Must have computer programs.

[Jeff Hallam]

Office: Open Office
Windows Compression: 7-Zip
Photo Viewing: Picasa
Photo Editing: GIMP
3D Design: Sketchup
Windows Burning: CDBurnerXP
Antivirus: Microsoft Security Essentials
Glary Utilities
Calibre (ebook management)

[Tim Morton]

i buy apple's, so everything i need comes pre-installed.

[David Weaver]

AVG
Ad Block Pro
Spybot S&D
Malwarebytes

[curtis rosche]

i hate avg,,,,, hitman pro, super anti spyware, or ad-aware

deffinatly need auto pager for firefox.

[Chuck Wintle]

Wolfenstein is a program right??

yes it is!

[Larry Browning]

for photo organization and a little bit of editing, Picasa is hands down the best one going, and it is FREE! I have thousands of pictures and I can find any and everyone of them in seconds. Also, but sure to checkout Gizmo's freeware review. It has tons of recommendations and reviews. It is legit.

[David G Baker]

Microsoft Security Essentials or Charters protection software, Photoshop, Word, Pandora, Carbonite (full version), Amazon Cloud Player, Ad-aware,

[Kevin W Johnson]

i buy apple's, so everything i need comes pre-installed.

Yeah, ANYONE but Microsoft can do that and not get sued.

[Art Mulder]

i buy apple's, so everything i need comes pre-installed.

I call shenanigans on this one...

I also have macs at home and at work, and depend on or use regularly:

1. Google Chrome for the browser
2. Skype
3. iPhoto Library Manager
4. Google Sketchup
5. LibreOffice (branched from OpenOffice)
6. Gimp (advanced photo editing)
7. Fugu (FTP/SFTP client)
8. VirtualBox (a Virtualization tool so that I can run Windows and Linux _under_ MacOS)

- I also use a VNC client
- I've also used Inkscape (a Vector Graphics program)
- Sometimes Google Earth
- I used to use OpenOffice

[Kevin W Johnson]

Audacity for audio editing

+1 for Audacity. I have my computer setup as such that if it goes to my speakers, I can record it. Ring tones made easy for example.

One of my all time favorites is Total Commander, a very simple file management program. Makes copying/moving files from drive to drive or folder to folder, or computer to computer, etc., a breeze. I have family members that also use it to upload/download files to my FTP server as it also has a built in client. Zips and unzips many different compression methods, and has many plugins available to allow opening .ISO files, creating .ISO's, opening .MSI files, unpack and create .GIF's, and alot more.

Imgburn -- for burning .ISO's

SandBoxie -- for opening questionable files or visiting websites with questionable/compromised security. Like a satellite tv forum with hacked ad streams that refuses to admit they have a issue.

IExif -- shows the Exif data for digital pictures.

[Steve Meliza]

Regardless of OS I install GVim as a text editor, GIMP to edit images, Open Office, Firefox, Thunderbird, Adobe PDF Reader, and VirtualBox for running virtual machines.

For a Linux machine I'd add "bless" the hex editor, pidgen for IM, OpenSSH for ssh, gftp for FTP and SFTP, sshfs for secure remote file system mounting, and grip for ripping music CDs. Some of that gets installed by default depending on the distribution being used.

For Windows it depends, so much of the freeware is crippled that I'll either use the built in software that comes as part of Windows or just do the task on a Linux machine. But free software I like to use includes Miranda for IM, iTunes for my iPod, Daemon tools for emulating drives and mounting CD image files, 7-zip for unzipping, AVG for anti-virus, FileZilla for FTP/SFTP, ImgBurn for burning/copying CDs and DVDs, and PDFCreator for printing to PDF files.

For a Mac I guess I'd just open the lid and start using it.

[Chuck Wintle]

for photo organization and a little bit of editing, Picasa is hands down the best one going, and it is FREE! I have thousands of pictures and I can find any and everyone of them in seconds. Also, but sure to checkout Gizmo's freeware review. It has tons of recommendations and reviews. It is legit.

i tried picasa and then faststone. Picasa is good but my preference is for faststone

[Jerome Stanek]

I like Gimp to some of my picture files.

[Jerry Thompson]

Just when I have started to figure out Windows 3.1 all of this rears its ugly head.

[Larry Browning]

i tried picasa and then faststone. Picasa is good but my preference is for faststone

Hmm, I went to their website, and unless I missed it, Fastone is not a photo organizer. It has some nice features, but photo organizer is not one of them. Just not sure how these two program are similar.