If you want some quick list of the popular free softwares, try freewaregenius.com’s ‘Reinstall Windows and outfit your system with all freeware programs’
It features 53 freewares and it is huge. The blog was written some time ago 2007 but many of the softwares are still popular and actively maintained. Some of my favorites are Launchy, CCleaner, Primo PDF, FileZilla, and Picasa.
Enjoy!