What Are Some Important Programs To Load On A Pc?

I'm new to Windows 7 and wondering what are some valuable programs to download? Maybe something to monitor performance, clean up the bloatware or a good media player. Basically, if my PC were a new smartphone, which apps should I look into? Someone recommended I get ccleaner for the bloatware, and use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer. I already have Norton Antivirus, and I'll probably download Winamp since that's what i've used in the past. Any advice?

 

I would suggest looking here for security programs and avice:
http://computerhelpforums.net/topic/13971-antivirus-security-suite-removal-tools/

As for other things, I would recommend a decent browser instead of IE, either Firefox or Chrome from Google.

Other than security and web browsing, the rest is up to you and what you need. If you are into watching movies, I would suggest VLC Player over Windows Media Player any day.
For monitoring your system, we recommend a program called Speccy

Personally for security, I use
Firewall: Comodo Firewall (Instead of the built in Windows one)
On-demand malware scanning: Malwarebytes Anti-Malware
Constant, background security: Microsoft Security Essentials

Some people would agree with my choices, others will have their own program list they prefer. If you have any specific areas or functions such as music players, programming development studios etc., feel free to ask/specify and I'm sure others would be more than happy to pitch in with their support for their preferred programs

 

I agree with DirtyPolo's suggestions.
Windows7 firewall is much improved now and does a pretty good job as well if you don't wan't to use Comodo.
I would uninstall Norton.It is a system Hog.
Sometimes difficult to remove Norton completely from your Computer.

 

If Norton came free with the machine then it will have a limited usage period.

I use MS Essentials ( free ) as an AV and I know a few others here do too.
Why pay for an AV when there is a perfectly good one available for free ?

Avast and Avira are free AVs too.

 

I am also in agreement with just about everything already mentioned, and will add that Microsoft Security Essentials is actually getting better as it goes on.

I will also add that as well as all that Dirty Polo uses (a man after me own heart there) I also have "Superantispyware" as well and find that digs out a lot more of the adware and tracking cookies than most other security software does.

Another more minor role player is SpywareBlaster, that sits in the background, but can stop other spyware getting in, but it does need to be manually updated regularly.

As far as other software is concerned, I will recommend installing and using one of the many free imaging programs, providing you have a fairly large external hard drive as somewhere to store the image.

If you don't know what an image is, it is a complete and full copy of everything, all partitions, operating system, all files and folders the lot, of whatever is on your computer at the time of making the image. It is stored on an external hard drive and is a complete rescue package should the computer fail, or become so corrupted it can't run any more.
It can also be used to install everything should you decide on fitting a larger hard drive, as I recently did when upgrading my laptop from a puny 40GB hard drive to a much more useful 120GB (It is an older XP machine)
It goes without saying that should the computer hard drive fail, it will of course install everything on to the new replacement too.


Again, no doubt other members will have good advice for other software as well so it then is up to you of course to decide, but do take notice of Allheart55, don't bother with so called registry cleaners or system boosters, they can cause enough damage for you to be glad you made an image as above.

Nev.