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.

>>31 For Opera, it could be my system. I don't have a powerhouse, but it always ran Firefox fine, so for all the hype of Opera, I was wondering what was up.

No you misunderstood, I didn't mean powerhouse or anything I only have 1ghz myself, and my old computer ran at 166mhz which is hardly a powerhouse. I meant problems like windows getting messed up or similiar (or perhaps in the most extreme case a subtle unstability in your hardware, however unlikely that is), it's not uncommon for windows to develop problems over time even if you treat your windows with care and keep it spyware free. It's odd really, I seem to have minor problems lately too, despite being about as paranoid as a SS officer about installing things. Do the crashes happen at specific actions by you? And how does it crash, just close? What version of it do you run?

You are absolutely right, I dislike all the messaging programs, but out of the 3 I listed, GAIM was the most respectable. I used to use trillian aswell, but that was very long time ago so my opinion might well be strongly biased against it because it was different then. But I doubt it's better now.