Inspired by Marc’s list, the following are my alternative windows software recommendations for the normal (with development needs) user. It is by no means the best approach to your windows experience. You might as well have better software to use. It’s okay that you do! It’s a big world! We can both co-exist!

NOD32 Antivirus. It’s like Norton or McAfee, except it doesn’t come with two-million options and thousand new terms.It has a very neat and nifty simplistic interface for all the types of protection you might want to have.

• It’s your hunt-dog for spyware. Very fast and it works!
• It’s for the n00bs out there who cannot install Apache, PHP, and MySQL. Oh well, not necessarily n00bs, I used it. It even comes with PHPMyAdmin for all the command-prompt. It’s the perfect LAMP solution.
• Perfect image editing and creation software. It’s like nothing else!

Mozilla Thunderbird. It’s just like Outlook, except it’s way more intelligent.

• Perfectly Mac-designed music management. and it doesn’t suck!

• Don’t install a Windows Theme-ing software. All you have to do is hack the uxtheme.dll and set your favourite customize.org VisualStyle.

• Don’t install Rainmeter. It’s your memory’s enemy!

• Don’t install zillion-types of Codecs. DivX and Xvid are sufficient.

• Don’t install Nero. Alcohol 120% is a perfectly better burning solution.

• Don’t install Internet Download Manager. It’s evil. Flashget (and it’s FF plugin Falshgot) is your friend.

• Don’t update to IE7. DONT! Instead, removed IE totally (unless you’re a CSS designer) and install FireFox.

Make sure to have the latest DirectX, Flash player, Java RTE, Shockwave (not really a must, but you never know), and having your antivirus updated!