post 2 you have on the money. there are some nefarious types who only install the bare minimum and let the people inexperienced with technical matters fend for themselves.
for the most part i agree with what you say but the rest just a matter of opinion. one prgram i would advise people to stay away from is itunes, as it has a habit of slowing down your machine.
winamp can handle just about any audio format and it hardly ever breaks for no reason at all.
i find that winrar is better than winzip, as it can open way more formats and can even be used as a replacement for windows explorer.
anti-virus is a matter of personal preference, some are better than others but whatever you do, you gotta be protected.
i have never been a fan of divx. a good codec pack to use is Combined Community Codec Pack,
http://www.cccp-project.net/. plays everything and includes zoom player and media player classic, two of the best movie players.
anything else i missed?