This is a more-or-less straightforward list of software I use on Windows and, briefly, why. From this list you can see I generally find something that I like and keep using it. I’m also a big fan of free software.
- Firefox web browser. I like it because it’s not IE, because it is free, and because it is customizable with a large number of plugins to do nearly anything you want. For example, I use a plug-in called Style Sheet Chooser Plus. That allows me to revert to simple formatting when some web designer does something ‘artistic’ and unreadable on their page.
- Forte Agent for e-mail and newsgroups. It’s simple and above all, supports plain text email which is frugal of bandwidth and much safer than HTML email. I must say that I use an older version as this program has suffered from creeping elegance in later versions.
- Media Player Classic for playing video and some types of streaming audio. Again it is simple and it is free. Not bloated like Windows Media Player is now.
- Open Office For word processing, spreadsheets, presentations and everything else that MicroSoft Office does, only it is free and open source. It can read most Office file formats and can produce files that are compatible with Office. No need to pay the Micro$oft tax to do normal office work.