I ran across this tool today and I'm pretty impressed.  Ninite is a simple and free web-based tool that installs the latest versions of multiple software applications on your computer, allowing you to run the setup process for each of them at the same time.  You run it right from their web page, and it doesn't install any of its own software.  Very nice little time saver.

This comes in particularly handy right now when so many are upgrading their operating systems to Windows 7.  It's a good bookmark!