[Omkar]

We’ve discussed the must-have apps on your phone, so it makes sense to discuss the other device that most of us spend a lot of time on – the computer. I have been a laptop user for the longest time and even though I thought of switching to a proper desktop unit, I've stuck to the laptop. Recently, I had an issue with some of the drivers and had to format my laptop, which really helped me get major junk out. Now I kept only those programs that are absolutely necessary.

Work-related

• Microsoft Office - Have the full suite, but use just Word and Excel
• Google Chrome - Used Brave for some time, but ran into some bugs. Switched back to Chrome.
• Notepad++ - Thanks to Rehaan for suggesting this program. This is Notepad on steroids. It has plenty more features and just feels better to use.
• FastStone Photo Resizer - Helpful in batch resizing and renaming of images. Works best for resizing forum pictures.
• Snipping tool - Screenshot program. You can screenshot a particular area of the screen.
• Canva - Yes, you can use it in the browser, but the desktop app is just more convenient. A very small program too.

Entertainment

• Classic Windows Media Player - I feel it's very simple and powerful. Can handle multiple file formats too.
• VLC Media Player - Have it just as a backup.
• Spotify - Don't like using it on the web browser and the desktop app is more convenient.

Editing

• Adobe Photoshop - Don't think there's a better alternative for editing pictures.
• Adobe Lightroom Classic - Purely for colour correction.
• Adobe Premier Pro - Basic editing of videos. Still learning.

Games

• NFS Most Wanted (2005) - Love this game. Don't play as much, but once in a while I play a race or so.
• F1 2020 - My laptop doesn't support anything heavier than this. I have to play this in low graphics settings to run smoothly, but a good game to play before an F1 Grand Prix to understand the track.
• WRC 7 - Recently started playing this. Have played the earlier versions.
• Car Mechanic Simulator - Don't play this as much as I used to. But a great game that needs a lot of patience and you understand a bit more about cars too.

[Omkar]

Thread moved out from the Assembly Line.

[GTO]

Besides the usual stuff (Chrome browser, anti-virus, MS Office), here are software I cannot do without.

- Dropbox. The best file-syncing software there is. The company does one single thing and does it really well. Way, way superior to the buggy Google Drive.

- Eyes Relax. Prompts me to take a break from the screen every 20 minutes for 1 minute (I walk around in the office).

- Microsoft Money. Using it for accounting since 2003. Among the best personal finance software ever made - the user-friendliness & features are amazing. Even today, I keep finding hidden features that make finance work so easy. It's been with me from the Windows XP days. Even installed it on Windows 11 on my Macbook M3 chip without a hiccup.

- FastStone Photo Resizer. Use it all the time for Team-BHP (watermarking images, resizing etc.). Also, the right-click convenient Windows Image Resizer software for simpler resizing work.

- iTunes. Am subscribed to Youtube Premium & Spotify, but I like to own the songs that I really love. Have 4000 songs in iTunes, neatly named + categorised + organised in albums & playlists. Also have "MusicBee" installed purely for syncing my iTunes with my Android phone.

- Second Copy for biweekly computer backups to external hard-drives.

- Acronis True Image. Makes an exact replica of my system. Have already used it twice for restoring and it works just as promised - the image is exact and the restoration is easy.

- Pictureflect Photo Viewer. The one I prefer.

- Approximately 8 productivity add-ons to Chrome (AI content detectors, customizing keyboard shortcuts, Grammarly for typos, Magical text expander, Tabs Outliner since I always have 30 - 70 tabs open in different windows in Chrome).

[mayukh42]

As someone who uses Linux for personal stuff, Windows for games, and Mac at work, here are some apps that I always add after a fresh OS installation. Most of them are available on all platforms.

Development

• VSCode with language specific extensions
• Docker

System

• Sublime Text (Text Editor)
• 7-zip - it is a one stop solution for all archive files including rar
• Terminator (Linux)/ iTerm2 (Mac) - these are excellent terminal alternatives
• PicPick (Screenshot tool, for Windows)

Browser

• Mozilla Firefox - this is my go to browser these days - stopped using Edge as Firefox is now much resource efficient with sleeping tabs
• Tor Browser, Chromium Browser (not Google Chrome but its parent) - I usually have couple of more browsers if some sites don't work in one, or to browse anonymously
• Google Chrome - strictly for work related websites

Multimedia & Photo Editing

• The GIMP and its Python script extensions
• RawTherapee (for raw images), Hugin (for stitching multiple photos)
• VLC Media Player,
• Kodi, just like on Android TV

Gaming tools like

• MSI Afterburner, HWInfo64 - nowadays gaming sessions are never complete without frametime graphs and hardware monitoring . I also usually undervolt the GPUs for much better power efficiency.
• Lossless Scaling - this is a very good Steam app for unoptimized games with Frame Generation support even on old GPUs. It can generate double frames, so when the game itself can render at most 30 fps smoothly, it results in 60 fps gameplay
• Playnite games launcher - this is an excellent alternative to Steam/ Epic games Launchers for offline games, as those almost always never track playtime when offline.

Office

• Google Docs/ Spreadsheets - it suffices for my needs and also I can access the docs from any browser. I have stopped using MS Office local installation, or even the likes of Libre Office on Linux for a long time.

Originally Posted by Omkar

• WRC 7 - Recently started playing this. Have played the earlier versions.

That is an excellent rally-sim game, in which I have put considerable hours as an alternative to Dirt Rally 1-2, the latter much less forgiving titles. Try WRC 8 too, it is an improvement over 7 in every way.

[chiekennugget]

Coconut Battery:I have a MacBook. I use to check its battery cycles, true battery level. you can use it to check battery cycles of other apple products too.

Cold turkey blocker:I use it to block websites that I feel I spend too much time on. Reddit is blocked. You can block your entire laptop too if you wish too.

Minecraft:It is the only game I play. I started playing it again recently. Absolutely amazing. The Java edition (the one I own) is pay once, no pay to update stuff. Content is added regularly. Provides everything for everyone (combat, building, exploring, animal husbandry, technical stuff through red stone). The performance has been in a steady decline, it is making it very frustrating to play.

Logi capture:I use it as an alternative to OBS. It is used for screen recording, OBS puts too much stress on my laptop. It has all the features I need.

Keynote:It is a apple default app, works really well if you want to do silly/janky animations. Works good as a tool to draw with mouse too. Simple photo editing works well

Any browser that isn't Safari:A lot of websites don't load on Safari. Images don't load on car websites, some questions don't load while writing mocks, and a few more.

Originally Posted by mayukh42

Lossless Scaling - this is a very good Steam app for unoptimized games with Frame Generation support even on old GPUs. It can generate double frames, so when the game itself can render at most 30 fps smoothly, it results in 60 fps gameplay

Have you used FSR by AMD, it works on both AMD and Nvidia GPU's. I have never used it but the common talk is that it is very good

[myavu]

Office 365

OneDrive

OneNote

Photoshop

Illustrator

Premiere

Sound Forge

Acrobat DC

AutoCAD

MiniTools Power Data Recovery

[Rehaan]

Only gonna name the ones that aren't well-known / mainstream:

(all titles are links)

Notepad++
• Auto-saving (their method took me some time to get used to, but now i love it)
• Double-click to highlight all same words
• Regex support in find/replace
• Just tons of features that make basic text editing and editing code so much easier

FreeFileSync
• Amazing backup / sync software with lots of fine controls
• Shows a great preview before running the sync/copy

Honeyview
• Replacement for ACDSee / Irfanview which all got a bit too bloated

ShareX
• All kinds of screenshot capturing, TONS of options
• Does simple screencasts (video) too
• Lots of annotation options for after your screenshot is captured. Sample below:


GIFcam
• Simplest way to make GIFs

RECbutton
• Simplest way to record video from your screen to an MP4

Networx
• Monitoring data throughput w/ an on-screen graph, etc

AnyDesk
• Alternative to TeamViewer

[Infurion]

I would like to Add Jump Desktop. This is the best TeamViewer/ AnyDesk alternative there is. Has their own fluid desktop protocol

If you use mac, keka file archiver is a great alternative.

If you are a blogger, author of any sort. Ulysses is the best text processor. Works across your iOS and Apple devices seamlessly.

[bobbyblr]

For me below are the programs that will be on both my personal & work PCs:

Electronics Assistant



This program is very useful for me in below cases:

• Resistors in Series & Parallel combination
• Potential Divider calculation
• Capacitor Unit converter
• LED Series Resistor calculator

PDFill PDF Tools (Free)



This program is very useful for me in below cases:

• To remove / decrypt password in a PDF and save it
• Split or reorder PDF pages
• Convert Images to PDF for easy printing
• Merge PDF files

[ads11]

A lot of my day 1 installs are utilities I came across thanks to Reddit over the years and can't live without. Along with the usual software, in no specific order:

• Office365: wedded to this, both the OneDrive integration and the productivity apps like Word, Powerpoint, Excel and Publisher (though I'm the only one in our department who uses the latter).
• EarTrumpet: much more granular control of system audio. Probably obviated on W11 (still use W10 so can't confirm if true).
• Inkscape: Vector graphics software for figure creation for papers and suchlike (though I did pretty much all the figures on my thesis on Powerpoint, which always amusingly alarms some people).
• Zotero: referencing software. Was a Mendeley user for years but a) Elsevier (boo) decided to gut the desktop app for some web app based garbage and b) screw Elsevier that's why. I'd counsel any student in academia to get on this from high school level onwards.
• Edge: not one I need to install per se but been happily using Edge for years, though will admit it's slowly becoming as bloated as Chrome. Just always hated how much of a resource hog the latter was.
• VLC player: feels like this is one of those fill-it-shut-it-forget-it type apps when it comes to media files. Just works with whatever you throw at it.
• Logi Options+: kinda mandatory to get the most out of the customisable buttons on the MX series mouse and keyboard from Logitech. I've set up quite a few hot keys on different apps for those two devices.

Those are the broad day 1 installs that immediately come to mind for me. Others are more sector specific so incredibly niche. I do end up installing the web apps for a bunch of things I use like:

• Whatsapp
• Youtube Music

[ExtremePocca]

Originally Posted by Omkar

]

• NFS Most Wanted (2005) - Love this game. Don't play as much, but once in a while I play a race or so.
• F1 2020 - My laptop doesn't support anything heavier than this. I have to play this in low graphics settings to run smoothly, but a good game to play before an F1 Grand Prix to understand the track.
• WRC 7 - Recently started playing this. Have played the earlier versions.
• Car Mechanic Simulator - Don't play this as much as I used to. But a great game that needs a lot of patience and you understand a bit more about cars too.

Glad to see a gamer on this forum, absolutely love car mechanic simulator, but having mastered the game already, I would prefer if it was more complex and finicky to an extent like working on real cars. F1 2020 is a masterpiece of an f1 game, and can be had for free (I think you know how). If you do want to spend some money on an f1 game though, do try F1 23 it runs as well if not better than F1 2020, do tell me your specs if you decide to buy it as it does stop some pcs from running it even if they can. As for WRC, I have been meaning to try one but have been left defeated after trying Dirt Rally and being completely out of my depth. Do try paint.net unless you are open to sailing the high seas.

[ExtremePocca]

Originally Posted by chiekennugget

.



Have you used FSR by AMD, it works on both AMD and Nvidia GPU's. I have never used it but the common talk is that it is very good

Don't think fsr works on Linux, and it's quality won't be as good as Nvidia's solution. On a slightly related note, has anybody nere managed to make DLSS 3 work on 30 series GPUs? I have a 3070Ti laptop GPU, would love to use DLSS 3

[ChristComesSoon]

Here are the ones I use:

1. Notepad++ : check out the Analyze plugin for powerful debugging.
2. Mediacoder : for transcoding needs.
3. Gimp : the best Open source image editor.
4. Calibre : Open source. Ebook conversions
5. The Word : Completely free, fearure-rich, fast Bible software.
6. FreeCommander : for all file explorer needs.
7. Nomacs : free, customisable image viewer.
8. Audacity : audio recording & manipulation
9. Microsoft OneNote : indispensable.
10. VLC
11. ShareX
12. qbittorrent
13. Game: Tiberian Sun (C&C).
14. Firefox and Brave Browsers, above all.


Would love to know if you have any recommendations for an alternative that is free, open source, for OneNote...

[nova.19_exe]

Okay, here's my take.

Productivity -

Office Suite - Was using Google Drive few months back, moved cause 15GB is too less for my use-case + we bought O365 Family plan which gives 6 people 1TB of storage for each!

Edge - Used multiple browsers, but I always come back to this. Yes, it hogs memory but I just love it for the feature list and a rare use-case - Copilot

Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver - Being an amateur graphic designer, this is my workload so can't go without these. Might be adding a few more Adobe apps in here. Do note that this is cracked version (are we okay talking about this?) so the ones I have are years old like 2018, 2017, you get the idea!

Visual Studio Community - Use it for my C++ programming and it is amazingggg!! Fast - check. Clean - check, Less RAM consumption - check. Intuitive - check!

Quick Share by Google - This is a lifesaver. Having to send files from someone else's phone to my PC or vice-versa just makes it so much easier!

WhatsApp - Yes, can't survive without this. I mean, who doesn't have WhatsApp in 2024?

Microsoft Powertoys - You guys need to use this! I use the Always on Top, Color Picker protocols and it hasn't disappointed me every single time!! The Color Picker is really useful for finding hex values, RGB values for a color I really like (graphic designer problems) and it gives me the exact shade when I use those values in PS!

Entertainment -

Spotify - Everyone at home shares the same account due to Premium, so I download my playlist and go offline, that way others can use it and not just one person, cause I listen to songs more frequently than anyone else and they get pretty annoyed cause they don't get to listen to songs!

Need for Speed - Most Wanted 2012 - Have this game from a really really long time, though I rarely get time to play, but it's there for that adrenaline rush!

[vignesh207]

These are my everyday stuff I use in my laptop.

MS Office: Outlook, Teams, OneNote are the ones I use the most, Word, Excel and Powerpoint occasionally

Windows Terminal: My go-to SSH client for connecting to my Linux Build server

Notepad++ : Windows 11 default Notepad has become better but still can't match Notepad++

Snipping Tool: Quick Easy way to take screen captures and share it over teams or email

Edge Browser: This is actually faster than Chrome but I use this primarily as my work account is integrated very well to Edge than Chrome

Chrome Browser: For non-work stuiff (mostly Team-BHP and Youtube )

Bing Wallpapers: For nice beautiful daily wallpapers