My family recently got an Asus netbook, which has plunged me once again into the world of Windows XP. Fortunately I came prepared -- while I spend most of my day on a Mac, I occasionally dual boot into XP on my MacBook Pro, and I've accumulated a number of must-have utilities for thriving in Windows.

Launchy: A fast application launcher that allows you to quickly find and run applications on your computer. It's roughly equivelent of Quicksilver on the Mac, though Quicksilver offers more advanced capabilities.

Cute PDF: A free PDF creator for Windows; "print" your document to the Cute PDF printer and it spits out a finished PDF. It's something I do instinctively on the Mac; it's nice to have that functionality in Windows as well.

Bonjour for Windows: Apple's Bonjour software lets you quickly find shared printers on a network. I use this to print to my Airport Express-connected HP LaserJet printer. The alternative is trying to use the Windows network printing utility, and that way lies madness.

Windows Virtual CD Control Panel [direct link to download]: The netbook didn't come with a CD drive, and since I don't have an external one I can connect to it, I occasionally have to use disk images (.iso) to install software. Much to my surprise however, it turns out Windows XP can't mount disk images out of the box. Fortunately, you can download a Microsft utility that enables that support. Hat tip to Jason Frizvold for finding the utility.

These are the four biggies for me, but I'm sure there are more -- what are your essential Windows netbook apps? I'm thinking of specific, niche apps rather than the big, obvious ones like Adobe Reader and Firefox. Every computer needs those; what apps make life on a netbook easier?