Top 10 Fresh Machine Installs

Microsoft Live Onecare

World of Warcraft

Microsoft Office (or OpenOffice, depends on how many licenses I have left)

DivX

Acrobat Reader

Silverlight

Rest depends on what I need to do that day.

I just did the same thing myself. Here's how it went:

Live Mesh First because it has all my VS projects
Visual Studio 2008
Epression Suite
Adobe Suite
Silverlight
Flash
Foxit
Word, Excel and Outlook
Live Writer

I will have to try that Brain software, been looking for a mind mapping solution!

Well there are the usual Office and Windows Live candidates that I do too...some of the ones I haven't seen yet are 7zip, Irfanview, and CutePDF.

1.  DivX/Xvid codecs
2.  WinRAR
3.  Flash
4.  Office 2007
5.  Dreamweaver
6.  Silverlight
7.  Visual Studio
8.  Expression Studio
9.  Skype/Messenger
10. Winamp/Media Player Classic

1. Strokeit +custom configs //  would be stupid not too, seeing as I use it wherever possible, speeds up my workflow specially for explorer
2. Winrar // using windows default explorer .zip support is *
3. Qttabbar // nothing beats using a shell extension that makes Explorer xTimes more useful and adds FREAKING TABS!
4. Ultramon // Mainly for the extra taskbar although the window manager is useful.. Windows lacking support for enhaced functionality when using multimonitors = piss poor 
5. Maxthon classic and v2 // v2 is installed just to get quick access favs/rss feeds before restoring the classic plugins/settings
-Latest flash player, sun java, shockwave,  silverlight usually get installed at this point
6. Truelaunchbar +restore default app menu/shortcuts // this is what a quicklaunch bar should be capable of, including all the customization . TLB > noobie looking fat iconed object docks
7. Taskix // improves MS lacking taskbar and adds features that should have been there years ago! *cough- MMB taskbutton closing (mousewheel support coming
8.  Zoomplayer(used for auto grabbing +installing all latest codecs ffdshow etc except CoreAVC), XnView>irfan(pictures), KMPlayer>vlc(videos), Winamp+addons+sui skin, 10x >wmp (Music)
9. Ramdisk // actually mainly used for Winamp with user files within install dir not under windoze poorly customizable user profile setup.. keeps the library access superfast.. also I usually put on Firefox portable+shitloads of addons(only reason I even bother have FF on my PC is because of the addons otherwise its just as useless as the a vanilla feature complete IE8beta2 install, it also starts up in a more reasonable time this way)
10. Notepad++ // lite and fast +has decent tab support and addons =win

Well thats by no means the full list most used things I install and use but generally those are all the things that get installed first or at least after installing latest whql drivers along with any other bits that always need a pc restart before working, deamon tools SPTD driver, uxtheme patching(gots to have a better looking theme than the ugly default) 

"Microsoft Live Onecare" I can't believe someone would actually want to install that useless junk.. out of all Live apps I only use Live Messenger, and the now Mail.. but only because the Outlook connector addon for Office Outlook is the most useless and temperamental scrap ever(heck even doing a search for it, first result takes you to the old MS download page for it, with the 2007 release, pff.. try using that to get your hotmail mail) piss poor addon.. why its even an addon and not directly built into Office Outlook I haven't a clue, but obviously if you want quicker access to live/hotmail accounts using that addon is a waste of time. quick'nfree gmail pop3 ftw

So I don't actually install any of the bigger application that I do use for work until last.. mainly because they take longer to install and I like to get all the most used stuff up'n'ready that way I can at least restore backups, tweak/customize things while those apps install+they usually need updating with newer patches anyway.