Updated 20-Sep-2023
I got a new Asus Zenbook with Windows 7 in order to future-proof myself against Windows 8 (I'll wait until Windows 9, or Ubuntu 14.10, thank you very much). This was back in December, 2012. I've since sold this (two months ago), but have kept this post, for posterity.
Installed Applications
Here are the applications I installed.
- Sysinternals Suite
- Open Office
- Sumatra PDF reader
- PDFedit
- PDFCreator
- Startup Monitor
- Startup Control Panel
- Keepass
- CCleaner
- Space Sniffer
- FileZilla
- KeyTweak remap the ctrl and alt so that the keystroke is identical for ctrl-c, ctrl-v, etc. (matches the less cumbersome keystrokes in OSX). Note that in OSX I use KeyRemap4MacBook. I've forgotten which keys I've remapped (or relearned), but I'm sure I will rediscover them shortly.
- Auto Hotkey
- Magic Mouse driver
- Wizmouse to get natural scrolling and other tweaks (Magic Mouse utility does not work on my Zenbook)
- GIMP
- Inkscape
- Bitami Djangostack
- Windows Debugging Tools
- Notepad++
Registry Hacks and Settings
Steve Ballmer can rot in hell for the abomination that is Windows 7 (much less Windows 8). These are the kind of incantations that must be invoked in order to get a system that doesn't give an error message every time you want to do anything (Steve Jobs has a few of these as well, I'm sure they will comfort each other in their fiery destination).
- Add a registry entry to make certain files low security (this suppresses the error message when you try to open anything you download or even creating a link to a file on the Taskbar).
- Change the alert setting: Control Panel > Action Center > Account Control Settings > Never Notify
- Optimize for SSD/HDDs
- Restore Quicklaunch