3 Norton windows, systemworks, firewall (sometimes is a bit too vigilant), antivirus
12 Net windows for everything from Ebay to Amazon to Paypal to German Computer websites, komplett.ie (I miss komplett.de, the VAT is a lot lower in Germany because of the unemployment there) and the obligitary quest to figure out if you can weld underwater (the sum total of human knowledge placed in front of you is bound to make you wonder).
2 email windows (Outlook express tip: ALT+m then ALT+s (Alt ms? Yes, it is a tad ironic, like the oxymoron, Microsoft works) blocks spam that slips through).
2 Steam windows
1 game updater e.g. autoassault, City of heroes\villians
1 Norad window for tacking funny stuff that flies around the world, e.g. Santa, UFOs, tooth fairy (orbiting pretty fast at the moment) etc.

I keep a fairly tidy system tray though, only about a dozen icons which doesn’t look like many when your res is up at 1152×864 (graphics card quirk, still haven’t figured it out. BTW: Owners of Thermaltake Xaser III cases may experience weird speaker feedback if the lights on the front are plugged into the PSU). Still, 74 processes and only 8 gig free on a 100gig (formatted) hard drive, 3 year old machine. Tough as old boots

System Tray
RandPaper
AbaClient
Virtual PC
Outlook
HP Digital Imaging Monitor
SQL Server
Windows Messenger (yes, some of my clients insist)
CounterSpy
Google Desktop
Norton AV
Volume Control
GotoMyPC

Total 14 windows (16 if you count embedded in Virtual PC)
12 System Tray icons

Does that make 26? Sometimes I have even more.

System Tray
MS Notes
MS Intellisync
KatMouse
SourceSafe Notifier (home made)
AutoHotkey Script (in testing)
McAfee Anti-Virus

And this is a good day

System Tray
Skype
McAfee Security Center

This is fairly normal for me (my standard setup), unless I’m doing some task that requires other apps. When prepping new blogs for launch I’ll have 4-5 Notepads, several IE’s, Photoshop, FileZilla, etc open. But when I’m just “processing”, I’ll only have 3 apps open.