New Thinkpad: What is YOUR must load software? Must delete?

[WFU03]

While this post isn't complete curiousity (as I did just get a new X61), I am interested to know what you guys consider must load and must delete software. I imagine it will be at least 25 programs for most people and it might help everyone get some new software ideas.

The rules: you must start from the default thinkpad load. For instance, if you load firefox, you must include it in the list because it does not come in the default load.

[mini_g]

Browsers: Opera, Firefox (First thing done with them is to update urlfilter.ini & integrate AdBlock, respectively)
7-Zip
OpenOffice
Daemon Tools
VLC Media Player
AVG Anti-Virus (Remove Norton if installed.)
Spybot Search & Destroy
Notepad++
ImgBurn
iTunes (I have yet to find a better audio player for Windows)

If this is for XP, the following are also installed:
ClearType Tuner
TweakUI
Google Desktop
FrontMotion Login

[Marin85]

Hmm, let´s see: WinRAR, ObjectDock, Virtual CD 9, TuneUp Utilities, Nero 8 (only Nero Burn ROM, Nero Vision, Nero Recode, Nero Showtime), Firefox 3, uTorrent beta, ICQ, Skype, Hamachi (basic free), Process Explorer, Acronis Disk Director, AVG 7.5 free, VLC, winamp (custom, only audio play), MikTex 2.7 + TeXnicCenter, Adobe Acrobat Pro 8, Photoshop CS3, M$ Office 2007, WinDJView, AutoDesk 3ds Max /Maya (have to learn it now ) and some scientific stuff like SPSS (for statistics) (or GRETL for teaching purposes), Maple (for teaching), Matlab, Wolfram Mathematica (for fun ). I´m glad I don´t have to pay for all this

Cheers

Marin

[agarza]

I prefer to install Windows XP standalone, a clean-install, but if I were to stick with the default pre-loaded state:

- Uninstall all Lenovo software, except for OSD, Power Manager and that's it
- IE7, Firefox3, Nero 7 Lite, NOD32, FlashGet, FoxIt Reader, Safari3, DVD-Decrypter, Daemon Tools, VLC, PowerToys, Visual Studio 2005, Office 2007, Du Meter, plus others

Do tweaks on the Windows registry to make it faster, disable some services.

I don't like Vista

[Marin85]

@xtr: off topic, what registry tricks would you suggest to make XP run faster?

Marin

[userlander]

must delete: windows

[sarbin]

must delete: windows

now that's funny right there.

[Likvid]

must delete: windows

now that's funny right there.

DOS is enough for most users anyway.

[Temetka]

Browsers: Opera, Firefox (First thing done with them is to update urlfilter.ini & integrate AdBlock, respectively)
7-Zip
OpenOffice
Daemon Tools
VLC Media Player
AVG Anti-Virus (Remove Norton if installed.)
Spybot Search & Destroy
Notepad++
ImgBurn
iTunes (I have yet to find a better audio player for Windows)

If this is for XP, the following are also installed:
ClearType Tuner
TweakUI
Google Desktop
FrontMotion Login

You have some really good software in your list man!

Daemon tools is indeed quite awesome, as is 7-ZIP and Firefox. Nice list you got there, looks a lot like mine.

[kunfuchopsticks]

Here is my list of disclosable programs:

Symantec Corporate Antivirus
Firefox
Miranda IM
MS Office
Adobe Master Collection
Nero 8
Thinkvantage CSS, APS
iTunes
Winrar
Alcohol 120
AHD
Cisco VPN

[neenee]

AVG 8 Free
Opera, with the profile I use on all my systems, includes ad-blocking
Notepad++
WinRAR
Crap Cleaner
Keepass
Paint.NET
MS Office 2007 (Word, Excel, Outlook)
Google Talk
Imgburn
Recuva
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2

And I do like Vista.

[fschwep]

I would delete anything Norton/Symantec that is in the preload as it often gets in the way and gobbles resources.
Must loads for me are:
- Gyula's Navigator from http://www.wanari.com/products/gynav/ . This is a Norton Commander-style file manager that allows you to view two folders/drives in two parallel screens and copy/move etc. between them. Any file operation in fact. Highly recommended.
- TuneUp Utilities, to do the thing Norton used to do well, like repairing the registry and controlling which programs run on your PC.
- FireFox
- The Bat! for e-mail
- Faststone Image Viewer
- possibly CDBurnerXP as it can burn disks in most external drives without the mega-overhead of Nero.
- Password Safe from http://passwordsafe.sourceforge.net/ . Indispensable. Keeps all your passwords in one tough encrypted database that does not depend on a browser.

[Mike Blake]

SpyBot Search & Destroy
VLC
XNView
Firefox/Thuderbird
TweakUI
If it didn't come with MSOffice pre-installed, I'd definitely install OpenOffice instead.

[RealBlackStuff]

Uninstall:
Most of the IBM/Lenovo utils
All trialware/crapware
MS Java
Outlook Express
All games except Spider Solitaire
Disable Windows Index service

Install:
V-Comm's Powerdesk (always very first thing)
EsetNOD32
TallEmu's Online Armor firewall
Firefox
Thunderbird
EditPad Pro
Foxit Reader (instead of Adobe's Acrobat Reader bloatware)
SUN Java
TweakUI
IrfanView
ASmallerImage
Ulead's PhotoImpact
WS_FTP-Pro
Acronis True Image
Raxco's PerfectDisk
Nero 6
WinRAR
Auction Sentry DeLuxe
MS Office 2003 (only Word + Excel)

[sarbin]

remove:
ibm access connections
rescue and recovery
norton av trial
access ibm message center
ibm java
windows messenger
outlook express
ibm ezeject
ibm keyboard customizer
ibm full screen magnifier
ibm presentation director
ati hydravision

install:
sun java
firefox
thunderbird
eset nod32
spybot
comodo 3x
irfanview
xplorer2
a few sysinternals utils
office 2k
ccleaner
boinc
tweak ui
codestuff starter
du meter
winzip

disable:
select services, generally following blackviper's recommendations
select start up programs via codestuff starter

[beGi]

removed

[jdhurst]

I would delete anything Norton/Symantec that is in the preload as it often gets in the way and gobbles resources.
Must loads for me are: <snip>

Do as you wish, no one cares. But your gross generalization about Symantec is nonsense and completely untrue. ... JDH

[Mike Blake]

Do as you wish, no one cares. But your gross generalization about Symantec is nonsense and completely untrue. ... JDH

Wow, that was harsh. Especially for an admin.

[jdhurst]

Do as you wish, no one cares. But your gross generalization about Symantec is nonsense and completely untrue. ... JDH

Wow, that was harsh. Especially for an admin.

I get tired of people telling me the effective, good tools I use don't work. That is why I called it a generalization and untrue. Symantec Corporate products (sometime preloaded on Lenovo) work wonderfully well, zero CPU consumption, little resource, and totally transparent and automatic. If people don't want to use what I use, that is fine - I do not care. But generalizations based on apparently limited experience have no real place here. ... JDH

[mattbiernat]

uninstall
everything
install
windows xp
active protection
easy eject
keyboard customizer
power management
thinkpad navigation
ulta navi wizard
spybot sd
windows defender
a-squared
spyware blaster
avir anti virus
ccleaner
registry first aid
km player
utorrent
free flv converter
windows live mail
windows live photo gallery

[ChugokuOtaku]

try Foobar for audio player

[fschwep]

Wow, that was harsh. Especially for an admin.

I get tired of people telling me the effective, good tools I use don't work. That is why I called it a generalization and untrue. Symantec Corporate products (sometime preloaded on Lenovo) work wonderfully well, zero CPU consumption, little resource, and totally transparent and automatic. If people don't want to use what I use, that is fine - I do not care. But generalizations based on apparently limited experience have no real place here. ... JDH

Well, JDH, I've been using laptops since before they had batteries in them, in the late 1980s (talk about a battery-less 7 kg Toshiba with a 286 processor, DOS, a 10 MB (!) harddisk, 640 K RAM, a red plasma monochrome screen, and WordPerfect 4.2 as its main application, used on a fulltime basis 8 hours a day). I think 20 years of daily computer use as a user, not a programmer, and being responsible for the computer/wordprocessor support of a 6-man magazine editorial crew for several years when the average household did not yet have a computer and the internet was only used by scientists and the military (and I was discussing this sort of thing on dedicated CompuServe forums) is not exactly 'limited experience'. How many years have YOU been using computers to do productive work with?

Symantec/Norton made wonderfully useful products, especially Norton Utilities and Commander, which I used for many years. I must have defragged my harddisks with Norton a zillion times. Which is why I tend to be harsh on them these days, as they do really get in the way (my way, OK). I have had to remove the preinstalled Symantec stuff forcefully on several Thinkpads (Let's see, half a dozen machines or so) to solve various problems and get them, particularly, to start up a lot quicker.
What particularly gets me is that it is fiendishly difficult to completely remove the Symantec pre-installed software, as bits of it tend to stick around very stubbornly and secretively, which you don't notice unless you use another utility program to take a good look at what gets loaded on startup. It does not truly deinstall itself properly if you ask it to, and that is one of the absolute no-nos in my book. Fine if one wants to use it, but if I feel I do not want a bit of software that I feel is superficial or gets in the way of whatever application I want to use, it should properly deinstall. That it does not is particularly bad for software from a vendor that is supposedly specialized in making utility programs to solve just that kind of problems on a PC. My other gripe with their stuff is that is has become a trap to make people pay for annual license renewals, eve though they did not ask for it to be on their computers in the first place. In itself that is a valid reason for wanting to deinstall it: there is software out there that does at least as good a job for less money, or even for free.

Personally, after a couple of decades of PC use, I don't want a lot of stuff that does everything automatically in the background; I want to tell my computer what it must do and when. Call me oldfashioned. I still use WordPerfect to do my writing with...

The original poster asked about what we want to throw out and what we feel are absolute must-have software on our thinkpads. I thought some explanation about why I made my choices might be useful for others, but apparently I stepped on someone's toes there.

[jdhurst]

<snip>
Well, JDH, I've been using laptops since before they had batteries in them, in the late 1980s ...... How many years have YOU been using computers to do productive work with?
<smip>
What particularly gets me is that it is fiendishly difficult to completely remove the Symantec pre-installed software, <snip>

Personally, after a couple of decades of PC use, I don't want a lot of stuff that does everything automatically in the background; I want to tell my computer what it must do and when. Call me oldfashioned. I still use WordPerfect to do my writing with...

I have been using personal computers for productive work since 1981 and other computers long before that.

I have no problem at all if people wish to throw away Symantec. They have removal instructions on their web site that provide total removal.

I was reacting to the reasoning that "Symantec products bog down the machine" or words to that effect. The Corporate Products generally do not (which is one reason I use them) and the new Consumer Products are getting much better, but I don't use them (and have always said so).

I also have no problem if people wish to do things manually. However, I have gotten used to the fact that Symantec updates without ever popping up (firewall pops up occasionally); Perfect Disk defrags without ever poppipng up; Windows Defender updates and scans without over popping up; and most of this occurs without any practical CPU consumption. PD slows down the disk when defragging.

And then, for the tools I use, I have not had a BSOD since I gave up Windows 9x systems in 1999.

So, my apologies if I tread on your toes or others. I truly believe that each user should use whatever they wish to use and whatever fits them (and I mean all applications and operating systems). What I ask is that what I use not be denigrated in order to defend what others use.
... JDH

[fschwep]

<snip>
I was reacting to the reasoning that "Symantec products bog down the machine" or words to that effect. The Corporate Products generally do not (which is one reason I use them) and the new Consumer Products are getting much better, but I don't use them (and have always said so).

I also have no problem if people wish to do things manually. However, I have gotten used to the fact that Symantec updates without ever popping up (firewall pops up occasionally); Perfect Disk defrags without ever poppipng up; Windows Defender updates and scans without over popping up; and most of this occurs without any practical CPU consumption. PD slows down the disk when defragging.

And then, for the tools I use, I have not had a BSOD since I gave up Windows 9x systems in 1999.

So, my apologies if I tread on your toes or others. I truly believe that each user should use whatever they wish to use and whatever fits them (and I mean all applications and operating systems). What I ask is that what I use not be denigrated in order to defend what others use.
... JDH

A lot clearer already. I did not intend to denigrate anything you use. The Symantec product(s) I meant were those that come, or came, pre-installed on a Thinkpad as it is sold to consumers, not corporate machines. The most important of which is Norton AV. The original post as I read it asked which of the pre-installed stuff we forumers would throw out and what software we prefer to install. My criticism concerns mostly Norton AV which, like many other AV products, may conflict with some applications and can bog down the machine to some extent (particularly by stretching boot time). Also, I am on a dial-in connection (ISDN actually), so using any auto-update function is out of the question in my home office - imagine an OS or an application deciding that it needs to download and install an update weighing in at a few dozen MBs... even a few MBs downloading through a slow connection like that would seriously impede say my reading my e-mails. So I am probably biased against any application that may make my internet communication even slower than it already is....

[WFU03]

A lot clearer already. I did not intend to denigrate anything you use. The Symantec product(s) I meant were those that come, or came, pre-installed on a Thinkpad as it is sold to consumers, not corporate machines. The most important of which is Norton AV. The original post as I read it asked which of the pre-installed stuff we forumers would throw out and what software we prefer to install. My criticism concerns mostly Norton AV which, like many other AV products, may conflict with some applications and can bog down the machine to some extent (particularly by stretching boot time). Also, I am on a dial-in connection (ISDN actually), so using any auto-update function is out of the question in my home office - imagine an OS or an application deciding that it needs to download and install an update weighing in at a few dozen MBs... even a few MBs downloading through a slow connection like that would seriously impede say my reading my e-mails. So I am probably biased against any application that may make my internet communication even slower than it already is....

As the author of the original post, this was my intent.

[emorphien]

iTunes (I have yet to find a better audio player for Windows)

*cringe*

I'd agree I haven't found much better for OSX but for Windows there are tons of options.

[WarMachine]

Hello,

Here is a list of softwares I will put on my system after an new installation from scratch :

- Firefox,
- SpywareBlaster,
- Spybot Search & Destroy,
- NOD32,
- RegProt,
- SuperCleaner,
- CCleaner,
- XPize (installs TaskSwitch too),
- Sizer,
- Taskix,
- QTAddressBar,
- WinAmp,
- PowerDVD,
- WinRAR,
- TuneUp Utilities,
- AusLogics Defrag,
- XP AntiSpy,
- MS Office,
- Photoshop,
- TPFanControl when possible (service version),
- Adobe Reader,
- Paint .NET,
- LogMeIn,
- Windows Desktop Search,
- BootVis,
- TuneXP,
- XVid, DivX Codecs and Player,
- Windows Media Player 11,
- Windows Live Messenger.



W.

[YeOldeStonecat]

Formatted disk of T60p
Installed dual boot...Vista Ultimate and openSUSE, probably going to triple boot and put Server 2008 on shortly

On the Vista side..
Laid down the barebone necessary Lenovo drivers (Chipset/ATI/Intel matrix/NICs, etc)
Office Ultimate 2007
Eset NOD32 antivirus
Firefox with adblocker+
Trillian instant messenger
CDBurnerXP
UltraVNC

Clear off default sidebar gadgets except calendar, put on custom clock, and 2x Network Utilities..1x for status of NIC, other for status of wireless.