out however is that in most cases, the applications with a small download size and installation footprint were usually the best. However, some of the programmes which started out as very small and effective, have over the years lost track of their basic design philosophy and have joined the bloatware bandwagon today.
I have a list which i feel would be recommended for novice users, try them out and i don't think you will have any regrets, the list however is random and in no special order and is meant for Windows users. I have covered a list of programs for Linux users in another blog.
First of all to get started after a fresh installation of windows an ANTIVIRUS program is a must
there are any number of free programs available today and surprisingly I have found Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) to be excellent for the Windows environment, if however you desire to get something else you can take a look at Antivir, AVG and Avast, you can get the latest versions at http://www.filehippo.com/
before you start downloading your programs I recommend you download the latest version of Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome you can use internet explorer to download this from http://www.mozilla.com/ or alternatively from filehippo. Install this browser download the flash player plugins for this too and when you're done forget you ever saw internet explorer on your desktop and don't even think of using it again (unless of course you come across some weird website that firefox cannot open)
In addition to a good antivirus program I usually recommend that you install an antispyware and antimalware, but if you have installed MSE you probably won't need to do that. But, if you're the paranoid kind then download malwarebytes from http://www.download.com/ and spybot search and destroy, you can even take a look at some firewall programs like comodo, zonealarm, sygate or sunbelt all available at filehippo
For multimedia applications if you're used to using windows media player as your default player, download the latest version and also download Klite Codec pack this pack enables media player to play almost all popular formats which the player doesn't natively support. An alternative to media player, in fact a highly recommended one is VLC or video lan client player. This player can open and play almost any multimedia file format you throw at it. Winamp is also a very popular player and is quite adept at handling a big music collection.
A maintenance tool that can help you remove junk files, clear your browsing history, clear your usage history and help you with your registry is ccleaner, this is an excellent tool, it will make things so easy for you.
