An audio music editor and recorder I and a lot of other people have is called Audacity.
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Select v. 1.2.6. since it's the current stable version.
You can google for things like "html tutor" to begin learning to begin learning to write that code.
Or you can use the NVU WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) html editor from Linspire at:
http://www.nvu.com/
The free version of Google SketchUp.6 can be quite useful within the limitations it has. It's a 3D modeling program you can design buildings and stuff with.
Other good free stuff:
Firefox -This browser is way faster than IE.
Thunderbird email program
Gimp photo processing program
Visere picture viewer. This one has a handy little Measure tool that allows you to measure something in the photo, and find out how many pixels long and/ or wide it is. If you can find something you know the size of-- a 2x4 is 3.5" on it's wide side, for example-- you can measure that in pixels, then figure out the scale factor of the photo and measure objects in it.
The OpenOffice suite at
http://www.openoffice.org
or the Pro version of this, StarOffice, available free from Google. (35+MBytes) It will take a long time to download unless you're on high speed)
Some people like Inkscape, which is a type of drawing painting program.
You might also like the free Dogwaffle program. That's a paint program and some people create really nice images with it. I'm not one of them, unfortunately...
There's a lot more out there if you look for "open source" programs.
I think programs like limewire or bittorrent require you leave your folders accessible to outsiders so they can retrieve stuff saved on your computer. I've passed on that little joy, thank you.
For Anti-virus protection, you can choose between AVG from Grisoft.com or !Avast. I have both but don't often run !Avast any more. It's a bit slow...
If you have a Mac, you wont need these....
Anyhow, search for these, look for commentaries on them, and judge if you'll want them. Or can use them.
It's a big list and the downloading and installing will take some time.