List Of Default Software I Use On Windows
The Software market is high. It is not like the olden days when all you had were a handful of choices. Today you have more than a dozen of software that could do the same job for you. I have always been a Software-hopper. Every time I don’t like something about particular software, I switch to something else until I finally find the one that is just perfect. So here in this article, I present to you the List of default Software I use on Windows.
1. Google Chrome
The number of Web Browsers that I have tried exceeds the number of fingers in my hands. Mozilla, Opera, Brave, UC, Edge, and whatnot. But no matter how many of them I try, I always keep coming back to Chrome. I have also tried chromium thinking that it could fill the gap for chrome while being open source but that didn’t help either.
It includes flash by default. It has the richest market of extensions and it performs faster than any other competitor. Also, I have an Android Smartphone so Google Chrome fits perfectly in that ecosystem of syncing my data between all of them.
2. VLC Media Player
This isn’t just my favorite. I am sure most of you also have VLC set default to take care of your Videos. I previously have used GOM player for over 2 years. Loved that too but a couple of times I had to play some files that weren’t working in GOM and required an additional codec installation. That was the time when I heard the famous phrase that says ‘VLC plays anything you throw at it’. So out of curiosity, I tried it and it hasn’t failed once.
3. Windows Photo viewer
Windows 10 brought in some drastic changes and my lovely windows photo viewer was gone. So I stuck with the new photos app from the windows store that was given default thinking that it was time to move on. But that thing is damn slow and I say this on record. It takes at least 300% more startup time and the UI is also not friendly. So I did some hunting and found my photo viewer back.
4. Gimp
Before some of you photoshop fans start debating with Gimp gurus, Let me make it clear that Gimp is not a 100% replacement for photoshop.
It lacks a lot of features that photoshop offers but for a setup size that is roughly 20 times smaller at 80 MB compared to 1.5Gigs of the slimmest photoshop variant what more do you want. I am not a professional photo editor. I used photoshop for a trial period but it was too heavy for my system. It had more features than I knew what to do with. So I went for Gimp and I can assure you that unless you edit photos for a living, Gimp won’t disappoint you.
5. 7zip
For a long period of time, I didn’t even know that there was an alternative to Winrar. My knowledge of compression utilities was limited. But one day I saw this file with a .7z extension and on researching, I found about 7zip. It is extremely efficient in packing and fast in unpacking almost any compressed file. I also once tried Peazip but I just felt that for my needs it was too much for an archiving program. I found 7zip minimalist and to the point.
6. Windows Media player
What do I say about this beauty! They probably wanted this to be a full-featured media player but I guess it didn’t work out well. I use Windows Media Player to play my music and only music. I have tried iTunes and I was not at all impressed. With the type of hype Itunes had, the player wasn’t worth it. Does it create playlists, import music what more I can ask for? I had tried some others too thinking that they might give me better quality but that doesn’t help at all. So if I wanted audio quality I ended up using another sound-enhancing driver.
7. Qbittorrent
QBitTorrent is arguably the best torrent client. I am sure 90% of you reading this are using µtorrent which has become the de-facto choice when it comes to torrent clients. Even I have used it for 3 years or so up until last year when I found QBitTorrent.
The Ads in Utorrent were troubling me a lot. Then I found QBitTorrent. In the beginning, I was a bit skeptical since I hadn’t heard anyone using anything other than µtorrent. But it was damn easy to use and every night I sleep, QBitTorrent takes care of my downloads to date.
8. WPS Office
Ms-office costs a whopping $100 and it packs a lot of unnecessary stuff with it. I usually work online on Google Docs but prefer to always have the free WPS office with me in case the internet’s not working and I need to continue my work.
9. Windows Defender
Seriously find it really strange that nobody uses this. I observed a lot of people the first thing they do on buying a new computer or after fresh windows install is that they install all these antivirus programs which in my honest opinion are not at all helpful. I have been using Windows Defender from the very beginning and I haven’t had a problem ever since. Windows actually packs in the Real-time threat detection feature which is more than what you need.
10 – Notepad++
There is nothing to compare here. This is so good that once you start using it, you won’t even think about switching. The Notepad text editor is pretty good, no doubt but when you get an editor with almost the same resource consumption and exponentially more features, you don’t need to think twice.
Conclusion
So here was a list of the default applications that I use. We all have our own personal choices and I just wanted to share my preferences when it came to default software. So what software do you use? Anything special worth mentioning? Do let us know in the comment section below.
