Higher quality on YouTube

YouTube has apparently been quietly upgrading the quality of its video clips, while improving the compression methods to get the size of files down. Which is good news on at least two counts, particularly as it doesn't take long to chew up your download package if you watch too many of them. If you want to watch better quality than what initially comes up when you push the play button, though, there are several options.
Firstly, there is an "HQ" button at the bottom right of the play bar, which will play the video in higher quality.
Secondly, you can add a little bit of code to the address bar at the top of your browser which will also improve things, particularly for older videos, which have been heavily reduced in quality from what was uploaded to YouTube by the video maker. Try adding one of the following codes: &fmt=5, &fmt=18, &fmt=22, or &fmt=35. These represent increasingly higher degrees of quality (the last one is HD or high-definition). Not every video will show an improvement, but many will.
Incidentally, rather than watch the same popular video over again on YouTube, download it to your computer with a utility such as DownloadHelper (a Firefox add-on), and then you can view as many times as you want without costing yourself bandwidth. Windows Media Player might not play some of them, but there are good free alternatives in FLV Player and GOM Media Player.

Doing it for free

One of the great things about the internet is that for almost every high-priced piece of commercial software, there is a free alternative available. In fact, some of the free offerings beat the pants off the commercial, particularly at the price! Here are some of my "can't do without" favourites:
Irfanview - an image editor (think Photoshop lite), that also doubles as a photo organiser. Has amazing capabilities for such a small footprint. Can also play many video files (eg, the movies you take on your digital camera).
Audacity - a sound editor I use all the time. You can also stretch or condense sounds (including songs) without changing pitch, move songs up or down a key, and much more.
OpenOffice.org - equivalent to Microsoft Office. Has all the bells and whistles, without the awful "ribbon" introduced by Office 2007 (and which I loathe). Has modules equivalent to Excel, PowerPoint and Access, as well as a drawing module, but the PowerPoint module is not well implemented and probably is better avoided.
EditPad Lite - a general-purpose text editor (a replacement for the Windows Notepad, but can do much more), small and compact with lots of functions.
Copernic Destop Search - I have posted separately on this.
VLC Media Player - can play all those videos and movies that Windows Media Player won't touch. Don't be fooled by its utterly basic interface.
CDex - a CD ripper (ie, copies music tracks from your CDs to your computer).
PdfEdit995 - Can create pdf files from any programme that has a print function. Can also convert pdf documents to Word format files, and much more.
Feel free to share your top favourites.