Useful programs that work on Windows 7

I'm running a fresh install of Windows 7 RC (Release Candidate, build 7100) on a secondary desktop PC, and I'm very impressed with it! Here is my checklist of programs and plug-ins that I typically install in Windows:

1. Anti-virus/Anti-spyware: Microsoft Security Essentials is free and provides some basic protection, so there is no excuse not to run some kind of anti-malware utility. My primary Windows XP install is running AVG Internet Security, and I've used Avast in the past too, and both of those companies also offer free products for home use.
   
   
2. Browsers: Mozilla Firefox (now my default), Google Chrome, and Apple Safari. Having just one alternative to the built-in Microsoft Internet Explorer is probably enough, but with the web work that I do, I like to test sites with all of these popular web browsers.


3. Browser plug-ins: Adobe Flash and Shockwave Players, Adobe AIR, and Microsoft Silverlight. Install these after you have installed all of the browsers that you intend to use so that the plug-ins will go into each one. Install them before you do much surfing to reduce your frustration of hitting sites that require these plug-ins for their navigational structure.


4. Chat and social media: Digsby is my preferred multiprotocol messenger. I could have installed AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Messenger (MSN), and Google Talk. Although Pidgin is also a Jabber (XMPP) client, and does have skype4pidgin for Skype's chat feature and a pidgin-facebookchat plug-in, I like using Digsby for its Facebook chat feature and to check my news feeds in Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and MySpace -- all from one interface. To get an even better view of the "twitterverse" I use TweetDeck (an Adobe AIR application) to group the contacts that I follow into logical columns and easily check when others mention or direct message me.


5. Audio/Video tools: Apple QuickTime and RealPlayer are useful to play things that Windows Media Player can't (certain audio and video codecs). Audacity with the LAME and FFmpeg libraries is a free way to edit sound files. Movie Maker is part of the Windows Live Essentials installer package, but you can deselect everything else. VLC (VideoLAN client) is a free media player that also has conversion/streaming capabilities, and a wide assortment of bundled codecs so that it can play almost anything!
   


6. PDF tools: PDF-XChange Viewer and PDF Creator. You might not need the full Adobe Acrobat just to handle the most common annotation and form-filling tasks -- use the free PDF viewer from Tracker Software, and the open-source printer driver on SourceForge.


7. File management: 7-Zip is an open source context-menu utility to open a wide variety of compression formats (e.g. RAR, GZIP, TAR, etc.) and supports AES-256 encryption in both the 7z and ZIP formats. µTorrent is a light program to download BitTorrent files (only legal ones, seriously). CoreFTP has a free client for not only FTP but also SFTP, SSL & HTTPS.
   


8. Remote control: Terminals is a multi-protocal remote desktop client for not only RDC (Terminal Services) but also VNC, Telnet, SSH and more. For remote access to the PC itself, I add the computer to my LogMeIn Free account right away.
   


9. Productivity: OpenOffice is the free and open-source suite that includes a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation program, and more.

There are many more programs that I run on my main Windows XP installation for work purposes, but the above list is a good way to get started with free software on the newest desktop operating system from Microsoft.