I love lists, and this is why for 10 blog posts, I’m going to share my top 5 lists of stuff. And I’m going to start with my Top 5 applications on my Windows machine. Yeah, Windows can suck in hundreds of ways, but beggars can’t be choosers, right? Well, unless when I’m at work where I use a Mac. Mmmm… a Maaaac.

#5: Yahoo! Messenger – These days, I won’t be able to live without an Internet connection (OK, that’s an exaggeration, but you know what I mean), and I can’t have my Intarnetz without Yahoo!’s instant messaging client, Yahoo! Messenger. It serves as my primary form of communication with friends, co-workers, and creepy strangers. Being on the Internet just looking at porn sites can be so lonely, so an occasional chat (or even a whole day conference) with friends can make the emptiness of cyberspace a little bit warmer.

#4: EditPad Lite – This is a free text editor that I use as a Notepad replacement. I don’t do a lot of (OK, I don’t do any) programming on my Windows machine, so I just use a text editor as a “buffer” for ideas and a container where I dump seemingly useless text that may become useful as I go about my business. EditPad Lite has a lot of features not present in Notepad, but its tab feature alone makes it worth the quick download for me.

#3: FastStone Screen Capture – Here’s another free software (for home users only) that makes capturing what’s happening on my screen so much easier than the traditional “print screen” key. Aside from multiple ways of capturing what’s on my screen, it also gives me a couple of extra neat features like a screen magnifier and a screen color picker. Groovy.

#2: Photoshop – Come on. Any self-respecting graphic designer or casual MS-Paint-is-for-sissies poser knows how to use even the most basic features of this baby. Once you learn how to do stuff in this application, you’ll feel high and mighty. Hence, the “cool” and “artistic” photomanipulated pics on Friendster. Also, with this awesome noun-turned-verb software, you won’t have to rely on a plastic surgeon to fix your fugly fat face!

#1: Firefox – If you’re still using Internet Explorer, all I have to say to you is “Dude, WTF?!“. Seriously, once I got a taste of Firefox’s tabbed browsing feature and its multitude of add-ons, I swore I’m never going back to IE. Evar. Well, occasionally I do for web development purposes, and I always feel dirty after each and every time. I tried Opera, Camino, and Flock, but I always come back home to this beauty.

So that’s it. My top 5 applications on my Windows machine. The top 5 applications I can’t live without. Well, I’m exaggerating again, but you know what I mean.