Top 5 Recommended FREE Programs To Install Right After A Clean Window's Reinstall

Here's my list of first 5 programs that I find myself installing every time I reinstall Windows. This list should be able to cover almost anyone's basic computer needs. And did I mention they are all FREE? Some are Free Open Source Software, other's are Freeware...yes there is a difference. So here goes:

1. Firefox - (download)
The first thing I do once I get my internet working is use Internet Explorer to download Firefox. Besides that, the only time IE was ever used was to see how website looks on IE during website development. Now that 3.0 has just been release, I really don't see any reason to keep using IE anymore. Go get it!

2. AVG Free - (download)
2. Avast! Antivirus - (download)
I had originally suggested to install AVG Free because that was the one I was using and it was the only free virus protection program I had heard of. But after reading this article on reddit, I am going to have to take that recommendation back and make a revision. From the reddit comment section Avast! sounds like the most favorable one. So I am giving it a shot right now. I've been using it for a couple of days and it seems fine so far. The internet sessions are noticeably faster without AVG's LinkScanner. Also it's nice that Avast is available in Chinese and Spanish, since there were some requests for that while I was working on other people's computers. AVG 8.0 so far only have English and Japanese I think. Here are some of the other free anti-virus programs I got from the comments.

• Avira
• Clamwin

3. VLC Media Player - (download)
VLC is an unbelievably powerful player that I'm still amazed by what it can do everyday. First of all, it will play virtually any media file you can throw at it right off the bat: movies, music, streaming tv, etc., with no additional codec download required. Some of the basic stuff you can do with it include: Transcode one media file to another, audio/video capture, audio/video streaming, watch shoutcast tv and radio streams, etc. The only type of media file that I know of that it can't play is Real Media files(.rm). If you have Real Media files that you absolutely just have to watch, I would recommend using Real Alternative over the Internet cancer that is Real Media Player any day.

4. Open Office (download)
If you don't have the clams to shell out for a set of Microsoft Office, and would like a good powerful set of tools that also works with Microsoft Office files, then Open Office is the way to go. The transition from MS Office is not as bad as it may seem, heck even my mother is using Open Office now. Whether you use them a lot or not, it's a nice set of tools to have around when you need them.

5. SSH Secure Shell - (download)
Now this tool may or may not be useful for a lot of you out there, but for me it's pretty close to "essential". Anyone that create or maintain a website site will definitely need a SSH client. It allows you to connect securely to remote server and transfer files to and fro. If you have a website, ask your host for "shell access", then use this client to do things one hundred times more and one hundred times faster than using web interfaces. It even have a ftp client, and is very light weight. I recently noticed that SSH changed this program's name to SSH Tectia Client, and made it commercial. However, you can still use the older version SSH Secure Shell Client free for personal and educational purposes. Definitely worth trying and learn to use. Here's some instructions on how to download and use.

Honorable mentions:
- TextPad, Gimp, uTorrent, WinRAR

So that's my list. I tried hard to keep the list short and cover as many different "essential" uses of the computer as possible, so hope it helps. Did I miss something? What do you recommend?