Is Martin stalking me?
I don't think so, but his great overview of what to do with a new Dell PC is spookily similar to what I did recently on a new box for home.
Of course, after you've followed Martin's guidance and got the basics right, you have to add a few essentials, in my case that's this lot:
- UnxUtils - Cygwin is great, but it's too heavy for me
- PuTTY - ssh, scp, sftp and more, the Swiss-Army network tool
- RealVNC - for those times when RDP just won't work
- Unison - for file synching with the old box and much more
- Psi - my favourite Jabber/xmpp IM client
- Winamp - the only Windows media player with a UI that doesn't make me retch, and it's got the essential Last.fm plugin
- Foxylicious - the best way I've found to integrate del.icio.us bookmarks into Firefox
I need to sort out a few dev tools too, Python, and the freebie VC++ are the most likely candidates, I'm well overdue for another look at Eclipse, so I guess that might get included at some point too.
And finally, why Windows? Well I have to use it for work (vpn client etc) and most of the kids' games won't run on anything else, so it's a necessary evil, and Dell still don't offer the chance to buy standard boxes without the Microsoft tax. I'm still deciding on whether to go dual boot or VMware for the sanity relieving Ubuntu install on the box. VMware has the vote currently, as it'll make the new box look like 2 (or more) boxes at the same time.
