Browsers:

Firefox: The tabbed, super-fast, open-source brower from Mozilla.

Chrome: A browser from Google faster than IE and all.

Internet Explorer: Still the first choice of 75 percent of all Internet users.

Safari: Browser from Apple supported on PC and iphone too.

Opera:The “world’s fastest browser” now also has lite versions for mobile devices.

Instant Messengers:

Google Talk: Google’s IM client also gives you gmail notifications and offers a voice option for calling other PCs.

Yahoo Messenger: Good & popular messenger from Yahoo!

AIM: Good IM from AOL Inc with more features,plugins and clarity.

Skype: Free voice and video calls to other Skype users and low rates for calling landlines and cell phones.

Trillian: An easy-to-use, skinnable chat client that supports all the major IM networks as well as audio and video chat.

Windows Live Messenger: The upgrade to MSN Messenger now supports VoIP and integrates with Windows Live Mail.

Miranda IM: While the other IM clients have added tons of features, Miranda has chosen to stay small, which makes it fast and easy-to-use.

ICQ: An enormously popular IM/VoIP/video communication tool with multi-lingual support.

Pidgin: A free chat client used by millions. Connect easily to MSN, Google Talk, Yahoo, AIM and other chat networks all at once.

FTP Tools:

FileZilla: An open source solution with both an FTP client and an FTP server.

Cerberus FTP Server: Free for home and non-profit use, Cerberus is an “industrial strength” FTP server that’s also very easy to use.

miFiles: This FTP client offers an intuitive interface and built-in compression/decompression capabilities.

Golden FTP Server: The free version of Golden FTP Server looks and works much like Windows Explorer and offers multi-lingual support.

WinSCP: Open-source FTP, SFTP, and SCP client with SSH support.

Media Players:

iTunes: Apple’s software is a must for anyone with an iPod or iPhone, and it’s a great way for everyone else to organize, purchase, and play audio and video files.

RealPlayer: The granddaddy of media players is used by millions of people.

Windows Media Player: Media player from Microsoft Corp.

CoolPlayer: A self-proclaimed “blazing fast” player for Windows only.

Deejaysystem Mk-I: In addition to a basic audio player, this app includes some advanced mixing features for DJs.

DivX: Play, create, or convert to the DivX video file format.

VLC Player: Player from Videolan org which supports all formats

Compression Tools:

WINZIP: Download popular WinZip Evaluation Version

7-Zip: This open source project offers a high compression ratio, plus the ability to utilize multiple file formats.

ZipGenius: ZipGenius supports more than 20 file formats, and it can pre-compress zip files so they take up less space.

SecureZip: Award-winning SecureZip adds digital certificate capabilities to standard compression capabilities.

There are many free tools which we use in our daily web life. Will update this post to extend it to more user friendly free software downloads.