Interesting list There nocturnus, I'll have to give foobar a try myself just for sake of trying it if nothing else.

For all registry cleaning and restore duties as you know I use avg pc tuneup, who's performance I've found frankly amazing in terms of keeping your computer running smoothly, it also does things like disk defragging and even defragging the registry if you want. Also there is a duplicate file or junk file finder (the junk file one is particularly useful for getting rid of random things windows logs), It also has a couple of useful tools such as an optimizer to clear up connection problems (which more than trippled my upload speed), and some shreading and deleting tools as well as lots of ways of seeing what is going on on your machine at different points without having to resort to the standard windows methods like task manager.

One of my favourite for instance is the startup manager which does exactly what it says on the tin, and lets you see what your computer is doing at startup and enable, disable or delete various processes.

It will also schedule automatic scans of your C drive if you want too.

I used to use a number of programs like C cleaner, but interface wise they proved a pain, pluss I didn't like things like having to select specific files to delete or clean or specific catagories of things to manually go through, in fact the amount of time I spent manually going through different catagories and trying to clean them was ridiculous, then I had to use another program called registry cleaner specifically for that, which also didn't have the world's best interface.

I also use avg antivirus which as you said, is perfect for set and forget. Imho a good antivirus is like a good houseelf, best doing it's jobwhen never seen, and avg does this very well,  should there be an issue it seems to clear it up very quickly.

it also does different sorts of threats too like spyware and rootkits, and of course auto updates, where previously I had to use spybot search and destroy which was a pain to update, and even more of a pain to use.

Both avg programs have very handy interfaces, at least with hal, in fact I was first recommended avg as a good antivirus by dolphin, and then I tried tuneup which has a very similar interface.

There are very few controls it's just "do this" button.

I've not tried the free download manager, sinse mostly my connections are fast enough not to worry, but one program I use frequently is the sendspace wizard, which has a very handy interface complete with both useful hotkeys and an easy to navigate panel, and does much of what you mention the download manager does such as setting local files, kewing files etc, though it is sendspace specific.

One of my favourite features is the ability to upload files from the right click menue (otherwise known as applications menue), in windows explorer, thus it's very easy for me to instantly put something for upload without mucking about with the wizard, ---- very handy for keeping copies of my thesis backed up online in case my flat ever caught fire and my external hard drive and desktop both got destroyed.

The only bad point is obviously the sendspace wizard is sendspace specific, but generally I've never found downloading half as time consuming or necessary to have resuming of interupted transfers as uploading, ---- I suppose I'm just generally lucky with connection speed ;D.

Another of my absolute favourite programs is the litle free unzipping utility 7zip. At one point I actually bought and registered a program called turbo zip express, then it turned out everything that could do could be done quite far more efficiently by 7zip, and the same goes for winzip (which I've tried), and winra too.

Not only are it's compression wrates exceptional, but everything can be done from the right click menue in terms of compressing and uncompressing, including uncompressing to the unzipped folder, creating new folders, unzipping to a location etc.

It also supports all common compression formats including ra and zip, pluss it's own default 7z file format is amazingly compressed, ---- I've got an mp3 down a good 40 or 50 percent using 7z format.

it's also great at recombining files, and like all the best programs you never need to worry about the interface at all in fact I barely think I've actually ever run thr program itself sinse everything can be done in windows explorer.

you can also compress not only many files at once into one folder, but as many individual folders as you like too, which is very handy.

Oh, and it is also great about telling you if there is a broken file in a zip archive too with a very readable message box specifying exactly what file that is.

The last major program I use is cyberlink power dvd, which is a great dvd player with highly accessible options, and far better playback in terms of video and speaker support than windows media player by default. It also has a great timed resume feature, which means you can turn your computer completely off and stil come back exactly where you were, which is great when watching long series like babylon 5 or startrek. it also has some very nice shortcut keys too, inf act

Another favourite option of mine that is only possible with hal on my pc is manually setting the time skip amount, brilliant for not having to sit through theme tunes sinse you can automatically have the player skip that amount of time only by pressing pg down.

it's my main method of playing dvds.

The only bad news is that the version of the player I have is rather old, version 6 I believe, where they are currently on version 10.

I downloaded version 10 to try it out, but managed to put it into a mode called theatre mode where none of the controlls were visible with lables, and try as I might I couldn't get it out of this without uninstalling which managed to completely do in my 15 day demo of the program.

I thus have a nasty suspiciion that while version 6 is a great accessible dvd player with some really handy options, version 10 has gone the modern way of things and has a flashy and irritating interface of doom!

That's the major list of random software I use which is probably less usual, not counting standard stuff like winamp (which I'm stil a fan of), m irc, or skype.

I am using Windows 7 Home Premium, and luckily 7-ZIP has successfully integrated into Windows Explorer's shell extension. Did you notice that z-ZIP has a specific installer for 64-bit version of Windows?

Development of better standards causes the old one to lose ground. As a matter of fact, the x86 architecture gradually leaves her place to a newer one, that is called 'x64'.

It is essential that the software developers to keep pace with those standards, and create software accordingly. That goes for TTS developers as well. I didn't see or hear any TTS voice that has been specifically designed to work on 64-bit version of Windows.

Hi,
Nope--AVG is not free. My thing about C Cleaner, as well as other registry cleaners, is that I have found some that are--um---not cleaning your registry? I had a computer crash as a result of using one of those.

Hi,
Other problem with x64 is that, although 32-bit aplications are backwards compatible, 64-bit ones are certainly not.

Hi,
No, no...I didn't say I was going to find the 64 bit version of an aplication and try it on 1a32 bit OS. The point was that some aplications are simply not written for X86.