Vince's Tech Tips - Ninite.com

If you've ever wiped a computer and restored the operating system, you know the annoyance of reinstalling all your software. Certainly, nothing can be done about proprietary software reinstallations – you have to haul out the CD, type in the product key, and wait for it to install. But for common open-source software that's freely available on the internet, there is a better way – ninite.com.

Almost every computer-savvy person needs to install Firefox, Filezilla, Dropbox, iTunes, Gimp, OpenOffice, Flash, Malwarebytes, 7-Zip, Evernote, Adobe Reader, and many other free open-source software. But tracking down the website these pieces of software come from, downloading them, and installing the latest versions can be a hassle. It can take hours. Enter ninite.com, the best resource for users looking to reinstall software after a wiped machine since sliced bread. Come to think of it, it's probably better than sliced bread, since sliced bread doesn't really help you restore a machine from a bare operating system. Sliced bread is largely useless in this regard.
 
Anyway, Ninite.com allows you to create a custom installer that includes all the open source software you'd like to install. To use it, you simply visit the website, click the checkboxes for the open-source software you'd like to install, then download the custom installer. This installer will install all the software for you, automatically picking the best versions (32-bit versus 64-bit) for your machine, as well as denying all those annoying tool-bar addons, browers additions, and other junk you don't need. Instead of tracking all this stuff down yourself and clicking through a bunch of installers, ninite.com does it all for you. And, of course, it's free.
 
So the next time you're sitting there reinstalling all your open-source software after a wipe, remember – there is a better way.