After stumbling across this list, I figured it would be handy to have my current list handy again for reference, so here it is. Can't even remember when and where I posted this the last time, guess it's been some years already... (update: old blog post (in German))
Starting with part 1 - Windows Software
(with part 2 and 3 being Linux and coding tools):
- T-Clock is still one of the first tools to be installed on a fresh system. The Windows clock has to show day of the week, date and time in a custom format for me.
- Miranda for ICQ and Jabber, it's been quite some years since I last used the original ICQ client. Guess it was even before anyone knew Jabber.
- ClipX is a clipboard history manager, nothing more, nothing less. ctrl+shift+v brings me a list of the last 20 items in the clipboard. I have no clue how I ever managed to work without it.
- RocketDock is my replacement for the Windows Quicklaunch bar, the start menu, desktop icons and Litestep. A simple dock to put icons in it - in a space-saving way in the bottom right corner of my secondary monitor. Before this I used AquaDock and Launchy.
- ÜberIcon is a fun little tool made by the creators of aforementioned RocketDock. Pointless eyecandy :)
- KVIrc is my IRC client of choice after having tried and gotten rid of like anything on the market: mIRC, Klient, HydraIRC, dIRC, Nettalk, XiRCON+Kano, bersirc, pIRCh, Visual IRC, ksirc, X-Chat.
- PuTTY tray, which is basically PuTTY with a few more features.
- FileZilla is my successor to both SmartFTP and WinSCP
- Notepad2 is my replacement for MS Notepad, Koolpad, Metapad, ConTEXT, UltraEdit, theGUN and of course SciTE - it's also using Scintilla.
- foobar2000 after they finally gave in to include an easily accessible volume button. Successor to Winamp 2. I have no clue what version it was, but I first used it in late 1997 along with my very first bunch of like 100 mp3s that nearly filled my harddisk back then.
- GOMPlayer since MPC wasn't developed anymore (see below).
- TrueCrypt for.. well... encrypting stuff.
- FoxitReader since Adobe's Acrobat Reader is a synonym for bloat.
- I'm using Firefox since it was called Firebird. Don't ask for a version number, though.
Most important plugins (and that's also nearly the complete list...) are NoScript, ServerSpy, Download Statusbar, TabMixPlus, FlashGot, LongTitles and Adblock Plus.
- Using Thunderbird since some 0.x version, after being fed up with Outlook Express, Eudora and some other tool I used for years but totally forgot the name... Only real addons are Enigmail for GPG and Folderpane Tools to rearrange accounts.
- 7-ZIP after a longer period of working with PowerArchiver 6 (the old freeware version).
- Paint.net - a free image editor with enough functions to mimic photoshop for home use - mostly.
These were the day-to-day programs, but there's much more rotting in my famous D:\Apps\ - the stuff that's copied from each Windows reinstall to the next, sometimes over years.
- Azureus 2, because I didn't find any other Bittorrent client that could match it and version 3 had some thing I didn't like, if only I could remember.. not using it very much.
- popcorn is the smallest possible email client I can think of. Great for testing stuff, for example connect to pop3, only load headers and kill that nasty mail choking your account when on dialup.
- TCPView, Process Explorer, Autoruns made by Sysinternals and bought by Microsoft are simple and useful.
- SequoiaView to check for wasted diskspace.
- CDEx to create mp3s
- The Font Thing is a small tool not updated for over 7 years that simply displays a customizable text in all fonts in a directory, installed, etc...
- Opera, still better than IE imho - although IE7 was a huge step towards usable again after IE5.
Honorable mention of not using it anymore, but my favourites for a longer time:
