Best thing to rip stuff with is DbPowerAMP version 10 :
http://www.dbpoweramp.com/bin/dMC-r10.exe
Don't use version 11 (the current one) as you cannot rip to MP3.
Also if you do a search for Lame 3.96 as well and install the codec into the DbPowerAMP folder that has a Lame file you'll have the latest version of the codec to use as well. Version 10 uses 3.92.
For a FREE CD Burning program go here :
http://www.cdburnerxp.se/
It's meant to be quite good, but of course not as good as Nero.
Media Player is of course Winamp, although if you look for WinAmp Classic and download the one with Realplayer support then you can play practically any format of video file you'll find on websites. There is a Quicktime one as well, but I had problems getting it to work with Firefox. I ended up downloading the full Quicktime Viewer from Apple.
Now for the things that you never knew you needed :
Autostitch :
http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~mbrown/autostitch/autostitch.html
Ever take those multiple shots to put together to make a panaroma shot? All the colours are different and jagged? This program will do it for you. It works amazingly well I've gotta say, and is very fast.
GAIM :
http://gaim.sourceforge.net/
A good replacement for MSN Messenger, ICQ etc. You can log into multiple message programs at one time.