My favorite newsletter is Lockergnome Daily, a daily (duh!) newsletter that has so many tips and tricks as well as cool software downloads that it is simply one of the best. It is kind of geeky but not to the point that it is hard for anyone to read; I recommend it for beginners as well as advanced computer users. It is published by Chris Pirillo (the Lockergnome) who is from our great state of Iowa.
That being said, the latest issue had an interesting feature: a Gnomie (a reader of the Lockergnome newsletters) by the name of Lance Feldman had a list of “Indispensible Freeware”. Now not all of you know what freeware is. Freeware is software that a programmer or group of programmers wrote and released either the source code or the program itself for all to use for free. When the source code is released with the software it is often called open source.
I liked the feature so much I thought I’d put in my two cents worth, so here is my list of Indispensible Freeware (I use some at work and some at home):

Acrobat Reader - You absolutely have to have this in order to view the many PDF documents on web pages.
Ad Aware - Easy to use and effective spyware removal tool. You can’t have too much protection from spyware.
AVG Antivirus - A very nice FREE antivirus package. I get updates each week automatically and scan my hard drive nightly for viruses. As good as Norton or McAfee but not as intrusive or expensive.
CDex - Yeah, I want to get my CD songs into my computer, no matter what the RIAA says. This is the tool I use.
ConTEXT - A text editor. I use this for scripting languages like AutoIt or batch files because it does syntax highlighting. I can even run the compiler for AutoIt from a configurable tool bar button.
Context Edit - You can get in and really edit the context (right click) menu for any file type effectively with this tool. This was originally written by a contributor to PC Magazine.
EditPad Lite - Probably the best freeware text editor. It will open binary text files like Notepad does (I haven’t found ANY other text editor that does as good a job at this including UltraEdit, NoteTab or ConTEXT).
FileZilla - This is an FTP client. I use it to transfer my web pages from my PC to my web server. Also I have used it to download files from the internet. Easy to use 2-pane interface, much like WS_FTP.
Inno Setup - Creates setup wizards with little effort. I use it mainly at work to create distributable packages to automatically install or update software or data files. Much easier to use than Installshield.
IrfanView - Simply the best file viewer available. Not only can you view graphics files (as it was originally intended) but you can view any movie file that you have the codec for, flash files and text files. You can even do simple operations and graphics conversions with it. You can also create a slide show screen saver with it.
Lister - Views ANY file type and shows the hex coding. Sometimes when a file has an incorrect extension you don’t know how to open it. This can give you a clue.
Mozilla - Yeah, the entire suite. I use the browser, and mail. I just upgraded to 1.4 and it doesn’t do the calendar yet, but as soon as the calendar is on there I will upgrade that also. Heck, I even have the “blog this” add-on.
OpenOffice - Why spend hundreds on Microsoft Office? OpenOffice lets you do just about anything MS Office does.
Power Archiver - This is shareware now, but I have the last freeware version, Power Archiver 2001. (I imagine if you did a search on the web you could find it on someone’s site) It works like Winzip and can do all the things Winzip does. I have yet to see it fail to open ANY archive I have come across.
RegCleaner - Why open RegEdit when I can use RegCleaner? It has an easy to use interface and is a very powerful registry editing and cleaning tool.
Resource Hacker - Check out the resources of any file: icons, bitmaps, messages, etc. You can even safely and easily edit those resources.
SFX Maker - Integrates with Power Archiver to create self extracting archives. Gives you a graphical interface to the process of creating a selft extractor and easy control over all processes. Even lets you create messages to preceed or follow your extractor.
TClock - Nice little clock add-on that also allows me to skin the start button and task bar.
TightVNC - I get called all the time by friends and family to work on their computer. If they can connect to the web, I can use TightVNC to remotely control and fix their computer woes. It also has Linux and Mac versions!
Winamp - How else can you listen to music on your computer? Hey, also stick with version 2 - version 3 is a dog!
XNews - I read about four newsgroups regularly and check in on a few dozen others. This is a very nice tool to allow me to do this easily.

Now that you know this, I’ll just bet that you are going to go out and get ALL of this software!