New as in you didn't have it before. . .

Well, I recently inherited a Gateway. Best of all, it's fairly new and not an 'ol beater at all. Bad news, the thing has been so invested with all species of viruses, spyware, adware, and bummerware. While I toyed with the idea of tossing out the Windows MCE and opting for linux, I want to use it as a media center extender for my xbox360. And as have yet to find an easy way to do so with linux (although I'm sure there is a way to do so with linuxmce) I just don't want to mess with it. Besides I need a refresher on XP and a test box for the A+ exam I'm studying for. So I decided that my best bet was to simply format and start with a fresh install.

Okay so that's the bad news, the worse news is that the box has become so degraded that it could not even create the system restore disk required for a redo. After a lot of web searching on google, I could find no way to bypass or remedy the errors I was getting. I broke down and chatted with gateway support. Long story short, I had to order a new system disk directly from them and pay for shipping, etc. . . Considering I could delay gratification for 1-3 weeks and fork over the $20 (instead of the $200 for a copy of Vista), I conseeded to the wait.

In the mean time, I've had time to think about all the apps I'll put into my fresh install. Over the years, I have bookmarked a plethera of web pages on great freeware, open source XP applications, and the like but have decided to create my own list as an amalgam of all the resources and help myself decide. So here's my own fresh Windows installation applications page.