Best Windows Software

Windows Software Guide.

The following is a software guide for windows, these are my own personal recommendations and most are free! I will bold any of the software that is not.

Internet.
Web browsers: Chrome, Firefox and Opera (More on these later).
Mail client: Thunderbird, Opera.
IM (instant message): Miranda, Pidgin, Skype.
IRC (relay chat): ChatZilla, mIRC, XChat.
Torrent client: uTorrent, Vuze.
FTP client (file transfer protocol): Filezilla, WinSCP.
RSS (news aggregator): RSSOwl
Download manager: jDownloader
Usenet client: SABnzbd

File Utility.
Office suite: Microsoft Office, OpenOffice
PDF viewer: PDF-XChange, SumatraPDF
Text editor: Notepad++, Notepad2, SciTE
Hex editor: HexWorkShop
Archiver: 7-Zip, IZArc, WinRAR.
Drive encryption: TrueCrypt, BitLocker
Disk burning: ImgBurn, CDBurnerXP
Virtual CD drive: Virtual CloneDrive, Daemon Tools, Daemon Tools Pro
System Search: Everything

Multimedia.
Video player: MPC-HC
Music player: WinAmp, Foobar2000
Codecs: CoreAVC
Image viewer: IrfanView, Honeyview, ACDSee Classic
Image editor: GIMP, Paint.NET, Photoshop
Video converter: Handbrake
Audio converter: Foobar2000
CD Ripping (Copier): Exact Audio Copy
DVD Ripping: DVD Decrypter, DVDFab, AnyDVD


System Utilities.
Anti-Virus: Microsoft Security Essentials, AVG, AVG (premium edition), Nod32, Eset Antivirus, 
Firewall: Windows default (Your rooter will also provide a firewall)
Defragmenter: Defraggler, O&O Defrag
Cleaner: CCleaner, Revo Uninstaller, Revo Uninstaller Pro
File recovery: Recuva, TestDisk
Computer specification: CPU-Z, GPU-Z, Speccy
Hardware monitor: HWMonitor
Virutal machine: VirtualBox, VMWare
I also recommend Tuneup Utilities 2012 for a whole range of System Utility programs and Tune up software.

Chrome, Firefox or Opera?
I personally use all 3 depending on what I am doing but most people will probably use and stick to one as their default browser.

Google Chrome
Positives;
Very fast rendering and good for JavaScript.
Supports userscripts and extensions
Simple user interface
Great security when running a sandbox
Negatives
Very little configuration/personalization
Limited features compared to other browsers.
Less powerful extension system.

Mozilla Firefox.
Positives:
Very powerful extension system
Best user script engine (Greasemonkey)
A lot of default configuration (about:config in the search bar)
Adblock Plus!

Negatives:
Slow
Heavy on resources
Does not pass Acid3

Opera (My personal favourite)
Very configurable and customizable
Very large featureset
Good userscript support
Fast rendering and good Javascript.

Negatives
No extension support
Known to be prone to bugs
Some pages don't render properly (Apparently, I have no experienced this myself)


I hope this Guide to good Windows software has been of use and as always please leave a comment!
Any suggestions for software to be on this list would be much appreciated.