I’ll be getting a new computer soon and would like to hear some suggestions on what to install and also what not to install. I’m speaking of general utilities and such. Norton always seems like a nightmare taking over my computer. I’d also like to keep my disk and registry as clean as possible. What’s the best way to uninstall programs. If it helps, I play a lot of graphics intensive games (I use Ramidle now). Im not a big fan of having alot of stuff in my system tray though Im not sure why.
Yeah, I have that inexplicable need to have my system tray uncluttered as well, which is odd, considering the cluttered state of everything else I own.
I’d recommend some of the so-called “system friendly” applications - programs that have no install program and use no registry entries. Most are just ZIP or self-extracting EXEs that you just decompress to a folder and run. On the plus side, most programs like this are shareware, or even freeware.
I’m not really sure about uninstalling programs; I’ve always just used the regular uninstall program, but I know that does leave some registry entries behind sometimes. There are companies besides Norton that make custom install/uninstall programs that monitor what changes are made to your system when a program is installed and reverse them upon uninstall.
I think that I need to know what kind of computer it is? PC, Mac, Cray?
Ah, it will be a PC. Also recommend, any registry snapshot programs or any way to make a healthy start with a new pc.
Start with Linux. This will eliminate your concerns about the registry, if nothing else 
Do not install anything that has spyware.
And in case you do, there is a great utility called Lavasoft Ad-aware that takes care of it. I don’t know how good this utility is, but my performance improved inmensely since i used it. I found that my PC was full of crap.
What does spyware do, or at least how does it crap up your comp? I do have one application that uses spyware.
By the way, to address the OP: as little as possible.
If you can’t immediately think why you need something, don’t install it. Be minimalist - start from zero and add essentials as you encounter them. Don’t clutter. The more stuff you have, the more chance some of it will not play well together or play well with Windows, and the slower your machine will run. Be wary of what you download and install from non-reputable sites.
As a minimum, you probably want the following:[list=1][]OS[]latest service pack for OS[]MS Office + latest service pack[]Adobe Acrobat reader (unfortunately)[]Anti-virus software[]Zone Alarm if you’re on broadband[]latest drivers for all hardware (try “Windows Update”)[]latest DirectX if you play gamesWinZip or some compression utility.[/list=1] I also recommend reformatting every 6 months and reinstalling Windows from scratch. This is not for the faint-hearted but it will keep your system running lean and mean.
I like DarrenS’ list particularly, and I’d add Ad-Aware (as recommended by ZooMetropolis and possibly a pop-up killer if such things bother you (POW! is a fairly simple, unzip-and-run tool, or maybe Proximitron for more advanced features).
Beyond that I try to minimise any other installations. For personal preference I use one other browser (Opera 6), a messaging/mail checking client (Trillian) and a tweak program (TweakUI for XP) but none of these are essential in any way.
Fewer is better. Every icon in your sys tray uses RAM, some A LOT more than others. Keep your sys tray as spare as possible.
The only programs I might recommend beyond those above would be WinAmp, Quicktime or Real Player
I agree with Ad-Aware - pretty much essential in these days of spyware. I dislike Real Player with a passion because it has become sleazy spyware; unfortunately no-one seems to have come up with a way of playing Real Audio and Real Media files without at least having the thing installed. Quicktime is useful for viewing MOV files (does Media Player understand those?) but I’ve found it too very annoying - it tends to prompt a lot for “you need to upgrade to a new version”, etc.
Winamp is still good for playing MP3s - I also use Microsoft MP7 but have found it to be slow, clumsy and a resource hog.
One other program to consider:
EndItAll v2
Really. This one isn’t a permanent solution, but helps in diagnosing/short term solution, when something starts bogging down your system. Basically, it’s the big brother of the three-finger salute. All those background processes that don’t turn up in the regular task manager window can be closed/killed with EndItAll.
I do find it useful to free up some resources when I close McAfee’s VShield, which it turns out, doesn’t actually shut down all the background stuff, when you tell it to. Made a couple of high-end games run a bit smoother for me.
Can’t find the URL to link for ye, but I’m pretty sure I got it right off the boards here.
(And you may well be astounded the first time you run AdAware, and see how much crap is hiding on your HD. Well, obviously not with a brand spankin’ new OS install, but…)
Windows Media Player 6.4 plays files created with Quicktime 2.0 or lower. Considering that Quicktime is up to version 6, those would have to be some pretty old movies.
Newer versions of WMP don’t support any version of Quicktime.
Wow, you folks are really conservative. Do you remain this cautious, or is this just for an initial setup, and you add other stuff later?
Not conservative, just jaded 
When I first started with Windows (3.1 then 95) I installed every gadget and shareware thing I could get my hands on. Like a kid in a candy store. After suffering numerous crashes and incompatibility, I’ve come to the conclusion it’s not worth it - nowadays, I’m strictly minimalist and my computing experience is a lot happier.
The must have’s are:
Adaware and Zonealarm. Also a good anti-virus. I like Norton’s myself. Powertoys for XP. Don’t forget SP1 for XP as well.
Linux? He says he plays a lot of games. That’s the last thing you want for gaming.
Just went through all this with my shiny new Dell 8200.
Had to beat back the evil Real player. Hell, they make Microsoft’s programs look good (not easy). Its Crapware.
AHunter3, alot of software or hardware only works with specific operating systems. So if I suggested something & turns out it’s not for your operating system, well,…
Thus, its always best to buy a computer that has what you want already on it. You can order your system like that.
You start with the basic system & add what they have to it, here is one for today:
“Super desktop Dimension 4500 P4-2.4Ghz 128MB DDR/20GB CD XP Home MS Works $649 - 10% coupon - $100 rebate = $484 shipped free. 2Ghz version is $50 less, probably not worth the savings.”
Its a Dell, but when you order it, you can select what else you want on it, see?
I’m really glad KidCharlegmane started this thread. My new PC is arriving in bits and pieces, and this stuff I’m hearing is helpful.
I’ve been using AdAware too and will definitely reload it.
But something happened a couple of days ago when I was trying to load a virus patch at the MSN site, and I ended up with something called UCMore. It appears to be an Internet add-on, like a super search thing. I swear I didn’t load it on purpose.
AdAware found it and issued a warning. !!
And then yesterday AdAware went crazy (or something frightened it). It kept loading and scanning, over and over, loading and scanning. It would start a scan, reload and scan, continuously. Aborting didn’t work, it just kept reloading. Reboot didn’t help. Finally had to uninstall it. I really miss it, so tonight I’m gonna try and find out what the heck this UCMore thing is, get rid of it and get AdAware back. I’m not sure the two events are connected, but I’m suspicious.
Hello, Dell? I’d like a dual processor box with a gig and a half of RAM, and for software, let’s see…XP Pro for the primary OS, Red Hat on a second partition, and Windows98 on a third, with a boot commander of some sort. OK, productivity software…gimme Microsoft Office Professional, Lotus SmartSuite, StarOffice, and Corel Office, with FileMaker and FileMaker Server and Eudora to round things out. I’ll need to browse, so in addition to the unavoidable Internet Explorer, I’d like Netscape Nav and Mozilla and Opera. And to design pages, Dreamweaver and GoLive. Hmm, what else? OK for FTP, CuteFTP and CoffeeCupFTP, I guess. Newsgroup readers, hmm, I don’t know PC newsgroup readers, I use Hogwasher on the Mac, I dunno, just give me the top half dozen downloads from TUCOWS and I’ll trash the ones I don’t like. Where was I? Graphics. Photoshop and Illustrator and Freehand and Paint Shop Pro and Canvas and Painter and Acrobat, I guess, for the 2D stuff, and for now just give me Bryce and AutoCAD and RealStudio or RealPlayer Studio or whatever they call it. Oh, that’s video, isn’t it? Yeah, video, OK, I’ll need Director and Premiere and Final Cut Pro. Hmm, we need some squirrel. Microsoft SQL Server and some admin tools, I’ll get back to you on the tools. A Visual Basic development environment would be nice, maybe a “VB for Dummies” package? Always wanted to learn that stuff. MP3 encoding software, I dunno, just give me the top half-dozen TUCOWS downloads again. LimeWire. ICQ. AIM. mIRC. MSN client. Text processor…geez, what’s the PC equiv of BBEdit? Gimme something with guts and versatility and ease of use, I’ll even pay for it but freeware’s better. Norton Utilities. McAffee Virus. EasyCD Creator. Something that will play .ape files, we don’t get that on the Mac, what do you PC users use? Video playback…in addition to the MS player, QuickTime and RealPlayer and maybe a dedicated MPEG player, do I need that? OK, a sound editor, is Deck available for the PC? Something to edit AIFFs, WAVs, and MP3s. Oh, I’ll need a tn3270 client and an ssh client and Timbuktu and VNC and the most common VPN clients. And Retrospect to handle my backup needs. ZipIt of course, and PKZip and Aladdin Expander. Oh, what are we using for simple MP3 playback? Something that will play anything I toss at it, with savable playlists and a small footprint, don’t care about fancy skins. A PGP utility. Firewall. Drive formatter, should do FAT, FAT32, NTFS, Macintosh HFS and HFS+, and Unix formats. Hacks to read foreign formats and access them. Oh yeah, emulators. UAE for the Amiga. Basilisk II for Mac. VirtualPC to load OS/2 if I want it. And DataViz Conversions Plus to handle file format conversions. Now some hacks. I want to kill the “application window”. Make it transparent at least, let me put one document window here and another document window there and between them, visible while I’m working in them, the document window of a different app. Oh, for macros, give me QuicKeys and WinBatch, I can’t live without some macros.
OK, I think that’s it. For Windows. Now, for the Linux partition, I was thinking…hello? Dell?