A long time ago I wrote a list of software I always ended up installing on Windows XP. This is a revised list of what I use on my Windows 7 installation.

Internet

• Google Chrome – I usually run the dev channel which is mostly stable for everyday use.
• Firefox 4+

Development

• RubyMine
• Ruby (via RubyInstaller)
• Java
• Maven
• Notepad++
• Msysgit

Utilities

• WinSCP
• Putty
• Launchy (alt+space for search and execution of files and apps)
• SyncToy (syncing images across different physical drives)
• 7Zip

Office

• Google Docs
• LibreOffice

Backup

• Jungledisk for bulk image storage on Amazon S3
• Dropbox for sharing smaller files among different computers

Multimedia

• VLC
• Wimp (norwegian service for audio streaming, a lot like Spotify)
• FFDShow (adds codecs to Windows Media Player)
• Picasa as image library

Omissions

I did not list a pdf viewer as I usually download the pdfs with Chrome and use the builtin viewer.