We Recommend...

System Protection:

You should only have one anti-virus software installed on your computer. However, you can have more than one anit-spyware software reside on the same system.

AVG Free Anti-Virus (http://free.avg.com/) by AVG Technologies, formerly Grisoft
Free anti-virus (AV) software
Microsoft Windows Defender (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/defender/default.mspx)
Free anti-spyware
Notes:
1. Windows Vista already has Windows Defender.
2. Genuine Microsoft Windows validation required.
Spybot - Search & Destroy (http://www.safer-networking.org/)
Free anti-spyware
CCleaner (http://www.ccleaner.com/)
CCleaner (formerly "Crap Cleaner") is a freeware system optimization, privacy and cleaning tools.

Tools & Utilities:

7-Zip (http://www.7-zip.org/)
An open-source file archiver for uncompressing & compressing (i.e. unzipping & zipping) files. It handles many popular file formats (such as .zip, .rar, .tar) as well as its own .7z format.
PDFCreator (http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/)
PDFCreator easily creates PDFs from any Windows program. Use it like a printer in all Windows applications (i.e. it installs as a printer driver - you simply print to it to create a PDF file.)

Productivity Applications:

OpenOffice (http://www.openoffice.org/)
IBM Lotus Symphony (http://symphony.lotus.com/)

Security & Data Encryption:

TrueCrypt (http://www.truecrypt.org/)
A Free open-source disk encryption software.

Multimedia:

Combined Community Codec Pack (http://www.cccp-project.net/)
K-Lite Codec Pack (http://www.codecguide.com/download_kl.htm)
HJ-Split (http://www.freebyte.com/hjsplit/)
Freeware multi-platform file splitters. You can use it to join or split large files (of any types).
FLV Player (http://www.flvplayer.com/)
Flash Video Player and compnents allow you to play Flash-based video (.flv) files and YouTube videos offline.
PlayFLV (http://www.playflv.com/)
It is a plugin that enables Windows Media Player to play Flash-based video (.flv) files and YouTube videos offilne.

Note: With the PlayFLV plugin, you do not need a seperate program to play FLV files. However, if you do not use/like Windows Media Player, you can use FLV Player instead.