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