| Software | Thoughts |
| Windows 7 Ultimate | The best Microsoft OS I’ve ever used. Enable the following features - Internet Information Services (IIS)
- Microsoft Message Queue (MSMQ)
|
| Windows Syncor Live Mesh | I toggle back and forth between these two |
| Password Agent | It’s my long-time favorite password manager and I couldn’t live without it. I use Windows Sync to keep my .pwa file synched to all my machines. Works like a charm. |
| Virtual Clone Drive | I’m finally leaving Daemon Tools – it said it supports Windows 7, but it didn’t for me. This package as steadily gotten shadier and shadier (constantly trying to install crap-ware, etc.). I’m happily using the free version of Virtual Clone Drive. |
| TextPad 5 | I’ve been using this as my primary text editor for over 10 years. I’ve tried to use Notepad++, Notepad2, SciTE, UltraEdit, etc. but I like this one the best
TextPad Tweaks: - Change the global font to Consolas 13 pt.
- Change the “Selected” color to lime green
|
Launchy | I used SlickRun for years, but I moved this years ago for my quick launch needs. It’s great. No longer needed in Win7 – the start menu searching is so good, and hitting the Windows key with my left thumb is good enough for me. |
Chromewith extensions: Evernote
| I toggle between Chrome and Firefox |
| Firefoxwith extensions IETab ,AdBlock, Firebug | |
| Media Players and Plugins | |
| IDE’s and Extensions | Visual Studio 2008 Professional
Visual Studio 2010 Professional
Tweaks:
* Disable “Track Changes” (Options –> Text Editor)
* Disable animations (Environment –> General –> uncheck “Automatically adjust visual experience based on client performance” and uncheck all child options
* Disable “Track Active Item in Solution Explorer” (Environment –> Projects & Solutions)
* At startup: “Show empty environment” (Environment –> Startup)
* Exclude devenv.exe from my virus scanner
* Exclude all .NET and Visual Studio directories from virus scanner
* Remap the following keys: F1 – AttachToProcess, F7 – Rebuild Selected Project, Ctrl+F7 – Rebuild Solution, Alt+W – ReSharper.ReSharper_ExtendedSelection
* Add nhibernate-configuration.xsd and nhibernate-mapping.xsd to C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\Packages\schemas\xml VSCommands
ReSharper VisualSVN TestDriven.NET ASP.NET MVC |
| Core Development Tools | .NET Memory Profiler TortoiseSVN Gallio NUnit |
| Misc Development Tools | |
| Paint.NET | I don’t use this much these days with Windows 7 because of it’s nifty new Paint program that handles PNG’s and does precise cropping. I like to have this installed regardless. |
| WordWeb Pro | I love having this handy at all times on all my machines. I can lookup any word while using any program with a quick key combo |
| Windows Live Writer | The best blogging client there is on Windows
Install this plugin as well: Insert Code for Windows Live Writer
|
| Office Ultimate 2007 | |
| Virtual Box | This is the best VM software I’ve found for personal use. It’s free… it’s fast… and it’s stable. |
iTunes | I wish I didn’t have to, but it’s kind of a must with my iPhone, peer pressure, etc. Dumped my iPhone for Anroid, and therefore dumped iTunes. Finally. |
| Windows Home Server Console | I run a Windows Home Server at home (life saver) and this is the client software that goes with it. |
| Trillian Pro | I finally gave this a try and I dig it. It vastly simplify my IM life.
|
| Skype | Stellar VoIP client |
| Evernote | I never thought I would ever abandon my paper notebook, but I did. This isn’t the best note taking app out there (that would be OneNote), but they have a great web app version of this, an iPhone app, and a Windows client… and they’re all linked together and synch automatically. That’s hard to beat. The iPhone app is what killed the paper notebook. I just don’t need it anymore |
| 7zip | Fastest zip app there is out there |