Copernic Agent Basic is a meta-search tool that allows you to search through many different search engines at the same time. This free tool automatically sorts the results and can often give better results than just using individual search engines.

Adobe Acrobat reader is a valuable tool for reading PDF files. It is free, and available from Adobe's web site.

ZoneAlarm is a free firewall system for protecting your machine from outside network attacks. This is especially important if your machine is on a DSL line or Cable Modem (and thus always connected to the Internet). Get the free version of ZoneAlarm from ZoneLabs' web site. Highly recommended.

Easy Thumbnails is a free program that easily creates thumbnails (small versions of an image) from image files. It has eight different compression algorithms and makes very good quality images. Good for creating web sites that load faster!