Agree.
3DSmax and Photoshop here. I haven't tried 3DSmax 6, though, using the fifth.
As for music ripping, I don't need anything but CDex: not only it can rip CDs, convert from/to mp3, ogg and wav (maybe wma too) but it uses CDDB so when you rip an audiocd, you only have to enter the name and the artist and the program renames the songs!
About popup blocker, I just use the Google Toolbar from toolbar.google.com
It's small, it allows me to access the 'search' faster and has nifty stuff like popup blocker and Word-find/Word highlight (you write the word you need in the text field and it can highlight the word[s] in the whole text/page).
