Shoutbox

• BitTorrent client (recomended: BitTorrent or G3 Torrent)
  
• FTP Client (recomended: SmartFTP)
  
• Whatpulse (if you use it)
  
• XviD (if you use it)
  
• At least one game even if you don't want it then (recomended: Grand Theft Auto, your favourite)

Also get the latest drivers for video/audio cards, just after fresh install is a good time, because there are no old ones there. Compress hard disk if it's NTFS, and if it isn't, make it NTFS (I just remembered that I haven't done that, I will now). Set screen resolution higher, and enable ClearType.