Stellarium's great, especially if you want to see when objects will set behind your own personal obstructions (your house, trees, etc).
If you've got a good telescope and you want to hunt for obscure galaxies and nebulae, and especially if you want to control your telescope from your computer, I think Cartes du Ciel is the best free software out there. It's not flashy, but it's powerful and very customizable.
http://www.stargazing.net/astropc/I wasn't familiar with Cartes du Ciel. It looks very much like a shareware program I had used back in 98/99 and eventually lost. I will add this to my astronomy arsenal - I really appreciate light-weight apps.
Thanks for the tip and link!