Logiciels utiles~ useful freeware

PDF

Foxit reader
Lecteur pour fichiers .pdf. Leger et vite. ~ Reader for .pdf files. Lightweight and very rapid. [ no more need for adobe acrobat reader]
(Gratuit ~ Freeware) (Windows)

Image Management

FastStone Image Viewer is a fast, stable, user-friendly image browser, converter and editor. It has a nice array of features that include image viewing, management, comparison, red-eye removal, emailing, resizing, cropping and color adjustments. Its innovative but intuitive full-screen mode provides quick access to EXIF information, thumbnail browser and major functionalities via hidden toolbars that pop up when your mouse touches the four edges of the screen. Other features include a high quality magnifier and a musical slideshow with 150+ transitional effects, as well as lossless JPEG transitions, drop shadow effects, image annotation, scanner support, histogram and much more. It supports all major graphic formats (BMP, JPEG, JPEG 2000, animated GIF, PNG, PCX, TIFF, WMF, ICO and TGA) and popular digital camera RAW formats (CRW, CR2, NEF, PEF, RAF, MRW, ORF, SRF and DNG).
I found this useful for batch resizing and text printing on photos
(Gratuit ~ Freeware) (Windows)

see also FastStone Capture screen image capture - lightweight and affective.

Music management

Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems.
Useful for clipping and editing long mp3 files, but can be used as complete recording suite.
(Gratuit ~ Freeware)

Media Monkey music collection organiser.
Manage a music library from 100 to 50,000+ audio files and playlists, whether Rock, Classical, Audiobooks, or Podcasts; whether they’re located on your hard drive, CDs, or a network. Organize, browse, or search music by Genre, Artist, Year, Rating, etc., and never waste your time trying to find mp3s you know you have. MediaMonkey is the music organizer for the serious collector.
(Version gratuit~ Free version) (Windows)

Multimedia

VLC is a fast and lightweight player , that can play any file format you can throw at it.
The interface is a bit plain but can be skinned the way you like. An excellent video player, reasonable music player and can also convert formats.
(Gratuit~ Freeware Opensource All platforms)

Web Development

Kompozer simple but fairly powerful web editor and site organiser. This is the program I used to build this site.
Help forums and user guide are available.
(Gratuit~Freeware Opensource All platforms )