Will agree with most of those (replace Firefox with Chrome; Live Mesh with Dropbox) but why Adobe Acrobat? Especially when your instincts are apparently telling you better…?

I’ve used Foxit, and have found it compact and much quicker than Acrobat with no noticeable loss in fidelity. I haven’t tried the last few versions of Acrobat, but the last one I used was horribly slow and bloated for the functionality most people use i.e. opening and reading pdfs.

Pdfcreator and putty would certainly be in mine.

When @pc_pro asked on Twitter which PDF reader to use, I think I was the only respondant to go with Adobe’s effort. It is SO much more attractive and, if you move all the redundant plugins, it loads in an instant. The plugins are slow, NOT the reader itself. There’s no way I’m ever going back to Foxit.

OK so you rebuilt because you didn’t do any back ups.
What back back up software did you install this time around then?

I use Adobe Reader 9.2 and it loads in less than half a second on my machine – a 3 year old Q6600 based PC from Fujitsu.

I agree with PuTTY, no way it wouldn’t be on my list.

For me, along with Firefox, I’d have to go with NoScript and FlashBlock as two must-have plugins.

Agree with Firefox, VLC and Skype, but not much else.

Instead I couldn’t live without:

– Keepass (cross-platform encrypted password database).
– GNU Privacy Guard.
– Thunderbird with Enigmail.
– PuTTY connection manager (multiple PuTTY sessions in a single window).
– Tweetdeck (for that there Twitter – I’m @graphiclunarkid, if you’re interested).
– Pidgin (multi-protocol Instant Messaging).

And yes, this is all running on Windows 7, though the only difference on my Linux boxen is that PuTTY Connection Manager is replaced with Terminator.

Hmm, definitely Foxit not Adobe, Everything search engine, Ccleaner (despite the fact it tries to add Yahoo toolbar now), 7Zip and I use Xmarks with Firefox and Panda Cloud AV.

I tried both Foxit Reader and PDF-XChange as alternatives to the bloaty Adobe reader. I used each one exlusively both at home and at work until usability niggles and little incompatibilities (rendering and printing problems) forced me to move on. I am certainly not an Adobe Reader fan but, like Tim, I eventually ended up back there because it was the only one that always worked for all my PDFs.

An alternative to VLC that I really like is Media Player Classic Home Cinema (http://mpc-hc.sourceforge.net/). Has all the format support you need out-of-the box, and a 64-bit version too. Give it a try.

As other have mentioned, if you need to telnet or SSH etc. then PuTTY is an absolute must-have.

Plenty more fabulous freebies out there too. To name just a few:

- 7-Zip (http://www.7-zip.org/)
- ImgBurn (http://www.imgburn.com/)
- Notepad++ (http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/)
- OpenOffice (http://www.openoffice.org/)
- Partition Wizard (http://www.partitionwizard.com/)
- TrueCrypt (http://www.truecrypt.org/)

@chrisfixit: C-cleaner without toolbar from the “other builds” section -> “slim” version
.
http://www.ccleaner.com/download/builds/downloading-slim

Whilst the PC Pro labs continuosly bash OSX as a viable operating system (especially for the lack of extra options) it would seem that Tim could of done with an excellent feature only on the mac. Time Machine is a no touch back up system which backs up to either an external hard drive or a nas drive. When your hard drive packs in, if you put a new HDD into your machine (or erase and install your existing drive) you would have the option of restoring from your backup which would give you the exact files as they were back onto your computer even down to the desktop background being the same as you had left it. I wonder when Microsoft will learn that the easier a tool is to use whilst still remaining powerful the more users from pros to consumers will use it. Tim, you could of done with a mac!

Wondered how long before we got the Mac fanboys on…

There are plenty of options for backin up PCs, including the Windows backup program (which isn’t great, but it works for basic stuff). There are also plenty of programs available that will clone hard drives, which is effectively what Time Machine does. There really is no need to buy a Mac just to be able to backup your data!

AVG Antivirus, VLC Media Player, Google Earth, Google Maps, CCleaner, Canon Digital Photo Professional, Picasa, M$ synctoy, Network Stumbler, Open Office, Firefox, thunderbirdThat’s 12 and Garmin Basecap which I have just discovered, that includes a driver that lets me download favourites from my car sat nav to google earth. Sorry can’t do it in 10, no way.

Copernic Desktop Search.
Beats the opposition when the main use of the computer is managing the flow of over quarter of a million files.

@John Hind: My understanding was that GoodSync is free as long as you don’t require more than 3 jobs.

Just had a thought.Why does’nt PCPro start a list of the best free software out there for each catagory,and ‘A’ list the best.

Hm, some interesting choices. Could do with categorisation, though, ‘cos this “10 fave apps” thing is a bit useless, really. On the Info Management front, don’t forget EssentialPIM and the amazing Xmind; on the File Management front there are FreeCommander and WinSCP (the latter also one of the best FTP clients around) – I’d also mention Recuva, by the lovely people who do CCleaner; on the Multimedia front there’s FastStone Image Viewer (better than Picasa, IMHO); in the Utilities bag we find NotePad++, Snipping Tool and Screenshot Captor, not to mention the amusing Wonderwebware Screen Ruler. Oh, and Launch Menu, which turns the Windows Quick Launch menu into a thing of use and beauty; on the Web tools front there’s the amazing – utterly amazing – DFM2HTML, one of the best web editors anywhere, ever. Life wouldn’t be complete without some Writing Tools, including QuotePad, TreeSheets and SuperNoteCard. Oh, and Linux’s TomBoy notes, which is available for Windows, too. Let’s not forget Collaboration Tools, including the wonderful Collanos WorkPlace, not to mention Yuuguu (fantastic tool that gives you remote desktop access through your browser, and integrates with Skype); then there’s the E-mail Client side, where we find the inspired EverDesk Optima, which exists in a Lite version (treats files and e-mails as identical: once you’ve used it, you’ll regard anything else as old-fashioned). There’s so much wonderful free groupware/wiki software around it’s silly, but my favourites are MindTouch (reliable, solid, constantly being upgraded), Foswiki (bit complex, but fast improving), Alfresco (flawed but powerful) and Cyn.in (built on Zope and showing signs of being best of all). Sorry, did you say something about “10″…?

Avast online scanner is pretty good too, I was advised by the Spybot team to get it after they helped me get rid of a nasty dose of Virtumonde.

Firefox? I’ve gone off it a bit, IE 8 seems fine on W7 (and I’m converted to OPera since I saw Opera Mobile 10 for Symbian, which is a brilliant browser.) Agree with negativity about Adobe Reader though; it reminds me a bit of Word since Word 6 (when word was just a good word processor). AR and Word are now trying to do too much; all I want to do normally is read PDFs, if I wanted more plugins I’d go get them…

I have a few items of my own to add to the list:

COMODO Internet Security – Does just about everything that subscription-based software does, plus it’s A) free [at least for the personal edition], B) not a memory hog, and C) extremely resistant to malware-initiated shutdown.

Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware – a great backstop program for dealing with crapware that might slip past your front-line defenses.