Rate how use full they are on a scale of 1-10 and a short description.

No particular order...

1. Rocket dock, helps keep your desktop organized (6)
2. EVGA precision, Overclocking utility for your GPU (8)
3. Power dvd, plays movies and blue rays much better than any other program (9)
4. Itunes, keeps your music organized (7)
5. Camtasia studio, best screen capture software period (5)
6. Steam, it works like xbox live works and has a huge easy to access community (8)

1. Evga Precision; for monitoring fps, temps and setting my OC profile(10)
2. Steam; so I can easy chat with my steam friends and play my favorite source games(7)
3. Chrome; best web browser besides FF, clean and fast(9)
4. Auslogics Disk Defrag, superior fragment program(8)
5. Windows Media player; I always listen to music and it's easy to organize(7)
6. Real VNC; So when I'm not home I can still work on my rig(10)

again in no particular order.

1. ObjectDock Plus　　　(7)   Docking Program, makes it easier to access your frequently used progs slightly buggy hence not a 10/10
2. KIS 2010　　　　（9）Cool security software, haven't found anything on my system with any other malware scanner since I started using this, keeps my pc clean.  Full scan can be demanding so run overnight, but otherwise very light on resources. Run in safe mode is excellent, like sandbox.  Vulnerability scan is very useful.  Was going free with rebates earlier this year. 
3. Mailwasher　　　（8）Sits in the tray, pulls your email headers down from server so you can delete spam without opening Outlook
4. Firefox　           (10)  Coolest bit of software, add-ons make this a necessity.
5. BackUpFox       (8, would be 10 if it was automated)  Backs up your profile etc, hasn't been updated in years but still works.
6. WinRar             (8)  For all your zip, rar etc files
7. Directory Opus (8)  File Manager for Windows.  Far better but less pretty than Windows Explorer.
8. CrapCleaner    (10 since I found you can customise it)  eh, clean out the crap off your system.
9. EasyBCD          (10 saved me from mistakes when I started multi booting)  Manage/ edit your multiboot systems. Invaluable.  
10. iReboot            (10)  Pick the OS you want to reboot to.  Simple and very effective, from the makers of EasyBCD.
11. NewsBin Pro       (8 would be 10 if it had a live search rather than having to press enter to search)  For all your newsgroup needs, compact view is the one reason I bought this. 
12. VLC                  (8)To play any video files. 

These are usually amongst the first installed when I set up a new windows OS. 

edit to add descriptions and links. 

flamingaxe791
^^Forgot your descriptions^^

fixed 

Handbrake (9) - video encoding
Virtual Dub Mod (7)- video capture and modification
Vegas 8 (10) - audio and video editing
VM Player (10) - F@H with notfreds

Auran Trainz TS2010 --- an awesome train simulator that will make any system glow. Great for testing new hardware.
CutePDF Creator. --- A great way to create PDFs from any printable document. - It's free too.
System Explorer --- Nice Task Manager replacement with other doo-dads added on. Can break out different subprocesses out of svchost, and has remote virus scanning of the different running tasks and services. A great tool for finding malware.
Advanced System Care Pro. --- A little suite of utilities. (The regular version is free. Pro is $20.00 US). Has a nice system clean up and registry cleaner in it. It beats grunging through the registry and temp files when it comes to system clearn-up.
MS Office 2007 Professional
Gimp for image editing --- Freeware photo editor that has most of the functions of PhotoShop, but without the price.
Sunbelt Software Vipre 3.x (Soone to be 4.x). ---- A great antivirus product that has little or no impact on the system when running. Unlike Norton or Trend Micro, which was my former favorite, Vipre's processes are really tiny and it does a decent job. It's pretty inexpensive too.
Diskeeper 2010 Pro-Premiere. Their latest version that handles large hard drives (> 1TB drives).
Search and Replace Master ---- Freeware search tool to edit same text in multiple documents. Great for config files and HTML pages. Can strip code out of HTML pages leaving the text strings behind.

This is pretty much it that resides on my computer at the moment.

John

Windowsblinds -makes winxp easier on the eyes (9)

iTunes -so my iPod has music/the works, also good organization of library, much better than wmp, unfortunately too resource hogging to use it while gaming, compared to wmp (9)

speedfan -temp monitoring (8)

trillian -a multi-im client software, I can use 1 program instead of installing aim, y!m, google talk, win live, for im'ing people. It looks better than all of them, it supports multiple accounts per connection (ie i can log onto multiple aim accts simultaneously), also has facebook chat and myspace im so I don't have to go to a web browser whenever I need to use chat/won't log off when exiting web browser. It is the eyes and ears of my online social networks (10)

xfire -friends list, and server viewer for many games (8)

avast -free antivirus that is probably the best one out there (9)

winrar -you should know what this does if you don't google it, it is awesomeness (9)

unlocker -program-access management, it "unlocks" programs making it availible to be altered. that was a bad description, google it plox. (8)

thats most of what most others forgot.

MSI Afterburner: For Nvidia and Amd (ATI) graphics card monitor and tuning (9)
CPUID- Checking system Info and validating (10)
ImgBurn: Burning and creating ISO files (10)
Malwarebytes- Excellent anti-malware program (10)
Xbox 360 Drivers for Xbox controller works with most steam games
(10)
Open Office: Free Doc, spread sheet, etc.. and compatible with MS Office (10)
Vantage: Testing and scoring system set up (10)
Prime 95: for testing overclocked systems (10)
OCCT: for testing overclocked systems (8)
Intel Burn Test: Quick Check of overclocking (10)
Firefox: Best wed surfer (10)
Google: best search engine (10)
Panda Cloud Antivirus: Lite on system and nearly invisible (10)
Shark007: Windows media player codecs covers all formats of video (10)
VLC Player: excelent for viewing any format of video (10)
Rocket Dock: for keeping your desktop clean (10)
Linux: Free OS  (8)
CCleaner: for uninstalling programs, registry cleaning, and clearing IE history,cache,etccc..... (10)
Usenext: for downloading files and programs to try before you buy the software. * I dont support piracy just like to be able to try something before spending my hard earned money on a program that will not do what i need it to do.
HTC: for connecting an EVO 2 4G phone to your computer
Steam: for gamimg (10)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Windows 7 (duh)
World of Warcraft
Chrome
CCleaner
Defraggler
Malwarebytes
Microsoft Security Essentials
HWMonitor
 
Coincidentally, that is my entire program list on this HDD.  Sad I know...

Blender,a great modeling,animation,texturing,game engine/design,particles and physics system,UV mapping,and all for free.
gimp,for texturing,photo editing,normal maps,and is free.

Just thought I'd add that VLC has a great converter built into it. One more reason it's the best out there!

Precision, ELEET, 7-ZIP, Firefox, Fraps, Steam for me!

CCleaner
MSI Afterburner
M.S.E.
Steam
Auslogics defrag
Firefox
xfire
AnyDVD
NERO essentials
WinRAR
cpu-z
That's all I can remember for now...

1. 3Connect - Software used to connect to the internet i.e Mobile Broadband.
2. Firefox
3. Teamspeak 3
4. Steam
5. folding@home
6. Avast Anti-Virus

No particular order
Microsoft Office 2010
iTunes
AnyDVD HD
CloneDVD
Norton 360 Ver. 5
Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Pro
Cyberlink Multimedia Suite 9
EVGA Precision
AIDA64 Extreme Edition
Stardock Object Dock & Dreamscape
3DMark 06, 11, & Vantage
Yamicsoft Window 7 Manager
Spyware Blaster
uTorrent
DirecTV2PC 
Firefox (the only way to surf the internet)
And Games :-) among other things.