Best of Breed Software?

New year, new toys. It's getting so that a typical nerd has to invest a lot more time into keeping abreast of software developments. As such, I have a simple request. I will name several categories, with applications that I am currently using. If you know of a much better or robust program, recommend them.

I have, of course, no preference for freeware over commercial software.

My current list is as follows:

1. Anti-Spyware - Windows Defender
2. Antivirus - Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition
3. Audio Editor - Windows Sound Recorder, Audacity
4. Audio Player - Winamp, Windows Media Player (for wma)
5. Bittorrent Client - uTorrent
6. Direct Connect Client - DC++
7. Disk Defragmenter - Diskeeper
8. Disk Imaging - Norton Ghost 2003
9. Documents - Microsoft Office 2007, Adobe Acrobat 3D
10. Download Accelerator - Getright 7
11. DVD/CD Authoring - Nero Ultra Edition, Alcohol 120%
12. DVD Authoring - DVD Lab Pro, TMPGEnc Pro
13. DVD Ripping - DVD Shrink, DVD Decrypter
14. E-Mail Client - Microsoft Outlook 2007
15. EDonkey Client - eMule++
16. File Undelete - PC Inspector File Recovery
17. FTP Client - CuteFTP Professional
18. GBA Emulation - Visualboyadvance
19. Hard Disk Recovery - Spinrite
20. Machine Translation - Systran Premium
21. MIDI Authoring - Cakewalk Sonar, Finale (for sheet music)
22. IRC Client - mIRC (with Sysreset script)
23. Password Recovery - Passware, Snadboy's Revelation (for passworded forms)
24. Picture Editor - Adobe Photoshop CS2, Adobe Imageready (for animated GIF), Panorama Factory (for panorama stitching)
25. Video Editor - Virtualdub
26. Video Player - Media Player Classic, with Quicktime & RealPlayer Alternative, and Combined Community Codec Pack

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Well, I do have my reasons for not asking about those two.

As far as web browsers go, it's either IE or Firefox for us Windows users (and I use both!).

And for instant messenging clients, it really depends where most of your friends are. AIM is prevalent in USA. Yahoo Messenger is the norm in my country, while a lot of my Asian contacts use MSN Messenger (both are substitutes, since they have interoperability). Google Talk has a very low penetration, but you can talk to all Gmail users, and Jabber guys as well.

I only have Google Talk and MSN Messenger installed, since rumor has it GTalk will soon have interoperability with AIM.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Haha, Opera.

So, Cam, russ. You consider foobar2000 more robust than Winamp? Would you recommend the latest version, or is there an optimal previous version that's better?

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Phleg, I sure wished you read the opening paragraph before you excoriated me thusly.

How ya doing, buddy?