Overall best programs

As far as antivirus goes, AVG is free antivirus, with free updates-- so why not?

since you said you're going to be on public wireless networks, I'd recommend zone alarm for your firewall, since you can get it for free (or so I've been told :\ )

spybot search and destroy is good for the fact that it lists all your processes and can tell you what process is for what, and it is antispyware.

I'd recommend windows defender, since that's free antispyware too.

Firefox should be your browser with the following plugins: adblock, fasterfox, and ietabs some people recommend opera, but I'm not at liberty to do so since I've never used it.

Gaim is the best multiprotocol/network client I've worked with. it does enable chat logging, the interface is nice and it doesn't feel bloated at all. I like it.

For productivity, I recommend open or star office either one over MS office if you're tight on cash because they do the same things as ms office for free. If you need to port your information to ms office you can just save your papers in .doc, your powerpoints in .ppt, and your spreadsheets in .xls format, and ms office will have no issues.

If you need a free photo editing tool, I've heard gimpshop is a nice free alternative until you afford the extorniate fees to use adobe's photo editing software but I haven't used it, so I can't vouch for it.

For overall good system maintence/performance, I would recommend system mechanic 6 (or whatever version is most current.) this thing does everything else not listed, securely deletes files, can do some limited file recovery, has an enterprise defrag utility, memory defragging/ frees idle memory, can do minor peformance tweaks, uninstall programs that just won't die, etc. however, this isn't free, but I can vouch for it-- it's excellent software.

hope this helps.

Jam it back in, in the dark.