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Must Have Programs for a PC (1 Viewer)

bagger

bagger

Footballguy
So, after having a mac for the past few years I finally convinced the wife to go back to a PC. As I was installing the standard items (aka Office, itunes), I was wondering what are some of the go to programs that are out there for a variety of tasks....

Anti Virus? (was going to uninstall McAfee asap and put in Norton)

Browser? (going to install firefox, unless something newer is better)

Program for photo management? (I know windows 8 comes with something, just not sure if there is something substantially better for cheap for the casual user)

Online backup? (was going to use backblaze, have really liked that)

Going to use Quicken for finances, thats a must.

Anything else? Ie movie editor for home videos?

3rd party programs for QOL for Win 8.

Would appreciate any insight as to that and if there are any good tricks to Windows 8. Some of the shortcuts still work and I will likely spend the weekend cleaning up apps and deleting the ones I don't want and trying to organize the start screen into something that is more intelligent that how my 2 y/o would set up which is apparently the default setup.

Whoever came up with Windows 8 should be kicked in the balls.

 
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bagger said:
Copeman said:
I'd install Chrome instead of Firefox.
Click to expand...
any reason why?i have heard good things about chrome just trying to know what is better about it specifically.
Click to expand...
I've used both, but much prefer Chrome. It's much faster. And I used Firefox exclusively for years before I finally switched a year or so ago. I also like the functionality of it better.

 
bagger said:
Anti Virus? (was going to uninstall McAfee asap and put in Norton)
Click to expand...
Honestly? Skip it. Install Microsoft Security Essentials instead. The McAfee/Norton stuff just bloats up your system and doesn't do anything better than MSE will do. As long as you don't download .zip files from unknown email senders, or bootleg tons of hacked software, you'll be fine.

 
Sarnoff said:
bagger said:
Anti Virus? (was going to uninstall McAfee asap and put in Norton)
Click to expand...
Honestly? Skip it. Install Microsoft Security Essentials instead. The McAfee/Norton stuff just bloats up your system and doesn't do anything better than MSE will do. As long as you don't download .zip files from unknown email senders, or bootleg tons of hacked software, you'll be fine.
Click to expand...
nice thanks.
 
Ninite - infinitely helpful tool - you pick from common applications and it installs them.

CCleaner

Revo Uninstaller

 
Never had even heard of c cleaner before this, so this is helpful. Thanks, and keep them coming.

 
VLC Media player

AVG Antivirus (unless that's terrible now - someone should confirm that's still good.)

 
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On new PC buildouts, I prefer Sumatra PDF over Adobe Reader. I ####ing hate programs that update frequently like Java, Adobe, iTunes, etc. even though I know you can skip 90% of the updates.

 
Dentist said:
Henry Ford said:
VLC Media player

AVG Antivirus (unless that's terrible now - someone should confirm that's still good.)
Click to expand...
VLC is a must if you torrent

AVG is crap

Microsoft Security Essentials is where it is at
Click to expand...
ever since I went to Norton and started using their firewall instead of Microsoft's, I've never gotten a virus. When I was using Microsoft's firewall they weren't protecting their browser very well and occasionally my PC would get infected, but not in years since I quit using Microsoft's firewall. I also quit using internet exployer. What a piece of crap that is. I now use Chrome.

 
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Regarding Windows 8, since you don't seem to like it, set it to start up automatically in desktop and you'll minimize the difference.

 
JohnnyU said:
Dentist said:
Henry Ford said:
VLC Media player

AVG Antivirus (unless that's terrible now - someone should confirm that's still good.)
Click to expand...
VLC is a must if you torrent

AVG is crap

Microsoft Security Essentials is where it is at
Click to expand...
ever since I went to Norton and started using their firewall instead of Microsoft's, I've never gotten a virus. When I was using Microsoft's firewall they weren't protecting their browser very well and occasionally my PC would get infected, but not in years since I quit using Microsoft's firewall. I also quit using internet exployer. What a piece of crap that is. I now use Chrome.
Click to expand...
I use zonealarm for firewall and AVG for antivirus. Opera has been my browser for years but I'm starting to get a little annoyed at some of the quirks.

 
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chrome

avast

ccleaner

adblock and/or ghostery (chrome ext)

that Ask Toolbar is pretty cool

Off topic: the speakers on my samsung laptop (3 yrs old) just stopped working the other day, not a driver issue, headphones don't work either, no sound period. Is this fixable or is it time to get a chromebook?

 
Microsoft Security Essentials has been working great for me for nearly a decade. And trust me, with the questionable porn sites I've been to, I should be loaded with more viruses than the CDC.

Also agree with others on these:

CCleaner

VLC Media Player

UTorrent if you do that sort of thing

Adblock Plus extension for whichever browser you go with.

 
I migrated to a new PC a couple months ago. Instead of just immediately installing all the same apps I decided to slowly just add apps as needs arose to avoid bloating the PC down just reinstalling everything. I also have been reevaluating the apps to use with an eye to going more open source. So far no MS Office, outlook, Acrobat, My go to apps so far are:

Libreoffice (fork of open office)

Firefox and Chrome Browsers

Thunderbird mail client

Irfanview image viewer

MS Security Essentials

Fox-it PDF viewer

7-zip, zip manager

Keepass, password manager

Filezilla, ftp client

VLC Media Player

Also, to keep things running as lean as possible I decided to use Portableapps.com releases of all apps whenever possible. This means that installation of the apps doesn't inject a bunch of crap into the Windows registry and auto-load processes automatically on boot-up to choke performance. It also means that I've got to manually setup short-cuts and manually create many program file associations. The primary intent of portable apps is to allow carrying around all your apps on a flash drive for portable use from any PC but I like using it like this mainly because of the minimal footprints

 
Psychopav said:
JohnnyU said:
Dentist said:
Henry Ford said:
VLC Media player

AVG Antivirus (unless that's terrible now - someone should confirm that's still good.)
Click to expand...
VLC is a must if you torrent

AVG is crap

Microsoft Security Essentials is where it is at
Click to expand...
ever since I went to Norton and started using their firewall instead of Microsoft's, I've never gotten a virus. When I was using Microsoft's firewall they weren't protecting their browser very well and occasionally my PC would get infected, but not in years since I quit using Microsoft's firewall. I also quit using internet exployer. What a piece of crap that is. I now use Chrome.
Click to expand...
I use zonealarm for firewall and AVG for antivirus. Opera has been my browser for years but I'm starting to get a little annoyed at some of the quirks.
Click to expand...
AVG is overrated and not nearly as robust and protective as Norton. I believe AVG is more of a virus than what it's trying to protect us from. Also, Malwarebytes doesn't really help all that much. Someone mentioned it earlier. I used to have it on my computer, but Norton doesn't like it, so I don't either. I see more benefit from CCleaner (Crap Cleaner) than I ever did with Malwarebytes, or whatever its name was.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Sarnoff said:
bagger said:
Anti Virus? (was going to uninstall McAfee asap and put in Norton)
Click to expand...
Honestly? Skip it. Install Microsoft Security Essentials instead. The McAfee/Norton stuff just bloats up your system and doesn't do anything better than MSE will do. As long as you don't download .zip files from unknown email senders, or bootleg tons of hacked software, you'll be fine.
Click to expand...
Microsoft Security Essentials (now Windows Defender for Win8.1) has been one of the lowest rated forms of protection in independent tests for a few years now. Telling people to cruise the Internet with no other security software installed is really bad advice.

 
Launchy - www.launchy.net

Everything - www.voidtools.com

Lightshot - app.prntscr.com

Multiple browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Opera)

Notepad++ -notepad-plus-plus.org

imgburn - www.imgburn.com

spybot

superantispyware

malwarebytes

combofix

evernote

revo uninstaller

teamviewer

Glary Utilities

 
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