New laptop, need software?

Perhaps you could offer some information as to what the laptop will be used for? I wouldn’t recommend a photoshop alternative, for example, to someone not interested in photoediting.

Mac or PC would help.

Also, I’m not really a fan of loading your PC or Mac with software unless you explicitly need or could use it. What is it you’re interested in, or what do you do?

Avast Home
Spybot Search and Destroy

If it didn’t come with production software, download OpenOffice. Avast is a good anti-virus that’s free too.

Start with Firefox, with the Adblock Plus and Noscripts addons.
Open Office as a substitute for MS Office.
If you’re into graphics or photo editing in any way, The Gimp instead of Photoshop.

CCleaner is a must have for PCs.

7zip

It’ll take care of unzipping and zipping up files and rar files and all those types.

AVG free antivirus
Its caught anything going through my system

Comodo
I very good free firewall. Can be annoying sometimes since its so strict though.

Skip AVG. You want antivirus software that works, isn’t bloated, and isn’t slow. Personally, I go with Avira, but Avast! is also decent enough.
@LeotCol The one virus I got was with AVG loaded. It is less than 95% effective compared to my 99.4%, and AVG is 3–5 times slower than the 2nd slowest AV program I’ve seen. Maybe five years ago before it sucked…

Firefox is a no-brainer

OpenOffice is great for those who need to deal with Office stuff but don’t want to pay $$$$

Foxit Reader beats Acrobat Reader hands down

CutePDF is good for making your own PDFs from any program that supports printing.
I agree with the GIMP if you are serious about graphics, but if you just want to view pics and maybe do some resizing, cropping, and a little color adjusting then XnView is far better. A little less overkill ;)

Spybot and CCleaner are also on my list

Firefox, Thunderbird, Open Office. Free and EASY!