@aibek: I like the list. It’s hard to satisfy everyone’s needs as everyone needs something different. If I were to make a list:

1.) firefox portable with flash, downthemall!, greasemonkey, weboftrust, adblockplus. Opera is nice but firefox is extensible. Opera blows firefox out of the water in terms of speed (not memory).

2.) universal extractor (http://legroom.net/software/uniextract) don’t knock it ’till you try it. It’s portable. It handles everything izark does plus installers in exe or msi format.

3.) System handywork: sysinternals + xp/2003 admin toolkits all from microsoft:(procexplorer, procmon, desktops): ever have that problem where you try to eject a usb drive but it says it’s in use. find the handle with procexplorer. How about the problem where a window pops up but task manager doesn’t have it listed as an active program and only shows you the task list? Procexplorer has the answer by clicking the target and dragging it onto the window. Great.

4.) Office/productivity suite: Gmail, Google docs, google calendar. Why install applications if you don’t have to? This is the top apps list though so if google doesn’t count: openoffice + thunderbird (enigmail, spamato, and lightning extensions)

5.) media player: vlc – I don’t understand how anyone can touch this. It’s portable, it doesn’t need codecs, and it’s loaded with features (including a media server and file conversion)
handbreak is a nice gui for vlc file conversion (flash videos too!)

6.) defrag: defraggler or mydefrag (it’s portable and you can script around it)

7.) virtualbox (Run any os within your os. need to test something for a friend? need to do something secret? need to run an OSX tool while in windows or visa versa?) Best part: turn most back-ups into virtual images that you can take and boot anywhere!

8.)Antivirus – avira, cureit, or eset online scanner. I’m not a fan of real-time anything on my pc but if you’re forgetful or just not familiar enough: avira is the way to go. The “can not update” and once a day pop up issues can be fixed.

9.) Antimalware – O.K. so this is a HUGE category: rootkits, spyware, malware, addware ETC. for such a huge topic one tool doesn’t cut it. Malwarebytes is great but it doesn’t catch everything
what about:
superantispyware free – catches things malwarebytes doesn’t
spybot S&D – old standard
a2 antimalware – bloat but tests very well (top 3 on some sites)
icesword – able to kill things the task manager can’t
combofix – if for nothing else other than it installs the recovery console for you.
10.) graphic editing – ifranview/pixlr for quick things, gimp/inkscape for big things. If you don’t need to install an app why bother?

11.) online storage – skydrive. 25Gb of free storage. Mount’s like a drive in windows explorer. Can’t
beat that.

12.) IM//social – I really like digsby’s polish but what about meebo? It’s online so you don’t have to install anything? If you’re looking for small and fast why not miranda?

13.) images (cd burning etc) – daemon tools lite + imgburn. Mount existing images with daemon tools then create // burn images with imgburn. Can’t beat that.

14.) backup — ntbackup or “backup and restore center”. W7 and vista can backup to a vhd for free! no need to install anything!

Bonus —

ubuntu linux within windows – http://portableubuntu.demonccc.com.ar/en/media
spare browser? How about a spare OS?

(linux over windows anyday)

Just my two cents.
Sorry for grammar and spelling. I’m lazy and illiterate.
Hope this helps.

If you want to control your PDF output in MS Office with VBA, PDFCreator is the best.

Thanks for the list, some of the items were new to me. For instance, never heard of SM Media Player before,

Tune Up 2010 & Glary Utilities, which one is better?

Despite that, I find it pretty good.

I guess it also scores points to be at the top of the list at http://www.matousec.com/projects/proactive-security-challenge/results.php

Insult me all you want for relying on a benchmarking test score, but in my opinion it can’t all just be invalid information.

1) Firefox
2) Avast
3) JKDefrag or MyDefrag
4) Glary Utilities, CCleaner, CleanAfterMe, Disk Cleaner,
FCleaner, RegSeeker and RegPair
5) Malwarebytes and Spybot
6) 7Zip
7) Gimp, XnView and PicPick (Would use Picasa if it could be offered in a portable version, preferably PortableApps.com Format)
PDFCreator
9) PNotes
10) DownloadHelper (Firefox extention)
11) Parted Magic, Clonezilla and Toucan
12) Pidgin
13) VLC Media Player and SM Media Player
14) XMPLay and Songbird
15) CDBurnerXP, InfraRecorder and ImgBurn

Please note the majority of these applications are available in versions designed to run from a USB. For those interested I recommend picking up portable versions from PortableApps.com as many portable applications offered directly by software developers leaves behind information on the host PC. An example is Glary Utilities.

Hope that helps

I have Picasa on my PC but for quick viewing/editing I do still come back to IrfanView which to me is incredibly quick and small footprint – and does everything I want in a picture viewer/resizer.

Anyways – great list (and some useful additional comments) and has pointed me in the direction of a few things I hadn’t come across! Thanks!

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

And I totally agree with you, that a system that needs an anti-virus (and for that matter a defragmenter) seems a half finished product.

and I know. combining anti-viruses can cause problems. w/e, don’t care.

One thing I will never understand is why does a system need an anti-virus, seems to me like a half finished product.