I'll update the first post tomorrow, but ... too ... tired ... now...

Updated ...

cool
I also used to use Metapad at work, it's a great program with transparency options, the ability to use templates, and etc. We had to stop using third party programs at work.

So what do you use now? Visual Studio? I pretty much stick to Aptana for bigger (web) projects, as the support is great and the prices are reasonable for the pro version, and with scite for anything else, like smaller C utilities and scripts.
One thing we haven't touched at all yet are console shells. Personally, I work with a mixture of Cygwin and Spidermonkey jsshell (which isn't a real shell in itself, but can be made to work like one with piping to cmd.exe) for scripts. Seems like a strange combination, but it allows for C-syntax which is something that I require (no, csh doesn't do the trick for me).

notepad, hahaha!

Good, free software?
Oh, there's so much I use everyday.
Pidgin for instant messaging,
kvirc for IRC
mumble for VoIP with my clan,
7zip for zipping,
gimp for image editing,
foobar as audio player (very lightweight, alternatives would be soundbird and winamp),
firefox as browser with some nice addons,
thunderbird for email,
sunbird for calendar,
linux as the better OS, love it for playing around,
hlsw for game server browsing,
utorrent for torrents,
emule for emule network,
blender for modelling,
virtualbox as a superb virtualisation box,
filezilla for ftp,
openoffice for all the office writing and maths,
winscp and putty for remote administration,
notepad++ for programming and text editing,
virtualdub or virtualdubmod for video encoding,
audacity for audio editing,
gnuplot for plotting,
defraggler for defragmenting,
and more... :D

I removed the duplicates for now... will add them to first post lateron. I have to admit, that's the first post with loads of software that I don't use regularly. I'll take a look at VirtualBox

For the Utilities section I would heartily recommend [url=www.ccleaner.com/]CCleaner[/url]. It basically cleans the living hell out of your registry for you and yes it creates a back up just in case something goes a bit wonky with the cleanup. Plus, it goes your most common applications and file folders where all that temp crap hides and cleans them out thoroughly of unnecessary stuff. I just used it and I recovered 28 gigs yes gigs not megs of space. And it is totally free and runs very smooth. So give it a try.

Hrm...well. I'd suggest Adaware by lavasoft, the free version just lacks a few active background scanning things and it'll get rid of any nasty spyware and other such minor not quite viruses. [url=]http://www.lavasoft.com/single/trialpay.php[/url]
As far as anti viruses go I think Avast home edition is still the best one you can get free. [url=]http://www.avast.com/[/url]
And for firewalls there is always zonealarm ( [url=]http://www.zonealarm.com/security/en/zonealarm-pc-security-free-firewall.htm[/url] ) if you don't want to deal with the windows one.
Browser wise I thought googles Chrome ( [url=]http://www.google.com/chrome/ [/url] ) was pretty good and had some nice ideas, it was alittle buggy when I last used it but it might be more stable now.
[url=]http://www.ephpod.com/[/url] - An alternative ipod manager to iTunes that lets you take files off your iPod and put them back on your computer. My personal experience with it is to use it for the file moving feature alone as it can otherwise cause some problems with newer ipods (just don't save changes and you'll be fine).

I really have to find another way to manage the first post, as it's really a pain to maintain... any kind of structure I try to add simply makes the list harder to edit... I'll figure something out.
One software gem that many people don't know about is InfraRecorder, a very user-friendly CD/DVD burning alternative.

Another I'd recommend is ImgBurn. It handles CD / DVD / HD DVD and Blu-ray, runs on all flavors of Windows, and should even work under Wine, according to the website. Oh, and it's free, of course.

what? where?

For video converting:
Super
It doesn't get much better then that :D

I haven't seen Hans in a while, I hope my "quote" calls him to it.

Kissaki, good list. I would add XnView for image viewing and InfraRecorder for burning CD's and DVD's. AbiWord for lightweight word processing where OO is an overkill. And FreeCommander for file management. It really increases my efficiency in many ways.