After every Windows reinstall in our shops, the same package goes onto the computer: a browser of your choice, LibreOffice, 7-Zip, VLC, a PDF reader and an image viewer. All free, all proven on the hundreds of machines that pass through our service each month. This article is that list, program by program — what it is, why that one in particular, and where to download it so you don’t pick up a virus instead of a program.
Where this list comes from
We are BG Computers, a computer and laptop repair service in Belgrade. We do Windows reinstalls practically every day, and every time the same question comes up: what does the user actually need to make the computer usable from day one. This list isn’t lifted from some foreign website — it’s what we truly install. No paid recommendations, no programs we’d wipe off our own computers.
Browser: Firefox or Chrome, but from the official site
Windows ships with Edge, and these days it’s a perfectly decent browser. Most people still ask for Chrome out of habit, and we often suggest Firefox as well — it uses less memory on weaker laptops and doesn’t push anything extra on you. Download it from mozilla.org, and Chrome from google.com/chrome. Never through a Google search and then the first result — more on that at the end of this article.
A practical tip from the shop: if your laptop is older and has 4 GB of RAM, don’t keep 20 tabs open in Chrome. That’s the most common reason people bring us a “slow computer” that is actually perfectly healthy.
Office: LibreOffice
Microsoft Office costs money, and that’s no small amount for someone who needs to open a Word document twice a month. LibreOffice does everything the average user needs: Writer instead of Word, Calc instead of Excel, Impress instead of PowerPoint. It opens and saves .docx and .xlsx files, so exchanging documents with others works without any trouble in 95% of cases. It can stumble on more complex Excel spreadsheets with macros, but the average home user will never even notice that.
Official site: libreoffice.org. It also has Serbian as an installation language.
Antivirus: Defender is enough — and what to avoid
This surprises a lot of people: we don’t install an additional antivirus. Windows Defender (Microsoft Defender) is built into Windows 10 and 11, is updated regularly, and has ranked near the top of independent tests for years. For a normal user — email, internet, work — it’s perfectly sufficient.
What to avoid:
- Free antiviruses that constantly pop up with ads and “warnings” to buy the full package. They cause more aggravation than benefit, and some seriously slow the computer down.
- Two antiviruses at the same time. They don’t protect you twice — they clash, bog the system down and cause problems. We see it all the time.
- “PC optimizers” and “driver updaters” that advertise themselves as protection. At best these are useless programs, and at worst they are exactly what they claim to protect you from.
If the computer is already infected, Defender sometimes can’t clean everything on its own — for that there’s virus removal as a service, where we run through the system with specialized tools.
Archiver: 7-Zip
Everyone knows WinRAR, but it formally requires a license after 40 days. 7-Zip is completely free, opens anything that can reach you — zip, rar, 7z, iso — and compresses better than most. No ads, no nagging to buy, and installation takes ten seconds. Site: 7-zip.org. This is probably the program with the best ratio of usefulness to size on the whole list.
Video and music: VLC
VLC media player plays literally everything. An old AVI from a 2008 DivX camera, an MKV downloaded yesterday, a DVD, an audio recording from a dictaphone — it has never once happened that VLC couldn’t open something for us. That’s why it’s on every one of our installs. Download it from videolan.org, and watch out for exactly that site, because fake copies with added “bonuses” have been circulating around VLC for years.
System cleanup: an honest word about CCleaner
Here we’ll be direct. We used to install CCleaner for everyone — not anymore. The program changed owners, picked up aggressive pop-up ads, updates itself and pushes the paid version, and in 2017 one of its updates even distributed malware. The benefit from it today is small: Windows 10 and 11 have built-in cleanup (Storage Sense and “Disk Cleanup”) that does the same job without the risk.
A special warning: don’t use registry cleaning. No “registry cleaner” will speed up your computer, and it can bring the system down. We know, because we’re the ones who fix those computers afterwards. If a computer is genuinely slow, the cause is almost always a full disk, a weak component or malware — not a “dirty registry.”
PDF: Sumatra instead of Adobe
For plain PDF reading you don’t need Adobe Reader — several hundred megabytes that take five seconds to load. Sumatra PDF is a couple of megabytes, opens instantly, and reads PDF, ePub and comics. Site: sumatrapdfreader.org. If you only open a PDF occasionally, you don’t even need that — every modern browser opens PDFs on its own. Adobe remains the logical choice only if you fill out complex forms or sign documents.
Images: IrfanView for viewing, Paint.NET for editing
IrfanView is an image viewer over 25 years old and still unmatched for speed. It opens every format, handles basic cropping and resizing, and is free for home use (irfanview.com).
For more serious editing — removing backgrounds, layers, color correction — there’s Paint.NET (getpaint.net). It’s not Photoshop, but for 90% of home needs it is. If even that isn’t enough, GIMP is a completely free alternative to Photoshop; just be prepared for a steeper learning curve.
The most important part of this article: download ONLY from official sites
This isn’t a throwaway line — it’s the reason several infected computers reach us every week. The scenario is always the same: the user types “vlc download” into Google, clicks the first result — which is a paid ad for a fake site — and downloads an installer that installs malware alongside the program. The file is even named correctly, the program works fine afterwards, and in the background the damage is already being done.
The rules we follow and recommend to you:
- Go directly to the address of the official site (they’re all listed in this article), not through a search.
- Skip results marked “Sponsored” or “Ad” — fake sites regularly buy up those positions.
- Steer clear of download portals that wrap programs in their own “download managers” with extras.
- During installation, read what you’re unchecking. Even legitimate free programs sometimes offer some toolbar or a change of search engine — always “Decline.”
If you suspect you’ve already picked up something — the computer pops up ads, searches lead to strange sites, everything has slowed down — don’t install another five “cleaners.” Take a look at our page for virus removal, and the prices for all services are listed on the price list. For individuals, a courier picks the computer up and returns it cleaned — you don’t have to carry it anywhere, or you can come in person to one of our three shops (Arena and Piramida in New Belgrade, the third near the Botanical Garden).
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a paid antivirus?
For typical home use — no. Windows Defender is built in, free and sufficient, provided you download programs from official sites and don’t open suspicious email attachments. Paid solutions mostly make sense in companies, because of central management.
Do you install these programs after a Windows reinstall?
Yes, it’s a standard part of the job. After a Windows reinstall we restore the drivers, updates and the basic set of programs from this list, as agreed with you — so the computer is ready to work the moment you pick it up.
Is CCleaner dangerous?
It’s not dangerous in the sense of a virus, but today it’s unnecessary and annoying: ads, nagging toward the paid version, and a job that Windows already has built in. Avoid registry cleaning in particular — there’s no measurable benefit, and it can do damage.
I downloaded a program from some site and now ads keep popping up. What should I do?
Don’t install additional “cleaners” — often they’re part of the problem too. Call us or send the computer by courier; we’ll inspect the system, remove the malware and check that nothing is left running in the background. Details are on the virus removal page.