WordWeb is the absolute best single free program I have found. WordWeb is a quick and powerful international English thesaurus and dictionary for Windows. It can be used to lookup words  showing definitions, synonyms and related words. There are also many proper nouns and examples of usage. I use it every day to insure I am using the best word for the job. I really don't know what I would do without it. It should have 6 Home State rating. I use it every day.

 3Dplus Add 3D text in the style of your choice & apply textures, bevels & shadows to create stunning eye-catching effects. Whether you need an outstanding new logo for your company, product or club, or a stylish new graphic for your Web site, 3DPlus makes it easy to get exactly the look you've always wanted.

DocPad is a superior alternative to Notepad.  Although it fills the same role, plain text editing, it has many advantages:  10-level undo, alphabetization, block indent/unindent, bookmark, case conversion, encoding conversion, file history, jump to line, jump to offset, keyboard macros, search and replace, spell checking, statistics, variable pitch font, and much more.  It also includes a built-in calculator, calendar, and character map.  Used internally by Gammadyne Corporation for 4 years, DocPad is now available to the public for free. DocPad runs on the Windows® 95, 98, NT4, 2000, ME, XP, and 2003 platforms.  A processor of at least 33 Mhz. and 16 MB of RAM is recommended. I use it every day.

Zip Backup to CD is designed to backup your data files using the standard Zip file format, allowing backup files to be viewed and restored with most zip file utilities, distributes the files to be backed up in several stand alone Zip files of a size fitting a standard writable CD (CD-R) or a size chosen by the user and can backup your files to hard drives, network drives, ZIP drives, JAZ, SyQuest, writable CD (CD-R), and most other removable medias. Though this program is not free it is so well priced as to be like free, just $19. It is the easiest backup utility I have found. Further since it uses the standard Zip formats it is completely reliable. It would have 5 Home State rating, except it is not free. However it is possible to get it free.

 FileZilla is the best and powerful FTP-client for Windows 9x, ME, NT4, 2000 and XP. It has been designed for ease of use and with support for as many features as possible, while still being fast and reliable. On top of all that is is also Open Source meaning free and always will be free.

 XnView is the best free graphics viewer I've seen and it is very easy to learn. It has a special feature that I happen to like that allows you to open any image you see with any program you put on the list. This makes it ideal for use with GIMP as it can save you several clicks.

 OpenOffice Suite gives you everything you would expect in office software. You can create dynamic documents, analyze data, design eye-catching presentations, produce dramatic illustrations, and open up your databases. You can publish your work in Portable Document Format (.pdf), and release your graphics in Flash (.swf) format - without needing any additional software. International users are not forgotten, with support for complex text layout (CTL) languages (such as Thai, Hindi, Arabic, and Hebrew) and vertical writing languages. If you're used to using other office suites - such as Microsoft Office - you will be completely at home with OpenOffice Suite. However, as you become familiar with OpenOffice Suite, you will start to appreciate the extras that make your life easier. You can of course continue to use your old Microsoft Office files without any problems - and if you need to exchange files with people still using Microsoft Office, that's no problem either.

 Metty Freeware Meta Tag Maker Some search engines please examine Meta Tags Adventure to index information about web pages such as subject matter, type of content and author. Metty Freeware Meta Tag Maker presents you with simple forms that allow you to input the information you want, then generate all of your meta tags. Once meta tags have been generated, you can copy and paste the meta tags into one of your HTML files or insert the meta tags into a new or imported HTML file. No knowledge of meta tags is necessary to build meta tags with Metty Freeware Meta Tag Maker.

 IZArc is the ultimate free archive utility supports many archive formats like: 7-ZIP, A, ACE, ARC, ARJ, B64, BH, BIN, BZ2, BZA, C2D, CAB, CDI, CPIO, DEB, ENC, GCA, GZ, GZA, HA, IMG, ISO, JAR, LHA, LIB, LZH, MDF, MBF, MIM, NRG, PAK, PDI, PK3, RAR, RPM, TAR, TAZ, TBZ, TGZ, TZ, UUE, WAR, XXE, YZ1, Z, ZIP, ZOO. With a modern easy-to-use interface, IZArc provides support for most compressed and encoded files, as well as access to many powerful features and tools. It allows you to drag and drop files from and to Windows Explorer, create and extract archives directly in Windows Explorer, create multiple archives spanning disks, creating self-extracting archives, repair damaged zip archives, converting from one archive type to another, view and write comments and many more. IZArc has also build-in multi-language support. IZArc is the most complete archive utility available today. I have been using it for years and have found it to be more reliable and compatible than other compression programs including Winzip and it is free.