Recommend some programs

I've been using the same programs for a while now, but they are starting to annoy me. Suggest some substitutes:

WinRAR. The splash advert is evil as fuck. I need something free that works on a wide variety of archive files.

Winamp. Back in the day, it was relatively lightweight. Now it takes an eternity to load on my laptop, if it doesn't crash first. Since I need something fast and lightweight for the laptop, suggest something like that.

Opera. You know, I was using Firefox for over a year. Then I tried Opera. I like it. It has a lot of stuff at once. But I'll be damned if it doesn't crash all the time. I'm thinking of going back to FireFox, but is there anything I should know about Opera crashing so I might can solve this myself.

Trillian. I like it, though it may be time for a change for me. Any other good messaging programs out there that support a wide variety of connections at once?

I'm not trying to start a flame war or anything. I just want to use the best programs.

OP here.
Thanks guys. I'm glad I didn't start too big of a skirmish here.

WinRAR works fine, but I really hate that splash box that is set to register by default. It loads up my browser and just takes too much time (and I usually only click it accidentally because I'm in a hurry anyway). 7zip sounds good.
>>4
Foobar2k, got it. I'm running Opera 8.54. Usually when after closing utorrent after running all night, or just switching between tabs quickly while one is running it slows down. Several times, it completely crashed afterward. If 9 is out, I'll try that, or do you recommend an earlier build that is very stable (I've only been using Opera for a few months).

>>6
>>9
>>10
See, I remember Winamp being very nice back in the day (v2). Skins are probably my problem. I have the new skins on for both my computers. I'll try the standard setup and see if that helps. That doesn't disable all the internet radio stuff, does it? I kinda like that...
>>15
I don't use IE.
>>18
lol I'll get on that.
>>20
Miranda, I'll check that out too. I don't mind learning to customize programs. As long as they work the way I want them too, I'm fine.