For my windows computer:

* Firefox
* Thunderbird
* OpenOffice
* ZoneAlarm
* Hamachi (VPN software)
* IrfranView
* WinAmp
* AudioGrabber (MP3 ripper)
* TiddlyWiki (I use it as a PIM)
* iPodder
* SyncBack


I just want to put in a special praise for OpenOffice -- what a triumph of free programming that is. I have deleted MS Office on my personal machines and, if I was still office manager, wouldn't hesitate for a moment to make that my office standard.

One of these days, I'll learn to write a regular expression -- until then, ctrl-h ^13^13 tab ^13 is my primary reason for pirating MS Office.

Add to the list:

Shareaza ("With a 2400 baud modem and an afternoon, you can rebuild your software library if you have to." - Rob, Free Dialog, 1988)
7-Zip (Screw WinRar)
K-Lite Codec Megapack and Mediaplayer Classic (Screw Quicktime, WMP and especially Real Networks)
N-Lite (Deploy THIS!)
NotePad ++
Password Safe
Apache2Triad
TreeSize (works in xp64, which is teh gay about context-menu items for some reason)

And probably crap cleaner, because I'm lazy.

I agree with practically everything on the previous two lists, although I rarely use anything anymore with a Microsoft label on it. To fix Microsoft stuff, I mostly need:

BartPE
Hiren's BootCD
SpyBotSD
AVG anti-virus

I'm not sure it's all 100 percent freeware but I have to add:

Nmap
Nessus
GIMP
Amarok
Azureus
Akregator
K3B
Gaim
Chatzilla
Xchat

I forgot some others that I use all the time:

FileZilla (FTP)
QuickZip
PGP (Encryption for files)
TrueCrypt (Encrypted drive creator)

I don't even have half of those -- I must not be apower user.

Max -- didn't I hear you say you were a MS employee or something . . .

Huh? Oh, years ago. Around here, working for MS is kind of like the IDF -- everyone spends a year or so working for them before they go on to whatever it is they're gonna do with their life...

I don't even have half of those -- I must not be apower user.

That might be because some of those are Linux, others are Windows.

And I forgot two more freeware Programs that I use often:

* TagScanner -- renames MP3 tags
* Siren -- file renamer.

These aren't exactly full-programs but I still use them all the time:

* LAME -- "codec" for encoding MP3s
* DownloadThemAll -- download plug-in for Firefox

It's not freeware but it's a no-limit shareware:

TextPad -- full featured but fast ASCII/text editor.
   (I really should pay them the fee since I use it ALL the time for everything.)

I'm curious, what do you guys do with your P2P networks like Shareaza or Azureus?

I don't do any software pirating or sharing of MP3s. Is there any other reason to have a P2P software?

I'm curious, what do you guys do with your P2P networks like Shareaza or Azureus?

I don't do any software pirating or sharing of MP3s. Is there any other reason to have a P2P software?

I'll admit to downloading SUSE a couple of times and Ubuntu a couple of times but that's it.

What do I do with P2P~*?

To paraphrase James Dean, what have you got?

To me, "piracy" is $5 boxed copies of Vista and "American Pie MCVII: Porky's Retirement Community Meets Bambie" produced in bulk in Malaysia.

Which reminds me -- I left out another important freeware item -- PeerGuardian, which blocks IP addresses known to belong to RIAA goons and the like -- and includes a feature that updates it's list of known stooge IPs automatically. Handy for keeping those Comcast "Somebody narced you off for ripping off their intellectual property" emails from cluttering up your inbox. Myself, I just keep a couple of gigs of Anita Blonde pornos in my share folder instead of commercial software -- keeps your ratios high without that annoying guilt that comes with being a leech.

What do I do with P2P?

I download a lot of TV shows with Bittorrent.  I use µtorrent with the webui plugin so I can add new torrents to download from work.  I don't download music or movies because, frankly, there are no albums or movies out there that are worth the trouble.

Living over here in the Middle East I wouldn't mind some new American TV shows. We get many of them eventually -- especially of they come from Fox -- but up to five years late.

(The reason for the Fox shows is that the biggest satellite channel here is "Star" which is owned by Rupert Murdoch.)

I tried bit-torrent but is was very very slow for me. I wondered if it is somehow geographically dependent and since I"m literally on the other side of the planet, that I get the tail-end of things.

Good list people!  Here are mines…

1.   Firefox with plugins
2.   Spybots
3.   WinAmp
4.   K-lite package with quicktime/real alternatives
5.   WinRar (7zip is ok but I’m so use to winrar)
6.   Notepad ++ (didn’t’ think there were others beside me!)
7.   Avast
8.   Everything
9.   Crap Cleaner 
10.   Unlocker (MS be damn for locking up files/folders)
11.   Xplorer
12.   Daemon tools
13.   Startup Monitor and Control Panel
14.   Process Explorer
15.   CDisplay
16.   Cleartype (for XP sessions)
17.   Utorrent (for hard to find OLD movies)

These are always installed on PCs I build.

From the cellar...

Nobody mentioned VLC? Plays close to anything other than Real( Spywareplayerformat) pretty well. Even plays as a desktop background, and uses minimal CPU power to do so.