SOUND RECORDING
Audacity
Simple sound recording tool.
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/windows
GRAPHICS / PHOTO EDITING
GIMP
Photo editing application that rivals Photoshop in features.
http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html
Paint.NET
Graphics editor with a very nice interface.
http://www.getpaint.net/download.html
Inkscape
Vector graphics application.
http://www.inkscape.org/download.php
FTP / SFTP
Filezilla
Solid podcasting client.
http://filezilla-project.org/
IRC
X-Chat 2
IRC client
http://silverex.info/download/
ARCHIVING
PeaZip
Fantastic archiving utility to extract and pack archives of an extensive amount of formats. PeaZip also features password protecting archives, keyfile support, system integration, a lovely interface, and much more.
http://peazip.sourceforge.net/index.html
