Web Browser: Firefox 1.5
The perfect free Open source Web-browser
Mulit-Client Messenger: Gaim
The best MultiClient Messenger I’ve found. MSN, Yahoo, AIM etc in a tabbed window
Programming IDE: Visual C# 2005 Express Edition
Burning Software: Nero 6
Great for burning pretty much everything to CD or DVD
Web Editor: Dreamweaver 8
Very good Editor for any type of website/webfile, with a ftp client built-in.
Disc Copying: Alcohol 120%
Copies and emulates Pretty much any disc, and has a Virtual drive for images.
Music Player: iTunes 6
I use Itunes because it likes my ipod nano and apart from being a bit of a bloater, works pretty well.
Video Palyer: VLC Media player
Simple the best video player, built-in codecs too so no-more codec packs needed
Cleanup and Repair: TuneUp Utilities 2006
Without a doubt the singel best Utilities program i have ever used, a toolbox and a half.
Image Editing: Paint.NET
Not overcomplex, but does most image things i need and its free too.
File Compression: WinRAR 3.5
Winrar is a must have for anyone using the internet for uncompressing everytype of archive.
Email: Thunderbird 1.5
Firefox companion for email, and RSS too.
Bitorrent: uTorrent 1.4
Without a doubt the best bittorrent program around. Tiny, fast and full of great features.
Image Organisation: Picasa 2
Keeps track of all your pictures and does some simple editing too, a must for flickr addicts.
AtariBoy 
That’s quite a nice list, but you might want to consider Daemon Tools instead of Alcohol for mounting cd/dvd images, it has better support for some encryption methods and uses less cpu time and memory. It’s just that it has a less friendly interface :P
Another one, if you like VLC mediaplayer for supporting so many formats, mPlayer supports even more :P But then again, this one has a much less friendly interface than it’s little less featured counterpart. To be more specific, it doesn’t even have a GUI…
As for Dreamweaver, personally, I prefer Homesite, also from Macromedia, it has a better codeview, but it lacks a wysiwyg editor, but I don’t use that anyway :P
The drawback of wysiwyg editors mostly is that they don’t create a clean code and I like clean code and it’s a better way to learn HTML or whatever other markup language or script you’re using.
They are all good suggestions, but for the exact reasons you like them, is why i dont like them, im a big fan of good quality GUIs and i definatly need a wysiwyg editor for html as im not that great with html.
I’m not a html guru either, but http://www.w3.org helps out quite good. There is a complete reference of the entire html language there which is completely up to date with the latest standards.
Besides that, the web is overflowing with good html tutorials for the use of layers, tables, frames, or whatever you wish to use. Personally I like using tables, easy to organize, just not as many possibilities as with layers when using div tags.
Once i get my exams and course out of the way, im going to look into css styles a lot more, i think its a great way to decorate your content without actually changing it.
katie
I recommend dropping winrar from the list (not free, getting old) and replacing it with tugzip (www.tugzip.com), a free open-source winzip clone(ish) program that will eat most archives.