Ok, so this article appears to have it's detractors, however..
...I'm a 41 year old Ubuntu/OS X user/developer who has long since lost the combination of raw curiosity/stamina necessary to go through endless lengthy download/browse/run/options/install wizard sessions, so Ninite sounds like a god send to me. I was LITERALLY thinking about something like this, for Windows, only last week.
It's especially fitting seeing as I've decided to do a little C++ development on Windows and was just this evening going to put together a Windows 7 image for VirtualBox under Ubuntu. So, hopefully, installing a Virus Checker, Malware software, Java, various IDE's, an office package, some graphics packages and a few browsers shouldn't take much longer than writing this post (yes, maybe I'm being overly optimistic).
It's a shame that Ninite doesn't include Visual Studio 2010 (express) in its list, or I'd probably say here and now that is was a killer application, at least for Windows software installation.
Only one more thing. I notice several Reg competitors were talking about Nanite back in 2009, am I missing something here, this is not new :-(