A posting about how you can outfit your computer with all the essential (and non-essential) software you need using strictly 100% freeware and/or open source titles.

Open Source Freeware : 400+ free applications and utilities
Extremely useful open source applications and utilities available free under various licenses.

Seventy-seven freeware programs for your USB drive.

PDFCreator is a free tool to create PDF files from nearly any source.

WinDirStat is a disk usage statistics viewer and cleanup tool for Microsoft Windows. It is extremely useful for figuring out (thru a visual representation) of where your hard drive space is going.

Daily freeware download site (some great finds can be found here). You can also try it's sister site http://game.giveawayoftheday.com/ for video games.

Ultimate Boot DIsk for Windows, a free software to make a bootable Live CD of windows to troubleshoot your computer