Looking for some windows programs that are helpful that people don't really mention?

Beyond Compare 4 - various types of file comparison and merging operations.

WinDirStat - makes it easy to identify and clean up files taking up your drive space.

Everything - I resisted using this for a long time and wish I hadn't.

Joplin - note taking app with markdown editor.

QTranslate - discontinued freeware, most recent version that I'm aware of is 6.10.0. very useful translation app that supports Google, DeepL, Yandex and others.

RapidCRC (Unicode) - file hash creation and verification

also shout out to Windows Firewall, not really a new thing but many people don't bother learning how to use it properly.