I just configured some new notebooks for some staff that were up for computer upgrades this year. As I mentioned in a previous post I went with the Lenovo 3000 N100 models. For the price, they are hard to beat and user experience so far has been positive. I shied away from installing Vista or the new version of Office just yet. Windows XP Pro and Office 2003 still meet our needs.

When setting up a new computer there are some free Windows utilities that are nice to throw in and make computing more pleasant for the end user. They also can benefit me, the system administrator. I thought I would pass a long my recommendation of what to include on a fresh build of Windows. Of course, this softwrae should also work on an old build of Window, too.

If we were not dependent upon Microsoft Access, I would recommend OpenOffice, but we have a lot of Access databases that could not easily be reproduced in an open source format. Plus, the academic prices for licenses for Office are fairly affordable. I also do not mention anti-virus or calendar software, because the campus is standardized on McAfee and MeetingMaker.

  • Drive Image XML: this one is really for my benefit, but helps everyone in the long run. Once I have everything installed and configured just the way I want it, I create an image of the computer and store it on an external hard drive, so that in the future if the computer needs Windows reinstalled or gets a new hard drive, I can simply restore the original image in minutes instead of spending hours reinstalling all of the software. It is similar to Norton Ghost, but is free.
  • Primo PDF: Mac OS X has had the ability to generate PDF's of anything you can print for sometime, but it is not an option built into Windows. Primo PDF gives you that ability for free. You can generate PDF's for the screen, print, ebook or prepress. It also allows you to merge multiple PDF's into one file. 
  • Foxit PDF Reader: I have written about Foxit before. It does what Adobe's free Acrobat Reader can do but so much faster. The program loads almost instantly.
  • Irfanview: Windows built in image viewer is okay, but if you need to resize or convert numerous images, this graphics utility which has been around since Windows 95, does an excellent job. However, Picasa 2, which is part of the Google Pack may be all that you need.
  • Paint.Net: GIMP is the revered open source graphics editor that works on various platforms, but Paint.net is also very good and takes full advantage of the Windows interface. There are numerous plug-ins and tutorials available. It supports unlimited undo, layers and various special effects. If you want PhotoShop but cannot afford it, check out this program.
  • Thunderbird: The campus has standardized on this email program. It is a great alternative to Outlook Express.
  • Google Pack: This is not only a collection of Google's own great software, such as, Google Earth, Desktop, Talk, Picasa, and Toolbar, but it also includes Acrobat Reader, Spyware Doctore, Real Player and Firefox. It provides an easy means of installing all of these applications, as well as, a too that will automatically update the applications
  • Putty: We still ocassionally use Telnet and this is a great telnet utility that also supports SSH and supports saving multiple telnet session profiles which the Windows built in telnet client does not.
  • WinSCP: This is a great file transfer utility that allows for easy drag and drop file management over SCP, SFTP and FTP.
  • SyncToy: This one is from Microsoft.  I use to map  the My Documents folder to the user drive on the file server, but that was not such a great idea when the server was down. With the Synctoy I can schedule to synchronize the My Documents folder on the local machine with one on the server, so that the data is always available whether the server or the local machine goes down. 
  • Stickies: This is an utility that comes with Mac OS X, but not Windows. It is a free electronic post-it note application that features the ability to share notes across a network or email notes. This s just on eof many variations. 3M has a version, but it is not free.
  • iTunes: Staff like to listen to music while at work and iTunes is one of the best audio players available. It is great for managing podcasts and listening to streaming Internet radio. QuickTime is also included which is my preferred video player.
  • 7Zip: For years people had trail version of WinZip on their computer. Windows has the capability to compress and decompress files built in, but itis still lacking in some features. 7Zip is a free utility that allows you to create self executable compressed files with password compression. 
  • Skype: We have successfully used Skype as a replacement for long distance phone calls.
  • Pidgin: This is a multi-protocol instant messaging  client that can replace a dozen IM clients including AOL, Yahoo, MSN, GTalk, ICQ, IRC, Groupwise and others.