i know this is really really old. but a bunch of the programs he listed in there are crap.

1. Anything from symantec (except ghost) is pretty much crap, especially norton.

2. Mcafee sucks ass too.

So for anyone looking for a good anti-virus setup, here it is:

Avg Free

Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware

Spy-bot S&D

And for Keeping ur computer running smoothly

CCleaner

Advanced System Care (free and paid versions availible, but it is very easy to get a paid version for free. pm me if u want it.)

Smart Defrag

Revo Uninstaller

Frankly having either macafee or norton on the list by itself makes this entire list not worth my time. they are both more spyware than anti virus and have been for years. Not to mention both AVG and Avast are 100% free and have scored nearly as good as them or better than them for a decade. Especially Avast, and thats not on your list at all.

Anyway some other good programs: All of IOBits software is useful to the general user, and most of it even for an advanced user. great regestry/defrag in their freeware. Their game booster would work well on a "normal" users computer. but if you are already the kind of person that goes and turns off every single un needed process, regedits manually etc then it will not provide a boost. (its not like the old dashcund software that also runs windows in a higher bit kernel).

For mounting burning, i cant recomend alcohol 120% more. This program does ANYTHING you can think of BUT burn movies because well hollywood is 3 bags of dicks. that does not however mean it cant burn a unprotected video file to a DVD, just that it couldnt copy a DVD with protections. Other than that it gets around MOST other protections, offers more file format options than just about anything else you can find, though it is pay software if you do a lot of burning/backups/etc this is the software for you.

VLC Media player- another great freeware this thing plays every kind of movie their is with a very low resource impact player. it can also convert file formats and do 1000 other things. one of the best freeware programs on the face of the planet.


Chrome- Obviously FF is good, but its big issue is even on a powerful computer the resource sink that is its craptastic memory leak can bog down after a large number of pages are viewed. While chrome has this issue to some extent(anything in windows does) its not even 1/50th as bad. so for older/slower computers i definatly recommend it.
so much more but this is what i would consider "essential" programs for a general user.