CPU-Z -- CPU-Z is a great utility to find out many specific's about your mobo and processor, as well as your ram. Just be careful because on some RAM it shows the wrong speed.

PC Wizard -- Great program that tells you pretty much everything you could want to know about your computer. Same as CPU-Z though, has some issues with RAM.

7-Zip -- Free alternitive to WinRAR, able to uncompress .RAR files, and has a higher compression ratio then winZIP.

SpeedFan - Access temperature sensor in your computer -- Utility to control fan speed's and see your hardware's tempature. Only if your motherboard supports these features.

Google -- Everyone's best friend.

GIMP - Windows installers -- Free LEGAL alternative to Photoshop. I prefer it to CS2 personally.

OpenOffice.org: Home -- Free LEGAL alternative to Microsoft Office. Can open any Microsoft Office files, and can Save as Microsoft Office files. Excel, Powerpoint, Word, it has it all.

THE DAEMONS HOME -- Free disk mounting software, if you don't know what that is then you don't need it.

Check Point ZoneAlarm - Download & Buy -- Free firewall, works great.

370619_avg75.html -- Free Anti-Virus, works great.

All of this Is free, and completely legal software. Any suggestions to put on here PM me and I will.

very nice dan, you advanced my computer by at LEAST a year..lol

i would also like to suggest these
all of them are free btw

meebo - a great alternative to aim and msn and icq and all of the stuff. it basically consolidates all of those chat screens into one nice, neat window. no ads.

lavasoft adaware - great spyware/malware scanner

irfanview - allows you to view any type of picture format out there. an extremely "light" program. (wont install any of that crap onto your computer)

firefox - nough said

"Avast" is pretty nice anti virus.
"Windows Defender" is nice too but needs a legit copy of windows.