During my talks, people normally ask me about specific tools they see on my system. About a year ago I posted about a bunch of things I use. It's time I update it to the year 2008. Some have dropped off the list. There are also a few I realized I had left out that I've been using for years (some I left for an alternative solution and came back to later). So anyway here's the list:
1. Launchy. It's Vista's Start menu search done right. It's amazing. Must-have. And if you can, make a donation to the guy developing it.
2. Google Desktop. Still there. Still finding my stuff.
3. Beyond Compare. Nothing "compares" to it. Ok, bad joke, amazing tool.
4. TextPad. Was using it before. Switched to Notepad2, then to ConText, now back to TextPad. The Find in Files feature it has cannot be beaten.
5.SnagIt. Still there. One complaint. It's become a little feature-bloated.
6. Finalbuilder. Since the first beta!
7. TinyClip. Eat your own dog food I say.
8. Console. Throw cmd out the window.
9. TrueCrypt. If you own a laptop and travel or have a desktop and carry it around, or for that matter, even if you don't, you have to keep your info safe. Been using it for years, no problem.
10. KeePass. In combination with TrueCrypt, try getting to know my passwords! I don't even know half of them myself. Keepass types them in for me
11. Acronis TrueImage. Only way to make decent backups and not worry about open files. And it works. I've restored many times from it.
12. Resharper. Cannot work with Visual Studio without it. It's just so unproductive to do so.
13. TortoiseSVN. I hated explorer-based VCS's initially but now I love the fact of not having to start an app to checkin/out a file.
14. FoxIT reader. Dumped Adobe a long time ago for this lightweight alternative. Only issue, it doesn't register the correct MIME type with browsers (or maybe it's something else, haven't investigated that much) and some stupid web sites, for example www.iberia.com try to be smart and won't issue your boarding card if they think you don't have a PDF reader installed (maybe it's just Iberia looking for Adobe specifically?)
15. TaskSwitchXP. You don't need Aero with this.