my reviews and finds

If you like Free Software this is the place to go:

Open Source Windows

Video Player / Video Podcasting

Democracy Player

Beautiful interface. Plays any video file. Subscribe to video RSS feeds, download and watch all in one app. Torrent support. Search and download from YouTube and other sites.

IM - Instant Messaging
Gaim
Connect to multiple IM accounts simultaneously in a single app, including: AOL IM, MSN, and Jabber.

Video Playback

Media Player Classic
Compact, but powerful media player. Plays anything under the sun. No install necessary.

VLC
Plays more video files than most players: Quicktime, AVI, DIVX, OGG, and more. Pretty good interface.

MPlayer
Similar to VLC-- plays loads of video formats.

Email

Mozilla Thunderbird
Powerful spam filtering, solid interface, and all the features you need.

RSS

FeedReader
Simple, lightweight aggregator.

RSSOwl
Solid cross-platform RSS client.

Peer-to-Peer Filesharing

Cabos
A simple, easy to use filesharing program. Gnutella network.

Gnucleus
A very good Gnutella search and download filesharing program.

BitTorrent
Download large files from multiple people simultaneously.

Azureus
A more complicated BitTorrent client. So many features you'll lose your mind.

Just a few Examples - go check it out!