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

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