Essential Software To Install After Installing Windows

Often fresh installation or re-installation of Windows on your desktop or laptop is a tedious affair. But you work is far from over once the operating system is installed, you still have to install the essential applications required before you can say that installation is truly complete. There are certain standard software which you cannot do without, let us list down the essential software to be installed to make our lives easier.

Device Drivers

In layman terms, device drivers are the piece of code that allows Windows OS to interact with the computer’s hardware. So when you get a new PC or reinstall Windows OS, you cannot simply plug-in your ADSL modem and get connected to the Internet.

There is no way for your PC to talk to the modem unless you install the relevant device driver for the modem from the CD that would have shipped with the modem. Similarly, for any other device such as a printer, scanner or external mouse you will have to install the respective device driver to configure and get these things working.

Antivirus

The importance of an antivirus application need not be reiterated, it is critical for the smooth functioning of your PC. It serves to secure all your personal data and protect you from unwarranted attacks over the Internet. In today’s world, identity protection is critical since a lot of financial transactions are done over the Internet.

So the moment you have finished installing Windows, you should not delay installing good antivirus software. There are a lot of licensed as well as freeware options available to choose from. Symantec and McAfee are some of the leading names who provide 30 days evaluation downloads after which you can upgrade to a licensed copy, while AVG is the most commonly used freeware antivirus application.

WinZip

This is one utility program that you cannot live without. You invariably need to share files and in the majority of the cases the file size would be too big to send it across directly. So you need to have some utility to do the compression and the send it across. In some case when you are sharing sensitive data, you may also need to encrypt it.

WinZip is the most popular software in this category and you can be assured that the receiver of your data will also have the same utility to decrypt and decompress the files that you have sent. It is also useful for taking data backup so that the backup data can be compressed and stored so that it occupies less space.

Web Browsers

Windows installations come bundled with the default browser from Microsoft i.e. Internet Explorer (IE). But there are a lot of other browsers such as Google’s Chrome and Mozilla’s Firefox which are giving tough competition to IE.

They are less prone to crashes, are faster, stable and easier to use. Depending on your preference you may want to install one of these.

Instant Messaging

Since the PC is no longer a standalone entity and communications via Internet is the norm of the day. Instant messaging (IM) service is real time communication between two or more people.

Voice and video calls are some of the advanced features provided by instant messaging software.

Adobe Acrobat

Software that you possibly cannot live without is Acrobat Reader. Portable Document Format (PDF) is an open document exchange standard. So documents can be represented in a common format which is independent of the operating system, software and hardware of different PCs.

To understand PDF format, Adobe has come out with a suite of products, which allow you to create, edit and view documents in PDF format. There are other freeware application available for download which are based on the PDF format

Office Suite

Word documents, Excel worksheets and PowerPoint presentations are part and parcel of our life, everybody from school students to working professional to the shopkeeper next door use the applications included in the Office Suite to enhance productivity.

Download Manager

Download manager are utility programs that facilitate faster downloads. They split the file into multiple smaller pieces and download it in parallel.

Also there are multiple mirror sites from where they can source the download based on speed and availability. There are a lot of freeware applications in this category such as Download Accelerator Plus.

Video Media Players

The WinAmp media player is the default media player provided with Windows, but has limitation in terms of formats that it supports.

There are other players such as VLC Media Player, Real Player and iTunes which support a wider range of formats and are very lightweight to use.