Shareware, Freeware and (nearly) essencial Free Software for Windows which won't spy on you:

- Mozilla Thunderbird. E-mail app as friendly as Outlook Express but featuring spam filters, and isn't as popular among virus writers.
- Mozilla Firebird. As a browser it's just as good as Internet Explorer, although it lacks polish. It will probably overtake IE in the next release.
- Filezilla. My FTP client of choice.
- UXTheme Multipatcher. So you can use alternative themes in WindowsXP.
- b0se Classic XP Theme. A minimal theme that makes Windows XP look like a usable OS, not a baby toy. Ths author has some other fantastic themes, although not quite as 'serious'.
- Winamp 2.91. The best all-round audio and (now) video player. 3.0 versions are overbloated, even when running in a 512MB 2800MHz computer.
- EditPad Lite. Windows will never bundle a decent plain text editor, so I use this.
- Nutshell Toolbar for IE. Instant Google, Amazon and IMDB searches, just like in Mozilla.
- MS Powertoys for WindowsXP. Command Window Here, Tweak UI and PowerCalculator are quite nice, I wonder why aren't these included in the default XP installation.
- Ad-blocking Hosts file. Won't kill all obtrusive ads in webpages, but it's a good first line of defense.
- Nimo Codec Pack. All the video codecs you're likely to need in one convenient package. Warning: Some codecs such as DivX 5 Pro contain spyware. Avoid installing those using custom installation.
- Audacity. ProTools-like multitrack audio editor. More than enough for 99% of us.
- CDex. May those who never ripped an audio CD throw the first stone.
- Moppi Demopaja. Let's make some demos!
- Sun OpenOffice.org. Why do people still waste their money on MS Office?
- AIST MovieXOne. A good (although rather ugly) video editing app. The freeware version is not available anymore officially, but you can still find the older 1.03 version in shareware directories.
- VirtualDub. A powerful video format converter, unfortunately doesn't handle DV.

There you go. A Windows installation functional with guilt-free quality software.···