QCD is a free media player that is better than Winamp, iTunes and Windows Media Player. It is second to no one. ( asside from a media player which is only available on linux, it's name escapes me.) QCD has it all:

• A fully featured yet simple and intuitive playlist browser
• Lightweight
• CD burning and ripping functionality with no limitations (ie. speed / copy protection)
• Minimalistic stylish GUI, skins available
• Plugins
• Includes all major file codecs

I know I just said that QCD was the best media player ever, what I actually meant was that QCD audio player ever, VideoLAN is the king of video. The two main strengths of VideoLAN are:
It plays every format of video ever. VideoLAN has every video codec you will ever need built into it. I dare you to find a file type it can't play.
It's lightweight. VideoLAN starts up ridiculously quickly and takes up a little over 10mb of RAM.

ExplorerXP is essential if you ever plan to move, copy, rename, delete or paste a file. It has buckets of useful features, such as tabs. You can create groups of commonly accessed folders; for example, you could create a Media group that includes your video, music and picture folders. It will rename batches of files enmass for you, while adding a sequential number at the end. ( ie. reallyhotyuaoi001.jpg, reallyhotyuaoi002.jpg...) Need to transfer a large file too big for CDs or a thumb drive? No problem, ExplorerXP will split it into manageable pieces for you.

Are you wondering where all your free space on your new hard drive went? No problem, WinDirStat will show you exactly which files and folders are taking up the most space on your hard drive. It even gives you a graphical treemap ( see screenshot) of your hard drive's directory structure so you can quickly tell just how much space your secret hentae folder is taking up. The treemap is more than just a gimmick, if you click a coloured rectangle WinDirStat will identify the corresponding file. Click on a folder and WinDirStat will highlight the corresponding space on the treemap. Pretty nifty if you ask me.
Here is a screenshot of WinDirStat in action.

µTorrent is easily the best Bittorrent client available. Typically using ~6mb of RAM, and weighing in at 170kb, it is very resource-friendly. Even with this size, it still manages to have all the features you coould ever want. Apparently it is skinnable too.

7-Zip is a freeware file archiver that supports all compression formats. It is better than winRAR, get it.

CDisplay is a program designed for viewing electric comics, mangas and images, it has many useful features such as bookmarking directories and being able to read directly from from *.zips, *.rars ect.

Clipboard Recorder keeps a history of the last 100 items you've copied or cut to the clipboard.

Does exactly what it's name says, it is a extremely useful thing to run overnight every once and a while if you have 89322934729 images and you want to save a bit of disc space.

DAEMON tools is a virtual CD-Rom and DVD-Rom drive emulator that is able to emulate nearly all known copy protections on the market today. In simpler terms: it tricks your computer into thinking an *.iso file is a disc inside a drive, saving you a blank CD / DVD. If you still do not know what I am talking about, you don't need this program.
WARNING: DAEMON Tools is known to de-activate Windows Vista. ( This is probably due to the fact that microsoft doesn't want you using a program primarily used for piracy.)

Notepad++ is a replacement for notepad. It's about time something like this is released, because I used to find myself punching myself in the groin over how incredibly slow notepad is. But seriously, Notepad++ has several features such as tabbed file editing and macros that could be useful to both a casual user and some sort of hardcore lemon author. But the real bread and butter of notepad++ is it's support for several popular programming languages. Notepad++ colour codes certain sections of your text depending on what language you are writing it in, making writing and reading code much easier.

Speedfan tells you what temperature the components of your computer are running at, useful for overclocking or diagnosing overheating problems.

SUPER is a free video encoder unlike any other, it supports pretty much every video codec ever made. ( including the PSP's format, but be warned, the PSP is picky and you can only use certain bitrates.) Don't be fooled by SUPER's annoying and unprofessional website, SUPER is 100% free of spyware, nag screens, bundled software and such.

If you are using Internet Explorer Exploder, get firefox; It is faster, more stable, and has much more functionality.
If you are using Opera, you are probably beyond converting.
If you are using a browser that isn't IE, Firefox or Opera, you probably live in a cave in Swaziland.

Essentually the Rasterbator creates giant rasterized versions of images. Since you likely have no clue what this means, it is best to refer to the Example Pictures.
PROTIP: It is best to turn up the contrast of your picture before you rasterbate it.
Example Picture - More Examples