softwarez....

recommended softwares - some of them can be found at filehippo

pc essentials - free
winrar - needless to say, just feel its better than winzip lar
daemon tools lite - virtual drive to load the iso
ccleaner - clean unwanted data
spybot search and destroy - rid those unknowing wares running in your computer
cccp - the video codec, tried klite codec pack, but still feel cccp is lite enuff to play all kinds of medias i throw
quicktime alternative - plays quicktime in media classic player and enable downloadable hd file trailers from apple.com/trailers
real alternative - plays all real media files on media classic....
foobar - advanced mp3 software player, UI is very customizable if u noe what u are doing
imgburn - a pretty advanced writer software compares to bloated nero. i like its light weight straightforward interface.

the "ahem" softwares
diskeeper - hdd defragmenter: using the IFAAST technology, said to keep your disk less fragmented as it helps u to allocate the optimum location on your disk when u write data onto it. so far my pc has been quite responsive for 2 months since installed... no complains. O, the service only runs when ur pc is idle, so you wun feel any performance hit during ur normal operation on your pc. recommended! diskeeper competitor is perfectdisk, though i haven't really try that software, heard its on par with diskeeper and both have its pros and cons. mabbe someone try liao can tell me.
anydvd and clonedvd - enables u to read any region dvd and rip dvd movies into the 4.5gb dvd+r discs. recommended!


browser
Firefox - its powerful for it's add-ons, other than dat, its quite a resource hogger.
Safari - said to be the fastest browser. over-smoothing of fonts isn't my cup of tea though
IE7 - if it has the book marking feature like FF then i think this should be the best browser for me


lousy softwares
outpost firewall has been blacklisted by me.... it crashed my whole computer when surfing the web using FF.... the thing is it always crash on FF, but IE7 and safari are fine.... dunno its the folks at mozilla or agnitum trying to be funny...