I highly recommend Wave Launcher. It allows to dispatch your favorite program from virtually any screen with a single swipe. Other apps that work well for me are SlidIt (swype style keyboard, switched from Swift Key), Pocket Casts (a user friendly podcasts player), Pulse (user friendly blog reader) and Google Music.
There is also a large selection of independent browsers. I use Miren but there are other good ones.
You may want a backup program. I am using Titanium Backup but IIRC it requires a rooted phone.