Software installation

I don't have an enormous amount of software to install, but enough to want some help.

To explain: my new laptop came back from the warranty repair today. After having taken so long, I imagined that the repairs may have been complex. So I was a little disappointed to see that all they'd done was replace the hard disk. Maybe they did extensive diagnostics and found that the disk really was the problem. They haven't told me. Maybe they will if I ask.

But now I have a brand new installation of Vista. I could go ahead and start configuring it all. Maybe I should reformat it so that I can have a linux partition. Do I want to risk difficulties in the Vista re-installation? I should be able to download any Asus utilities from the web. Hmmm.

But the blog refers to the various free/open source software that I use - mysql, Google earth, open office, audacity, myeclipse, and a host of libraries etc. Wouldn't it be great to just submit a list (saved in a backup) to an installation tool, and have the computer automatically download all the right stuff. Easy in linux, but I'm not aware of such a tool for Windows. Maybe I'll search.