Samantha Rose Hunt01 May 2009, 8:29 PM
Just bought a new PC? What... you're dreading downloading and installing all your favorite software?
We’ve all been there: after opening up a shiny new PC, the realisation hits that the next task is the boring job of trawling the net for all the free apps that make up the basic platform for most people's PCs: Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash, iTunes, video CODECs, and so on. That task is no longer such an effort for Windows users, thanks to the release of a single-download collection of software.
Smart Installer Pack makes it simple to install all the basic apps on your PC. All you have to do is download the application (I’ll warn that it is quite large at 227MB, so make sure you factor that into your broadband plan's monthly usage allowance), you’ll then be able to choose from a host of popular applications such as Picasa, GIMP, Google Chrome, Daemon Tools, Firefox and many more. The fact that all the installers come in one EXE file is great, though you do still have to sit through the individual installs, choosing options.
There are many other similar apps that we've covered in the past that offer similar features to help with setting up PCs.
DriverPacks.net releases massive driver installer packs for XP and Vista that set out to fix the fact that Windows often doesn't have the basic drivers needed for all PCs when first installed. You can also slipstream DriverPacks into your Windows install CD/DVD so that Windows has the drivers before it is even installed. The
DPBase tool makes slipstreaming DriverPacks easier.
InstallPad allows you to install many common Windows apps, and rather than taking an all-in-one-installer approach like SmartInstallerPack, it downloads the apps you want to install at the time you click install.
Windows Post Installer Wizard helps you install many common apps, and also lets you change the Windows default settings away from annoying Microsoft-centric ones to more convenient ones (such as automatically adding Google as your default search provider in Internet Explorer and so on.)
AppSnap can install common apps for Windows (with a bent towards open source ones) and can also monitor for and download updates to those apps when they become available. However it is updated rather sporadically and hasn't been for a while.
GetIt indexes various Windows software repositories and allows you to "chain install" install software from them (you select all the apps you want installed and it goes and gets them, and installs them, one after another.)
Google Pack installs a bunch of software, which is pretty Google-centric with Chrome as the browser, and so on, but also includes Spyware Doctor, Adobe Reader, Skype and RealPlayer.
(Of course, it's worth mentioning that application repositories are nothing new. UNIX and Linux have had application repositories for decades that provide a single spot to go and get apps for your PC, with installation as easy as selecting what apps you want and clicking install. Still, it's nice to see similar sorts of concepts coming to the PC.)
With additional reporting by Dan Warne.