MSE might be light on resources, but it slows down the startup of certain applications so I wouldn't even recommend it.

Avast is a good free antivirus and seem to be the most popular right now. But no antivirus is perfect, it's only as good as the user of the computer.
Don't download everything without knowing what you are doing.
Use thing like adblock (unlock the website that you know are good, so that they can make money) and noscript.

And there are many more thing you can do that can even justify not needing and antivirus.

I too support avast. One thing ppl that dont talk about is the interface of the programs. If they sux no matter how good the job the program does it will affect the way you use. Can't find options or can't understand it's functions are really annoying points. From the several AV I have seen avast has the best interface.

Anyway currently I am not using avast because I need firewall too so I use COMODO Internet Security (free). Avast Internet Security is not free. Anyway COMODO is my 2nd choice.

So it's either Avast, MSE or Comodo Internet Security.

Along with AVG, which of these use the less resources?

VHS:I dunno if this qualifies for the kind of software people are looking for but I had a great experience with this vhs converter. I had the hardest time finding a software that would let me convert vhs tapes and let me edit the footage afterwards. I was originally going to use a conversion service where you send in your tapes and they send you back a dvd but they charged like $20/tape! It seems like you can try out the converter for free for 30 days.

GIFs: GIMP is always great to use. It's user-friendly and best of all it's free. I've heard a lot of people use photoshop but I don't really want to shell out the money just for making gifs ya know? Anyways, I absolutely recommend GIMP as well.

Media Player: VLC or MPLayer. Both have a built-in ffmpeg decoder so either is sufficient for me.

Video Editing: Still not sure if Final Cut Pro or Adobe after effects is better. I guess it depends on what you'd like to use it for (project-wise). FCP seemed more common within the business but now that seems to be shifting. Hollywood editors seem to vary with which they use so I say look at both and decide which fits your editing preferences more :) I personally like FCP but that's what I started on so I might be biased...

I like SMPlayer as a front-end to mplayer. There are builds for both Linux and Windows. Linux users will find smplayer and mplayer in the repositories. Usually installing smplayer brings in mplayer automatically as a "dependency." The developer of SMplayer, "rvm," offers a Windows version that includes both programs here.

Which free Office Suite do you guys recommend as an alternative for Microsoft Office?

Google Docs and LibreOffice/OpenOffice would probably be the safe choices. Microsoft Office also has a free online version as well as a free "app" version for Windows 10 (maybe Windows 8.x as well).

I've used LibreOffice for years now on Linux. I preferred it because it didn't rely on Java the way OpenOffice did. LO is the default office software on most mainstream Linux distributions like Ubuntu.

I also like the fact it doesn't have that giant ribbon at the top of the screen.

The most important issue concerns whether you need to exchange documents, particularly word processing documents, with people using Microsoft Office. MS Office uses some proprietary quirks that can make documents looks slightly different in the two programs. If this applies to you, I suggest you install LO and try it on a Word document you received from a colleague.

I don't have this need so I use LO all the time. When I send documents to others, I export them as PDF files.

The one thing you won't have a good alternative for is Microsoft Access. LO Base is okay, but hardly as smooth or full-featured as Access. I use it to manage PostgreSQL databases on my servers from time to time. It's one of the few reasons why I keep Windows around.

Well, that's surprising to know. Is this just for small/simple and personal databases? Because I didn't think Access was a good choice for anything beyond that.

I'm not using Access to store the data itself. Just as a client to online SQL databases.

With ODBC drivers you can connect to most SQL databases including all the popular ones like MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, MS, etc. I have one PostgreSQL database with a variety of complexly joined tables that I need to update each year. I can put the new data into Excel and upload the tables via Access. I can write SQL pretty fluently and typically use a text-mode client from the command prompt. Sometimes I find the ability to create visual queries helpful when the database structure is complex.

Ah, ok. It's still neat to know it can be used like that.

I usually use Word, Powerpoint and Excel. That's all. The rest i never or rarely use.

Then the ones I mentioned should be fine, although you'll have to test them for your own need. I believe Apple also has a free online version of iWork.