1) Install Windows Vista, then go to Windows Update & install every update available.

2) If you have a Bluetooth adapter, then don’t forget to install BlueSoleil 5. It is a must have application for all your Bluetooth needs in Windows Vista. Although you can transfer & receive files without BlueSoleil in Vista too, but since it is an OEM bundle, chances are you already have it bundled with your Bluetooth adapter.

3) Make sure you use Ad Muncher, it is a must have application for Windows Vista. Just install it, then run it & forget it, it won’t bug you & do its work automatically. Vista comes with Windows Defender which is good enough for removing Adware & Spyware. If you want something else, there are many free tools to choose from but once u start using Ad Muncher, you won’t need an adware cleaner & you can very well disable Windows Defender.

4) The best torrent client for Windows is undoubtedly µTorrent. It us low on resources, works the way you want it to work & even provides a WebUI for controlling even when you are away from the computer. Start it, configure the way you want it like setting the folder to download files to, enable port forwarding & that’s it, Just double click on a torrent file & it will do the rest automatically without bugging you. A very good Vista-ish skin for µTorrent can be found here.

5) For CD Burning you will be satisfied & surprised by InfraRecorder. It is a very small & simple, easy to use CD Burner with support for writing Audio & Video CD out of the box. It can also make CD Images of your optical CDs. For mounting Virtual CDs, there is no better solution then DAEMON Tools for Windows. It hardly has any front end & runs simply from the tray. Install it, then right click on any disk image & select to mount it.

6) A must have Add-on for Internet Explorer 7 in Vista is IE7 Pro, it has one very small but effective Download Manager integrated which works very nicely with IE 7. If this isn’t sufficient for you then you can always use Orbit Downloader. To view the loaded cookies in Windows you can use Cookie Monster.

7) When it comes to IM clients, I recommend using the official IM client due to more features available compared to something like Pidgin.

8 ) For your Image Viewing & Management tasks, you can rely on the inbuilt Windows Photo Gallery or something like Pictomio which uses the power of WPF in Vista. If you can pay, then there is nothing better than ACDSee 10 for Windows. Other good solutions are XNView but I haven’t tried them. You can also use Paint.net which is by far the best free Image editing application for Windows Vista.

9) When it comes to system maintenance, all you need is CCleaner or TuneUp utilities. These are enough for all your maintenance tasks. You can use either the inbuilt defragmenter or use any free defragmenting application like Tune Up inbuilt defragmenter or Defraggler.

10) You must be having a mobile phone, right. If it is Sony Ericsson then make sure you see MyPhoneExplorer & if it is Nokia, then make sure to install Nokia PC Suite for managing everything about your phone

11) A very good & lite PDF reader I would recommend is Foxit PDF reader , it’s only 2 MB & works wonders however it is good only for simple text PDFs, not those with inbuilt movies or interactive content. For that you should use Adobe Reader which is very fast now & even supports hardware acceleration in Windows Vista something which Foxit lacks. For printing to PDF, have a look at BullZip PDF printer with Ghostscript 8.6. Install it & then you can print any document or web page to PDF.

12) For all your Multimedia needs just install K-Lite Codec Pack. It has FFDShow inbuilt which is the only decoding engine you will ever need. For more formats like Quicktime & Real Media, just install Quicktime Alternative & Real Alternative. These codec come without the player so you can simply use Windows Media Player 11 or Media Player classic to play the videos.

13) The inbuilt security in Vista is quite beefed up, in most cases the default ones are enough. Still if you want to have control over the system, then just install Comodo Personal Firewall which is free for home use. You already have Ad muncher installed so with this firewall it is a killer combination. For your anti virus needs, I would recommend NOD32, the best anti-virus for Windows Vista I have ever used. It’s very light on resource usage. For storing your passwords, you can either use Keypass or AI Roboform.

14) The Media center application in Vista will take care of all your PVR needs; you can even record TV using it. If your TV tuner card is not supported then have a look at ChrisTV or Media Portal, which is equally good.

15) For converting videos from on format to another, you can use SUPER, although I use Riverpast video cleaner.

16) A must have UI enhancer for Vista is Vize. Install it after you have installed every update for Windows. Vista comes with inbuilt sidebar which brings gadgets to Windows, but if you want a bigger library of Widgets, considers using Yahoo Widgets.

17) Windows Vista comes with Windows Mail inbuilt but it lacks support for Windows Live Mail in it. A better solution is Windows Live Mail desktop using which you can check & access your Yahoo, Gmail & Windows Live Mail. It’s quite simple to use.

18 ) For saving contacts, you can use Windows Contacts. It integrates with WLM Desktop so you don’t have to worry about anything.

19) For archiving purpose WinRAR is so far the best, however another good & free solution is jZip which integrates in Windows like it is a part of Windows. The shell integration is better than WinRAR. sIt can open RAR files too, just that you can only make Zip files using it.

20) You can use Winmpy FLV player for playback of FLV files like those downloader from YouTube.