Software for the PC

I just bought Janet (my wife) a lightweight laptop and have the pleasure of setting her up on a Windows Vista machine. It came with Vista, and though my plan was to run Linux from it . . . Ubuntu couldn't get the built-in camera and network card to work without hassle and I don't have the luxury of time to hassle with it. So she's Vista and I'm finding a fairly shallow learning curve going from XP to Vista. It does give me a chance to reflect on what software I install on Windows machines when building from scratch, though.

Here are the freeware software apps I've installed so far:

• Firefox --with the extensions listed in a previous post.
• Thunderbird
• Picassa
• Open Office
• GOM Player --Allows me to play FLV movies and can be set so videos automatically go to full screen.
• iTunes
• MagicDisc --I have kids, and I don't like to have to have the physical CD in the drive in order for them to play. This doesn't seem to work with Vista so I'm looking for an alternative.
  
• Tuxpaint
• Skype
• MW Snap --Screen capturing made very easy.
• Adobe Reader
• PhotoStory
• Google Earth