Useful free software
Metapad I find a better replacement to windows notepad for creating and editing text files. Very small and light weight.
Keepass is a great free password manager, you can also get apps for phones that can use the same database format.
Irfanview is a great basic image editing program, it's nothing like photoshop but quick and easy to resize images, rotate etc.
Crystal Disk Info for viewing hard drive and SSD Health.
HWiNFO for listing internal computer hardware specs.
Libre office is free and can create/edit documents and spreadsheets. It is a good alternative to Microsoft Office.
Thunderbird is an email client made by the Mozilla team.
TXTcollector Is a tool to merge txt files together.
ReNamer is tool to bulk rename files.
Filezilla 2.2.27 An older version and my favourite ftp/ftps client. Avoid the later versions.
TightVNC Great for controlling computers remotely on your lan/vpn.
Bluefish a handy HTML editor.
Handbrake an open source video transcoder/compressor
WizTree Disk usage analyzer
VLC Video media player