A new job generally mean a new computer. In most old big companies, a computer is still synonymous with having to suffer using Microsoft Windows. But despair not : a good selection of additional software will make Windows more functional and your workstation experience more bearable.

Here is a list of the ones I setup most of the time. It covers most of the indispensable everyday utilities :

– Jxplorer LDAP client
– Filezilla FTP client
– Xchat IRC client
– Notepad++ text editor
– Psi Jabber client
– Putty SSH client
– WinSCP SCP client
– Irfanview image viewer
– PalmOne Palm Desktop
– Virtual Dimension virtual desktop
– Winmerge diff and merge utility
– 7zip archive manager
– Mozilla Firefox Web browser
– VMware player
– Foxit PDF reader
– Tortoise SVN client
– Thunderbird mail client
– Kompozer HTML editor
– Unison file synchronization tool
– AdAware system cleanser
– Gimp image editor
– Openoffice suite
– GPG4Win
– Tora Oracle SQL client

Of course that will not get you anywhere near as far as a half decent setup of Ubuntu or Debian, and once you will have hunted down, downloaded and installed each of those independant packages with no centralized package management you will have a much better understanding of what super cow powers are all about. But at least it is a start and you can quite comfortably survive with that kit.

As a bonus, here are the few useful Thunderbird that I use all the time :

– Attachment Extractor
– Headers Toggle
– Rewrap Button
– Remove Duplicate Messages
– Enigmail