I was going to PM igowerf with this info but it looks like he hasn't been online since the end of January... I haven't read the whole thread so forgive me if these free programs have already been mentioned:
AntiVirus: I used and liked AOL Active Virus Shield (Kaspersky) but as many of you know, it's been discontinued. I now recommend Anti-Vir for its better detection rates (compared to the other free AV solutions), but AVG has email scanning (albeit lower detection rates). YMMV.
Firewall: I've been using Comodo (V2 and currently
V3) and really like it. It does throw up a lot of allow/deny windows which can be annoying, but it rates among the best in the
leak tests and I'm very comfortable using it. Another option is
Online Armor which also appears to be excellent, but I've continued to run Comodo without problems. Either of these (as well as Jetico and numerous others) are obviously far superior to XP's built-in firewall.
File compression: I use WinRAR on my home PC and IZArc on my work system, but I can also recommend 7-Zip and ExtractNow. All of these should do what you need and, IMO, are a lot better than having to deal with WinZip's annoying nag screens.
FTP: FileZilla, SmartFTP, or CoreFTP should get the job done. There are other free FTP utilities available but these are typically praised and should get the job done; it really depends on your preference of GUI as I've discovered after trying various free file renaming utilities.
Graphics / Image editing utilities: I currently use Paint.net or PhotoFiltre simply because they are powerful enough to do everything that I need to do, but there's no denying that GIMP is an awesomely powerful image editor. Since I've never really used PhotoShop, I tend to think that the GIMP interface is a bit overwhelming for n00bs and it is slower to load on all of my systems, but rest assured the power is there if you want the advanced features of PhotoShop for free.
ID3 Tag Editor: I've used The Godfather and ID3TagIt, as well as numerous other tagging utilities. I've gotta say that
TagScanner has been my mainstay for MP3 taggers. The Godfather is extremely powerful but its interface can be a bit overwhelming for some people. For the record, I tried the latest version of TagScanner but in the end felt more comfortable with version 4.8 which has worked like a charm since day one.
Burning software: My mainstay is Nero, but I use version 6.x since I think v7 and v8 are unnecessarily bloated. And since Nero isn't free, I've used several programs at work with great results:
In addition to CD Burner XP, you might try
ImgBurn,
BurnAware, or
DeepBurner
There are many more great free utilities that I use on a day to day basis. These have all worked for me and there are more that I've probably forgotten. I just wanted to inject this thread with new life (again, I haven't read all of the posts).