Recommended Free Software

Audio/Video

musikCube: Play music, practically perfect program. Easy to navigate large music libraries.

VideoLAN: Play any media file worth playing

SharePod: Change what's on your IPod from any computer

Computer Upkeep

Auslogics Disk Defrag: Windows disk defragmenter

CCleaner: Clean up Windows filesystem a little bit

Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware: Get rid of adware, viruses, etc.

Document

Foxit Reader: PDF Reader

OpenOffice: Who needs MS Office?

Misc

GIMP: Similar to Photoshop

Utilities

7zip: Unarchive all kinds of formats

ImgBurn: Burn and read image files

Notepad++: Edit text files, supports many computer languages

Putty: Small SSH client, absolutely necessary

WinSCP: Transfer files to *nix boxes

Browsers

Google Chrome: Blazing fast

Mozilla Firefox: Many, many extensions