OpenOffice is a free replacement for Microsoft Office. For the most part, they are compatible with programs like Writer (word processor), Impress (presentations), Calc (spreadsheet), Base (database), and Draw. It is a rather large download so don't expect to just a few quick clicks to have it up and running. Plan some time for downloading and a little more for installing.

http://www.openoffice.org

Firefox has been my browser of choice since its beta days. I've just found it much more stable, versatile, and functional than Internet Exploder -er- I mean Explorer.

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

SecurityAdd-ons for Firefox

Thunderbird is an excellent replacement for Outlook Express or Windows Vista Mail. It also has the flexibility of easy to install add-ons exactly as Firefox. One of the nicer add-ons is Lightning, a calendar feature.

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/

Most people probably default to and use Adobe Reader. It works well enough, but I've found it to be rather cumbersome (over 52 MiB's with Adobe Air) for just reading documents.

http://www.adobe.com/products/reader/

For the most part anymore I've been using Foxit Reader. Foxit Reader has most of the features needed at a fraction of the size (just over 6 MiB's).

http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader/

PDF-XChange Viewer is one I'm not as familiar with but is growin in popularity.

http://download.cnet.com/PDF-XChange-Viewer/3000-10743_4-10598377.html

I don't use a WYSIWYG editor anymore for editing web pages. But if I did, I would probably opt for KompoZer if someone wasn't paying for the software. It's a fair replacement for FrontPage or Expression.

http://kompozer.net/

Programmer's Notepad is like Wordpad on steroids yet just as simple to use. You don't have to be a programmer to enjoy its features either. I use it for all my general text editing as well as my HTML and PHP code. It even has color coding for many programming languages.

http://www.pnotepad.org/

WinSCP is a file transfer client capable of using FTP, SFTP, SCP and now FTPS.

http://winscp.net/eng/index.php

An awesome little shell client. It allows you to connect via raw, telnet, rlogin, ssh, and even serial.

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/

If your looking for something that can do a little (lot) more than Microsoft Paint, then GIMP is probably right for you. Actually, comparing it to Paint is probably an insult similar to comparing Jim Thorpe to the kid who won the gold in the Special Olympics. A more accurate comparison would be to Corel Paint Shop Pro or Adobe Photoshop, to which it holds its own.

http://www.gimp.org/

Picasa is a free application from Google for managing photos. With touch-up capabilities, slide-show, movie, and web-album creation, this is a must have for anyone that takes a lot of digital photos.

http://picasa.google.com/index3.html