Gnomie Josh writes in to share his top 10 favorite programs:

1. Audacity: Audacity is a free program that allows you to edit your music and sound files. It is Open Source and it is very to use. For someone looking to start podcasts, this program is for you. You will get used to the features it has in a matter of minutes. This is perfect for starting off in editing music and sound files.

2. Winamp: Winamp is a great music player for those looking for an alternative to the common “iTunes” software. It comes with many features and plug ins as well. You can play all your music files and save play lists as well. It also plays many music files that other music software cannot normally play.
3. Trillian: Trillian is a all-in-one messenger that uses very little resources. It includes, MSN, AIM, ICQ, Jabber (Gmail chat), Yahoo!, and even IRC. This is for you if you are a person that always has at least four messengers running at a time. There is a pro edition to this, which is slightly better, but the basic one is just as good because it is free.
4. CPU-Z: CPU-Z is a small program that displays your current computer specs. For example, it can show you your motherboard name and even how much RAM you have. This is good to know when you are looking for those drivers and you forgot the name of your motherboard.
5. WinRAR: WinRAR is a great program that allows you to compress your files to a smaller file size. I suggest using this as a default compression program. There are others such as Win7, but this does the same job.
6. UltraVNC: VNC is a client to server based program that allows you to access another computer. Just start the server on the computer you want to gain access to, and then use the viewer on another computer to view that computer. I suggest getting UltraVNC and not RealVNC. It seems to be faster and overall more robust.
7. TrueCrypt: This software allows you to encrypt any drive you want to and as you move files to that drive, the files encrypt automatically. I suggest using this if you need to keep important information away from people that want to know things.
8. Skype: Skype is a Voice Over IP program that allows you to communicate for free for PC to PC calls. The only downside to this of course is that you need credit in order to call to landline phones. However, the price is cheap to do so.
9. HijackThis: This program will search your registry for errors and possibly anything that could be wrong with it. Not only that, it logs all of the information it changed or found.
10. AVG: AVG is a free program that lets you scan for viruses… for free. Most software you need you have to pay for in order to do this. This is free and for being free, it is good at what it does.

Bonus Site: dll-files.com will let you find 99% of .dll files you need. Sometimes you may get an error saying you need a certain .dll file for a specific program. This site will let you find that .dll file and make that program work.