Software I Use Everyday

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I’m one of those people that enjoy rebuilding their machines every so often, either for performance reasons or just because I like to tidy things up.  I rarely keep software installs around since there are usually newer versions by the time I re-pave my machine so this is my "must have" list of software I reinstall every time, in one easy place for my future self to grab the downloads from.

General/Misc

  • CCleaner - My favorite registry/file cleaner.  I run it at least a few times a week.
  • Trillian - Pretty much the one and only IM client.  It supports all major IM networks and the 4.0 beta version eve handles GTalk and MySpace so there really is no need for anything else.
  • Virtual CloneDrive - It’s what I use to mount ISO’s on anything from XP to Vista, though I hear MagicDisc does a great job as well.
  • Windows Live Writer - It’s what I use to write my blog and it rocks, seriously easy.
  • Windows Live Photo Gallery - Great for tagging photos and includes built-in flickr.com uploading support.  Really polished looking.
  • FeedDemon - My RSS reader of choice, if you only use Google Reader you’re missing out on some really great features.  Awesome support for offline feeds and they just made it free!
  • ClipX - Great clipboard history manager.
  • Window Clippings - I’m always taking screenshots for various things, either blogs or product help or just to send off to a client to show them what they should be seeing.  Free, easy and awesome.
  • Password Agent - New - There are a slew of password vaults out there but for some reason I keep coming back to this one.  It doesn’t try to offer every feature under the sun, just the ones I need.

General Development

  • TortoiseSVN - Best subversion client I’ve used so far.
  • Intype - A TextMate-like clone text editor that I’ve started using more and more.
  • TextPad - Until Intype matures some more I still need a lot of the great features in this text editor.
  • Sysinternals Suite - When you need to know exactly what’s going on in your system these tools will help you explore the plumbing.
  • Ruby - A beautiful scripting language that I find myself using more and more for little tasks that I used to write applications for.
  • Virtual PC 2007 - Because sometimes you just need to test on a different or clean OS and this is even better than a lab full of machines.

.NET Development

  • mbUnit - I find myself preferring mbUnit to NUnit to unit testing.
  • NCover - Ever wonder just how much of your application is actually being tested?  Here you go.
  • TestDriven.NET - Best way to run mbUnit, NCover, NUnit, etc. from inside of Visual Studio.
  • FxCop - Because it’s always nice to know what the framework team would think of your code.

Delphi Development

  • GExperts - Best add-in for Delphi ever in my opinion.  Just the Ctrl-G makes it a must-have.
  • QC Plus - When you want to submit Delphi bugs or just browse the current issues the CodeGear provided QC client app sucks.  QC Plus pretty much blows it out of the water.

Web

  • Chrome - New - This used to say Firefox but honestly I haven’t installed Firefox during my last three machine reinstalls.
  • Fiddler - When you need to debug HTTP traffic this is the tool I reach for.
  • SmartFTP -  I used to use Filezilla but honestly I’m a sucker for a good looking UI.
  • Gmail Notifier - Notifications of new Gmail messages in your tray.  Simple and useful.

LAMP

I still do a lot of PHP work for a few clients so these are my "must have" tools for working with the LAMP stack.

  • PuTTY - For telnet/SSH access into a site’s shell
  • SQLyog - GUI for managing MySql databases
  • LAMP Virtual Appliance - A LAMP stack in a virtual machine, with images for VMware and Virtual PC/Virtual Server.  Great for testing

Media

  • Zune Software - Because I have a Zune and I love UI.
  • Mp3tag - My favorite metadata tag editor.
  • Winamp - Still the most powerful media player out there, plus it rips better MP3′s than the Zune software since it uses the LAME encoder.
  • EncodeHD – There are a dozen if not hundreds of tools used to re-encode video out there yet oddly enough they either look like a boom box from the 80’s, are super complicated or are expensive.  This is free, open-source, requires a single installer and frankly rocks.  Highly recommended.

Uh, now I realize why it takes me so long to reinstall my machine :)

UPDATE: Okay, so I’ve updated my list for 2010, look for  - New – for the items I’ve added since I last made this list.