If you're running XP and are using an LCD monitor, this is a must have. Cleartype will improve your font display quality dramatically. Believe it or not, I no longer need to use my glasses while browsing the internet! - it's that much of an improvement. The Microsoft website will give you the details on how to activate it. It's free and well worth the time to setup. (a minute or two). Check it out...

If you have Vista (prior to SP1) you have probably noticed that it takes for ever to decompress a zip file. This handy utility will unzip a file at lightning speeds. It works as good as any other commercial apps and best of all it's free. 7-Zip works in Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP/Vista and is capable of unzipping files other than ".zip", such as rar, tar, etc.

This app performs a lot of the quick edits that you may need to do on a photo -like removing red-eye, or converting a file format from one to another. The feature which impresses me most, and that I used often, is it's screen capture utility.
Best of all, of course, it's free to use for personal use.

This application is not just your average downloader. I have yet to see it fail on downloading any video stream that I point it at. Unfortunately, it's only available for Windows PC's at this time but, - that's just fine and dandy! It supports all the major operating systems including Vista. What are you waiting for? This is a "major" free app.