The following are some handy free Windows tools to talk to Linux boxes:

• Putty - telnet & SSH client
  
  
• WinSCP - Secure Copy (SCP) & Secure FTP (SFTP) client. This has a cool Total Commander type interface with one pane being the remote Linux machines file system and the other pane the local machines disks.
  
  
• 3CDaemon - a freeware FTP, TFTP server & client and Syslog server all in one. Be careful, this is for short adhoc file transfers, don't use this in production as it is no longer supported and has known unpatched vulnerabilities. But it is great for uploading/downloading images to devices like routers and quick & dirty file transfers.
  
  
• Linux FS plugins for Total Commander - these plugins let you access Ext2 & ReiserFS partitions on a Windows box. Really handy for dual boot machines.