Windows 7 is the default operating system upon any laptop/desktop since late 2009. For enthusiasts and businesses, the OS has been available for over six months. But you need more than just the OS alone – applications complete your computing experience. Bookmark this page and visit it whenever you do a complete re-format of your C: drive and do a fresh re-install of Windows.

The below are tasks you simply must do, and applications you must install to get the most out of your Windows 7. While these are the basic blocks, there are a few more advanced applications which are also great to have, you can view the “advanced essentials” page here. Please note that all of the applications recommended below are free.

1. Windows Updates
The first and foremost thing you must do before anything else, is to update Windows. This will provide you with security and compatibility updates. Almost every hardware device driver is available from Windows Update (WU), and you can generally be certain that drivers obtained from WU are stable. Ever since Windows 7 made device support over WU such an important priority, a number of people have taken to a policy of only obtaining drivers through WU, and don’t even bother to use the driver CD bundled with their hardware.
Download: Automatic, start it up from Control Panel

2. Security – Microsoft Security Essentials
It is free, stops viruses/spyware/other-malware in their tracks, and is light, so why not use this anti-virus? MSE is currently at version 1.0 and is recognized as being one of the lightest anti-malware application from a major vendor, besides its engine being rated among the top three antivirus applications. Allow it to schedule regular updates of itself, so that it can catch new malware. If you install MSE and also leave UAC at its default level of prompting, you can be quite certain that your computer is secure, and that unusual activity will be flagged up.
Download: http://www.pcworld.in/download/microsoft-security-essentials

3. DirectX Redistributable Updates
Windows 7 does not come with all the extra DLLs that an expanded DirectX 9 provides. It does support DirectX 10 and 11 but offers only a core install of dX9. For improved compatibility with newer games and slightly improved performance, update to the latest version of the DirectX 9.0c Redistributable runtimes. The latest version that can be installed offline, is a release from February 2010.
Download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=0CEF8180-E94A-4F56-B157-5AB8109CB4F5&displaylang=en

4. Windows Live Essentials
Want to make videos out of your photos, edit WMV videos, add soundtracks, or write your video to a DVD? You cannot. Or atleast, not without installing the application, since Windows Movie Maker has been removed from the latest OS due to anti-trust concerns. Install the Windows Live Essentials pack to get the following applications – Windows Live Movie Maker, Windows Live Writer (for blogs), Windows Live Mail, Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Photo Gallery, Toolbar and Windows Live Family Safety.
Download: http://download.live.com/

5. Adobe Acrobat Reader 9.3
What happens to all those PDF forms and documents seen on websites and e-mailed by people to you? You need to have a PDF viewer for sure, to be able to view and print Portable Document Format (PDF) files. The lure of alternative viewer apps is strong, but Adobe’s own application has become much faster now. It can also use GPU acceleration where relevant, and supports all features possible in a PDF, so that is the one being recommended here.
Download: http://get.adobe.com/reader/

6. Adobe Flash Player 10.1
The same Flash technology that entertains you on a website like YouTube comes back to trouble you on other sites in the form of advertisements. Yet we cannot pull away from Flash animations and other content, atleast not until HTML5 video is widely used.
Download: http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/

7. Windows 7 Codecs v2.43
The time when a randomly picked audio or video file could not be played by Windows Media Player is gone. Windows 7 now has support for most of the common multimedia file-formats (though the Home Basic and Starter editions do not). But still, a downloaded file in a high-quality format such as MKV or FLAC will not play since these formats are not supported by the built-in codecs. So you need a codec pack for the Windows 7 operating system, which does not mess with the built-in codecs but sits unobtrusively, ready to decode any multimedia file. Note that this codec pack is just that, and does not bundle any player, so you can just use Windows Media Player, or download and use any other player you like.
Download: http://shark007.net/win7codecs.html

8. Productivity Suite - OpenOffice.org 3.2
In most cases, the purpose of buying a PC (or laptop) is to do work. This means a productivity suite is inevitable, and even those who uses online office apps (like Google Docs) would benefit from having an offline application installed. As the most widely used free office suite in the world, the opensource OpenOffice is a good choice. It is an alternative to the expensive MS Office suite and is compatible with it, uses a familiar menu-toolbar interface, and just works.
Download: http://download.openoffice.org/

Advanced users can click this link to read Part 2 of this story.