Please note do not hold me responsible if you screw your pc up with these programs. These programs are user friendly and pretty much impossible to do that but you never know. I will update this periodically.

SECURITY
Avast
http://www.avast.com/
avast! 4 Home Edition is a full-featured antivirus package designed exclusively for home users and non-commercial use. Both of these conditions should be met! Our company offers the Home Edition free of charge, since, in our
opinion, it is possible to avoid global virus spreading by efficient prevention; however, many users are not able to or do not want to pay for antivirus software. This page will show you the most important features of this program.


Comodo Firewall
http://www.comodo.com/products/free_products.html
Comodo Firewall, rated by PC Magazine Online as an Editor's Choice, constantly monitors and defends your PC from internet attacks. It's easy to install and use and passes the industry's most stringent firewall "leak" tests. Unlike some other 'free' firewalls, this is not a stripped down version but is the full, completely functional product. This free solution comes complete with continual updates that are free forever!


Spybot
http://www.safer-networking.org/
Spybot-S&D 1.5 has quite a lot of advantages over version 1.4: improved compatibility, more effective detections and new functions. Between all the positive feedback we received, there were also some things that needed to be improved: the immunization sometimes needed to be applied twice before sticking, many users wanted the file shredder back, and it was impossible to remove entries from the user blacklist in the Internet Explorer plugin. But first of all, we apologize for the long starting time of Spybot-S&D 1.5.1 to all users. This item has been fixed now in this new version 1.5.2.


GRAPHICS
Paint NET
http://www.dotpdn.com/
Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. An active and growing online community provides friendly help, tutorials, and plug-ins.

Gimp
http://gimp.org/
GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a freely distributed piece of software suitable for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition, and image authoring. It is a powerful piece of software with capabilities not found in any other free software product. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert-quality photo-retouching program, an online batch-processing system, a mass production image renderer, or an image-format converter.

GIMP is modular, expandable, and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image-manipulation procedures to be easily scripted. Version 2.4.4 is a bug fixing release.

I'm sure this will be appreciated.

I always recommend Avast. I use it regularly in my business. Both home and pro additions.. depending on the application of the hardware install. I also use the Avast BART CD (Bootable Antivirus & Recovery Tools) in diagnostics.

Comodo: I'm not a fan of software firewalls. A hardware solution is always a better, more secure approach that does not cost much money and is very easy to install.

Spybot:
This is a redundancy if you have the two items listed above installed and working properly. Not one I see as useful or necessary, imho.

Both Paintnet and Gimp are great.
I've actually have kinda forgotten about them... and prefer to buy Adobe for all my graphic needs.

Don't forget this one:

OpenOffice:

OpenOffice.org is a multiplatform and multilingual office suite and an open-source project. Compatible with all other major office suites, the product is free to download, use, and distribute.
http://www.openoffice.org/

Actually I have found that spybot finds a tad more stuff then comodo, but as you said on comodo software does suck, but yet some people still cant afford a router yet.

Actually.. Spybot is a redundancy if you have a hardware firewall and Avast...

I still believe spybot is something that is very much a repeat of Avast.. without a hardware firewall in place too. It does consume a noticeable amount of resources looking for much of what avast is already looking for, and likely to catch first.