Each time I setup a new computer with a fresh operating system, I re-evaluate the software I install on it.

Word Processing. In addition to Vista, I'm taking the plunge into Microsoft Office 2007. It looks good and has some nice features (I like how documents are easily "skinnable"), but the interface and document format is completely different. I don't know why they did it either. The new interface is not very difficult to understand, though, which is good. In some ways the "ribbon" is better because you can see more of your available options right there at the top of the screen. (I wish it was on the side, though, since I've got widescreen.)

Image Processing. I'm trying out Paint.NET for my "Photoshop" needs. It's an open source Windows Paint replacement. It's not even close to the maturity of Photoshop, but it's far, far smaller and quicker to load. I hope it will handle the things I do most often, which is basically cropping, editing icons, and converting file formats. Sure, Photoshop can do all of that better than anyone, but it's got such a huge resource footprint for what should be lightweight tasks. I considered Gimp, but I just couldn't bring myself to install it and all of its dependencies on a fresh Windows installation.

Text Editing. I still haven't found a text editor better than TextPad. It's rock solid and free (donationware). I looked at Notepad++ but it looks amateurish. At work they are fond of UltraEdit, but it's commercial and I don't like it so much. The only thing TextPad lacks is scripting, but I've only rarely found myself needing that outside of Visual Studio. (TwistPad is the only text editor I've seen that I like as much as TextPad, but it's trialware and doesn't have scripting either.)

File Synchronization. I've been using the quirky but blindingly fast TreeComp 3 for file synchronization for almost 5 years now. Now I'm trying out Microsoft's SyncToy. I can already tell it's not as robust and not as fast, and it lacks the ability to overwrite read-only files (handy when copying source-controlled code), but so far it is working well-enough.