I recommend that every Windows user use the following tools. These are popular among power users and most of them are free. All these tools are written by third party companies.

• CutePDF Writer
• RegSupreme Pro (commercial) (For hackers only. Not terribly important for Joe User)
• AdAware Personal
• Spybot Search & Destroy
• SpywareBlaster
• PuTTY SSH clients
• Free CD/DVD Burner
• 7-Zip
• WinSCP Best FTP client for Windows, supports SCP, SFTP, FTP as well as RSYNC
• Firefox (See below for recommended Firefox add-ons)
• Thunderbird
• Nvu HTML Editor
• Fetchyahoo for downloading Yahoo mail into Thunderbird
• RedMon - Redirection Port Monitor (Local copy is in my file cabinet)