How many of you were put in the position of standing in front of a newly installed Windows OS without a proper backup and thinking how many hours you’re going to spend further to configure the system just the way you like it? I believe plenty of you were.

Windows comes with a set of default applications that are simply unprofessional and outdated. That’s why I like to replace them all with alternatives that fit my needs. I’m going to put together a small list of recommended changes you should make as soon as you install a clean Windows OS.

1. Change Internet Explorer to Firefox
The reason is obvious. I chose Firefox for its stability, user interface, and for the ability to personalize it exactly the way you want it. Internet Explorer (especially versions before 7.0) is lame and obsolete. But what could I expect from a software that hasn’t released a new version in five years?

2. Change Outlook Express to Thunderbird
I’d go for Mozilla’s mail solution on this one because it seems like the easiest to use. Optionally, you can go for a popular webmail service like GMail. Thunderbird is more likely to be used when you have multiple e-mail accounts you’d like to manage. I’ve never had problems with it in the past two years

3. Change Windows Media Player to Winamp+MPlayer (Linux version ported to Windows)
Windows Media Player was smart and innovative for its time, but I started to dislike that when the AVI/XVID formats were getting popular. Music should go through the old Winamp and movies should be played with MPlayer, the ported Linux version. This is one of the best movie players I’ve ever used. I never needed an additional codec to play movies.

4. Replace Paint with Fireworks / Photoshop
You won’t be doing 2D sketch designing your whole life, wouldn’t you?

5. Replace your desktop themes
I personally like futuristic themes for my computer and a Vista pack is more than enough for you to get out of that default scheme.