The great thing about all those programs and utilities are that they are completely free. In addition to the list I originally posted, I've recently changed my IRC client to IceChat instead of mIRC. I believe that IceChat is better, but mIRC is still good.

It would take me too long to post all the links for them, but a quick Google search will help you.

I realise that some of the programs in that list aren't exactly well-known, so I suppose I should describe them a bit more.

BitTornado - You might have heard of BitTorrent. It's a brilliant way of downloading files because it splits them up during transport and reassembles everything at the end. As they are split up, it means the bits are smaller and they travel across the net quicker. While bittorrent has been frequently used for illegal downloading, it is a perfectly legitimate system and there are plenty of things available that are ok to download.

Sysinternals Rootkit Revealer - Rootkits are small programs that are embedded in your operating system. There is now way to remove them, but it might be of interest to find out if you have any. A recent high-profile case involved Sony implanting rootkits on computers using audio CDs that people play on the computer.

TeakUI - This is a great utility which can alter all sorts of aspects of Windows, such as removing the arrows from shortcut icons or stopping the message about unread mail on the login screen.

CutePDF - Adobe Acrobat costs a lot of money. CutePDF is a freeware tool which does Acrobat's job of converting things to PDF. You can then view these files in any PDF reader. The program is simply a printer driver.

Process Studio - This is a great system monitor which tells you exactly what processes are running and also how much of the memory and CPU each one is taking up.