These are the absolute best programs I know of and actually use as much as possible. All this software is free (let me know if one is not) and I encourage anyone to comment with any that they think should be added. I will add them to the master list and we will throw this on the right in perpetuity. If you think that I am on crack about some of these let me know that too. Together we can change the world!!
adobe’s acrobat reader - sadly, since pdf’s are the most unnecessarily overused format of all time (not saying they’re bad - just overused in some cases), this is a necessity. be careful though it will try and install adobe album or some other crap program so watch where you click. i hate it when companies do that. anyway adobe reader isn’t that great anyweay but it is much better with the next program that makes things much nicer…
ad-aware - you all should know this one, by now. it kills off spyware and other nasty little things that lurk on your machine.
antivir - The free antivirus, the professional version is well worth hunting down/buying. it does the job, but doesn’t have all the bloat and extra “goodies” that something like norton or mcafee does - the best av app i’ve used so far.
azareus - the bit torrent client. if you know what bittorrent is, then you should check this out. formerly shad0w’s experimental client, this is my preferred means of running/downloading with .torrents
bb4win - a version of the blackbox linux shell, made for windows. tired of the standard explorer.exe gobbling up all your resources or just running as slow as molasses in january? give this lil’ fella a try, then. it’s definitely a different shell/desktop experience, but it’s lightning fast, low on ram-usage and is highly customizable. i love it. plus it makes you look like a crazy geek to all your friends. not for the resistant to change!
burnatonce - a free burner? yep it exists! nero has gone south in my books, way to much of a hog of resources. seems like even on a super computer it takes like 15 minutes to get o the burn page. so this is a handy alternative. you burn by using the windows explorer method of copying files to the cd and pasting. also handles cd images. very lightweight and fast.
college alarm clock - turn your favorite mp3 into your alarm clock. perfect for bachelors with thier cpu attached to a massive stereo system. trust me this will wake you up! possible the only thing of value left on geocities!
crap cleaner - crap cleaner is great little app for scrubbing your OS of all those little things that seem to slow it down. not a bad little app.
ephod - i hate itunes, and for that reason i never bought an ipod, but if you did, this is a great alternative to manage your files. (warning!!- may not work on newer ipods cuz apple hates you having any control of that expensive little box you bought and own and should be able to do anything you want with!)
eraser - a handy little app for erasing those files that you don’t want anyone to know about. Eraser is a secure data removal tool for Windows. It completely removes sensitive data from your hard drive by overwriting it several times with carefully selected patterns.
filezilla - this is an excellent ftp client that is free, and works extremely well, resuming downloads and managing large ftp transactions.
firefox - an alternative to internet explorer (the best alternative, some might say…). this browser isn’t free, but it is blazingly fast, uses minimal resources, includes popup blocking, tabbed browsing, and is almost infinitely customizable in terms of menus, buttons, windows, etc.
gimp - once the adobe photoshop replacement for linux, it is now available on windows. not bad for those of us that want to save oh, about $1,000.00+ which is what photoshop cs2 retails for.
hijackthis- this program will nuke some of the more persistent spyware you have on your machine. basically it lists all changes to your browser since you installed it and gives you the option to delete them. great for killing stubborn toolbars and web search add-ons.
Infranview - A great little free imaging app. I highly recommend it.
kceasy- a filesharing app that knocks limewire, kazaa, edonkey, and ll the other ones out there off the map. why? because it does all those networks and is from sourceforge. that means it is ad and spyware free. great for sharing music with people. rememebr only use your powers for good and support the artist!
maxmem - the best little ram cleaner in the land, for use when something decides to eat up all your resources. helps speed up a bogged down computer too. very light weight.
mirc - simple to use, but still one of the best irc clients available for windows. if you don’t know irc is, then don’t worry about this one. but it used to be the way to download movies and anything else good.
media player classic - it’s the windows media player, v6.4, but heavily modified and able to play damn near any video format you throw at it, especially when used with…k-lite codec pack - here, you can find a very nice little codec pack - it has all the codecs i need and none of the extra crap that some of the enormous packs have. also, you can find “quicktime alternative” and “realplayer alternative” here, which will let you play .mov or .ra files with media player classic, instead of having to install the bloated quicktime or realplayer themselves.
NVU - Quite possibly the best (and free) website authoring program out there. I can’t imagine how I ever made web pages without this one.
openoffice- a great alternative to microsoft office, that allows you to save as microshaft docs, and open them. very handy app.
spybot - search & destroy - yet another spyware cleaner, in my opinion a bot out of date but some people still swear by it. it does seem to catch the things that ad-aware misses.
synergy - share your mouse and keyboard across multiple computers and monitors…kinda hard to explain, see for yourself here. they show it just after the intro and silly video at 3 minutes in.
thunderbird - the mozilla group certainly does make an excellent email client. completely free and open source, this easily beat outlook/outlook express as my preferred email client.
tightvnc - access your computer from another computer. also you can log into your ocmputer and control it from the internet with this cool app. I use it all the time. for advanced users, a how to will be on here soon.
tweakui - allows you to tweak the timing of events and numerous other settings in regards to your windows desktop. this is one program everyone should have.
vlc - vlc media player is one lightweight program with some heavyweight features. playing any file under the sun with the k-lite codec pack above this little app can also host and stream files from your computer to the net. what better way to browse your porn archives when your on the road?
winrar - able to open numerous archive formats (.zip, .ace, .tar), etc, but also it’s own .rar format, which can give much better compression rates than the better-known .zip format.
Well that should just about do it for now. Have fun with those. I think they are great myself. Rememebr to donate and contribute to the free software community if you can.
Download: 
Screenshot: 
Link: 
