Minimal Essential List edit

Popular Software edit

Full Browsers	Firefox	Opera
	Firefox would be my primary choice in a browser. It is free, fast (enough), light (enough), and most importantly, it is highly extensible, which puts it over all other browsers because of the wide variety of third-party tools and plugins available.	Opera is the free alternative to other browsers; if you do not think you will need third-party tools and is looking for an extremely fast and light browser, choose Opera.
Firefox Extensions	Adblock Plus
	The most popular ad-block implementation for Firefox. If you come from Internet Explorer, you may not know what ad-blocking is. This free add-on to Firefox will strip out most ads on pages you will encounter, and rerender the page without them.
	Filterset.G Updater
	Adblock requires ad-definitions, or filtersets, to operate. Adblock Plus comes with a set; however, I always add Filterset.G for optimal performance.
	Forecastfox
	Uses the Accuweather free service to put weather forecasts anywhere on your browser, so that you will know future weather at a glance.

Office Suite	OpenOffice.org	Microsoft Office
	The open source office suite, designed for compatibility with the OpenDocument format. However, perfect compatibility has not been achieved with Microsoft Office.	The industry standard office suite.
PDF	Adobe Acrobat Reader Foxit PrimoPDF

Full Editor	GIMP for Windows	Adobe Photoshop
	This open-source image editor can do what most people want Photoshop for; however, its interface is not particularly intuitive.	The industry standard office suite.
Image Viewer	IrfanView
	Fast and powerful image view for Windows to replace the useless image previewer in Windows.
Panoramas	autostitch
	Autostitch can quickly and easily combine multiple images into panoramas; it does all the blending and perspective adjustments automatically.

Winamp foobar2000 iTunes

VLC or Media Player Classic (with one codec package from free-codecs.com)

Antivirus	Avira Antivir PersonalEditing Classic Alwil avast! 4 Home	G DATA AntiVirusKit Kapersky Anti-Virus F-Secure Antivirus Norton Antivirus
	The free antivirus are just as good as the commercial; Avira Antivir, in particular, has rated higher than even commercial solutions [1]. However, they usually do not come with firewall, spyware detection, and the like. Detection-wise, I believe Avira is better than avast 4, though avast has the flashier interface.	It is difficult to say which is the best antivirus, because their capabilities fluctuate from week to week as new threats are constantly released. Suffice it to say that you probably won't go wrong with any of these. Solely from an antivirus perspective (not considering what firewall or antispyware comes with the full suite), I personally will try to aquire one in the priority of the order given.
Firewall	Norton Comodo
Anti-Spyware	Ad-Aware Antispyware Spybot - Search & Destroy

Thunderbird IM Client (Trillian Pro, Gaim, etc.) (NOT AIM!)

Winrar or 7-zip SequoiaView (Graphical HDD viewer) Norton Partition Magic

DVD Decrypter Alcohol 52% or 120% Daemon Tools Nero

Knoppix Ubuntu SLAX

Google Earth

Xvid codec

Torrent Downloader

Encyclopedia/Dictionary

Hardware Accessories:

Flash memory drive (at least 1GB)

External Hard Drive

Surefire (M6 Guardian)

H&K USP or Springfield XD .45 compact

CRKT M21