<p>For me</p>
<p>Itunes: music
Soulseek: P2P for underground hip hop
Emule: P2P for everything else
Adaware: Spyware
Zone Alarm: My fav. free firewall
Trillain: Use Aim/MSN/yahoo/icq all at the same time
Firefox: Obvious</p>
<p>As for programs I gotta have the Adobe Creative Suite 2 Premium and Winzip</p>
<p>erm..you guys are gonna be on a huge college network so you need a few tools to protect you. You don't want people like me sniffing the packets that you send out of the network ;)</p>
<p>rated best by me and by consumer reports:
firewall:
zone alarm</p>
<p>anti-virus:
kaspersky
nod32</p>
<p>spyware: (download about 3-4 of these for 1 program won't catch everything)
ewido antispyware
a-squared
windows defender (finally a decent microsoft product)
lavasoft ad-aware</p>
<p>What NOT to download:
norton - resource hog
mcafee- resource hog</p>
<p>My personal favorites:
trillian
xfire
I8kfangui</p>
<p>ozym:ahh alright. i have cable so i never make use of download managers. on a rare ocassion i might but really it's not neccesary. i love my 15/2 connection.</p>
<p>I second quirkily's comment about Foobar2000--although I would say that it is a must no matter which format(s) you use, especially if you have a large playlist of files. Also the plugin foo<em>ui</em>columns is a must.</p>
<p>It's extremely lightweight, and therefore extremely fast. The audio quality is better than any other player too (for example, as far as I know it was first player to perfect gapless playback). Plus with plugins you can add only as many features as you need.</p>
<p>Definitely an all around great program.</p>
<p>Kinda off topic, but does anybody know where to get Final Cut Pro for pretty cheap?</p>
<p>eBay? Maybe look at used copies on amazon or look at apple.com.</p>
<p>Windows Media Player 11 beta is the bomb! You can browse your media collection by album art and it rocks. It also manages your pictureus, music, and other media. The key word there is MANAGES. Unlike winamp and some other programs that are "light" in Windows media player you can search and sort 100 different ways. in winamp and others you have to make a play lists by clicking through windows explorer and dragging and dropping, which is lame.</p>
<p>Hey do any of you know about a program that lets you flag certain files (e.g. you have three word files and want to remember one is the one you want to send to someone...)?</p>
<p>Google Earth</p>
<p><a href="http://softwareelectronics.com/%5B/url%5D">http://softwareelectronics.com/</a></p>
<p>you can get insane student deals on this site many of the professional applications you were looking at!!</p>
<p><a href="http://www.freewarefiles.com/%5B/url%5D">http://www.freewarefiles.com/</a></p>
<p><a href="http://downloads-zdnet.com.com/%5B/url%5D">http://downloads-zdnet.com.com/</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.majorgeeks.com/%5B/url%5D">http://www.majorgeeks.com/</a></p>
<p>These sites are not half bad for freeware or for shareware. Even for the stuff you pay for, they are pretty good because the reviews are great.</p>
<p>i'm curious to know, what program people use for burning cd/dvds.</p>
<p>Pavlov, I use real player. But, I have a patient temperment:)</p>
<p>There is a variety of freeware for cd/dvd burning on zdnet and it is all reviewed up the wazoo.</p>