One of the things that is most likely to keep me using my existing system, apart from the fact that it works perfectly well and does everything I need, is that moving to a new Windows machine is SUCH a pain, and yes, I know Apple makes it easy.

I use many programmes, many of them free, but even so, finding the downloads and installing them all takes a huge amount of time. Wouldn't it be good if we could have just one tool that let you select all the software you usually use and install it in one hit?

Courtesy of How-To Geek, Tadaaahh! Ninite Makes Installing Software Incredibly Simple

Ninite is a cool new service created by two programmers in San Francisco who believe that installing software shouldn’t require work.

It’s simple to use and has a large selection of popular freeware and open source applications. Just pick the apps you want to install, download the Ninite installer, then walk away and do something fun while it does all the work for you. The service installs the software with default settings and says “no” to any extra crapware (like browser toolbars) the installers might try to sneak in. Ninite isn’t even installed on your system, you just use a stand alone executable to begin the install process.

As we see fewer and fewer machines with CD/DVD drives installed and more and more network-centric applications anyway, the day of buying and installing a specific programme on your machine may be going away steadily.

But in the meantime, we could all do with a halfway step that lets the machine do the donkey-work; isn't that why we got them in the first place?

How do you manage your software reinstalls? I tend towards the "swearing about losing the disc, then swearing about losing the product activation code, then swearing about having to set up my preferences again from scratch" model.

And you? Comments are open.

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