What Do You Install First on a New PC

My friend Patric Welch, a.k.a. Noobie, just found this blog post that lists the writer’s top 10 applications to install on a new PC to get things started out on the right foot. The other nice benefit of this blog post though is that all the applications listed are 100% free.

The article shares a a list of 10 applications that you can get completely free. The apps vary from security, image and graphics or office productivity. Dustin Wax provides a full description and reasoning behind his choice for each of these applications. Be sure to read his entire post for that information, but here are his top 10.

• Panda Cloud Antivirus
• Mozilla Firefox
• OpenOffice.org
• Mozilla Thunderbird
• Picasa
• Skype
• VLC Media Player
• Handbrake
• Digsby or Pidgin
• CDBurnerXP

One of the great things about blog posts and articles is the comments section. For example, I don’t remember hearing about Panda Cloud Antivirus, so I was interested in reading through the comments to see what other people had to say about Panda if they had experience. In the meantime I heard of other suggestions for virus and anti-spyware.

What are you required choices for applications to accomplish those tasks you need every day? Let us know in the comments and maybe someone will find an application they’ve never heard of before that will change the way they work and use their computers. Your app doesn’t necessarily have to be free, but that’s always a plus.