Microsoft’s beautiful “Core Fonts” used to be available for (free) download at http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fontpack/default.htm.

Unfortunately, these have now been removed—see http://typographi.com/2002_08_13.php#000428.

Fortunately, the licence agreement under which they were originally distributed makes it possible to make these fonts available for download here.

To unpack the *.exe files on OS X, you’ll need cabextract. (There’s a MacPorts version as well.)

 198383 2002-08-14 08:30 andale32.exe
 554208 2002-08-14 08:30 arial32.exe
 168175 2002-08-14 08:30 arialb32.exe
 246007 2002-08-14 08:30 comic32.exe
 646368 2002-08-14 08:31 courie32.exe
 392439 2002-08-14 08:31 georgi32.exe
 173287 2002-08-14 08:31 impact32.exe
 661728 2002-08-14 08:31 times32.exe
 357200 2002-08-14 08:31 trebuc32.exe
 351991 2002-08-14 08:31 verdan32.exe
 185071 2002-08-14 08:31 webdin32.exe