Aside from essentials installations here are some of the application I have on my PC which proved useful to me so you might as well look into.
Will post the links soon.
General
- TimeSnapper Pro
- Diskeeper Pro Premier
- Ad-Aware (Free)
- Spybot S&D (Free)
- Windows Defender
- Zone Alarm (just turned Pro)
- HiJackThis (Trend Micro)
- RSSReader
- TuneUp Utilities 2007
- PrimoPDF
- SnagIt 8
- FastFolders
Dev Tools
- Reflector
- DbgView (sysinternals)
- Process Monitor (sysinternals)
- Process Explorer (sysinternals)
- IECookiesView (nirsoft)
- TcpView (sysinternals)
- IIS Resource Kit
- IIS Diagnostics Kit
- FileZilla 3.0
- Fiddler2
- MBSA 2.0.1
- Virtual PC 2007